The Main Character is the Villain

In truth, it didn\'t matter. The important thing was that I had a mace in my hand and the tenant farmer\'s family had been dragged to the center of the lord\'s mansion like pigs. If they were dragged like pigs, they had to be beaten like pork cutlets. I practiced swinging my mace in the air. The tightly bound tenant farmer, who saw me practicing, trembled in fear.

The wife lying next to him kept saying to the tenant farmer.

“H-honey, what’s going to happen to us now? Huh?”

“I... I don’t know. I\'m sorry.”

It was a truly tearful sight. The two daughters clung to the tenant farmer, trembling like aspen trees. In contrast to the overweight and unattractive couple, the daughters were well-maintained and quite fair. For a moment, I felt moved but firmly shook my head.

The tenant farmer Balpa was covered in dirt. The guards, who hadn\'t bothered to prepare a cart, had roughly tied him up with ropes and dragged him here. The same goes for the wife and daughters. There were no human rights for criminals in this country anyway.

Especially since they were caught embezzling taxes meant for the lord, there was nothing more to be said. At this point, anything short of roasting them would be considered lenient.

“Balpa. Do you understand your crime?”

“Yes! I\'ve committed a grave sin! Punish me, but please spare my family….”

Kwang-!

I cut off the tenant farmer\'s plea by striking the ground with my mace. Just as quickly as he had stolen the taxes, the tenant farmer acknowledged his guilt and begged for punishment, hoping to save his family.

Hearing the commotion, Sieri came outside and asked Robin what was going on. After Robin explained the situation, Sieri came up to me and said.

"My Lord, pe.... perhaps you could show some leniency…… ”

Sieri voiced her opinion in a very cautious tone, careful not to undermine my authority. I shook my head and said.

“Sieri, if a crime is committed, it must be punished. If we show leniency once, it sets a bad precedent. If I don\'t properly punish the first case, what will people think afterward? They\'ll believe they\'ll be let off the hook too and commit wrongdoings again.”

Sieri fell silent. I felt like her favorability have decreased slightly, but I couldn\'t afford leniency in this matter. Showing weakness before a fraudster would inevitably backfire. I must see this to the end. I instructed Robin to send Sieri back into the manor and then turned my attention back to the tenant farmer. ṛ

“You asked me to punish you but spare your family, Balpa.”

“Yes! Yes! Please, I beg you!”

The tenant farmer once again banged his forehead to the ground. He seemed resigned to his own fate. However, tax evasion was a serious crime, and it was unlikely that his wife or daughters were unaware of his actions.

If anything, they likely mocked the foolish lord and partied together. It\'s obvious they didn\'t try to stop their father or husband. These b*tches were accomplices. Accomplices must be dealt with equally. Evil will always slip through the cracks if you give it room. I intended to make an example of this case to show what happens when you evade taxes.

I ordered the soldiers to move the daughters aside. Then, I lightly swung my mace in front of the wife. She trembled, tears streaming down her toad-like face. The tenant farmer desperately struggled on the ground.

After swinging my mace a few times in the air, I gently tapped the wife\'s head, aiming for a precise hit. I pinned her leg down with one foot to keep her from moving.

“My Lord! My Lord! It was my fault! Please, punish only me! I beg you!”

The wife struggled and tried to escape from me. After gauging the trajectory for the mace, I steadied myself. The tenant farmer screamed in desperation.

“My Lord! Please, I beg you! I\'m sorry! I\'ll die for this, My Lord! My Lord!”

Kkang!

With a chilly sound, the screaming wife fell silent. Her head twisted violently and rolled on the ground. Her neck, dangling loosely, could no longer support her head. Leaving the wife\'s lifeless body sprawled on the ground, I pointed my mace at the daughters.

Robin approached me and said.

“My Lord, doing the same to the daughters is...”

“I won\'t kill them.”

The tenant farmer, stunned between screams, now wore a vacant expression. Crawling towards his wife\'s corpse, he touched her cold body as if hoping she might come back to life, but there was no chance of that.

* Cannot check the status of the deceased.

“Ah... aaaah…”

I flicked the blood off my mace and ordered the daughters to be brought forward. Although they were decently attractive, I had no particular desire to do anything with them. I don\'t know if they\'d spread their legs to the man who killed their mother, and who knows what they\'ll do in bed.

Looking at the situation around me, it seemed that killing the daughters would completely ruin my image. If word got out that I had killed an entire family, Sieri\'s favorability would plummet as well.

Considering others\' opinions, it was better to spare the daughters.

“Let this be a lesson for evading the lord\'s taxes. Tenant farmer Balpa and his wife will be executed. As for their daughters...”

After a brief pause, I asked Robin.

“Is slave trade legal in our territory?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Then let\'s sell them as slaves. Bring in a slave trader.”

I briefly considered selling Aira as well, but I still haven\'t gotten the price for this crazy wench. She still has some use and had her own skills, so it was worth keeping her around a bit longer.

The tenant farmer buried his face in his wife\'s corpse, sobbing. Watching this, I momentarily felt a pang of pity, but remembering how he had lied to my face until the very end quickly restored my composure.

“Alright, let\'s wrap this up.”

I personally executed the wife, but the tenant farmer Balpa was beheaded by the soldiers. From the way he clung to his wife\'s body, it seemed they had a strong marital bond. May they continue their close relationship in the afterlife.

The daughters were to be imprisoned in the dungeon until the slave trader arrived. Of course, they would need someone to talk to, so I placed them in the cell next to Aira.

Currently, Aira was putting on an impressive performance, fully embodying the essence of a madwoman. I wondered if she behaved like this only when I came to check on her. The daughters were begging to be moved to a different room, as if I wasn\'t the one to turn their parents into meat chops and had them be sold into slavery.

“W-who is that woman? She’s terrifying! Please, move us to another room. Anywhere but next to her!”

While the daughters cried and begged, Aira, excited by my presence, was acting even more deranged.

“Kkirek! Kkieeeek! Kyaaaaak!”

If I didn\'t have the ability to see her status window, I would have been convinced she was truly insane and sold her to a brothel. However, her status was functioning perfectly, and Aira was merely pretending to be a lunatic.

A few days later, the slave trader arrived to appraise the daughters\' value. Robin was not involved in this process, and the slave trader was an outsider. Once I confirmed that no one else was in the dungeon besides us, I asked in a low voice.

“Does the price drop if you cut the tendons of the limbs?”

“Female slaves typically get sold to brothels, so it won\'t affect the price much. Their faces are quite decent, and their bodies are in good shape, so they might fetch a higher price.”

“Then there’s no problem. Let\'s cut it.”

I wanted to make sure they can\'t cause trouble in the extreme case that they escaped and lived well. It didn\'t matter where the slave trader sold them. Robin and Sieri would be satisfied knowing they were alive, and they wouldn\'t care about what happened afterward.

They didn\'t have to know every detail about the criminals\' treatment. If they were later found in a brothel, I could simply deny any knowledge.

Using a technician brought by the slave trader, the tenant farmer\'s daughters had the tendons in their arms and legs severed, rendering them disabled. Measures were taken to ensure they wouldn\'t heal naturally, so there was no chance of them even escaping.

“What about cutting out their tongues to stop them from talking nonsense?”

“Mute slaves fetch a lower price.”

“I\'ll sell them cheap, so go ahead and cut them out.”

Since I wasn\'t selling them for the money, it didn\'t matter. The tenant farmer\'s daughters, already powerless with their tendons severed, began to thrash wildly as the pliers and scissors approached. They were gagged, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was probably curses aimed at me.

Aira, who was in the adjacent cell, stopped her act of madness and stared with her mouth wide open at the scene. When the technician struggled with the girls\' resistance, I stepped in and slapped one of them hard. Her jaw snapped, leaving her mouth hanging open. The slave trader said with a grimace.

“Her jaw is dislocated.”

“You can fix it, right?”

“If it dislocates once, it’ll likely happen again. Slaves with such conditions sell for less.”

I grabbed the hair of the one whose jaw was still intact and whispered to her.

“You see that? Try anything dumb, and I’ll pull out all your teeth.”

The remaining girl then opened her mouth on her own and tightly closed her eyes.

Once again, screams echoed through the dungeon. Aira, clutching the iron bars, was trembling. The slave trader, after stuffing the daughters\' mouths with hemostatic agent, pointed at Aira and asked.

“Are you selling her as well? I\'ll offer you double the combined price of these two girls.”

Aira shook her head vigorously and fled to the corner. Did she drop her crazy act? I shook my head and replied.

“No. I still have some use for that one.”

“I understand. You have a good eye.”

The slave trader nodded, then began to bind the daughters with the technician’s help. The two girls, completely drained of energy, could only breathe heavily—their eyes unfocused. I said to the slave trader.

“Please sell them somewhere other than the southern region if possible.”

“Understood. Then, I\'ll be on my way.”

With that, the slave trader left the dungeon. Now, it was just Aira and me. As soon as the slave trader was gone, Aira started screaming again.

“Kkiruk…kkieeek!”

How do I break her of this habit?

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