by Funa
Hearing Mile’s speech, the hunters now saw that they had a chance of being pardoned for their charges of banditry, and their eyes glistened hopefully. The man who seemed like the leader began to frantically offer his petition.
“I-It’s true! You all said that you were going to be traveling on a road where bandits had been appearing without hiring an escort, so we wanted to persuade you to hiring someone for your own safety! I’m not lying, I swear to you!”
In fact, the man probably was telling the truth. Even if they intended something sly like ripping the girls off by charging a higher rate for an emergency on-site job or trying to get them to tack on some additional services later—or even if they thought they might try and persuade Mile and her storage magic into their party if possible—none of that would directly contradict the appeal that the men had made. If all they truly intended from the outset was to intimidate the girls into hiring an escort, not actually steal from them, then the offense was mild enough as to not break Guild regulations or bring criminal charges.
Of course, pretending to be bandits in order to intimidate the girls was still a bit out of line, but they probably assumed that so long as they were not discovered as accomplices while doing their “gallant rescuers” act, then they would be fine.
“Deceiving you girls as we did was unforgivable, of course, but we were prepared to get our hands dirty if it was for your safety. We thought that the ends justified the means and that the Goddess would forgive us. You all would agree, wouldn’t you?” prattled the leader, looking self-satisfied.
“Hmm, I suppose you might be right. That’s not an unnatural course of action to take, if you were worried about us… Very well. We will put in a good word for the men who were playing the bandit role so that hopefully they’ll be dealt with more leniently.”
“Thank you so much. You’re really helping us out of a tight spot here. Now, we’ll all travel back to Zarbef with the woodcutters, and there we’ll go our separate ways…”
“Hm? What are you talking about?” Mile asked suspiciously. “The woodcutters were simply pawns in this scheme, but we’re still taking you in as criminals and handing you over to the authorities via the Guild.”
“Huh? I mean, I know it was rotten of us to deceive you, but you do understand that we did it from a place of good will, right? Plus, we never intimidated you or raised a sword against you ourselves—we acted as your allies from the very beginning. If you’ve already forgiven us for lying, then what’s the problem here?” the leader petitioned frantically.
Mile casually replied, “Yes, well, that is indeed true in regards to your actions toward us, but you did try to murder those woodcutters to silence them, even knowing that they were not actually bandits, but in fact people that you yourselves had hired to complete a job. The way you were thrusting those swords, if Mavis and I hadn’t stopped you, you really would have struck and killed those men. In other words, you attempted murder. Anyway, trying to kill someone you hired just to save your own skins is an incredibly malicious act in and of itself… A felony, in fact.”
“Ah…”
The hunters swiftly saw their error, but it was too late to make amends now.
“You all do appear to be hunters, so I’m sure you’ll be receiving punishment from both the Guild and the town guard. Now then, if you’ll just keep calm, and…”
“Now!” cried the leader.
“Okay!” replied the other three.
And with that, they all drew their swords.
At this rate, after all that they had done, the best they could hope for was merely to have their reputations ruined. They might be stripped of their qualifications as hunters, likely sentenced to serve ten or twenty years in hard labor as penance for their actions. The way things had turned out for them, they would have been better off turning to banditry for real, capturing the girls, and selling them off to another country. Not only were the four of them an attractive set, that set included a young noble maiden who had storage magic of a ridiculously high capacity. They would be certain to fetch an immense price on the black market.
Besides, the hunters could count on their friends, the idiotic woodcutters, to take all the blame. If they killed the men and buried them here, people would assume that they had taken to banditry, kidnapped the girls, and fled the country with them. That would be that. It was possible that the woodcutters might not even be tied to the crime, and the whole thing could be passed off as the work of normal bandits.
All these assumptions made, the hunters now brandished their blades for the sake of their lives and their livelihoods.
“Ah… There’s the chink in the armor,” Pauline said, brandishing her staff with a sinister grin. “When you all tried to plunge your swords into those men, your movements were far too swift, too coordinated. And here again now, when you drew your swords, not one of you hesitated for even a moment. Normally, among a group of four, there would be at least one or two who would hesitate to murder a group of mock bandits who they themselves had hired or balk at the idea of turning their swords on a group of innocent young ladies who were not even hunters. And yet, none of you even batted an eye… This isn’t the first time that you all have attacked civilians, is it?”
“Sh-shut up! What the hell are you implying?! Whatever. It’s not like any of this changes how things are gonna end up for you all! And here we thought you’d be good little girls and hire us on, but I guess you’re too stupid for that. We thought we might be able to get Little Miss Storage there to join our group, but it looks like we’re gonna have to just sell her off somewhere now. A bit of a shame there, but I guess we’ve got no choice…”
They probably intended Mile’s ‘recruitment’ into the group to be compulsory. There was no other way that they could have managed to bring a girl of noble birth into their party. Of course, what they had intended to do with the other three was anyone’s guess…
Apparently, these men were even more malicious than the Crimson Vow had initially supposed.
“Well, I guess that’s how it’s going to be, then. Miley, Mavis, if you would.”
“On it!”
The men seemed not to have been paying very close attention to what had happened when the girls struck down the woodcutters. They were still a short distance away at the time, and Mile and Mavis had moved too quickly to track. Therefore, all they knew was that the woodcutters had been defeated—a fact that, in and of itself, was not particularly surprising. They may have been pretending to be brigands, but they were still just woodcutters, total amateurs in battle. Even if she were still at an apprentice level, it was clear that a trained knight would have no trouble defeating a group like them. Of course, they had also assumed that the young lady had been hired on as a ward against attacks and that an apprentice knight would not deign to challenge four bandits all alone, of her own accord. Besides, they never thought that the woodcutters would actually try to attack or harm the girls on their own.
Finally, the men had assumed that they should be able to maintain eye contact with the woodcutters for the scant seconds that it would take them to come running, so there was no worry of the plan going askew. They never suspected that the knight would challenge an enemy four times her own number without waiting for the rescue that was already on its way.
At any rate, they had still evaluated that the only enemy worth considering was the apprentice knight, not taking into account either the noble with the sword in her hand or the staff-wielding child and maid. Surely, as C-rank hunters, they would be stronger than the knight, and there were four of them to boot. So really, why should they have worried?
“Mavis, Mile, finish them!” Reina commanded.
“Okay!”
“On it!”
The command that she had just unleashed was very much like that which might be issued by one of the figures that appeared in Mile’s Japanese folktales, such as Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, or Freiza, or Doronjo. It was a phrase that they had heard so often that by this
point it had been drilled into the other girls’ heads. Following that command, Mile and Mavis drew their swords.
Cling clang! Smack! Smack!
The sounds of clanging metal rang out in concurrent sets of two, and suddenly the four hunters collapsed to the ground. Naturally, they had been struck with the sides of the girls’ blades, so their lives were not in danger.
With some rare exceptions, Western-style swords were a lot sturdier than swords of Japanese make, so even if they were used in an unorthodox manner such as this one, there was little chance of them breaking—particularly if they were enhanced by nanomachines, such as these were.
“All righty! Time to go ahead and bury them,” said Reina.
The other three nodded.
***
“It’s just one false lead after another…” Mavis grumbled.
“Well, to be fair, if we ran into those guys after we’d dealt with the real ones, it would be a problem for our reputation. People would doubt whether we really had handled the problem, y’know? So really, it’s better that we tie up all the loose ends beforehand,” said Reina.
Mile and Pauline nodded in agreement. If there were two groups of bandits, and they dealt with one group while the other was still active, people would most certainly doubt their capabilities. Did they actually exterminate those first bandits? other hunters would wonder. Did the bandits actually let some innocent people get captured in their stead? And so on and so forth.
As they had initially planned, the girls continued on toward the town of Caldile, leaving the second group of offenders trapped in dirt, just as the first group had been.
The woodcutters were buried alongside the hunters. They still needed to be handed over to the authorities for a scolding, and even if the girls were to ask their names, the men could give them false identities. This was the natural course of action. Of course, the woodcutters had already given their side of the story, but as far as legal proceedings were concerned, at the moment they were still as good as bandits, and their claims were the protests of criminals. It was not out of the question to deal with them accordingly.
Plus, even if the Vow would testify as to the extenuating circumstances involved, it was not up to them to decide on anyone’s punishment. The men were not hunters, so while they would not receive any penalties from the Guild, the town guards would sentence them, and as such, their punishment had nothing to do with the Crimson Vow.
That said, the Vow had at least covered their victims’ heads with a metal cage this time, so that they would not be killed by beasts. Naturally, a barrier spell had been furnished as well. That would be enough to keep them safe for at least a little while.
After the girls had been walking for about ten minutes…
“Halt!”
A man who appeared to be a traveler had been resting atop a boulder on the side of the highway. Suddenly, he stood and held up his hand, and a crowd of vulgar-looking men appeared from around the bend behind him.
The fish were really biting today. Must have been some pretty tasty bait…
“Well now, here comes another one…” said Mavis.
A Pnumekin?
As always, Mile’s mind conjured up a reference that no one else could possibly hope to understand.
They look back to see a number of men piling up behind them also. There were ten-odd men in front and five or six behind. These numbers were roughly comparable to what they had guessed, based on the reports of the attacks so far.
“Looks like these guys are the real deal,” said Reina, and the other three nodded. It was highly unlikely that multiple bandit squads of this number would all be launching attacks in the same place.
It was quite fortunate that they would be able to wrap this up on the very first day—fortunate for all the buried men, that was. If they weren’t dug up soon, they might just take root and start to grow. Or start rotting away. Well, first an eye might sprout up and then some teeth would grow, the nose would blossom, and then… Mile suddenly realized that Reina had made a joke along very similar lines some time ago, back when Mile had gone to investigate the fallen golem. It would be one thing if she were doing a parody or an homage or respectful nod, but Mile would not tolerate herself stealing someone’s thunder with wholesale plagiarism.
We should probably get back and retrieve them before worms start crawling out of those blossoming noses, anyway…
Unfortunately for the men, Mile, in all of her genius, had neglected to consider what effects their imprisonment would have on their physiology…
“Insolent whelps! You must be well and truly addled!” Finally back in the moment, Mile spewed out a speech fit for one of her folktales. “Have you any idea what greatness stands before you?!”
At her words, Reina and Mavis were spewing internally. Some two-bit daughter of a poor noble household could hardly refer to herself as a thing of “greatness.” If she were a princess, it would be another matter, but a princess she was not. Luckily, this was all a part of Mile’s plan to determine just how much information the bandits had about them.
“Tch, some low-class nothing like you, great?! Don’t make me laugh! If yer travelin’ around without even so much as a guard then I bet your family don’t care anythin’ for you, storage or no, little Missy. We’ve got a much better place ready for you!”
Mile was frozen in place, mouth half-ajar at how utterly simple her own intelligence-gathering had been and how comprehensive the information was. Just like that, they could confirm that the men were aware of everything that they had said back in the guildhall. The other three grimaced.
There was no need for the Crimson Vow to investigate the method by which the men had come by the information. That was something for the bandits to give up on their own once they had been captured, and extracting that information was a job for the Guild and the guards. All the Vow had to do here was to apprehend them. Ascertaining the source of the leak would be nothing more than a bonus service, a way to safeguard themselves for the future by learning where any remaining forces might lurk. Thus, the only choice here was to take out every last one of them.
“Now then, shall we?”
“Yeah!!!”
“Now now, little ladies,” said one of the bandits, “ain’t no point in resisting here. Just be good and surrender. We won’t do anything bad to ya. We won’t hurt or kill ya. In fact, we’re gonna send you ladies off to some folks who’ll take nice, good care of ya.”
“That’s plenty bad enough!!!” the Vow chorused in reply.
Mile folded her arms and nodded in approval at their beautifully coordinated rebuttal. The fruits of conditioning the others with her Japanese folktales were finally starting to ripen.
“Enough of yer grousin’, just hurry up and…”
“Firebomb!”
Ka-boom!
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
“Ice Storm!!!”
Blamcrackleshinkshunkbambambam!
“WAH! GYEH! GWAAH!!!”
Reina’s explosive fire crashed into the bandits from the front while Pauline’s ice attack showered the men from behind. While Pauline’s favored area attack was the “Hot” spell, it was not the only trick up her sleeve. She could use water, wind, and fire magic to various degrees; it simply happened that, unlike Reina, she was better at water magic than fire. Furthermore, this time they were not on their home turf, and she was using her spell against a number of people who were going to be questioned later, so it was more prudent to put aside her unique spell in favor of more standard ice and wind magic.
Numerous fist-sized balls of ice were whipped up into a maelstrom on magical winds. In this pattern, the ice would not pelt the men once, but again and again until the ice melted, or the magic stopped… Even if the ice were to break on impact, meaning that damage from each individual hit might decrease, the chunks of ice that would hit the bandits would then be twice as many.
Next, Mile and Mavis rushed in. Mile went to the front, while Mavis took the rear. Rein
a had limited her attack on the men at the front to a power level at which they would not be killed or injured seriously enough as to lose any limbs, and so, only about a third of them were unable to fight. The other two-thirds were in various conditions: some unhurt, some limping, and some with their arms dangling numbly.
It was highly unlikely that any bandit crew would include mages who were skilled enough to use their magic in battle, so for this group to pit themselves against the Crimson Vow, who had three mages in their group, was reckless. Well, really, even if the bandits had ten mages, their efforts would have been equally futile…
Meanwhile, the men at the back were still standing, but they were all equally bedraggled. Pauline’s ice had effectively engulfed everyone standing within its radius. Thanks to this, all of the men’s battle capabilities had been significantly compromised—though, honestly, this made little difference to Mavis and her True Godspeed Blade. A normal C-rank hunter could handle perhaps two bandits, but Mavis could take down five or six bandits in top form as easily as swatting a fly. By nature, bandits tended to favor an indolent, carefree life. Lacking the diligence to become a soldier, the sincerity and patience to become a merchant or artisan, and the skill to become a hunter, they were typically negligent in both effort and training.
After all, if they were actually strong, they would have at least become hunters, not bandits. The bar to enter the Hunters’ Guild was incredibly low.
And so, the battle—or rather, the one-sided massacre—was over in the blink of an eye. All it had taken was a few strikes from the sides of Mile and Mavis’s blades to strike the men down. After the opening blows, Reina and Pauline’s job was done. Then all they had to do was sit back and watch.
Of course, Reina was still holding an attack spell, and Pauline a healing one, just in case. The healing spell was for the bandits, in case Mile or Mavis “accidentally, unintentionally” overdid it. And yet, the confrontation was over, and the bandits were successfully apprehended without the opportunity for Pauline to use her healing magic ever arising.