Chapter 61
‘Tirsi must’ve done a good job.’
We’d anticipated that they might threaten us with the hostages, so we’d split into two groups beforehand and divided up our roles.
I’d cause a commotion inside with Cloud Summoning magic, and Tirsi would use that opening to rescue the hostages.
Everything had gone according to plan.
“Whatever the reason, you crossed the line.”
I said, subtly manipulating the fog so it wouldn’t draw attention.
“But I’m merciful. I’ll spare you, at least, since you’re the bandit chief.”
“R-really?”
At one word from me, the bandit leader changed his tune. The other bandits screamed at him.
“B-Boss!! What are you saying?!”
“Shut up!! We’re dead whether we resist or not!! What’s wrong with me trying to save myself?!”
“But you said that even if we died, we should at least stab that guy and die with him!!”
“The situation’s changed!!”
Bastards started raising hell right away. I waved my hand nonchalantly.
“Come over here. If you’re afraid to stand beside me, you can stay in the corner. I never intended to kill you in the first place. I like capable people.”
“Thank you!!”
The leader brightened and scuttled over to the corner. I ignored his former underlings squawking at him.
‘Idiots.’
I absolutely had no intention of letting that bastard go. Well, I’d let him live, but I’d arrest him and hand him over to the guards. I needed someone to testify, after all.
Once he’d spilled everything he knew, the guards would take care of executing him. He was far too vile to leave alive. I did plan to make sure the guards killed him properly, though.
‘Maybe I should break his arms and legs later, just to avoid trouble.’
As I thought that, I noticed one of the bandits making a suspicious move. He was secretly nocking an arrow.
“Die!!”
Why yell when you’re launching a surprise attack? Anyway, the bandit who shouted like an idiot raised his bow and fired quickly.
I thought he might be aiming at me, but his arrow flew toward the bandit leader. Going after the traitor first—truly a model example of a fine band of idiots.
─Whoosh! Thwack!
“Guh!!”
The leader, hit once in the shoulder, crumpled. What kind of piece-of-shit armor gets pierced by one arrow? At the sight, too ridiculous even to laugh at, I threw the axe in my hand.
Whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr!!
─Crunch!!
The spinning otherworldly tomahawk gave the archer a Mohawk haircut. Since even the handle sank in, he’d be dead on the spot unless his father was a slime.
“Eeeeeek!!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
At the sight of a man’s head bursting open, the bandits let out screams and piss as a set. Even men used to killing probably had never experienced being on the receiving end.
Trickle─.
The blood and brain matter from the axe-Mohawk archer spilled into a nearby crate.
This room was packed with all kinds of stolen goods and household items. Fucking hell, these bastards lived better than I did. Seeing how damn comfortable their cave suite looked made the Professor Slayer inside me rip his shirt and rage.
“──So you’re professors after all.”
Beings who steal the fruits of other people’s labor and make them work for their benefit.
That was a professor.
They were the same. They couldn’t make anything themselves and only harmed civil society—they were vermin!
And despite that, they were fucking greedy, even going so far as to rob others of the fruits of their hard work!
Every treasure piled up over there was someone’s paper!!
They were more vile and despicable creatures than the house roaches lurking in kitchen cupboards!!
Therefore!!!!! They deserved to die a hundred, a thousand times over!!!!!!
“──I’ll kill the professors.”
I spat the words out, chewing on my hate-filled rage.
“Of course I’ll kill you too!!! I’ll kill every professor who torments grad students!!! I’ll kill every professor in this world!!!”
“Y-you crazy bastard!! Why are you looking for professors in a bandit hideout?!”
“Questions are useless!!!!”
I roared at the villain making excuses. My murderous intent enveloped them, and they drew their weapons like madmen whose reason had completely evaporated.
“Kill him!! If we kill that one bastard, we can escape!!!!”
“Kill that bastard, and the boss who went over to his side, too!!!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah──!!!!!”
Rumble!!
More than ten bandits charged at me all at once. I watched their attack with my bare hands.
Every one of these bastards was a vicious murderer. They were villains who kidnapped people for illegal slavery and sold them off to who knew whom.
These worthless carbon dioxide generators weren’t worth keeping alive!
Die here!
“Death Fog!!”
I chanted and waved my hand. The fog of Justice followed my control, shrouding the cave. Though I couldn’t make it lethal, I could make it blow as fast as the wind.
“Don’t be scared!! Get in there and surround him!!”
“Charge!! Surround him and beat him to death!!”
They charged without hesitation. I raised my arms to protect my head and ran toward the direction of the noise.
Why else would I have made small talk with these bastards? It was all to figure out the layout of this room. There were no obstacles in my path.
─Tat-tat-tat!
My vision was obscured by the fog too, but I trusted Beast Regression’s defensive power. I dashed through the fog and rammed straight into the first person I hit.
KABOOM!!
“Aaaaaagh!!”
The bandit I collided with flew away as if he’d been hit by a car. The bandits stopped in confusion when they heard the scream.
“Stop!! Stop!! That bastard got through!!”
“Where is he!! Quit hiding and come out!!”
“Don’t panic!! Gather over here!! If we stick together, he can’t attack us!!”
Idiots getting cocky because they trusted their numbers. I picked up a rock I’d set aside and sighed.
They say you live if you stick together and die if you scatter, but that only applies to brave soldiers. A bunch of idiots gathered together are still just a lump of idiot rice balls.
─Whoosh!!
I threw one of the rocks I’d set aside toward the sound. I controlled the fog around me to clear my line of sight, too. The target was huge, so my accuracy was 100%.
Crack─!!
─Thud!
The rock I threw sent another idiot to the side of King Yama. They screamed in terror.
“A-again!!”
“Who is it!!! Who the hell died!!!”
“What are you gonna do knowing that!! Quit freaking out and protect your heads!!”
What a racket. Slightly amused, I looked around for something else to throw. But I sensed something moving stealthily beyond the fog.
I wondered if it was Tirsi and focused for a moment, but it wasn’t.
I’d told Tirsi beforehand not to come near the fog. We’d agreed that if she did, she’d say the code phrase we’d decided on. There was no way she’d be crawling along the floor.
‘That bastard leader.’
He was trying to make a run for it while the fog covered everything.
─Creeping, creeping.
He was moving damn quietly, but he still couldn’t escape my mana-enhanced senses.
‘Now I understand how Nefertiti noticed Frang and me hiding.’
I remembered the ruins-guarding request.
Nefertiti had easily found us, even though we’d thought we were well hidden.
For a warrior with superhuman senses and a sixth sense that could read mana, the hiding skills of someone who couldn’t manipulate mana were worse than a child’s game of hide-and-seek.
I hadn’t reached the Mithril-class realm yet, but even I could do this much. I picked up a heavy nearby crate and promptly threw it at him.
“Guh!”
The leader passed out, apparently hit in the head. I’d thrown it gently, so let’s hope he wasn’t dead.
After knocking out the escapee, I looked at the bandits. Even with all the commotion, they were huddled together, too scared to move. I hadn’t attacked for several minutes, so they must’ve been out of their minds with fear and tension.
‘Heh heh.’
A pretty good idea suddenly occurred to me. I raised both hands, then swept them down like an orchestra conductor.
‘──Now kill each other.’
The fog obeyed my command faithfully. The accelerated fog-breeze scraped bits of stone near the bandits, making a sound like a fan on low.
─Shuffling.
“Over there!!!”
The bandit, already out of his mind, swung his weapon at random.
A sudden noise had reached his nerves, stretched taut with tension, and he’d attacked instinctively.
In that bastard’s head, he might be replaying his own heroic image of noticing an enemy’s stealthy approach and striking first.
‘But the one over there is your comrade, you idiot.’
“Aaaagh!!”
“Guh?!”
The comrade struck by the blind bandit’s slash screamed. The bastard who’d attacked realized he’d made a mistake, but it was already too late.
“There!!”
“Kill him!!”
“W-wait! That’s not it── Guh?!”
─Clang-clang-clang!!
─Slice!! Stab-stab!!
People are so weak in the face of fear. The longer the tension dragged on, the more their minds filled with the thought that nothing mattered and they just wanted it to end.
That was why these idiots believed the illusion that I’d attacked them.
If they’d felt any camaraderie, they might’ve hesitated to attack for fear of hurting their comrades, but bandits weren’t the kind of people you could expect that from.
They’d want to kill me and run away quickly, even if it meant they were the only ones to survive.
──And this was the result.
“Aaaaaagh!! Die!! Just die!!”
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!!!”
“You bastard!! You piece of shit!! You fucking bastard!!!”
─Stab-stab-thud-thud-slice-slice-stab-thrust!!
The foolish bandits were consumed by the terror of the fog. They abandoned reason and surrendered to their fear, slaughtering one another.
No, maybe this had been inevitable.
Because the real monsters weren’t in the fog, but inside their own hearts.
‘──Mr. Watt, can you hear me?’
I conducted the performance in tribute to the inventor of the steam engine.
‘This is a Requiem dedicated to you.’
Fog-wind blew amid the screams and sounds of battle.
──When that frenzied performance, destined to go down in history, finally came to an end.
In the space where the fog had vanished, only two people were still breathing: me and the one bandit leader.
***
As I savored the performance, having massacred the bandits, a presence approached me.
When I sharpened my guard and glared at her, the hooded woman recited the code phrase we’d agreed on.
“Font size 10, line spacing 160, five double-sided pages.”
“Ti—Ahem, Ash. It was you.”
I’d nearly called her by her name. Using an alias wasn’t easy.
Tirsi, who’d come closer, wiped the blood from her clothes as she spoke.
“You’ve done well. Thanks to you, there were only a few bandits in the way while I was rescuing the hostages.”
“Did you subdue them for sure? Are you hurt?”
“They’re all dead, and I’m fine. How about you, Arthur?”
“Same here. Ah, except for the leader.”
I pointed to the leader, who was still unconscious. Tirsi checked and nodded.
“Impressive. I might not have been needed.”
“No. Thanks to you, Ash, I didn’t have to worry about protecting the hostages while fighting. Those bastards would’ve tried to threaten me with the hostages once they started losing.”
The bandits had mistaken me for a henchman from some evil organization, but when it came to taking the hostages away alive, I was in the same position as that henchman.
If those bastards had held a knife to a child’s throat to threaten me, things could’ve turned horrific. Tirsi had prevented that in advance, so she’d more than pulled her weight.
“So where are the hostages you rescued?”
“They weren’t in good shape, so I gave them diluted healing potions and had them wait nearby. The Transport Guildmaster’s son was alive, too.”
“That’s a huge relief.”
So that bald man had been the Transport Guildmaster. That explained how he’d been able to promise such a big reward at his own discretion. Why was I the only one who hadn’t known?
“Anyway, it’s over, so let’s tie up the leader and take only some of the stolen goods with us. We can sort out the ownership issue later.”
I said as I loosened my shoulders.
“We can’t have someone come here and sweep up all the stolen goods while we’re gone, can we? If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for days, it’d be so ridiculous.”
“Hehe. Let’s do that. I’ll tell the hostages to wait.”
“Sure. I’ll tie up the leader first.”
While Tirsi went to give the hostages the good news, I tied the leader bastard up tightly with a rope. Every limb, too. We could untie him later.
─Snip-snip.
While I was at it, I shaved his head, too. There was a razor here, probably because this was the bandits’ living quarters.
Gleam─.
“Hmm. A fine bald head.”
I gave the smooth bald head a sharp slap with my gauntleted hand and returned to my spot. Tirsi had finished talking to the hostages and returned, too.
“Let’s just take the light, expensive stuff and go.”
Tirsi said, her eyes shining. Some of the stolen goods belonged to us, so this was our rightful claim. If we couldn’t establish ownership later, we could return them to the guards.
─Rattle-rattle,
And so Tirsi and I grabbed our papers first.
"Found it……!"
The sight of Tirsi clutching her paper to her chest with tears in her eyes was striking. I’d found and properly secured the paper I’d written, too.
─Clink.
We also decided to take some potions and silver coins that were valuable for their weight. Since I’d left my bag outside the cave, I put them in a crate with the papers and carried it.
According to Tirsi the alchemist, these potions were worth a whopping ten silver.
Ten silver.
Five times my sale price. Seeing it like this, fuck, I’m damn cheap. At a master’s student’s salary, you could buy one Nord a month.
Anyway, I guess banditry really did pay. That’s why these idiots were willing to risk their lives running this racket. The traveling merchants had at least three silver in their purses alone.
“Ash. Would you mind if I drank one of these mana potions? I’m running a little low on mana.”
I took out one of the potions and asked, shaking it.
I had enough to keep Beast Regression active and fight, but it felt like only about thirty percent of my max remained. I wanted to replenish it in case of an emergency.
“Wait a moment. Let me check the volume.”
Tirsi took the mana potion and examined it, then uncorked it and smelled it.
“It’s mid-to-low grade. Do you know how to drink it?”
“Slowly, one sip at a time, so I don’t overuse it. Right?”
“Yes. You know your stuff.”
Mana potions in this otherworld weren’t like game items you could just gulp down without thinking.
They weren’t made from addictive ingredients, but if you recovered beyond your mana capacity, your body couldn’t handle it and would collapse.
There was no convenient potion that filled you up to a hundred and stopped, like a 120-point potion used by someone with 100 MP. Overuse it, and your mana would surge to 220, leaving you foaming at the mouth. It was just like real-world drugs.
‘If it recovered as much as you could chug, it wouldn’t be sold to civilians.’
Who’d be crazy enough to let something that dangerous circulate in the market?
What if some crazy mage spent years accumulating mana potions, hooked them up to an IV, and burned down a city by spamming Fireballs?
“Here you go, Arthur.”
I took the mana potion back from Tirsi and brought it to my lips. It was a small bottle about the size of a fancy drink you’d bring to someone in the hospital.
I drank it slowly, gauging how much my mana pool was recovering.
In this world, it was bad to drink beyond your mana capacity or more than you needed. Just like how chugging caffeine didn’t mean you could skip sleep.
─Gulp, gulp.
Still, one bottle was more than enough for me. I hadn’t even drunk a third of it, but it felt like my mana pool had recovered by more than half.
‘Fuck. I thought my mana pool had gotten a little bigger.’
A little mid-to-low-grade potion had nearly filled me up. I clicked my tongue, put the cap back on, and tucked it away. Tirsi, who’d been watching, packed her things and slung her now-heavier bag back over her shoulder as she said,
“Let’s go now. We need to hand that bandit chief over to the guards and send the hostages home──”
Tirsi slowly closed her mouth as she spoke. I’d told her to be quiet.
“Arthur?”
“……Wait.”
I placed a hand on Tirsi’s shoulder and moved her behind me.
─Tingle, tingle.
I sensed a presence coming from the entrance I’d used. It was an unknown pressure.
──Something was there in the darkness of the cave.