Dream Life

We were attacked by bandits in Ars Street - the main street connecting Ars, King Kaum's capital in the south, to Periclitle, the city of adventurers - the biggest difficulty Karsh.

Fortunately, the bandits cautioned me that there was an overwhelming difference in power. For this reason, a Magic Preemptive Attack was able to inflict Heavy Damage on the enemy.

Having been informed by a bandit who was lucky enough to survive that we still have company, we decided to defeat the bandit's survival in order to eliminate the worries of our hindsight.

According to the information obtained, there were two bandits with horses about a kilometer down from the top, and me and Beatrice were to ambush them.

Divided from the Liddies, wary of the surroundings, but hurried down the road. Only two bandits survive, because the smell of battle blood doesn't necessarily attract demons.

About five hundred meters down, the surrounding landscape changes from rocky walls to wasteland. Me and Beatrice decided, just in case, to hide themselves and lower their posture.

Then, we carefully descend the roads with greater perimeter vigilance.

Moving on for about five minutes, I could hear the horse hissing slightly.

Beatrice sends me a stop signal by hand.

"Looks like you're hiding in the bush on the east side. If it's the grass here, I can hide enough. Follow me."

When she says so, she splits into grasses with the sound of gasp.

I climb behind her perfectly so I don't delay, and I give in and move on.

For once, I'm nervous, but I'm very concerned about the thick tail of a tiger shaking in front of me. I concentrate on mobilizing all my mental abilities and mounting an ambush.

After entering the grass for about five minutes, the horse's hissing grew louder.

Beatrice was slowly getting up and checking the surrounding conditions.

"You're right. Looks like he's in the bush. No magic this time. Like."

I snort small.

No magic is used to defeat the enemy for sure.

With my Wind Attribute Magic, if two enemies are about the bandits who have attacked me, I can defeat enough by simultaneously deploying multiple magic.

However, since we cannot see the enemy from its present position, it is necessary to approach it considerably even when using magic. Of course, there would be an option to say we would use magic after we got close. But me and Beatrice were afraid something would happen. For example, do you think the enemy will notice magic or the horse will be surprised by magic? If that were the case, we would end up having to carry out raids.

Then, from the outset, we will be able to support each other rather than magic, and it is decided that challenging a melee is more certain.

I pull the bastard sword out of my back and squeeze it tight.

I slowly stood up and confirmed what she called the bush.

A dozen low pine-like trees have solidified and grown about thirty meters east of the tunnel. Whether the bushes were shrouded or tall grass growing in the wasteland could not confirm the appearance of horses or bandits.

Beatrice moves forward slowly, and I move along the grass with the same cautious footsteps. I hear an unusually loud scratching of a grass called Gassa, but you shouldn't hear it with the wind blowing around you shaking the grass.

We arrived about ten meters to the bush.

I heard a bandit-like man's wild voice with the sound of a horse's hoof.

"I hear there's a hungry ghost in a rich place for a big girl, but a different beast man. Besides, I'm talking about hungry ghosts with beautiful faces for both men and women. Well, either way, it's just going to be a head toy..."

Apparently, the aim was not only the merchants, but we were in.

(I see. So it wasn't the ambush at the time of passing, it was the time to go up. If you're in that position, even if you try to escape behind, it's not easy to escape with the merchant wagon in the way. I thought it was a bag of rats, so you tried to...)

Approaching more carefully and in a crawling position.

We were able to approach the outermost horse a few meters away.

We were making a noise scratching the grass called Gassa to get closer. But there's no indication that a nervous bandit ever cares if he thinks it sounds like a horse eating grass.

From between the grasses, two bandits lead to a pine tree without pulling out a weapon and are obsessed with conversation without watching.

Beatrice told me to kill Left "Ya" with a hand sign. I nodded at it and looked at the bandits on the left.

The bandit is a young man in his early twenties, probably not so over twenty. However, the face felt terrible and the word "chimp" was on my mind.

(I guess that being so full of gaps doesn't mean I'm not trained to be busy. You mean the young builder ate it up and joined the bandits... Now go dump the so-called “virgins”...)

For the first time, I kill people with my own hands.

When I realized that, there was a slight upset. But he was quickly regaining his usual calm. To me now, that young bandit is just a prey, not much different than a demon. At that time, I thought it was nothing more than a “thing” to get rid of that young man.

I'll send a signal with my eyes that I can "go anytime" to get the timing right with Beatrice. She nodded firmly and took immediate action.

She put the spear low and popped out to be bounced by the spring.

The horses marvel at the move and start to rumble.

The bandit wondered what was going on and tried to stand up.

I was making an instant effort to follow Beatrice's movements, too. And he jumped straight at the target chimp-style guy.

The target man looks at me and opens his eyes wide. But I don't even think you're upset or pulling out the sword at hand.

I held the bastard sword in my right hand back firmly with both hands and swung it through the man's neck at once.

The man gives me the look of being incredible and stares at me with a glimpse.

A short amount of time passed.

The man tried to raise his voice about something, unacknowledged by the fact that his neck had been slashed and torn. But his voice was speechless, just making the sound of Hugh leaking air out of his trachea.

Shortly afterwards, bright red blood gushes out like a fountain, and it just goes down on me. When I glanced at the young bandit, I immediately left the scene.

The time taken to kill a bandit is only a few seconds. It shouldn't have taken ten seconds.

When I leave the body of a bandit, I wave my sword as usual, paying my blood, and keep my perimeter on guard.

In the end, I could do all this without any emotion.

Speaking of demons, I'm not upset at all whether it's because I've already taken nearly a thousand lives. On the contrary, the matter was more surprising.

Beatrice, who attacked at the same time, had also finished the man on the right with a single blow. Like me, she shakes her spear and pays for her blood.

"It's brilliant. But what's the first time you've killed a person? You can stay calm."

And he smiled, which can also be described as gentle, and said, "No, this doesn't mean anything bad. I'm complimenting you," he adds.

I smiled bitterly and replied, "Oh, I know."

"I'm surprised myself. To your own calm."

That's what I was saying, looking around and making sure there were no other enemies.

Beatrice sounded frightened by the motion,

"You can be top notch as an adventurer for a demon opponent, but a mercenary for a human opponent, no, in your case a knight... you can also be top notch as a knight. Are you really shivering at your wild dog opponent?"

He was talking about me shivering in the first line, so he seemed to ask me about it.

I didn't know how to answer that and I didn't end up saying anything.

To mislead the scene, I removed the Demon Crystal Stone and Orb from the two bodies and what seemed to be available.

Beatrice said she still said something, but she shakes her head small and checks the condition of the horse. Twenty-seven horses in all - three were loaded with luggage - and they connect everything.

The lookout I killed didn't have a big one, just like the chimpy look. One long sword of poor quality and a rusty floating dagger, I didn't think the leather armor I was wearing would be useful, and I wasn't even willing to peel it off. The same thing happened to those Beatrice defeated, and the body was dumped under a pine tree.

I went back to the street with the connected horse and while Beatrice was on the horse's turn, I went to tell Liddy and the others that I had the rest of the bandits.

Liddy and Sharon greeted me with a smile and started getting ready to leave.

I only tell the merchants in the merchants that the bandits have been wiped out, and prepare to leave in the same way.

They said the merchants said something, but they didn't say anything in particular, they were just looking at us.

We were at the head of the merchant corps again and headed south down the street.

And I stopped matching the speed of the merchant squad just out of Karsh. It was decided that if we got this far, we would rarely encounter dangerous demons, but because we thought it would be difficult to speed things up because if we included our own horses, we would be carrying more than thirty horses.

We pulled the merchant corps apart and headed south down the street.

Around 4 p.m., we arrived at the village of Bowden, our destination.

The rain I was worried about had already stopped around here and there didn't seem to be enough precipitation for the streets to soak up. Although the clouds are still drooling low, there are no signs of rain falling.

We secured a room in the relatively good lodging we used to stay in and took the horse to the square where we put the wagon.

Then we inspect the bandits' luggage.

It didn't seem like a big band of bandits, and even if you inspect your baggage, little gold eye stuff comes out.

In the end, in addition to weapons and protective equipment, there were only three hundred C (krona) (= 700,000 yen) of gold coins, in addition to five pieces of gold, which smelled of preserved food and clothing.

Further interrogation of the surviving bandits is unlikely to result in anything like an asite, or a hidden treasure.

When asked in detail, it appears that a bandit who had eaten up in the north was about to move his base to the southern Kaum kingdom.

(Since the head is a former Class V mercenary, about level forty? If I could ambush the merchants this time, I don't know what could have happened to these guys. But what kind of life is banditry at this level)

The justice system in this world is, in a way, more rigorous than Earth. That is because there is a magic item called the Orb, and when the Orb breaks a criminal act, that is, an oath that is made when making the Orb, it keeps a record and is certified as a criminal. In other words, if you commit a crime, you are automatically certified as a criminal. There's no room for a trial there.

Also, even if you sin and run away, in a city of a certain size, you will not be able to enter the city when you become a criminal, because the orb will be confirmed at the introduction.

Of course, there must be different ways out that I don't know. I think it's a rational story to completely tighten criminals out of the city. Especially since the new town of Doctus doesn't have a prosecutor, even bandits can get in if they want to.

But the fact that committing a criminal act makes it harder to get into the city is quite dissuasive.

Especially around here, where demons travel, they come directly to their own safety. If we don't get into the city, we'll have to create a wild inn or a crude handmade base. Being in the city is overwhelmingly less safe than being in the city.

So the idea that you will stop committing criminal acts to protect yourself is a compelling enough story.

The punishment for murder and theft is even heavier.

They may be executed, but for the most part, they are dropped into criminal slavery in order to rescue the victims. For this reason, anything that falls into banditry often ends up as a criminal slave.

I'll be a bandit with that readiness, but for the reasons I just said, most of the bandit's life will be wild. If you get in with some strength, you'll get a glimpse from your buddies and have a somewhat better life, but the bottom line will be the bottom line of life. Fear of demonic raids, cooking meals from crude ingredients, and not getting a busy sleep. Probably not much different from the environment you escaped from.

I couldn't even imagine what it was like to live and what the lower end thought it was like to live.

Only three of us were kept alive this time.

Whatever it was at the time of the first raid, Beatrice and the watch we killed could also be captured alive. That's all the difference in skill, and given the surprise effect, it's likely you dumped your weapon irresistibly.

I just followed Beatrice's instructions this time, but I should have given you the same instructions even if I was in command.

There are several reasons.

Firstly, a risk to conducting a fight in a horse with more than twenty.

If the enemy had fought back with self-abandonment, it could have hit the horse. In that case, if the horses panic and rumble around, we're in danger, too. To eliminate this risk, it was necessary to kill with a single blow, unabated.

Of course, there's a magical way to be powerless. In my case, dark attribute magic can be used, so it would have been possible to put him to sleep if it was about this chimp. But dark attribute magic is not omnipotent. There is a personal difference in resistance to magic. If I could not magically put him to sleep, the ambush effect would have disappeared.

Furthermore, our next destination is a poor village called Bowden Village, with no defenses and nowhere to take the survival of the bandits. It's pretty dangerous to take a bunch of bandits to a village like that.

If anyone can guide us, there's no denying the possibility that we'll be scratched in the neck.

I hear that many places don't hate dealing with bandits, especially in poor villages. Of course, instead of moving on and trading, you're threatened, but you're still exceptionally likely to have collaborators compared to the city.

If you are a few bandits who have been injured, if you keep them tied to some tree, they are not that dangerous, but if that is more than ten, the degree of danger increases at once.

And the biggest reason Beatrice decided to kill the lookout would be for me to gain “experience”.

Basically, my style of combat is a combination of magic and sword. In other words, someday, the day will come when we will kill each other with our swords against our human opponents.

Beatrice thought it would be convenient for a less psychologically resistant enemy like this one, who is overwhelmingly less skilled than I am, can ambush and fight back because this one has been attacked.

It was a great opportunity to actually gain experience safely.

She's trying to get me to be alone, so maybe she was constantly gauging when to make me do my first “kill”.

So I guess you cared if I wasn't upset after I killed people.

Beatrice is different from the luxury of appearance, because she is a woman who often cares about what she says.

As far as the three surviving bandits were concerned, they were to be left strapped near the original where they would stop the carriage.

Sometimes the three of us, the guards of the carriage do the watching. The escorts also have no mercy for the bandits, so if you try to escape, you will slaughter them without hesitation. Of course, we got him. We admit it.