A World Where You All Are The Villains

“Sister… is it over now? Are the scary people gone?”

With his face buried against Eston’s back, Theo had been trembling, but now he slowly lifted his head.

As expected, the child’s face was perfectly normal.

His pupils, which would have been pitch-black and dilated if he were miasma-corrupted, looked completely healthy. There were no signs of the typical symptoms of miasma erosion, like sticky black fluid pouring from his eyes, nose, or mouth.

“……!”

The man approaching Eston startled at the sight and turned to his lord in shock.

“N-No…! H-How is this possible…!”

The village chief, too, gaped, looking back and forth between Theo and Eston.

But Dylan simply watched in silence, arms crossed.

“Kid. If you’re okay, can I pluck just one hair from your head?”

“S-Sister…”

Theo shrank back at the stranger’s request.

“It’s alright, Theo. It won’t hurt. The man just wants to see what color your hair is. Should I pull one too?”

Eston gently soothed her little brother.

Thanks to her, the man managed to collect a strand of Theo’s hair without any trouble. He put it in a glass vial he was carrying.

Inside the vial of water, a few tiny fish, each about the size of a pinky, swam around lazily.

I’d experienced this test myself before.

‘Miasma detection.’

If the fish were to die, it means the person is contaminated by miasma. It was a simple, basic test.

The man gently shook the vial, mixing it.

I watched, a little tense.

I was certain I’d purified Theo completely, but since regular people can’t see the ‘rampage percentage’, I couldn’t be absolutely sure.

And not even an hour had passed since Theo had woken up.

‘If there’s still any miasma left in him…’

Apparently thinking the same, Eston shot me a desperate look.

I swallowed nervously, waiting for the test to end.

“…He’s clean.”

The man finally declared.

None of the fish inside the vial he handed to Dylan had died.

“Haa…”

Eston, who’d been stiff as a board, finally let out a sigh of relief.

Though I didn’t show it, I also felt like I’d been given a new lease on life.

Only one person stubbornly refused to accept the result.

“N-No, that can’t be… That can’t be, my lord! Just yesterday, Sophie saw the boy unable to say a word!”

“He’d been tied up and starved for days while he was sick. How could he talk normally like that?!”

With no miasma detected, Eston glared sharply at the chief and shot back.

She then turned her gaze to Dylan.

“My lord, I just found out a moment ago that some villagers seem to have been thawing out the frozen corrupted. That’s why Miss Nancy—I mean, Her Ladyship—and I ended up being chased.”

“E-Eston…!”

The chief was utterly flustered by her sudden accusation.

“N-No, it wasn’t anyone else, my lord! S-Sophie, that woman, acted alone—!”

The chief frantically denied it, but Eston pressed on, venting all her pent-up resentment.

“If you go check for yourself, you’ll see Aunt Sophie came to thaw out her son and ended up starting a fire. She tried to block us from taking Theo away.”

“……”

“That’s why the corrupted managed to escape. Even if the fire spread, isn’t it strange that they broke free so quickly, and most of them at that? Unless someone started thawing them out beforehand.”

Dylan, who had quietly listened to Eston’s report, furrowed his brow.

“So all the reports were lies.”

“M-My lord! Please, it’s a misunderstanding! Please hear me out—!”

“Frank. Arrest everyone involved and interrogate them.”

“Yes, my lord!”

“W-Wait, my lord! My lord—!”

The chief was promptly dragged away by Dylan’s men.

It was a rather anticlimactic end.

“……”

Silence fell once again over the dead forest.

‘So, it’s resolved for now?’

It was a bit unexpected that even the villagers who thawed the ice would be punished.

Being chased by the corrupted was certainly dangerous, but it wasn’t as if Eston was an entirely innocent victim.

She had hidden her miasma-exposed brother, and as a result, others were hurt. That was all true.

But I didn’t really feel like judging her for it.

‘It’s a pain. Not my problem, anyway.’

Honestly, just the thought of returning empty-handed, with not a single clue about my transmigration to show for coming all this way, was enough to make my head ache.