Fourteen hours had passed...
With the help of the village chief's guards, Reon and Mei Lin had successfully evacuated all the villagers—relocating them to a clearing nearly a mile away from the village.
To avoid panic, they told everyone it was a food distribution effort.
Reon had no choice but to actually provide food, using the beasts he'd hunted in the Greenhood Forest, along with the meat he had in his Spatial Ring and rice stored in the village chief's mansion.
Although the chief was angry at first, Reon managed to calm him down by purchasing the rice at a fair price.
By now, it was already night.
The villagers sat together on the open field, happily eating under the moonlit sky.
Some had set up makeshift tents and were resting.
Children laughed as they played simple games on the grass.
But not everyone was at ease—some elders had grown suspicious of the sudden evacuation.
"This isn't normal," a few of them whispered.
