Chapter 131: Bandits
When Lia heard Ren speak of the Count, she frowned slightly.
"Is something the issue?" Ren asked curiously.
She hesitated for a long moment and then spoke, "My father, I plan to take him to face the law for his crime of trying to run away from the town," she said.
"Ohh, now I see why you took his position. If you already plan to do this, then why worry about the Count coming?" Ren asked.
"That’s because my father is somewhat close to the Count, and that will make things hard. If I am not lucky, it might turn in his favor and come after me at the end," she explained her worry.
"Ahh, I see, so that’s what is bothering you. You do not want your father to stand the chance of being vindicated," Ren said.
"That’s it. He deserves to rot in prison, locked away from all sunlight for all his life."
"I do not know why you have such strong feelings against your father, but I’ll help you regardless," Ren said.
"Help me? How so?" she asked.
"Just inform me what route the Count is following, and I’ll make sure that he rules properly and justly. That’s a promise," Ren said with a smile.
[...]
A convoy of two carriages rushed through the plains, led by four figures in army armor riding up front. Each armor carried an emblem of a sun, and the same emblem was fixed at the side of the carriages.
They rode at a steady, undisturbed pace. They moved that way with no issues until they got to a mountain range. Halfway through it, the sound of something falling through the air could be heard, as well as shadows getting close. The knights pulled their horses back as fast as they could and evaded the falling debris that turned out to be rocks and large pieces of wood.
The amount was massive. It blocked the entire path and caused a wave of dust that freaked out all the horses. The riders and coachmen fought hard to keep the horses from running off.
The moment the horses calmed down, the knights dropped down from their horses and immediately pulled their swords, eager to fight against whatever was coming.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
The sounds of arrows ripped through the air, loud and fast. The knights saw a barrage of arrows coming from above and then immediately sprung into action.
The first knight moved nimbly, evading the arrows as they hit the ground even in full armor. He moved his sword like it was a whip, fluid in his motions as he slashed through the ones that he could not dodge. His speed was lightning fast, and his reaction was beyond human.
The second knight simply produced a shield and blocked the arrows as they rained down very fast, each one bouncing off the back of the shield and doing nothing to damage it at all.
The fourth and third guards ensured that not a single attack landed on any horse or any carriage, ensuring that it was all kept safe.
Seeing the situation below, a figure at the top suddenly knocked up his arrow, but unlike the other ones that had been normal, this one hummed with magic, and the tip began to crackle with lightning. He shot the arrow. It spun through the air in a trail of lightning.
It slammed into the ground between the knights, unleashing a massive blast that hurled them in all directions, slamming into rocks and the side of the mountain. The impact was strong enough to ensure that none of them got back up fast.
After the blast, ropes came down the side of the mountain, and armed bandits began descending very fast.
Suddenly, the door of the last carriage swung open, and faster than anyone could follow, a blur shot out, extremely fast.
A figure dressed in a long black coat, with white hair and two swords on his back. He rushed up the side of the mountain while running. Another figure came out of the carriage. A lady dressed in mage clothing, purple and gold, with a staff in her hand which had a sharp crystal embedded at the head.
The man in the black coat hit the mountain face running and kept going, both swords clearing their sheaths before he reached the first bandit rappelling down the rope above him.
The first sword took the rope. The bandit dropped.
He caught the next rope with his free hand, pulled himself sideways across the mountain face, and cut through two more in a single horizontal motion before they could release and fall back. They fell anyway, just differently.
A bandit above him pulled a short blade and thrust downward. He turned his body inside the angle of it, let it scrape across his coat, and drove the pommel of his right sword up into the man’s jaw. The bandit’s grip on the rope went loose.
He kept climbing.
Below, the lady raised her staff.
The magical circle formed at the crystal tip without ceremony, spinning once, and the purple blast that came off it crossed the distance to the nearest cluster of bandits before any of them had finished registering what they were looking at. The impact was not loud so much as total, the blast consuming the space the bandits had occupied and leaving nothing that required a follow-up.
She adjusted her angle.
Another circle. Another blast. Same expression throughout, which was no expression at all, the face of someone completing a task they had done before and would do again.
Two more clusters gone.
The remaining bandits on the mountain face had begun reconsidering their descent.
At the peak, the figure with the bow knocked the final arrow.
This one was different.
The tip crackled, lightning wrapping around the shaft in a continuous current, the hum of it audible even from below. He drew it back to full extension, held it for one breath, and released.
The arrow screamed downward, trailing lightning