Chapter 9
A small carriage was waiting at the entrance to the village.
It was too modest to be called a splendid carriage for nobles, yet its condition was far too good for an ordinary carriage.
It was made of sturdy wood and had neat decorations.
And above all, the horse was far from ordinary.
It hadn't been sent by the academy.
To begin with, there was no way they would offer this kind of treatment to a commoner student.
The academy was the finest educational institution in the empire, but it was also a social gathering place for nobles.
It wasn't kind enough to send a carriage just because one commoner was going to take the entrance exam.
I remembered the carriage that had come to pick up Isabel last time.
That one was……
I couldn't even tell whether it was a carriage or a treasure chest….
Then where had this carriage come from?
“Ahahaha! Courtesy of the Extreme King-ieyo!”
The Extreme King proudly shouted from beside me.
I quietly looked at her.
………
Wait a second.
Where had she learned that “by” from?
Did this other world have English…?
How was a ten-year-old commoner brat supposed to get all the way to the academy in the distant capital?
I would either have to cling to a merchant caravan passing through the village or walk there barefoot.
I'd worried about it a lot at first, but I had the Extreme King.
She had lived for over a hundred years, so she obviously had plenty of money, right?
“…….”
The Extreme King suddenly looked at me.
“……That was the face of someone having an incredibly rude thought-ieyo.”
Damn it.
The longer we spent together, the more uselessly perceptive she became.
I needed to be careful.
“Anyway.”
Once I sat inside the carriage, I could see the village through the window.
I could see the small houses and familiar roads.
The dirt road I passed along every day and the field where I dug potatoes were visible, too.
And Uncle Lawrence was waving at us from the entrance to the village.
I stared quietly for a moment, then opened the window.
“Uncle!”
Uncle Lawrence raised his head.
“Then I'll really be going!”
A brief silence followed.
Then Uncle Lawrence smiled brightly.
As if to tell me not to worry.
“Yeah.”
His voice was faint.
“Have a safe trip.”
The carriage slowly began to move.
I watched out the window for quite some time before a thought suddenly occurred to me.
But there was a cliché in fantasy stories that happened one hundred percent of the time when you set off in a carriage……
Was a bandit event about to trigger?!
***
-Neighhh!
Accompanied by the horse's cry, the carriage hurried along the road.
Honestly, I had been impressed when I first saw the carriage.
A carriage in a fantasy world! The scenery unfolding outside the window! A vehicle pulled by horses!
I had wondered if this was what romance was all about.
But after about two hours, I realized it.
“Romance my ass.”
The ride was absolutely terrible.
My back hurts!
The moment we ran over even a tiny pebble in the road, the impact traveled straight through my butt and up to my spine, you know?
“Ugh……”
My lower back was screaming.
And why was the seat so hard, anyway?
Was this really a seat made for people to sit on?
In the end, I took out the clothes and underwear I'd brought and spread them across the seat.
The cushioning effect was perfect.
It was the best choice for survival!
“Why do you look like that-ieyo?”
The Extreme King, sitting across from me, tilted her head.
“Are you nervous-ieyo?”
“No.”
I answered while clutching my lower back.
“My back just hurts.”
“What are you going to do if your back already hurts at ten-ieyo!”
“I know.”
I nodded seriously.
“Then are you all right, Extreme King?”
“……?”
“You've lived for over a hundred years.”
Bonk.
Ow!
Something struck me on the head.
“It's incredibly rude to mention a woman's age-ieyo!!”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
What was I supposed to say? She looked like a child no matter how I looked at her, but if I said that, I felt like I'd get hit again.
I turned my gaze toward the window for no particular reason.
Beyond the window, broad grasslands and a forest road stretched on.
The carriage had been traveling for quite some time.
The village had long since disappeared from sight.
It was about time……
I cast a sidelong glance at the Extreme King.
Her cheeks were slightly puffed, and she wore a sulky expression.
“…….”
I kind of wanted to tease her.
“Extreme King.”
“Did you call me-ieyo?”
“Actually—”
Just as I was about to open my mouth.
-Screeech.
The carriage suddenly shook violently.
“?”
And stopped.
My body lurched forward.
But after spending the past two months strengthening my body with the Extreme King, I was no longer in the body of an ordinary child.
I grabbed the handle and easily regained my balance.
Thank goodness.
Otherwise, I would have ended up falling straight into the Extreme King's arms.
It was horrifying just to imagine.
At the same time, I slowly smiled.
Because this situation was far too familiar.
Traveling by carriage through a fantasy world, then suddenly stopping as an ominous atmosphere settled in?
“What is it-ieyo?”
The Extreme King turned her head and asked toward the driver's seat.
A moment later, the coachman's trembling voice reached us.
“B-Bandits!”
They showed up!!!
I quickly rose and looked at the Extreme King with sparkling eyes.
“I'll go.”
“You're the first person I've ever seen get this excited about meeting bandits-ieyo……”
“You gave me permission, right? You did, didn't you?”
“No—wait—”
Having received the Extreme King's permission.
I hopped out of the carriage without waiting another moment.
When I opened the carriage door and stepped outside, I saw faces far more vicious-looking than the uncles who had been my teammates in the tower.
They were holding melee weapons like swords and axes, and there were quite a lot of them.
Wow, this is my first time seeing actual bandits in person……!
Should I ask them to autograph something as a keepsake?
Oh, right. I didn't bring any paper.
“W-What…… A brat……?”
The bandits exchanged confused looks at my sudden appearance.
They had probably been expecting a frightened child.
“Hand over everything you have, and I'll spare your life.”
One of the bandits in front said this as he drew the sword at his waist.
I tilted my head.
“Are you uncles stupid-ieyo?”
“What……?”
As I'd expected, the bandit was flustered.
“If you take everything a child has here, that child is as good as dead anyway.”
I said this while folding my fingers one by one.
“Whether I die this way or that way, isn't it all the same?”
“…….”
“If you were in my position, wouldn't you at least put up a fight?”
The bandit wore an expression of serious contemplation.
“I-Is that so?”
……What.
Why was this bandit so stupid?
For some reason, I thought of the Extreme King inside the carriage behind me.
It was a similar kind of stupidity.
“Hey! Move!”
That was when it happened.
“Why are you hemming and hawing like that!”
A man with a huge scar across his face stepped forward from one side.
He was obviously the leader.
“Are you going to waste time over one little brat?”
He drew his sword.
“Kill the brat and take the carriage and horses.”
“Yes!”
At their leader's command, the bandits all raised their weapons.
Then they charged toward me.
“It's scary-ieyo! It's scary-ieyo!”
When I raised both hands and shouted, the bandits' expressions stiffened for a moment.
“…….”
“What's with that way of speaking?”
I grinned.
“How dare you ignore the Extreme King's way of speaking.”
I picked up a fallen branch from the ground.
“Bandit uncles, you get a million bonks.”
The next moment, I kicked off the ground.
And then.
Thwack.
I drove the branch straight into the head of the bandit in front of me.
“…….”
For a moment, the surroundings fell silent, as though time itself had stopped.
Why? It was a bonk. I just used a branch to do it.
“K-Kugh…… Marco!”
Someone shouted the name of the fallen bandit.
I tilted my head.
“Oh, his name is Marco-ieyo?”
It sounded like a name from an animated show.
But that was the end of my idle thoughts.
I simply walked forward.
“Y-You bastard, what the hell are you!”
The bandits began to panic.
The composure they had shown earlier was gone, and they only watched each other's reactions.
They were a complete mess of disorganized incompetents.
“People who call themselves bandits……”
I raised my fingernails and drew up the energy sleeping inside my body.
And then.
[Heaven-Slaying Star]
Aren't you people a little too stupid?
If you don't know, you die! Kehahahaha!
***
Huff—huff—
Logan was running off the mountain road and into the forest, breathless and gasping for air.
He was the leader of the bandits who controlled the road leading to the capital. He had once been a fairly well-known mercenary and had survived countless battlefields.
That was why Logan knew.
He knew what he had seen.
“What the hell…… What is that monster……!”
At first, he had thought the child was nothing more than a little brat.
The child hadn't looked like a noble. He had no expensive equipment and no one who looked like a guard. Seeing only a single carriage, Logan had decided it would be easy prey.
But that judgment had been completely wrong.
The child had been holding nothing more than a single branch.
Yet the instant that branch was swung, Logan had felt instinctive fear.
The little child had entered the midst of the bandits in that small body without the slightest hesitation, moving as naturally as someone who had experienced this situation countless times.
He aimed for their heads and their throats.
Every movement was utterly devoid of waste.
It was too cruel to call it swordsmanship.
It was also somehow different from the martial arts said to have come from the East.
But Logan, who had spent decades as a mercenary, knew for certain.
Those movements weren't meant for fighting.
They were movements optimized solely for killing.
‘I have to run.’
There was no need to think about it.
Losing his subordinates was unfortunate, but that wasn't what mattered.
They were just youngsters who knew how to swing a sword or two, anyway.
He could gather a new group of men again in no time.
He had a reputation built during his time as a mercenary.
What mattered was surviving.
Logan gritted his teeth and hid himself deep in the forest.
No matter how skilled that little brat was, there was no way the child could follow Logan this deep into such a dense forest.
Logan had spent decades as a mercenary.
He knew how to run away and shake off pursuers better than anyone.
But then.
-Thud.
Something suddenly caught on the tip of his foot.
“……?”
Logan flailed, somehow trying to lift his body after it pitched forward. At first, he thought he had tripped over one of the rocks scattered along the road, but something was strange.
No matter how he thought about it, he wasn't the kind of body that would fall this miserably over such a trivial rock.
To get up, Logan slowly raised his head.
And his body froze.
Someone was standing in front of him.
A small child with black hair, their entire body drenched in blood.
“Where do you think you're running off to!!!”
That was the last sound Logan heard in his life.
***
Half a day after subduing the bandits, we finally arrived at the capital where the academy was located.
Both the Extreme King and I had bodies far beyond the bounds of ordinary people, so we weren't tired.
The problem lay elsewhere.
“Ugh……”
I stood listlessly in front of the lodging.
“I want to wash up first.”
I was an absolute mess.
The bandits' blood had dried and stuck all over my clothes and hair.
The sticky sensation was incredibly unpleasant.
“Sigh…… Sigh.”
The Extreme King sighed beside me.
“Who told you to shower in blood-ieyo?”
“It couldn't be helped, Extreme King-sama.”
“What's with that weird title again-ieyo?”
There was no point explaining Traits or Heaven-Slaying Star; it would only make my mouth hurt.
To the Extreme King, it was simply a situation where a child had crushed a bandit gang and gotten covered in blood.
In the end, we took a room at a nearby inn with the Extreme King's money.
The moment I entered the room, I headed straight for the bathroom.
The academy entrance exam was tomorrow!
Finally! The day had come!
Of course, it was no secret that the owner of the lodging had seen a blood-covered child and tried to call the guards.
And at last, the next day arrived, and the entrance exam for Astell Imperial Academy drew near.