episode_0069

Marching. Assault. Defense. Meal. Lodging. Weather.

And then marching again. And assault again.

It was barely ten days into the journey, and we had to engage in battle with bandits almost every other day on our way north.

“Assault! Raise your shields!”

“Again?!”

There were even times when we were attacked twice in one day. It was a journey overflowing with more bloodshed than expected.

Fortunately, most of the bandits were no more intelligent than goblins, but…

“Ugh… These guys are quite skilled!”

Occasionally, there were formidable opponents among them, not to be underestimated even by seasoned adventurers.

While our party could handle them, other parties, except for Barduna and Amina, faced adversaries they couldn’t take on one-on-one.

Moreover, unlike the grunts who wore ragged fur clothes, these bandits were all clad in metal armor.

Of course, their metal armor was nothing like full steel plate armor worn by knights; it was more like cheap iron breastplates or chainmail… But still, that was something.

Frankly, even third-rate adventurers often roamed around in patched leather armor.

Anyway, it was clear that these bandits were not the kind to be engaging in banditry in this cold place, neither in terms of skill nor equipment.

“What are these guys…!”

Amina narrowly avoided the double-headed axe swung by a bandit in chainmail, and as another bandit lunged at her with a spear, she grimaced and backed away.

“Hahaha, look at the little girl running away in fear!”

“…Isn’t it trembling?”

“What are you saying, it’s definitely trembling!”

The axe man and the spear man mocked her while pointing at Amina’s upper body with their gloved fingers.

“…How uncouth. They’re just upstarts.”

As if expressing her displeasure, Amina spat on the ground, her face contorted.

Moving as if dragging her feet, neither advancing nor retreating, maintaining a certain distance, it seemed she was deliberately focusing on defense instead of outright attacking, waiting for an opportunity.

Alright. It’s a situation that requires more caution than usual, as it might be unknown to face bandits at the level of Dongpae adventurers.

If one recklessly takes the offensive and allows for a counterattack, the situation will rapidly deteriorate.

Well, in the end, it was her own doing.

That woman, Amina, had decent swordsmanship, but she casually wore tough troll leather boots over rough cloth instead of proper metal armor, which would have been sufficient against mediocre foes, but against even low-level Dongpae bandits, inadequate defense would surely bring painful consequences.

On the other hand, I…

– Kyaah!

A screeching sound like metal. The bandit’s blade, blocked by steel armor, slides along its surface.

“I should watch carefully.”

Could a sword swung with one hand break through steel armor?

Perhaps for a knight, but certainly not at the level of a Dongpae.

“Like this.”

I reach out my left hand encased in gauntlets, grab the weakened side of the bandit’s sword, and forcefully pull while thrusting my longsword held in my right hand.

“Gasp…!”

The bandit, unable to withstand my strength, staggers forward.

In an attempt to regain balance, he reflexively raises his head, revealing his vulnerable neck. Into the exposed center, my black iron longsword plunges deeply.

“Squelch…!”

“You fool, you should have dropped your sword here.”

Piercing the vocal cords and breaking the cervical vertebrae, the black iron longsword withdraws from the back of the neck.

With widened eyes, I strike the bandit’s side with my left arm, knocking him down, then swing the sword, causing the head and body to separate as the bandit staggers and dances a few steps away.

“This damn woman!”

Another bandit rushes in, enraged by his comrade’s death.

His beard, like some kind of bandit… oh, right, he is a bandit.

Yes, he was a rugged man with a beard, ultimately no more than a child compared to the opponents I’ve faced so far.

No, more importantly.

“Where have I seen him before…?”

The bandit charging towards me has a hood wrapped around his forehead instead of a helmet, and his exposed face looks strangely familiar.

Where have I seen this guy before…?

“Are you from Vespyr, by any chance?”

I threw the short sword I held in my left hand towards the man and voiced the question that had come to mind.

“Huh! What does that matter!”

The bandit with a rugged beard swung his mace, knocking away the flying blade, and shouted.

I see. He’s from Vespyr.

After hearing the answer, I roughly understood.

The reason I felt a sense of unease looking at this guy’s face… and where these bandits with such skills and equipment had suddenly appeared from in such numbers.

“Now I get it. You guys—or rather, you. You’re the adventurers who fled back then, aren’t you?”

That’s right. The identity of these low-level bandits was none other than adventurers who had chosen to desert during the Abyssal Priest suppression mission.

Seeing them fall into banditry instead of returning to the city, perhaps among them…

“The scoundrels who fell for the cursed nonsense, right?”

Traitors who were deceived by the Abyssal Priest’s bluff and attacked other adventurers and priests. They turned a situation that could have ended without much harm into a catastrophe.

“Killing the priests means facing execution if we return to the city, but starting over from scratch somewhere far away feels daunting… so the only path left was a life of thievery, huh?”

I chuckled behind my helmet and pulled the black steel greatsword, gripped tightly with both hands, back over my shoulder.

“I see. It’s an idea that only empty-headed fools would come up with.”

“Shut up!”

When people run out of things to say, they curse, don’t they? Whether it was a nerve being struck or not, the bearded bandit angrily raised his mace high above his head.

Full of openings.

I took in a breath of cold air through the gaps and pulled my arm muscles as far back as possible, storing up strength. Like drawing an arrow on a strong bow and pulling it back to its limit.

“After I cripple your limbs, I’ll have some fun with you!”

“Talking big, huh? Does banditry suit you naturally, pussy?”

The mace came crashing down like a hammer on a construction site. But just before that, at the moment when the bandit’s lower body was about to be horizontally cleaved by my restrained strike…

“Heh, take this, Hilde!”

– Kwaah!

With a sound like a firecracker, the man’s head was flattened as if it had been caught between a vise.

It was because Freide’s greatsword, swung from behind, had struck the bandit’s skull downward.

The head of the bandit didn’t split in half, but rather crumpled and burst as it hit the ground without raising its blade.

“To Hilde! How dare you say such a thing!”

Without any intention of stopping after that blow, Freide swung her greatsword down with the force to bury the body of the bearded bandit she had just killed.

Each word she spat out was followed by a resounding echo.

The bearded bandit, now smaller than both Freide and me, finally allowed himself to collapse onto the ground.

“Hilde! I took care of it! I did well, right?”

Freide smiled, as if asking for praise, while sweeping off the flesh and bone fragments with a swing of her greatsword.

It was a response that left me speechless.

Even for someone like me, who had slaughtered human trash in the hundreds, the sight of a person’s body being compressed to dwarf-like proportions made my appetite plummet.

Still… she did help me, so praising her would be appropriate, right…?

“Uh… yeah, thanks.”

I expressed my gratitude in a somewhat trembling voice.

“Hehe!”

Freide giggled, nodded her head, and then leaped toward another bandit like a ferocious beast.

Perhaps, like me, she was a rare skilled individual among adventurers of our level.

Unlike Barduna Amina, who seemed to be struggling against the odds, she exuded an air of complete ease.

“Hilde! If you win, come help us over here!”

While momentarily distracted by Freide’s back, Amina, who was engaged in combat with two bandits, shouted for help, urging her not to stand idle if her hands were free.

Unlike our party members who were each holding their own, her party of three young men seemed to be of average competence at best, and thus appeared to be of little use in such a fierce battle.

I knew she’d be like that. Collecting party members with a sense of gathering attractive toys rather than allies who could be of help, when encountering stronger enemies, she couldn’t muster the strength and would inevitably fall behind.

“I’ll go straight there, so hold them off!”

I leaped towards her, wielding my bloodied longsword into the air.

The person wasn’t someone I particularly liked, but I couldn’t just leave them to die.

◆◆

“Ugh…!”

The last bandit, his chainmail soaked in crimson blood, slumped like a broken puppet.

“We did it!”

The hired hands cheered, raising their fists triumphantly.

After confirming that there were no more enemies around, myself and the other adventurers sheathed our weapons, caught our breath, and tended to our weary bodies.

“First, tend to the wounded and the fallen!”

Rug, the leader, ordered his men to tend to the situation before expressing their joy.

We had won, but not without casualties.

If the opponents had been mere amateurs, it might have been different, but facing a horde of bandits at the level of seasoned adventurers meant we too had to spill blood this time.

Several of the elite guards lay dead or dying, unfortunate porters groaning with arrows lodged in their throats.

The hired hands swiftly gathered the fallen and tended to the wounded, offering little more than emergency care with potions and bandages. The lightly injured would likely survive, but the seriously wounded seemed doubtful.

The adventurers sat on the ground, tending to their own wounds. Only Freide, Amy, and I were unscathed.

Not only Bardu’s party and Amina’s party, but even Kikel had two arrows stuck in his tail.

“It’s just a scratch from a mosquito! It’ll be fine if I wrap it up!”

He casually pulled out the arrows, laughing off the injury as insignificant, but Amy poured potion over his tail and expertly bandaged it.

“Hmm, this dagger looks quite useful. Here, take this. Jane.”

“Thank you, Bardu.”

Bardu and Jane were already stripping the equipment from the bandits they had killed, selecting items worth using.

The leg was torn off, and it was so strange that it was indescribable, like giving a lover a Valentine’s chocolate.

“…Hey, are you okay? Your leg almost got cut off.”

Lerun, Ben, and Hamil sat together, tending to their wounds. Kikel was covered in injuries, even worse than Jane.

“I protected my legs, so it’s fine.”

“Are you crazy? Is that what’s important right now? Your leg almost got cut off!”

“What could be more important than that?”

“Well, I guess.”

“These guys are out of their minds…”

They seemed close, as if sharing a bed, but it was a conversation one wouldn’t want to listen to.

“Thanks earlier, Hilde.”

As I sighed and wiped the sword’s blade, Amina, with bandaged arms, approached me and thanked me.

“Thank you. When it’s dangerous, we should help each other.”

“Still, it was really dangerous.”

Indeed. The spear had grazed my left arm, so I had to fight with only one arm. If I hadn’t helped, even if I had luckily won, I would have surely lost an arm.

“Sigh…I think all my senses are dead.”

Amina, who came next to me, lit a magic torch and sighed deeply.

Ah, smoke from the cigarette. This woman repays kindness with enmity.

In a world without the concept of passive smoking, Amina blatantly puffed smoke. Since I was the one who would become overly sensitive, I just fanned the smoke away without making a fuss.

“I thought it was a simple request, but it turned out like this. I should have just gone to find a dungeon or something.”

Amina seemed to want to express her frustration. Maybe she wanted to empathize as fellow swordsmen.

It was a strangely gentle attitude. She used to be competitive with me, always ready to retort, making conversations tiresome.

Is it because I saved her life?

“That happens sometimes. Lately, it’s always been like this for me. Really, how many times have I narrowly escaped death?”

I lightly shrugged my shoulders and responded appropriately.

“You may be tangled up for the first time, but I’ve been getting tangled up like a dog in recent requests… It’s not really comforting, but it is.”

“Miss Amina, why don’t you at least have a pair of shoulder pads for this opportunity? Even if breastplates are burdensome, shoulder pads aren’t that heavy…”

“Well… maybe that’s really how it should be—”

Crack.

The voice suddenly cut off.

At the same time, a sound of tearing flesh.

I reflexively stepped back and turned my head to look at Amina.

No, it was Amina just a moment ago…

“Ugh…!”

A headless body convulsed.

And one more.

“What, nothing special? Aren’t these guys…?”

A mysterious red-haired female warrior gripping Amina’s elongated neck.

“She looks quite strong… so, are they here for her?”

Thud!

Behind her. Amina’s body, which had been flailing its arms, slumped weakly to the side.

“Well, we’ll find out if we kill her.”

Throwing the head she had been holding like trash, the unknown female warrior pulled out a spear from her back and charged at me like a wild animal.