Nice To Meet You

On the way, I listened to Shekuri-san explain.

It seemed these people were peddlers who had been supplying the village with daily necessities for some time.

“Ran-san and her companions are, in short… good-natured people.”

“A merchant being good-natured is hard to believe. More likely they put on a friendly air just to strip away every last coin.”

“No, Nadja—that might be hasty. It could be just as Shekuri-san says.”

“Impossible! Merchants are never up to any good!”

Honestly, neither Nadja nor I had a favorable image of merchants.

They always used their sharp wits on how to avoid taxes or how to squeeze money from others, making not only us but also our parents suffer bitterly more than once.

But my thoughts differed from Nadja’s.

Because, in the first place… people living in the desert hardly had any real wealth at all.

Could you believe it?

Here, even currency wasn’t in full circulation—barter was still the mainstream.

Villages moved every few years, so they didn’t even have names. Houses were makeshift brick buildings with lots of sand, and there were almost no real resources.

What exactly would unscrupulous merchants even take from a place like this?

“Mm… put that way, you’re right.”

“But if they’re merchants, they must still trade. What do we provide them with?”

“Mostly sand oats, and sometimes water… as well as bone crafts or items left behind by someone deceased. Water is always valued, so we often share it within reason.”

True enough—in a desert, water was more precious than life.

But precisely for that reason, it wasn’t something to hand over lightly.

…Which meant it was more accurate to say Shekuri-san and the others simply had nothing else to offer.

Sand oats were, simply put, oats that grew in the desert with very little water.

They were horribly dry and crumbly—barely edible.

If made into porridge, you could just barely swallow them down… that should give you an idea of the taste.

The fact that such things were used for trade made it clear their circumstances were dire—and the merchants must have realized that too.

And yet they still traded, risking monster attacks to come all the way here.

That had to mean those merchants were truly trustworthy people.

“The trade goods Woody-sama prepared for this day will finally show their worth.”

“Yeah. For all the help we’ve received, I need to make sure they can profit too.”

Apparently, they had been supplying Shekuri-san’s people with daily necessities.

Most likely—no, certainly—they came into the desert ready to accept losses.

Even selling the monsters they hunted along the way probably didn’t cover the cost.

After all the help they had given, we needed to make sure they saw good returns too.

Maybe it sounded greedy, but… anyone tied to my domain, I wanted them all to be happy.

That was what made a true lord, and I still believed that.

When we arrived, we saw villagers offering the fruits they had just harvested.

It seemed the merchants didn’t have much surplus food either, as they devoured the fruit hungrily.

I walked up slowly, smiling warmly.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Woody, serving as lord of this land.”