We were taken into the beast folk vilge and spent the night there. The vilge we are staying at is in the shape of the letter O, and the houses look like small hexagons with triangle windows. The vilge is well hidden between a circle of trees resembling willow trees from our world; I heard that they call them Witler's Willow. The whole vilge also seems to have been hidden by an illusion spell; to us, it was easy not to fall under the spell due to Sia's help.

  "So tell us, how do you know Ayame?"- The kitsune sat down with us in a private vilge room located on top of one of the trees; the room is carved directly into the tree. The décor of the room is pretty exquisite, with all sorts of vases, pots, cooking utensils, ptes, and bowls for food. Seems like this room is connected to other rooms when you start to realize that the doors look like they are part of the tree itself

  "We met her when we were troubled, and she helped us. Then we officially welcomed her to our team while on a quest." We were served tea and boar meat. I find it peculiar that demi-humans, especially animal demi-humans, can eat animal meat

  !Animal Demi-Humans such as Kitsune can eat meat; they are Human and share the same human digestive system that all humans have; demons have a different digestive system that can digest poison and parasites!

  “Thanks for the biology lesson, Sia."

  "Ayame told us that there were 2 monsters that she met and could help us build the nation of monsters and have it thrive. We received another letter a month ago telling us of 3 people named Hikaru, Hana, and Fumiko that will help us build this nation. If I had to guess, you two are Hikaru and Hana, right?"- The Beast-Folk around here seem to be talking in a bad dialect of the local nguage; we can understand them, but not everything that they say. It’s funny, almost like they have their own forgotten nguage

  !It's because they have their own nguage, but it's not in use anymore!

  "Yes, I am Hikaru Tanaka, and she is Hana Tanaka. Nice to meet the rest of you as well. Say to the others that I salute them”-The woman gave us a warm smile and then moved to another room; she brought in a pte where 2 tea cups sat.

  “Well, I will tell them. Ohhh, you don’t know my name, I am Akari. I am the chief of this vilge. Your main problem is here. Our main problem is not the King's army as we first thought; it turns out they are from the army but are retired and no longer serving; they are Ifrit followers who try to push us out of our homes. Think you can do anything to help? I would like you to handle this with as little violence and killing as possible”-Akari looked in front of us; she then looked straight at us; she couldn't keep her composure. It seemed this was life and death for this vilge.

  “No need to bow. This is for our benefit as well. We will drive the followers of Ifrit out of this vilge. But first, we need more info on them. What did they do? What is their pn? We need that intel. Can you provide us with at least that?" Akari nodded. She stood and walked to one of the drawers in the room. She pulled out a few pieces of paper and gave them to us.

  "These are their pns and what they intend to do; that’s what we managed to gather at least. I think they took captive a few vilgers as well. Be careful, you two."

  Reading over the pns, they want to subjugate this vilge; well, the documents seem all right. They even told them the method they would use to take over the vilge, but something was wrong.

  !Warning, that is a red herring meant to distract them. They pn to take over in a way simir to the Trojan Horse. Let's do something different this time!

  "This is a distraction from how they will invade the city. One question, are there any monsters around the area? The bigger and more dangerous, the better!"- Hana looked at the paper next. I suggested that if they were going to use something akin to the Trojan Horse, we would have that horse eaten.

  "Why would you need that? Now that I think about it, the letter sure sounds suspicious. It may have been written to only distract us; you 2 may be onto something that we didn't see"- Akari gave us a map of the area with all the high-risk regions marked on it and pces where you can find dangerous monsters, too.

  "Thank you, Akari; now, you must wait a bit. Hana and I will be discussing the pn." We moved to a room different from the one we are staying in.

  “So, what is your pn, Hikaru? I don't want to kill them, and if we do, the king in this state will get suspicious and might do something rash; we can't know yet. No, I got it. We can use my skill and delete their memories, but I don't know how much that will hold up. Still, it's our only choice here.” - Hana turned her head left and right, trying to find the right way to deal with this situation.

  “No, I have a better idea, let’s prove that this pce is dangerous first by attracting all of the soldiers where the most dangerous beasts are, we do that first and then we will let the soldiers get killed by the monsters that are there. They won’t know what hit them. Plus, King Wieka will know that they were killed by monstersm we can report on it ourselves while we are disguised that monsters are what killed them and that someone came to the rescue but it was too te”- I pointed on the map the sections that were designated to draw the soldiers in. A minotaur ir in a ravine sounds like the best pce. Even if Akari said to handle it without violence and killing, I don’t think we really have a choice here.

  “The ravine sounds good, but I want to respect Miss Akari’s wishes. But in a sense you are right, dead people tell no tales”- Hana looked at the map and pointed to it. I nodded in agreement.

  We told Akari about the pn and showed her our skills and what we could do; it took us a few hours to do all of that.

  The present:

  "So, Hikaru, did Akari agree to your pn? Didn't she tell you to avoid killing? How did she agree?" Daisuke sits on one of the castle's chairs, watching my memory repy. I decided to switch from that tiny screen of a memory repyer to using a spell that extracts them from my memory.

  "Well, Daisuke, to tell you the truth, she was against it the first time, but we convinced her by showing her the facts of the matter; you will see."

  Back to the memory:

  "Well, it doesn't sound too bad. But there are some other things that we should note. Are you 2 sure that you can bear this burden? You are killing a lot of people. I wanted to avoid this, but there seems to be no other choice. I hope there isn't any more bloodshed in the future. I always wished I could avoid it, but having all the facts in front of me, I can't deny them.” - Akari's face had a somewhat sad look; that's the only way I can describe it, or she looked so tired of life.

  From there, we pnned further ahead. We waited until tonight to put this whole pn into action. I know I jumped here in narration, but I won't let an entire memory of us doing strategy pns with Sia and Akari py; that will be 10 hours too long.

  After Sia’s calcutions, they should be moving toward us now.

  *Use skill: Lord Of Deceit and Lies Lucifer*- We used this skill to turn Hana into Akari and me into 1 other vilge elder.

  As on point with Sia's calcutions, they came with some sort of giant offering. A few soldiers were there with them; the rest seemed to be hiding in a mobile house.

  “Lady Ifrit changed her mind; she wants peace; please accept these offerings of peace and a house that are better than what you could have had in your lives. Be grateful for the Goddess had blessed all of you", – One of the soldiers, who I assume is the commander, spoke, his voice robotic and monotone, his movements janky and disorganized, typical of Ifrit's brainwashing.

  "We are pleased that you decided to walk the path of peace. Please come this way"- We put up the best performance possible to look as weak as possible.

  A mist has set in, like the first time we have walked; great, not this again!

  We directed the soldiers to the Minotaur ravine. The monsters killed Most of them, but they didn't attack us. Strangely, these monsters usually attack us.

  After they were done with the soldiers and were in around 10 minutes, 1 thousand people were killed in 10 minutes; we just stood there and watched, well, not really; I finished off a few that were still alive in secrecy.

  "Thank you for driving the attackers to us. We are grateful for your service to the nation,"- One of the Minotaurs spoke; a yellow light engulfed him, and he stood before us as a man.

  "We are a different species of Minotaur known as Senitaurs; we can transform between our 2 forms as we wish. That's in case you wondered about me just turning Human before you."

  “I have 1 st request. Make it look like we were attacked as well here. I already have some wounds, so it would be a piece of cake for you guys”- They nodded.

  After all was done, Hana and I started to py dead. We even made Sia have us faint while maintaining Lucifer's disguise as Fumiko's guards.

  6 days have passed since that event, and nothing of note really happened, but we were back in Welcia and solved the issues. Strange;y we got invited by the king to the throne room for something, I don't know what exactly.

  "So, tell me all of the information you know about the attack"- King Wieka passed a gss of wine to each of us. Oh, so it's about the missing troops.

  “Well, the attackers were humans, most likely a strong band of bandits with a special skill that allows them to see through the fog. We were attacked by people wielding heavy weapons like 2 handed swords and the like. That’s the st thing I remember. We were lucky that we survived; we had pretty bad injuries, but I managed to activate a small healing spell that saved our lives”- I sipped a little bit of wine. Telling this lie is perfect since followers of Ifrit tend to believe anything, but King Wieka isn't like those people; he was forced into it; just you wait, old man, I am gonna find a way to bring you back if it's possible and kill Ifrit for good.

  “I don’t remember that much. I was the first one to get knocked out, but he saved us as he said with that healing spell that kept us alive, the bandits thought we were dead so they left us there.”- Hana looked at the ground, trying to make an impression of embarrassment.

  "It's ok. You were good guards. It's a good thing that Fumiko sent you there. Now I know what I have to deal with first. I will leave the Nation of Monsters alone for now. We will focus on that band of bandits. You have my permission to rest and are promoted in your guard rank. You are Royal Guards from now on. This means you 2 can work at this pace, and even if you don't, you will have higher pay, and Fumiko is forced to pay you more by my orders."

  “Sia, is there any traces left of the old King Wieka in there?”

  !Yes, that’s why you got promoted!

  We showed respect to King Wieka by doing a small bow; this man had done everything for the people of his country; he was even willing to sacrifice his life for them. I genuinely respect that.