I Am Not Goblin Slayer

Chapter 318: Good and Evil Lie in the Heart

"Thud—"Gauss smashed his fist onto the stone slab. The sealing magic guarding the cellar flickered, could no longer bear the strain, and finally shattered with a thunderous crash.

A stronger, fouler stench wafted out from the opening.

"Light Cantrip."

Gauss released a companion orb of light.

The passage brightened instantly.

"Ahem!"

"So poor, she was locked up in here the whole time?"

Aria gently fanned the air.

When the group stepped down into the cellar, they could finally make out the room's layout.

Cloudy glass jars soaking various organs, forceps, saws and other surgical tools, an examination table, a workbench, and in the corner of the room an iron cage draped with a black cloth.

Gauss hurried over and pulled the black cloth aside.

"Whoa!"

Abby’s body lay huddled motionless in the corner. When the cloth was lifted, a piercing light suddenly flooded her vision.

The sudden brightness made her squint.

Since being imprisoned here, she hadn’t seen such bright, such warm light for more than half a month.

"What is this?"

Her sight had not yet fully recovered.

A gentle sound reached her ears, making her instinctively feel reassured.

"It’s all right now."

As her pupils gradually adjusted to the light, the scene before her grew clearer.

In the glow, a figure bathed in holy white light slowly came into view.

The handsome man looked a little awkward, an undercurrent of pity and a sigh hidden deep in his eyes.

"Daidai—"

The man set his hand on the iron cage and exerted a little force.

The iron bars, thicker than a wrist, were easily pried apart.

He gently lifted the missing girl Abby out of the iron prison, then draped a black robe over her body, soiled from prolonged captivity.

Abby lay in that strong, powerful embrace and tilted her head up to gaze at that flawless face.

"Is this... an angel?"

After rescuing Abby, Gauss did not linger long in the room.

Shadow first conducted a thorough search of the surroundings to ensure there were no further survivors. Then everyone quickly looted the useful spoils from the site.

Some sinister items—experimental organs, notebooks, records—were destroyed on the spot.

Finally, Gauss released a soul-stirring Fireball.

It obliterated the scene completely;the house, building, and various experimental instruments melted under the fireball’s intense heat.

He destroyed everything to ensure a second Witch Megan would never be born.

Before he obliterated it all, he had already recorded some crucial evidence with a "Memory Sphere," so there would be proof when needed.

This memory sphere was a magical oddity purchased in Fisherman's Song Town.

A bit like a camera from a previous life, the recorded images could be preserved for a long time.

The village chief Hodel and several other village elders followed behind like they were dragging a thousand-pound weight, their steps heavy. Gauss used a spell called Friendship Spell—actually a truth-forcing charm—to question Hodel and the others.

Combined with the cellar notes and the elders' testimonies, he finally understood the whole affair.

Back in the village, Gauss gathered the villagers in the open square.

He then disclosed everything that had happened in the stone house and the existence of Witch Megan to the assembled people.

More precisely, Witch Megan was the village's "ancestor," a rare magical prodigy born in this Herbal Medicine Village centuries ago.

Seeking power, she became an adventurer, and by chance obtained a rare wizard legacy, walking a very different path as a Brain Transferer wizard.

Because the brain transplant surgery needed to minimize rejection when changing bodies, she targeted villagers who shared similar bloodlines with her.

Thus began a centuries-long cycle of "nurturing" and "experimentation."

To facilitate control, she would occasionally select an obedient villager to become village chief;those who resisted would be poisoned and killed, then replaced with the next obedient caretaker.

At the same time, she cleared nearby monsters and periodically provided supplies or other support to ensure her "cultivated blood" would not be lost to misfortune.

Under this carrot-and-stick strategy, Herbal Medicine Village developed into its present state.

The cost was periodic disappearances: some villagers became new bodies for the witch;others were used as experimental materials.

Some had "gone missing" like Abby while gathering herbs, some left a letter and went off to try their luck in towns, and others fell ill with incurable "strange diseases."

Although suspicions occasionally arose, they were quickly soothed.

Besides, this era was never safe to begin with.

Even in a normal village, for a child to survive to adulthood involved countless risks—sudden death, disease, getting lost, hunger, monster raids...

Compared to those unknown dangers, the relatively well-off Herbal Medicine Village was still a decent place to live.

So families of missing children had to stifle their grief, accept the misfortune, and continue living.

After all, the dead were gone, while the living still had to face the future.

Now, in the square before the villagers, Gauss bared the hidden truth in all its bloodiness.

The bustling crowd immediately erupted into chaos.

Some refused to believe it, thinking Gauss was talking nonsense.

They had lived here for generations;how could their village be a witch’s "breeding ground"?

Others turned pale with shock.

Especially those who had lost children before;their pupils constricted abruptly, and things that had never made sense suddenly fell into place.

To prove his words, Gauss displayed the images from the memory sphere with magic for the villagers to see.

They were jars filled with human organs and pages of experimental records.

Villagers’ names, ages, experimental procedures—Witch Megan had recorded everything in detail.

Of course, she recorded all this for her own human experiment data, but now it served as proof for Gauss’s claims.

"It's Fan En! Fan En, he…"

"Didn't he go to Barry Town to apprentice as a blacksmith?"

"There’s Keira too."

People in the crowd soon spotted names they recognized and covered their mouths and noses in disbelief.

There were more names in the notes that contemporary villagers no longer remembered;those belonged to villagers who had vanished over the past centuries—their acquaintances and relatives long since in the ground.

The most direct proof was Abby’s return.

If other disappearances spanned years, Abby had only gone missing half a month ago while gathering herbs.

The notes and Abby’s return forced the doubtful villagers to face reality.

Their "pure land" was actually the witch’s experimental field.

The most furious were those who had lost loved ones;Witch Megan was dead, so they angrily surrounded the village chief and the other elders who had remained bowed in silence the whole time.

"Hodel, why did you help the witch!"

"Give me back my dear Georgina, you beast!"

...

Gauss watched the square descend into chaos and shook his head.

Some villagers were enraged;some bewildered;others carried a slight unease and panic—that terror of having their familiar environment that sustained them torn away.

Witch Megan was certainly not benevolent, but objectively, her existence had maintained a messy yet somewhat stable order.

The Herbal Medicine Village was entering a "post-witch era." They would have to rely on their own strength to survive in the forest—fend off monsters or relocate to less resource-rich but safer areas.

Gauss observed all of this.

After all, he was just an outsider.

As an adventurer, he could only offer help within his capabilities.

He looked at the village’s only mage, who appeared to be in his thirties.

Since Gauss and the others had returned, the mage had watched the events unfold silently.

"Your name is... David, right?"

On the way back, Gauss had asked Chief Hodel about the village’s sole professional mage.

He needed to ensure this professional had not colluded with Witch Megan.

Hodel had repeatedly assured him David had no direct contact with the witch.

David’s skills, spells, and Meditation Method largely came from Witch Megan, but those "in the know" had requested them from the witch to improve the village’s defenses.

"Yes, Lord Gauss." David answered timidly.

"Hodel promised me on the way back that you had no collusion with Witch Megan, but I suppose you were aware of the village situation, weren’t you?" Gauss said quietly.

Faced with Gauss’s calm question, David fell into a long silence.

After a long while, he nodded bitterly.

"Yes."

He had once tried to investigate the missing villagers but was quickly stopped by Chief Hodel.

Hodel forbade him from probing.

Though Hodel was an ordinary man, he was David’s foster father.

He had raised the parentless David and funded his training to become a professional mage.

So even though David suspected the disappearances were not accidents, he never conducted a thorough investigation and simply numbly ignored what was happening.

He spent his days teaching young villagers skills, leading them to hunt beasts and monsters outside the village, but did not dare set foot in the forbidden place Hodel mentioned.

He also realized that the "missing" villagers were unlikely taken by monsters, and that the occasional resources provided by professionals probably came from that forbidden area.

But he lacked the courage to break the cycle—until Gauss arrived.

Under Gauss’s penetrating gaze, David lowered his head;it was as if Gauss had seen through him.

"I will report all of this to the Adventurers Guild." Gauss sighed. "Hodel and the others are not my concern."

"But I only ask that you, as the village's only professional, protect this village."

Although they had lost the witch’s perverse protection, in theory a resident professional mage combined with able-bodied villagers could handle most threats.

As for reporting to the Adventurers Guild, Gauss had already written a brief letter recording the situation and sent Raven Eck to deliver it to the nearest Fisherman’s Song Town.

Given his influence in Fisherman’s Song Town, someone would likely arrive quickly to investigate and handle the follow-up.

To some in Fisherman’s Song Town, he was already a lake god’s "earthly deputy," not an ordinary adventurer.

"Let's go."

Gauss cast one last look at the village.

Serlandul had already fetched Abby’s father and their luggage.

Both Abby and her father needed Serlandul’s treatment. After asking Abby, Gauss did not intend to leave them in Herbal Medicine Village;he planned to take them with the team to the next town.

Night fell.

Gauss and the others set up Fold Houses on a patch of open ground.

"How is Abby?"

There were six Fold Houses in total.

Aria chose to stay with Shadow, leaving a room for Abby.

The empty room was reserved for Abby’s father, York.

"She can move about now." Serlandul turned to Gauss and said softly.

He had removed the witch Megan’s magical suppression from Abby.

Now Abby had fallen into a deep sleep from exhaustion.

"But she will still need some time to recover."

"Hmm." Gauss nodded.

"What about York? Will he regain his senses?"

York was not actually mad;his normal mind had been numbed by drugs.

He had always suspected his wife had died from complications after childbirth, but because of his daughter Abby he never dared pursue the matter.

After Abby disappeared, the man who had lost his last tether finally resolved to investigate and discovered Hodel leaving the village at night.

He was discovered, and Hodel—not entirely without conscience—did not choose to silence him.

Instead he drugged York, leaving him in a dazed, raving state.

This world is not purely black or white;most people are simply ordinary. They are neither saints who cannot tolerate a speck of wrongdoing nor monsters of absolute evil.

Hodel allowed the witch to capture villagers for experiments and occasionally supplied her with food and daily goods...

But he also distributed resources he obtained from the witch to villagers and organized trips to resource-rich areas for herb gathering, improving villagers’ living standards. When York discovered the truth, Hodel still lacked the heart to kill him.

Not a good man, but not evil enough to be utterly irredeemable.

So Hodel would be handed over to the villagers and the officials from Fisherman’s Song Town who would arrive to investigate.

"It should be fine. Now that the drugs have halted and with me dispelling the potion from his body, he should regain consciousness, then we can slowly treat him..."

Gauss could not help feeling a little sympathetic.

If they hadn’t happened to pass through Herbal Medicine Village, this man's life would have been a nightmare.

His wife taken by a witch to sustain her life, and years later his only daughter suffering the same fate.

That is power.

Gauss clenched his palm and then relaxed it.

Power can create tragedy and drag people into an abyss, but it can also bring salvation.

It is neither good nor evil in itself;it depends entirely on how people use it.