Maou to Yuusha no Tatakai no Ura de - Ch. 18.2

[nymphriel]

FYI to everyone: the mangaka became overwhelmed with work to the point of not being able to understand written words anymore, so the series is taking a hiatus until mangaka gets better (via publisher's twitter).

 

[VooXoo]

Chapter 19 is out, it took a while and from reading the psot above it seems like 20 will take even more, but the mangaka need to recover, just patiently wait.
My prediction was off, the suspicious behaviour was because they were hiding something,

Spoiler

hiding that bandits had conquered the village and the villagers were their slaves.
In the next chapter MC moves with a small group to their base, kills and captures them, the female noble moves in too, she finds a bandit busy raping and harming with sever physical violenge a poor girl, of course the dude gets put down like he deserves.
From there it follows to MC organizing a lynching of every surviving criminal, and he personally executes them, stopping the villagers before they do it, as that is the job of nobles, he doesn't like it but knows he have to do it, he was already showed similar executions in the past in his training as heir.
The weird behaviour of the village chief seems to have been on purpose to make MC and company investigate.

 

[Oakheir]

To everyone wondering how he knew what she said, he watched her say it, as he explained to the audience, in his head, why he didn't like that family. I believe this was at the start of the Stampede when he was lamenting about his situation and who was around him and the chain of command.