This Kind of Hero Chapter 68

Life in the Small Village

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Golden Orchard Village was located in the southern region of the Golden Flag Empire, north of the Sacred Highlands. For a village with a diverse population, it was quite typical: its residents included beastmen, elves, dwarves, as well as the more prevalent humans. Like other mixed settlements, it was extremely lively.

Noon had just passed, but people here did not break for lunch. Noon was when they had to harvest a fruit known as “goldfruit” which possessed a beautiful appearance. The fruit itself was also crispy yet juicy. For these reasons, each one sold for a decent amount of money. It was rumored that in the big cities, a single goldfruit was worth an entire silver coin.

Whenever the Golden Orchard Village’s residents caught wind of this rumor, they would sigh with lament. “Despite all the work we put into cultivating goldfruits, we’re only able to sell one catty ¹ for fifty copper coins. Yet, outside, they’re actually such a rare commodity!”

There were some villagers who had considered heading for the big cities, however they quickly gave up on these kinds of ideas: living in the big city wasn’t that easy. The more affluent people there was in a region, the more exploitative that region was. If poor people like them were to move into the big cities, they would likely have no choice but to become beggars. Furthermore, if they accidentally offended some powerful personage, they might just get beaten to death.

Therefore, the residents of Golden Orchard Village simply passed the days the same as always. Humans, beastmen, elves, and dwarves — none could stand the others, yet they all depended on each other. Over time, they got used to this kind of lifestyle.

Being used to such a lifestyle wasn’t such a bad thing.

This particular noon was particularly hot. Golden Orchard villagers clambered up and down the fruit trees gathering goldfruit. The goldfruit trees differed greatly from ordinary fruit trees as they were extraordinarily tall and required vast quantities of nutrients, sunlight, and water. A piece of land the size of a soccer field could only hold two to three gold fruit trees; however, each one could grow to over ten meters tall and would bloom and bear fruit throughout the entire year, through all four seasons.

Underneath the goldfruit trees, other fruit trees could also be planted. It has to be noted, however, that these additional fruit trees could not be planted as densely as in other orchards and could only be sparsely spread about, lest they steal nutrients from the goldfruit tree.

As the villagers worked, dripping with sweat, they began chatting about the bounty their village chief had put up a month ago on the two Griffins to the village’s southwest. Three months ago, a griffin attack on the village had resulted in a few casualties. However, bounties for magical beasts at the level of a griffin were worth five gold coins at minimum. . . and even at this cost, no one would accept the request. It took several days of tireless work before the village chief had been able to rack up ten gold coins, which was twice the minimum cost. He had then nervously set off into the city to find a tavern that could help him announce the bounty.

Even if no one picked up the bounty, at least the villagers could rest more easily.

Below the working villagers, who dangled from the trees’ thick branches with coarse hemp ropes tied around their waists, young children played. The children, both boys and girls, were practicing how to climb trees, a skill they would need to support themselves in the future.

“They need to learn how to climb when they’re still young,” said the oldest person present, an elderly man with a head of silver hair. “If they can’t learn when they’re young, it will be much harder when they’re older.”

His elderly wife was just below him, also picking fruits: the Golden Orchard Village’s women did just as much work as the men. Like the elderly man, she was also quite old — she was also part elf. From her hair color, it appeared that she was of human and wood elf descent, and her hands were as rough and coarse as tree bark. After countless generations of intermixing, those with elven ancestry had a lifespan no longer than a human’s.

On a small road off to the side, a few adventurers were passing by. With much fairer and clearer skin, it seemed that their journey through the wilderness had not taken much of a toll on these adventurers.

Perhaps they were lord knights who had come out to play, the working villagers thought.

“Indeed,” the elderly woman, who was old but still able to work, replied. “It would be great if George could quickly come to understand our painstaking efforts.”

Their son, little George, was climbing in a fruit tree down below them. Being a boy around ten years of age, his entire body was brimming with energy. He rapidly ascended to the treetops, but from his precarious movements, it was quite apparent he wasn’t trying to learn, but rather to play and show off. Below the tree were a few boys and girls craning their necks up to look at him, watching as little George behaved like an arrogant hatchling, flapping his arms like wings towards the sun.

Little George’s mother sighed and wondered when their youngest son would learn to climb more steadily, like his older brothers and sisters. Then suddenly, with his foot seemingly catching onto something, little George tripped. He fell headfirst from the tree. “Ahh—!”

Everyone watched, wide-eyed. A few children were shocked silly. The adults descended from their trees in a panic. However, they could not keep up with the falling little George. Although the fruit trees appeared short and squat, that was only with respect to the goldfruit tree. When little George fell, he had been two to three meters off the ground.

Every year, Golden Orchard Village had villagers fall from the trees, some of whom broke their limbs in the fall or even died.

Of course there were also children. In Golden Orchard Village, parents would often scare their children with stories of naughty kids who fell from the trees and broke their legs.

Little George’s mother shrieked, “No!”

Wood elves had the ability to control plants; however, part-elves with extremely mixed bloodlines could not perform such magic.

Seeing that little George was about to hit the ground, a few villagers unwittingly held their breath. Little George’s elderly father tried throwing down a rope as if he wanted to fish the boy back up, but to no avail.

The sudden disaster seemed to strike quickly, yet also slowly. But then, a figure, moving quicker than people’s eyes could follow, dashed over like lightning from the nearby path and leapt up to catch the child.

He gently let little George down to the ground. The boy was still frozen in fear; however, after some time, he began to loudly cry.

Only now did a few of the villagers in the nearby trees manage to make their way down. Among them, little George’s mother had gotten her foot entangled with some hemp rope in her haste. His father ran over and enveloped little George in his arms while crying, his snowy sideburns soaked with cold sweat.

While crying and patting his son, he turned towards the kind-hearted person who had saved little George and knelt down on the ground before kowtowing with gratitude.

Xu Jun, once again, had become a “hero.” Although he had only saved a child, he received a great deal of gratitude. The villagers had gathered around him. After experiencing such a great shock, they were in no mood to continue picking fruit. The villagers believed that misfortune never arrived alone. If a person fell from a tree, they saw it as the God of Misfortune warning them to stop harvesting fruit for the day.

As little George was still young, he actually managed to recover quite quickly. This child began running and jumping all over the place as if the events that had just transpired were but a dream.

“Mom, I’m fine,” he said while escaping from his mother’s arms which were reaching for an embrace.

“Kind-hearted lord knight,” little George’s father, old George, cautiously stammered out, “we don’t have money. . . so please accept these goldfruits which we had just picked instead.”

As he usually did, Xu Jun comforted the elderly man and informed him that he did not need money and that gold fruits were fine as a thank you gift. The elderly man seemed to ease up before grabbing little George and forcing him to bow towards Xu Jun in thanks. This boy, however, secretly raised his head and cast an indignant sideways glance towards Xu Jun.

When Xu Jun had said “I don’t want money,” the boy had coldly snorted. His father hastily forced this child’s head down into a deeper bow.

Oh, an edgelord². Xu Jun smiled while his hands began to itch.

He seemed to have caught a disease, a disease which made him want to beat up every brat he encountered_(:зゝ∠)_

Lance, the young dragon, Jesse, the unicorn, and Mantou were all waiting for Xu Jun. Mantou didn’t think much of the situation. Rather, to him, it would have been strange for Xu Jun to not go and save a falling child. After all, his owner was just too much of a nice guy~(≧▽≦)/~

Jesse and Lance, however, had never encountered such a human before. Although Lance had never personally witnessed it, he had seen his tribe’s elderly dragons discuss how humans were naturally selfish and only cared about themselves. They had talked of how humans only cared about the life and death of their own children but not others. At the time he had the following thought, his dad was definitely not like that! His dad was someone who was even kinder than all of the Ice Dragons added up together!

–Had the Ice Dragon tribe’s chief known Lance’s thoughts, they probably would have spat out a mouthful of old blood.

Fuck, there should be a limit as to how unreasonable you are!

Seeing that Xu Jun had gone to save a child he had never met before, Lance felt increasingly pleased with himself: look at how upstanding and righteous my father is!

Once he returned to the Ice Dragon’s territory, he definitely needed to flaunt and show off a bit!

However, naturally, Jesse was different from Lance. He had seem many things and had a good understanding of the human race. There were quite a few people like Xu Jun who were willing to help others for no cost, however. . . Jesse raised his voice and asked, “Xu Jun, aren’t you a Brave?”

“If I remember correctly, Braves are allowed to ask for money from those that they help?”

One second Xu Jun was still comforting these ‘if you want money we don’t have money, but if you want gold fruits we have tons of it’ villagers; in the next second, he watched as these villagers dispersed in all directions leaving only little George and his parents behind. Some of the children had not wanted to leave yet, but they were taken away by their parents who scolded them, “What’s the point of staying? You have money?”

Little George’s parents lowered their heads as if they wanted to slip through the cracks in the ground, “. . . we . . . gold fruits. . .”

Xu Jun forced a laugh, “No need, really. Ai, I should probably go now.”

He shook his head towards Jesse, “You really shouldn’t have said that.”

“They’re just ordinary villagers. Even if you searched them from head to toe, they probably won’t have even a single gold coin so what are you trying to scare them for?”

The unicorn, Jesse, smiled mirthlessly, “So you did a good deed for free? Why?”

On their way to the village, they had been travelling quite leisurely, and had often struck up conversation. After two days of interactions, these people — alright, fine, outside of Xu Jun the rest all weren’t human — had gotten used to each other. This was especially true of Xu Jun and the unicorn man, Jesse, both of whom were now able to talk to the other with even tempers. Xu Jun truly felt that this unicorn man’s personality conflicted with his. The unicorns, and even unicorn beastmen, of this world should have been pure and holy, aloof and ascetic. However, Jesse, this old demon who has lived for who knows how many years, was overflowing with frivolity♂. Had Xu Jun not seen his beast form, he wouldn’t have believed Jesse to be a unicorn.

“It wasn’t doing a good deed for free. After all, they hadn’t asked me to save anyone.”

Xu Jun glossed over the situation while treating it like no big deal.

In the past two days, he had discussed a similar topic already with the unicorn man. In the end, Xu Jun had almost been frustrated to death by this fellow who had brought up countless ideologies and philosophies one after another. Xu Jun really did not want to start another round of pointless arguing with Jesse.

If he had the time, he’d rather look at the village scenery.

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Author has something to say:

Ah, I guess now is the agritourism segment (⊙v⊙).

Demon King Zeze hasn’t shown up for a day, miss him.

(T/N: hahahaha, definitely hasn’t been over seven months for you guys, hahahaha *sweats*)

On another note, I saw readers asking about the young dragon, Lance. I need to make something clear. Lance is honestly treating Xu Jun as his father, and had no other feelings. Even if I wrote this work two years ago, it still won’t be NP. Xu Jun is different from the previous work’s protagonist. He won’t be liked by many people, and is more of an outstanding, but ordinary, person, so people treat him more like a role model or a good friend.

(T/N: NP means n pairs– in other words, multiple ships, or in this case a harem)

Translator’s Niche:

[1] One catty is generally seen as being 0.5 kg in modern-day China, and is equivalent to ten taels. Traditionally it’s hovered around 0.6 kg and is equivalent to 16 taels. ⏎

[2] Literal translation would be second-year middle schooler, which borrows its definition from the Japanese term chuunibyou and generally represents a child with delusions of grandeur. Edgelord seemed to fit here.⏎

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