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"Hello! I'm Enri, welcome to Carne Village!"
The girl greeted us with a wide smile on her face, although after getting a closer look at her, I could see her eyes were bloodshot and bruised.
She seemed tired and worn out, like she had barely slept the past few days.
After a few seconds of the goblins and Enri staring at us, Aly realized I wasn't going to speak up.
"Ah- Hello, I'm Aly, this is Link… Are you… the master of these goblins?"
Her eyes widened in surprise at the question, and her expression turned sheepish.
"Oh, yeah. They must have startled you, huh? Don't worry, they're all really nice, they won't attack you."
...So this girl was actually their master in some capacity. Did they obey her completely? If so, how did she manage to tame a bunch of monsters? I could become friendly with hostiles by wearing the 'Mask' items from the game, but there was never a way to permanently tame enemies. How did she do it? Some kind of magic spell, or did she just make an alliance with the goblins?
Either way, I was unsettled by the prospect. Mainly because these goblins were absolutely intelligent. They were able to speak, they were trained in weaponry, and they served and protected a village.
They were no different from any other sentient race.
And I must have killed dozens of them in the past few days.
"Anyways, you guys are travelers, right? In that case, sorry for the surprise from the goblins. We've… not had a good week. We need to be cautious around visitors."
Her forced-cheerfulness faded away as the girl talked more, and when she was finished speaking, she had begun staring at the ground, her brows furrowed.
The goblins had moved away from the three of us, back towards town, although the level 12 was still standing nearby and watching us quietly. He was probably acting as a guard for her.
Aly spoke again, hesitantly, and we began to learn from Enri about Carne Village, and the horrible fate it had recently endured.
...
After the introductions, me and Aly quickly came to realize a few things.
The goblins that intercepted us had been protecting this village from any hostiles or attackers. They served the girl, who's name was Enri, and were completely loyal. When not trying to sneak up on visitors, they were apparently quite cheerful and funny. That might have been biased on Enri's part, though.
It seemed strange to me that they followed the girl even though I could see she was only level 3, but then she explained how she had summoned them from a magic item she received.
Although there was never an item that could summon monsters in Breath of the Wild, this was an entirely different land, so it was likely there were all kinds of things that would be new to me.
Throughout the conversation, Aly was quiet. He did the talking for both of us, and explained how I didn't enjoy speaking, but he was much more withdrawn than usual. He was probably still intimidated by the others.
Not knowing what to do, I left him alone for the moment.
As the two of us entered the boundaries of the village along with Enri and the goblins, the gaze of the surrounding villagers fell heavily on my shoulders. They were staring.
All of them seemed incredibly fearful, not just of me and Aly, but of the surrounding forest and plains. The working people looked around, filled with apprehension, as if they expected monsters to attack at any moment.
As we entered the town, observing the nearby villagers, I realized how few people could actually be seen in comparison to the amount of houses.
An apprehension began to slowly fill me.
And that feeling was soon proven correct.
...
Enri explained how the village had been brutally attacked, just two days ago.
It was a nightmarish story.
On a relatively normal day, just like the sunny one now, the lives of these villagers had gone to hell.
Soldiers dressed in armor from the neighboring empire had suddenly appeared and began slaughtering the residents of this village. After arriving on horseback they went from house to house, rounding up the people and mercilessly killing them, for seemingly no reason at all.
Enri spoke quietly, saying how there was no empathy or compassion to be seen on that day.
Only through the efforts of a masked sorcerer calling himself 'Ainz Ooal Gown' did the survivors come out of it with their lives. Apparently, this man arrived in the town and rescued them with magic, summoning a large creature which then killed all of the attackers.
A horribly bitter feeling rose in my chest.
I couldn't believe it.
While me and Aly had been traveling through the forest without a care, these people were slaughtered. Like animals, by merciless enemies. Enemies you couldn't even call human.
I bit down on my lip.
Nobody had spoken after Enri relayed her story, and she seemed distinctly uncomfortable, rubbing at her arm and staring at something we couldn't see, lost in memories.
I glanced at Aly, who was watching our surroundings silently, and the girl in front of us, with empty eyes. His fidgeting had stopped over the course of her retelling.
Noticing my gaze, he made eye contact, tilting his head in question.
I turned back to Enri and opened my mouth.
It was quite hard to even get my throat working, with stress building inside of me as the villagers around us watched quietly. But I managed.
"...We'll help."
Carne village was small.
It didn't have a large population, it was separated from any nearby settlements, and it was built directly on the edge of the dangerous Forest of Tob.
Plus, after the… large and sudden decrease in the amount of residents, this smallness was even more apparent.
I could almost call it a hamlet, instead of a village, but there was still organization and a proper collection of buildings, so I refrained from that.
However, just because the village was small, didn't mean it was a bad place to live.
In fact, I had come to greatly enjoy the small, quaint, and struggling piece of civilization.
"Oi, Link, could you bring us another few logs?! That'd be great, thanks!"
Looking up from the wooden wall, and the nail I had just finished hammering into it, I nodded to the man who had yelled out to me, before making my way to a large pile of wood the villagers had gathered.
After me and Aly's arrival on the day before, the wall around the village had grown in size quickly. While at first there was only a small foundation and the beginning of a proper plan, we were soon able to accumulate resources and people willing to help. As the hours passed, wooden supports and logs were put up.
Now, nearly an entire section of it was complete, and dozens of people worked hard all around me.
I picked up one of the piled wooden logs, a medium-sized one around fifteen feet long and thick with old spirals, hefting it over my shoulder with a grunt, and making sure nobody was nearby to accidentally hit.
A few of the villagers gasped in shock at the sight, but most of the people working here had become used to my jarring shows of strength.
I had to admit though, the image of a small and not very bulky-looking guy picking up an entire piece of tree more than three times his height must have been disorienting.
Before starting work, I had changed out of my champion's tunic and was now wearing the climbing armor. In game, it was used to increase Link's speed while climbing and reduce the amount of stamina used. After beginning to help out with the construction efforts, I wanted to test out these stamina conserving abilities.
Sadly, I hadn't noticed any difference when wearing the set and when wearing something else. Though, that might definitely have been because the work just wasn't difficult enough for me to get tired.
After another few hours we stopped for a large lunch, made by a few of the men's wives. Sitting around and talking with the townspeople, I was able to get a few good looks into their personalities and ways of thinking.
It was unsettling.
While most of them had smiles on their faces, their eyes were dark.
They were exactly like Enri, the girl that had greeted us on the way in. Trying to cover up the darker emotions with forced cheerfulness. Laughing with each other, speaking normally, reminiscing and cracking jokes.
But underneath all of that was a desperation- a need for those people to find some method of distraction. It was probably the reason they had been throwing themselves so deeply into physical work, and trying to better themselves and the town.
I sat there silently, surrounded by the loud and energetic meal, as people ate around me.
I was inside of the group conversation, people weren't just ignoring me, but there still felt like a violent disconnect. Even if it was only me who felt that way, watching them like an outside observer.
I didn't know them, I didn't speak much, and they had gone through something horrible together. I was the stranger, sitting in their midst, at a time when all of them felt weak and scared.
I felt like there was a chasm between us, opening up and isolating me from the rest of these people.
It was an unpleasant feeling.
But strangely, that feeling was not unfamiliar. Not unfamiliar to this body's feelings, and not unfamiliar to my actual memories, either.
I laughed to myself. It seemed like Link and I were more similar than I thought.
But then something happened.
I was taken out of those self-deprecating thoughts, quite suddenly, as one of the people nearby turned to me.
They spoke, breaking up the conversation.
"-And here's the man of the hour! He must have sped us up by half a day, just by himself!"
"Link! Come on man, you gotta tell us how you got so strong!"
"Yeah, you must be some sort of adventurer, right? With a sword like that…"
"We gotta show you some thanks for helping out so much!"
"Alright, here, take some of my servings!"
"-You definitely need extras after today, huh?"
I blinked a few times at the sudden deluge of attention, as the entire group turned to me, and began piling food onto my plate with barely any incentive.
Their words washed over me as I sat in the center of it all.
...I didn't understand it.
But I smiled with them, anyway.
These people were admirable.
They were determined, hard-working, and even though they were weak individually, they had survived something traumatic. Together, they were recovering, and even though they had a long road ahead of them, they didn't falter.
I accepted their rowdy praise quietly, even as I gave them silent compliments of my own.
Carne village was definitely a good place to be.
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*Author's Note*
This chapter was pretty difficult to write. I wasn't exactly sure how to realistically create these traumatized people, and now that we're getting into more familiar territory I'm scared of rewriting things that were in the book, or going against canon and breaking that. I'm not very used to writing fanfiction yet, so I haven't figured out the best way to avoid both of those things. I also didn't exactly know what else to put into the introduction of Carne Village from Link's perspective, and I still feel like it's too short.
That said, now that we're in Carne Village the pace should be picking up a bit more, and we'll finally get the story started! I'm very excited for what's going to come next.
Also, I really need to say thanks for all of the positive reviews and support I've been getting so far. It's been great and I'm happy you all seem to be liking the story and premise!