The Seven-Year-Old Village Chief in Exile - Chapter 7

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 7
“…Pardon?”
I stared, frozen, and repeated what he’d said.
“Execution? Immediate?”
“Possessed Individuals destroy the world’s order, the flow of fate, causality—all at their whim, spouting nonsense about being the ‘original’ or some such. One possession causes damage to at least ten thousand people. They think they’re the protagonists of the world.”
The demon in school uniform shook his head, looking troubled.
“There’s an organization called the Multidimensional Alliance. Though I suppose this might be premature to tell you just yet. In any case, the damage caused by Possessed Individuals across various worlds has been…”
My throat went dry. I swallowed hard.
‘What kind of development is this?’
Possessed Individuals?
Immediate execution?
‘Why did I ask? I should’ve just kept pretending to be Hebeniah! What’s with my conscience!’
That was when it happened.
“Were you wondering if you yourself were possessed?”
The demon thrust his face closer to mine, asking the question.
Startled, I hiccupped loudly instead of answering.
The demon in school uniform laughed brightly at the sight of me.
“Oh my, what a misunderstanding! Don’t worry. You’ve simply settled back into your original body. You’re not possessed.”
I’d returned.
The demon smiled so beautifully it made your chest flutter.
But I could only feel afraid.
I couldn’t be certain whether it was the demon’s smile that frightened me, or the tremendous secret I’d just learned about myself.
But one thing was clear.
‘My hiccups had stopped—that’s how shocked I was.’
I wasn’t possessed.
From the beginning, I had been Hebeniah Clavis.
* * *
First, I introduced the demon in school uniform to my household.
I decided to set aside the many questions swirling confusingly in my mind for now. I was desperately curious, but these weren’t urgent matters.
“You can ask me more if you’d like.”
“My head’s too muddled. Later.”
“Dear me, have I been talking too much?”
“Not yet, at least…”
The family members gathered at our house to prepare dinner greeted the demon warmly the moment they saw him.
“I’m a demon who will be staying by Hebeniah’s side from today onward.”
The demon in school uniform won over the household instantly with his straightforward manner and gentle smile.
He even told us his name.
“Please call me Verity! Of course, it’s an alias. If an ordinary human heard my true name, their skull would burst, and their soul would wander this realm, fraying, until it finally scattered.”
“…”
“…”
A demon was a demon, after all.
While dinner was being prepared, I pulled Ian aside and went to a corner of the yard with Verity.
“Verity is an incredibly powerful demon, isn’t he?”
At my question, Verity nodded.
“In terms of combat ability, I possess skills that won’t embarrass anyone. Even the two Lords you met before would acknowledge that.”
So the bleached demon was a Lord too.
“Then could you help train both of us?”
“Hebeniah?”
Ian looked at me in surprise.
I spoke to Ian.
“I’m sorry for deciding on my own like this. But when you touched the sword earlier, there was something so wistful in your eyes…”
“…”
“Like the protagonist in that song from morning calisthenics.”
“Ha, ha…”
Ian opened his mouth with a bitter smile.
“I’m embarrassed. Even you, my younger sister, saw through me.”
And he admitted it readily.
“You’re right. I still have lingering attachments.”
Though he’d stepped down from his knightly position under false accusations, Ian still couldn’t forget those days when he wielded the sword.
“The sword isn’t just a weapon to me. It’s the means to protect my family, the fruit of my labor, proof that I’m alive and breathing.”
“Brother…….”
The word felt a bit awkward on my tongue.
But it meant that much to Ian—I could tell—so I hid my true feelings behind a wry smile.
“Good heavens……!”
And then.
“To think there exists such an admirable human being!”
Verity ate it up entirely.
‘Now that I think about it, that was exactly the kind of line a moody adolescent would love.’
Looking fifteen as he did, he probably actually was one in his head.
‘No wonder his combat strength is so formidable.’
While we were at it, Ian and I decided to start training the very next day.
I ate a hearty dinner that evening and went to bed early to prepare for tomorrow’s training.
Yet I couldn’t fall asleep so easily.
‘So I really am Hebeniah.’
All this time, I’d thought I was a Possessed Individual.
Even as the dizziness in my head persisted, my heart grew strangely calm.
‘What a relief.’
The guilt of having seized another’s body vanished, and confidence bloomed in its place. Now there was nothing I need hold back from.
Yet a question emerged.
‘If being Hebeniah right now is the real truth…….’
Then what on earth was my life as Chai Ha-bin in that other world?
“Mmm…….”
I groaned over the question at length, but no satisfying answer came.
“Well, let’s just forget it!”
My curiosity wasn’t urgent. What mattered most to me now was living well here in the Exile Settlement.
To do that, I had to learn how to use my strength properly.
‘I suppose it’s unfair. If this life here was truly mine all along, what about all the suffering I endured there?’
But even that bitterness paled against the relief and happiness I felt now.
‘Right. Let’s forget it for now and sleep well.’
What good would it do to keep complaining about a life more dreadful than exile itself?
Just as the exiles here reclaimed their own lives, I would find and enjoy mine.
‘A pleasant task, then.’
With that thought, my heart settled.
As if praising such a night, someone gently stroked my head.
“…….”
When I opened my eyes in sudden surprise, morning had already come.
‘When did I fall asleep?’
The sensation was too vivid to be a dream, still sharp and clear, so I quietly ran my fingers through my hair.
I greeted the morning with pleasant embarrassment.
* * *
Verity, dressed in a dark blue school tracksuit, led Ian and me to the outskirts of the Residential District where the Primeval Forest stretched wide.
“First, please take these.”
He held out two bags.
Ian’s was a neutral-colored Hiking Backpack, while mine was a pink one with a drawing of an ant carrying a flower on its head.
Inside were dried rations, a water flask, a first-aid kit, and the like.
‘Surely not……!’
A chill ran through me as I turned back to Verity.
Verity delivered his terrible news with an innocent smile.
“The best training is real combat! Shall we begin intensive training hunting monsters in the Primeval Forest?”
“You demon!”
“I am a demon, yes?”
“Are you out of your mind……!”
As I began to protest in alarm, Ian beside me had gone strangely quiet.
When I glanced over uneasily, he stood with the resolute expression of one who’d made peace with death, his eyes gleaming with determination.
As if hunting monsters in the teeming Primeval Forest and honing his skills was his very destiny.
‘This brother of mine has lost his mind!’
Look at your side!
There’s a seven-year-old right next to you!
Sensing my displeasure, Verity placed a Strawberry Milk Candy between my lips with his characteristic cheerful smile.
“As you know, Miss Hebeniah, this place is a hunting ground where the Lord’s Familiar Spirit romps about. Monsters are merely its snacks.”
Exilium is the domain of Familiar Spirits.
A Familiar Spirit is a demon’s pet.
In other words, this place is a demon’s land.
“In the territory of a superior being stronger than themselves, monsters cannot act recklessly.”
“R-really?”
So the training might be easier, then?
Unfortunately for me, that hope was not to be fulfilled.
“The moment we enter the forest, I’ll seal your power. Then the monsters will think, ‘Oh, how convenient!’ and come rushing at you both. All you need to do is hunt them down properly.”
“You devil!”
Having coughed up blood and exerted myself not long ago, his words did not sit well with me.
“So you won’t do it?”
“W-well, I suppose I will, but…”
As if he’d expected as much, Verity grinned.
The decision now rested with Ian.
“What will you do?”
“I want to grow stronger quickly.”
Ian’s downturned eyes burned quietly.
“I was framed for crimes I didn’t commit because I was weak—because I lacked the strength to even protect myself properly. The family left behind is probably suffering because of me.”
“…”
The family of a convict exiled for embezzlement and breach of trust.
Given what we had endured, the family left behind was surely not in a good situation either.
‘Usually the families of perpetrators find it hard to be protected.’
Ian, who had been a royal knight, knew that better than anyone.
No matter how composed he appeared on the surface, inside he must be burning black with rage. The same was likely true for the other exiles.
“…All right.”
Before entering the forest, I made a request of Verity.
“Make us a tool so we can communicate with our family.”
“What kind, specifically?”
“Hmm…”
As I pondered, I glanced at the Watch on my left wrist.
I recalled reading in ‘The Complete Clavis’ that this Watch had a telephone function.
“Make another one just like it—one with a telephone function.”
Verity promptly created a Watch and handed it to me.
Just as he finished, the family arrived to see us off.
I fastened the newly made Watch around Livy’s wrist, and right then and there, I showed her how to make a call and we tested it.
There were two types of calls: voice and video.
Voice was simple—communicating by sound alone—while video displayed a small screen on the liquid crystal, showing the other person’s image.
“My goodness!”
As my image appeared on the small screen above the Watch, Livy and the exiles gasped in surprise.
‘Oh, the picture quality is quite good.’
I was marveling at it too when someone tapped my shoulder gently.
I turned around with a joyful smile.
“Dalis!”
My fellow prisoner, the woman falsely accused of murdering her husband and abusing her children, was still not entirely of sound mind.
According to the adults, her hair had turned white, but it had originally been brown—it had turned that way in just one day after arriving at the Exile Settlement.
Dalis gazed at me blankly for a moment, then opened her arms and embraced me tightly. I wrapped my arms around her back in return.
“Listen well to Livy. I’ll bring you a gift when I return.”
* * *
We decided to depart for the Primeval Forest only after the exiles had returned to the village, as a precaution.
Staring into the darkness-shrouded Primeval Forest, I asked Verity a question.
“How do we enter?”
“Why, you open it and go in, miss.”
“Me?”
“Then shall I do it?”
“Can’t your butler open a Seal?”
“Miss, we’ve only known each other a day and you’re already saying harsh things.”
Verity placed his hands on his hips and answered spiritedly.
“I’m just a bread shuttle! There are things I can’t do!”
“But didn’t I give you both the money to buy bread and your errand pay?”
Isn’t it me who’s the bread shuttle?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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