Karma
Karma
Fuuuuuck.
I had been careless. Beyond forgetting or whatever, I never imagined it.
That these bastards were not soldiers, just criminals, the dregs of humanity who buy and sell people.
"Aaaaaaaah!!"
There was no way such bastards would have strict military discipline or adherence to rules. But still, there was something to say: the bastard I first met and freed from physical pain had been going on about going to a brothel or whatever, not associating with slaves.
Did I even imagine that in a tent a little ways away, he was personally hiding a prostitute?
This time too, as always, I barged in and killed first, only to realize that the shadow I thought was a blanket was a woman lying there.
What was the use of regretting? The ship had already sailed. I spoke with as much patience as I could muster to the prostitute who was screaming her lungs out while looking back and forth between the two dead bastards' corpses and me.
"Hah... Hey."
"Aaaaaaaah!"
No matter what I said, she just screamed, that crow woman, so my patience was thrown away like a rag.
"Oddly enough, today my luck was good, but..."
I bought some soup, why couldn't I eat it...! Ah, that wasn't the point.
"Sigh. Fine. They'll swarm in anyway, so what's the point of yelling at you to leave? You stay here. I'll go out."
I'd planned to assassinate the entire encampment on the principle that it counted as assassination if there were no witnesses, but that plan had just gone spectacularly to hell.
As I let out a deep sigh and left the tent, sure enough, from all directions, bastards were already gathering, startled by the screams, rushing out with weapons in hand. Using the prostitute's screams as background music, I observed their actions, but something about their reaction was off.
"Wh-what?! What's going on?!"
"Who's that? Anyone know him?"
"First time seeing him...?"
They didn't even know each other's faces; that kind of reaction had been mixed in from the start. Eventually, at their overflowing patheticness, a remark slipped out of me.
"If you see a face you don't know, that's an intruder, so why are you checking with each other? You funny bastards."
"What?! Emergency! Emergeeeency!"
"Intruder! Call the captain!!"
Still, even though I seemed to have wiped out about half, there were still quite a few left. The ones I could see right away were already about ten, and I could tell there was more bustling movement in the distance.
Using my height to take in the scene, I watched as three energetic bastards started approaching me with swords and ropes. Had they brought the ropes in case a slave escaped? Novel, but perfectly understandable.
"If you stay still, you won't get hurt badly. Stay quiet..."
"Hey, you moron, do I look like a slave?"
But unlike their preparedness, their actions were boneheaded. The fearless bastard just came at me while I stood there idly, so I immediately punched him in the face and took his sword.
One unexpected thing this time was that the punch alone had killed him.
How did I know? His brow had caved in like someone told him to "Be quiet!" and if he had survived that, it would have been weird.
Whoa. Was it because the gauntlet was so sturdy? I might need to hold back my strength from now on.
My senses had changed a lot from before, so even I was flustered; the bastards were even more flustered and started backing away several steps.
"F-fuck, what kind of punch caves a skull...!"
"Wh-who are you! Do you know where you are, barging in like this!?"
"What a joke. Someone might think I trespassed on a noble's domain. Mere slave trader scum acting all high and mighty."
Even if they groveled on the floor and begged, I would kill them, and with them being so clueless, Bad Eldmia and Worse Eldmia were starting to crawl out. Disgust had me losing control of my expression, but since there was no reason to control it, I kept it that way and answered, pointing at the ground.
"Where is this? It's a street slave shop, a site of human rights violations."
"Hu-human rights what?"
Even after I showed this much hostility, they couldn't bring themselves to rush me all at once. Maybe they were just bandits who attacked innocent people under the pretense of hunting escaped slaves. That pushed my disgust clean off the meter, and I shifted the finger that had been pointing at the ground to point at myself as I continued.
"Who am I? Slave merchant hunter Eldmia Ega."
"Wh-what did we ever do to you!"
"Not you, but my big sis got dragged off by a slave trader once. Ever since, scum like you are all my enemies."
"Y-you crazy bastard!"
Situation assessment complete. Seeing them act that way even with about ten gathered, for now, these guys were nothing. As I always did, I exploded with Magic Power, shot forward, and shouted while beheading the bastard who had tried to slander me as a madman.
"Even if a madman swings a sword, you'll die if you're hit!"
Taking the bastard's head cleanly soaring into the night sky as a signal, the battle began.
"Fuck, it's an aura user! A crazy aura user showed up!!"
Meanwhile, the ones at a distance were screaming at the top of their lungs, acting as human sirens. Surely their aim was to pressure me and rally more comrades, but...
"Looks to me like all your buddies are already gathered."
Including the ones still approaching, about twenty total? Even as they emerged from the dark, they were being silently killed by arrows from Asilie flying in from somewhere unseen. The ones hanging back and gauging the situation were only making things easier for me.
What good was twenty gathered when most couldn't even rush at once, and even if they did, it was only three or four at a time.
"Fuck, crossbow! Get the crossbow!"
"What the hell are the other bastards doing, so late... Aaarrgh!"
"If you can't find a crossbow, bring a trident, you sons of bitches!"
I never let my guard down because numbers could always be a threat. The bastards had gone into the fight carelessly, though, and the anxiety and confusion spreading through their ranks had long since reached the point where it couldn't be fixed without a commander.
Maybe things would have gone a little differently if they hadn't shouted that I was an aura user. The ones who lacked confidence in their skills started watching for an opening after that shout, then fled into the distance only to meet their end at Asilie's arrows, steadily thinning their numbers.
As if to prove that someone with the mental fortitude and skill to stay calm while watching heads fly off with each counterattack wouldn't be rotting his skills on mere slave hunting, it hadn't even taken 5 minutes for the number of bastards to drop from over twenty to four.
Hmm. Maybe I'm pretty strong?
"S-spare..."
"No such thing."
In the end, the last one who had lost his will to fight chose surrender over fleeing, but I beheaded him before he could lay down his weapon, and the slaughter was over.
Unlike the one who had made the wrong choice, the three who chose to flee would either get killed by Asilie's arrows or succeed and disappear somewhere, but seeing their state, they didn't seem to be of a rank that could report to someone connected to Count Bosha, so I let them be.
What actually bothered me was the captain who hadn't shown up despite 5 minutes of this ruckus. I started walking through the middle of the bloodbath and shouted at the top of my lungs.
"Captain! Olly olly oxen free! You win, so come on out!!"
It seemed unlikely those bastards would search that desperately for a captain with no combat ability. With that perfectly reasonable suspicion in mind, I took about twenty more steps before a voice came from my right.
"What the hell are you supposed to be?"
A strained voice that sounded like what you'd get if your vocal cords were fat. From the giant tent that I'd seen nobles steadily coming and going from, a burly man fully armed like a knight appeared.
"Huh, I'm not exactly short myself, but you're a bit taller?"
The bastard, a pig in armor with the only gap being his still-lifted visor, addressed me with a disgustingly smug grin.
"A little shit got up to some fun. What did you do with my men?"
"Can't you tell by looking at this mess? They're all dead. And who's little, you punk? At best, you're only about 5 centimeters taller than me."
Anyone hearing him would think he was twenty centimeters taller than me. The sheer cheek of it almost made me take his head off on the spot.
"But that's weird. You don't look particularly smart, but you're in charge here?"
I taunted him simply because he had pissed me off. Instead of answering, he swung the war hammer in his hands down at my head, and I lightly dodged the attack, put some distance between us, and examined him.
It was nothing compared to Yekaterina's siege ram, but even with that sizable war hammer and armor, his movements were faster than expected.
But in other words, that was all. Yekaterina had been much faster.
"Are you an aura user?"
Just in case, I checked with my enhanced senses and thought I felt some very faint aura, so I asked. He rested the war hammer on his shoulder and answered with a triumphant laugh.
"Heh heh. Yeah. Starting to feel the heat?"
"Feel the heat? Ha ha ha. Alright, I bet all my money and both my hands."
Damn. Not something you should say about a woman, but Yekaterina really was a monster among monsters.
I had no idea how she could swing that siege ram, much heavier than that hammer, like a spear.
Anyway, with that minor curiosity resolved, I had no more business with him, so matching his gaze, I leveled my sword horizontally and took a stance.
"You little shit, talking nonsense..."
He sneered at the sight of me and slowly raised a hand toward his helmet to close the visor and start fighting in earnest. The instant he did, I drove forward at full speed and thrust my sword.
The gap wasn't nearly wide enough for him to let his guard down. I only needed a fraction of a second to close it, and the distance vanished faster than he could perceive. My sword met no resistance as it punched straight through one eye and into his skull.
"...Huh?"
Making a grand entrance only to end with one hammer swing. A fitting end for trash that only hunts slaves. The so-called captain couldn't even properly react, his one good eye rolling back as he died.
As expected, ambushes were always right, and carelessness invited death.