Chapter 8 - Fauxe Village

Cecil was following behind Lucia while keeping a vigilant watch of the surroundings.

It surprised him seeing Lucia walking in the front so care-freely. It was probably due to the fact that she frequented the path they were taking and knew that it was safe, so she lacked any form of vigilance.

'Anyway, just in case, I won't let my guard down.'

Even though the path seems safe, considering how lacking Lucia's awareness was, but nothing was absolute.

They were still off the beaten path so that means a monster could still potentially attack them.

As Cecil was vigilantly observing their surroundings, Lucia who was at the front, raises her voice in delight.

"Cecil, **** ****!"

"Huh?"

Looking past her, Cecil soon spots a path up ahead, although it wasn't paved with cement or anything, you could easily see a wide path that could fit 2 cars on it.

'The path seems like it was frequented by travelers and wagons or carriages.'

The path had a lot of foot marks and line marks, which seemed to be the wheels of wagons or carriages.

There were no monster-like marks on it. When Cecil looked further he saw a sign that was pointed towards the small path they were on. It had some letters that he couldn't read on it.

After walking onto the main path, Cecil then turned around and looked at the path they just left.

Sure enough, the small path with the sign next to it, stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the other areas of the forest.

'I guess it was frequented by a lot of people, I guess they would fetch for water or even fish in that river from earlier?'

While he was thinking as such, Lucia grabbed a hold of his hand again and started dragging Cecil away.

"Cecil, **** **!"

"Oh, okay…"

'Man, although it's nice to have a girl holding my hand while walking, but this feels more like she's guiding a blind guy around the area.'

They continued to walk on the path for a while. When they set out from the river it was deep into the afternoon. Looking up at the sky, Cecil sees that it had turned orange. Clearly it was almost the evening.

'The walk from the river to the road was pretty long huh?'

While on the road, they didn't come across any wagons or people walking on it even after walking for about an hour or so.

'Maybe people in this world don't travel when it's almost night time?'

They continue walking for another half an hour before Cecil notices a fork on the road. The main road kept going straight straight. While the other road, being somewhat smaller, lead to the left going deep into the forest.

Although the road was surrounded by trees, they were at least 5 meters away. But this path had trees lining right up by the side of it.

Lucia immediately takes the path to the left.

'I guess her house is on the other end of the path?'

Lucia seemed excited and starts running, of course with Cecil in tow.

After running for around 10 minutes, the forest opens up into a wide field.

They stop and Cecil was able to take in the view in front of them. He saw a village with wooden houses at the end of the path.

Since they were on slightly elevated grounds with the forest behind them, Cecil was able to take a good look at the village.

Lucia says something to him while pointing at the village.

"Fa***!"

"Fakse?"

"Fauxe!"

"Ohh, Fauxe."

'So this village was called Fauxe. Odd, it sounds almost like fox. Fox village? Come to think of it, in the novels, the beastmen always had a certain type of animal that characterized their facial and body features, you know, like lions, wolves, cats, dogs, lizards, etc. I wonder what Lucia's is? She has triangle-shaped ears on top of her head which were somewhat like wolf or cat ears. I'm guessing hair and eye color isn't attributed to the species, but she does have 3 fluffy tails. I wonder what animal she's based off of. Crap, that's bad, I shouldn't say animal, it sounds really racist and wrong. It might even be considered a taboo here in this world. Better keep my thoughts and mouth in check when I learn their language.'

They start walking down to the village.

Cecil was getting pretty nervous, he was worried that something bad might happen. He didn't want to get misunderstood and get driven out of the village.

'Hopefully everything turns out alright. Please, let it be alright.'

They finally reach the village gate, the sun was about to set and the village was already lit up with what appeared to be lampposts.

The lampposts were only a pillar and with a round sphere that was emitting bright light on top of it.

'So I guess they were lampposts, although I doubt that those spheres are light bulbs like back on earth.'

When they finally got to the entrance, what awaited there was a group of villagers.

At the head of the group was a very buff… man? He looked somewhat feminine, but he was without a doubt a male considering he was very muscular and tall, almost 2 meters in height.

He also had the same ears as Lucia but instead it was golden in color. His hair and eyes were also gold, and he was, at the moment, glaring sharply at Cecil.

Behind the buffed man, who Cecil presumed to be the village chief, was a tall young woman who looked somewhat like Lucia.

She had the same platinum colored hair as Lucia too, but her irises were red. She looked young enough to be Lucia's sister.

'She's probably Lucia's mother, considering that she was looking worriedly at us. I mean I would too, since her daughter, maybe, has been dragging around an unknown human boy around her age behind her.'

The rest of the group also had the same features as Lucia, the ears and tails were the same, but it seems that only Lucia and the young woman who resembled her had 3 tails.

The rest of the group only had 1 or 2 tails at most.

Stopping in front of the group, Lucia started saying something. The couple in the front, as well as the rest of the group had a somewhat surprised expression after Lucia said... whatever it is she said.

The wary looks had also turned into looks of curiosity. With the exception of the buffed man. He was only glaring even harder at Cecil.

'Holy crap, he's scary. I felt a little bit of bloodl.u.s.t there.'

Sensing the faint amount of bloodl.u.s.t, it put Cecil on edge, but honestly, with how the man looked, it seemed impossible for Cecil to win in a fight against him.

Lucia let's go of Cecil's hand and continues speaking to the group. Of course, Cecil couldn't understand one word they were exchanging.

The group had a back and forth conversation until everyone turned a curious eye towards Cecil. After they did that, Lucia started to frantically say something to them. She looked pretty fl.u.s.tered.

'How cute... Holy hell, this isn't the time to be thinking that!'

Cecil looked at the group and sees them staring back at him. The looks they were giving him were all varied. Some with disbelief, others with suspicion, but the most severe one was from the buffed man.

He looked like he was about to eat Cecil alive.

The man walked up and started saying something to Cecil, despite having a somewhat feminine face, he had a deep bass-like voice.

"*** *** ****** **** * ****** ****?"

"What?"

"****?"

When the man started speaking to Cecil, he could only stare blankly at him. Sensing that things were going nowhere Lucia said something to him and even Silver started barking at him.

"*****! Cecil ***** **** *** *********!"

"****?"

"Woof!"

"***** *******?"

"Woof woof!"

"**** ***** ****** * ** ****."

After the man took notice of Silver, who was laying prone behind Cecil and out of sight, he looked somewhat surprised and started holding a 'conversation' with Silver.

It was a repeat of what happened back with Lucia. After an extensive 'argument' between the buffed man and Silver, he turned towards Lucia and said something to her.

"****, *** *** ***** *** **** *** ******."

"***!"

"*** ********, *** **** ** **** ************ ** ***!"

"****!"

Finishing his conversation with Lucia, he takes another look at Cecil and Silver.

After that he turned back towards the group of beast folk and said something. After that the group of people all started to disperse, they were heading back to their homes.

The people left at the entrance were only Cecil, Silver, Lucia and the buffed man and young woman who looked like Lucia.

Lucia ran up and hugged the young woman. The woman also hugged her back with a smile.

They said something to each other and Lucia came back over to Cecil and started dragging him, again, into the village.

The buffed man and young woman turned around and started walking further into the village with Lucia following behind them with Cecil in tow.

'Well, I'm glad I wasn't attacked and chased out? It still doesn't solve the problem of me not knowing anything about this world's language though.'

"Hey Silver, you can talk to them right?"

He responded with a bark.

"Good, ask them if they can teach me how to speak in their language later, okay?"

"Woof, woof!"

The 3 people in front look back at Cecil who appeared to be talking to Silver.

When Cecil looked ahead again, the man and woman had a softer look in their eyes.

Although, the man's glare was still a bit menacing, at least the faint bloodl.u.s.t from earlier was now gone.

Like this, he was dragged deeper into the beast kin village by Lucia.