Chapter 277: Marcus, You Cowardly Bastard
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 277: Marcus, You Cowardly Bastard
"They hid something in the forest. I tracked their trail, and it led right there."
Finn had a natural talent for tracking. Wherever humans went, they were bound to leave traces. The scent of the air would shift, and footprints would be pressed into the earth. Even a single snapped twig brushing against a body was enough to give them away.
Finn had picked up on those very clues. Having met all kinds of people while wandering the continent, Encrid guessed she had once worked as a bounty hunter. Of course, her past was none of his business; he simply found her useful.
That was how they discovered the hidden den near the village.
The village had been built alongside a small forest situated slightly to the north. In the far distance, the Pen-Hanil River was visible, shimmering under the light. Deep inside the woods, the bandits had dug a den to hide their demonic beasts.
Every single creature was drugged out of its mind, dazed and stumbling. There was a wolf-like demonic beast with its tongue lolling out, bearing the telltale surgical scars of the alchemist they had previously killed—the one whose arms they had severed, legs they had slashed, and head they had split open.
That bastard really had his hands in everything.
Though it looked like a wolf, its legs were those of a deer. When this kind of synthesis succeeded, the world called the resulting monster a chimera. Neither natural monster nor pure demonic beast, it was a man-made monstrosity.
"Who goes there!"
Five men stood guard—either beast tamers or perhaps just emergency rations for the creatures.
"Attack, and you die," Encrid said flatly.
Despite the blunt warning, they lunged. So, he killed them.
Seeing this, a man in the back who had been doing nothing but rolling his eyes in panic released the remaining demonic beasts.
Screeech!
A lion with a snake's tail lunged forward. A half-baked chimera made to resemble a manticore rushed at them, only to lose its balance and tumble across the ground.
Encrid split the head of the incomplete chimera lion. With a sharp whoosh, his blade cleaved its skull in half, spilling brain matter and dark red blood.
Sachsen and Sinar joined the fray. Esther climbed a nearby tree and merely watched the slaughter unfold.
The man who had released the beasts tried to seize an opening to flee, but he died instantly when a hand-span-long arrow pierced his skull. It was Finn's doing.
"Where do you think you're going?" she muttered.
There was no escape.
The weapon she used to fire the bolt was the hidden launcher Encrid had previously confiscated from a Black Sword bandit.
She wields it twice as well as that bandit ever did.
Hiding the launcher in her sleeve, she had aimed for the back of his head the moment the target's gaze drifted. Unless one was exceptionally sharp, avoiding an arrow-shaped ornament embedding itself in their brain was nigh impossible.
The unleashed demonic beasts boasted sheer ferocity, but little else.
Groooar!
Skreeeech!
A human-faced dog grafted with a snake's venom glands sprayed poison in all directions. However, they were all half-baked failures. There was no reason to waste time. It took over half a day to slaughter them all, purge the village, and finish the cleanup.
"The next one is a four-day walk from here," Sinar, the elf company commander, reported.
Encrid nodded.
From then on, it was like a circus troupe's touring performance. Finding a village, entering, striking, beating, killing, and cleaning up. It was a continuous, grueling cycle.
Upon seeing their leaders and demonic beasts completely wiped out, most of the village bandits fled. That made the job much easier.
"If the higher-ups find out about this, do you think they'll leave us alone? Anyone looking at this would think a rebellion broke out! Anyone who values their life, follow me!"
The smarter bandits made this assessment and fled, gathering their own factions as they deserted. In any organization, there were bound to be those harboring their own ambitions. Encrid didn't bother chasing down every single one of them. It was a waste of precious time.
"Something feels off. It's too creepy."
Bandits with good intuition fled with such remarks. Only a tiny fraction remained, and the villages Encrid raided quickly became ghost towns. Some villages that exchanged information tried to prepare, but it was meaningless.
When five of the guards stationed throughout a village had their carotid arteries slit and died without a single groan, the remaining bandits were seized with terror.
"Fuck! Did a ghost pop out or something?!"
The man in charge of the village, a first-rate assassin himself, was consumed by dread. Something utterly absurd was happening. The six guards protecting him had vanished without a sound, yet he hadn't sensed a single thing.
No—actually, he had seen it with his own eyes.
In the corner of the bedroom, a hand had reached out from the darkness, grabbing his guard's neck and twisting it. It was a technique that looked as though it had snapped thousands of necks before.
The most terrifying part was that even as the neck spun around, not a single sound escaped. Even more frightening was that the dying guard looked as though he didn't even realize he was dying. Far from showing shock, the guard's expression remained tense, his sharp eyes still scanning the surroundings and his lips tightly pursed in concentration even as his neck snapped.
"Over there!"
The village chief, a former assassin, swiftly threw a poisoned dart. The deadly projectile, coated in a toxin so lethal that a mere scratch meant death, vanished into the darkness. A few guards thrust their knives into the spot where their companion had vanished.
As they thrashed about, a horrifying sight met their eyes. Behind their companion's corpse, a hole had been bored into the floor. When had it even been made?
"When...?"
Those were the chief's final words. A single line swept down from above with a sharp shlick, slicing his throat clean through.
It was an alchemical assassination tool: a String Knife. A razor-sharp wire, thinner than a pinky finger, severed the chief's neck and left his head suspended in midair for a fraction of a second.
"Aaaaargh!"
Disposing of the remaining guards was child's play. Driven to sheer panic, some of them even stabbed each other in the chaos. Sachsen, watching from where he hung upside down on the ceiling, threw two Silent Knives to finish the job.
With things turning out like this, the rest of the villagers were too busy fleeing to resist. The dwellings where crowds had once resided became as desolate as haunted houses. A gust of wind swept through the center of the village with a low, mournful howl.
"If a wraith popped out right about now, it'd be a perfect picture," Finn remarked.
Encrid agreed, but he had no intention of slowing down. Of course, they weren't going to leave things like this indefinitely. As soon as they eliminated the village's combatants, slit the chief's throat, and ransacked the place, Sinar sent a crow flying.
Caw!
When she extended her arm toward the treetops, a pitch-black bird flew down and perched on her forearm. The trained crow immediately flew toward the Border Guard to deliver the news. This meant that troops would soon move in to occupy the villages the bandits had abandoned.
In the meantime, Encrid's group kept moving toward the next target. They bought and rode horses when necessary, and when the terrain grew too steep, they released them and scaled the cliffs on foot. It was a path that required them to cling to sheer rock faces, but a rugged mountain trail was hardly an obstacle for them.
Crumble.
Stone dust drifted down beneath their feet. The entire group was clinging to a cliff of such height that if anyone fell, they could never dream of walking again. Yet, none of them felt any sense of danger.
Finn jammed a dagger into a crevice, used her elbow guard to strike the hilt and drive the blade deeper, and then pulled herself up. Climbing with practiced ease, she looked down and spoke.
"If someone actually fell and died here, it'd be pretty funny in its own way."
It was a comment that made sense in context. Forget the humans—what about the panther following them? Its claws scaled the cliff as if they were legendary swords slicing through mud. It looked no different from walking on flat ground. Those claws and skills were capable of scaling vertical castle walls.
The same went for Encrid, Sachsen, and Sinar. They were all people who could more than look after themselves. Encrid climbed steadily, step by step, while Sachsen moved as though he had glue smeared on his hands. Sinar even cracked jokes as she moved, scaling the cliff with nimble, rhythmic taps.
"Have you ever kissed on a cliff, fiancé?"
"...Do you really think I have?"
"Sometimes I wonder if my fiancé is a virgin."
Whether they were on a cliff where a fall would shatter their bones or in a cozy drawing room sipping tea, she joked as if it made no difference. It was equally remarkable how Encrid just took it in stride. In any case, the chances of them falling to their deaths were about the same as a crow being bitten to death by an ant.
Traveling in this manner, they soon reached the next village. In a place where a horde of slaves was gathered, Sinar discovered three of her kin. She didn't even furrow her brow, but her words were sharp.
"How foolish of you to get caught," she criticized them bitingly.
The three elves had nothing to say in response. The moment one of them, a male elf, was freed, he snatched up a dagger and lunged at a clean-shaven bandit, stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach.
"Sp-spare... ugh! Gurgle!"
The bandit, who had just been groveling for his life, was caught completely off guard and gifted six holes in his abdomen. A deep, burning resentment was visible in the elf's eyes.
"A peach that even worms wouldn't eat," the male elf muttered.
Overhearing the murmur, Encrid pondered the meaning. Thanks to Sinar, he had grown accustomed to elven expressions. Since the elf had spoken in the common tongue of the Empire, the meaning was clear. If left to grow naturally, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, peaches would attract worms. What, then, was a peach that even worms wouldn't touch?
It referred to an utterly useless, trash-like human being—someone so rotten even a parasite wouldn't want them.
It wasn't hard to guess where his resentment stemmed from. The two female elves had suffered a similar fate. Their bodies had been violated, and the male elf had been subjected to the same.
A bastard who didn't care about gender.
The bandit chief certainly had broad, disgusting tastes. It was an unpleasant sight, but looking at the continent as a whole, such horrors were far from isolated incidents.
Was it possible to slice away all of this with a sword? In his youth, Encrid believed that if he became a knight, it would be possible. But after leaving his village, he realized the truth. Talent was not the issue. Losing to a mere teenager was not the issue either. Encrid had simply been young and short-sighted.
That perspective shifted as the concept of a village expanded into a territory, and a territory expanded into the continent. Only then did he understand. Even if he became a knight, even if he became a disaster on the battlefield cleaving a thousand men with a single swing, he could never cut down abstract evils like this.
So, was he supposed to give up? Was he to remain just another flashy swordsman? When he aspired to be a knight, was his desire merely to wear brilliant armor and radiate a halo of light?
Not a chance. Encrid had never once thought that way. The knight he dreamed of was no mere tool of slaughter.
As these thoughts filled his mind...
"Do you want to sweep them all away? Do you want to burn it all down? You can do so. I will help you if needed."
Sachsen approached, his eyes burning a deep crimson. It didn't seem like a calculated remark; it looked more like he was simply drunk on the violence of the moment.
Is he a bit sick in the head? Encrid wondered. Sachsen occasionally spouted nonsense like this.
Encrid gathered his thoughts and asked, "Out of nowhere?"
"Your eyes are burning."
At Sachsen's words, Encrid closed his eyes for a brief moment. When he opened them, the fire was gone. At least, the flame of destruction Sachsen had witnessed had vanished.
"Let's go."
Encrid focused on the task at hand. Now that he could wield a sword as well as an associate knight, was he starting to have other thoughts? No. The ember nestled in Encrid's chest had been burning all along. It was simply showing itself now.
"Oh? There's a dwarf here too?"
It was as if they were playing a game of collecting races. This village had dug tunnels everywhere to hide slaves.
"Fuck, who the hell are these guys!"
The moment a few bandits resisted, their throats were slit, spraying blood as they collapsed. It was Sachsen's handiwork. Using his silent steps and concealing his presence, he made use of the items he had scavenged.
"I was gifted a rather useful artifact," he said.
Seeing him speak so confidently while looting a dead man's belongings, it was clear he wasn't normal either. Not a single bandit caught from behind by Sachsen managed to react. He slit their throats one by one. Once eight of the noisy bandits were dead, the rest fell to their knees, trembling.
The one acting as the chief had already been dead for some time. This chief was neither a mage nor an assassin. He wasn't even good with a sword; he had merely relied on cheap tricks and traps in his bedroom. But with Sinar and Sachsen standing before them... well, that was that.
Encrid didn't even need to step forward. Actually, he swung his sword exactly once. When two of the village's decent fighters lunged at him, he parried with a soft sword style and struck back with a snake sword.
Thud, thud!
With two dull thuds of tearing flesh, he left two corpses in his wake. No one else dared to challenge him.
Thus, the village was subdued. They freed the remaining slaves, and any who still resisted were cut down without exception. Most of the villages followed a similar pattern. Once their "experts" were sliced and diced, the rest surrendered or fled.
In this manner, it took them two months to hunt down and dismantle five villages that the Black Sword bandits had hidden away. One could say it was only two months. Considering the pace they maintained, the statement was justified.
The executive of the Black Sword only realized what was happening after half of his established villages were ruined. That was how fast they were. By the time he noticed, it was already impossible to salvage the rest.
Those crazy bastards!
Slam!
Seething with rage, the executive slammed a candlestick onto his desk. A dent formed in the center of the rosewood, the wood splintering and sending shards flying.
Pant, pant!
His anger did not subside. If anything, it flared hotter. Finally, he hurled the silver candlestick right through the window.
Crash!
The expensive stained glass shattered into a shower of glittering dust. The silver candlestick fell into the garden on the ground floor of the three-story mansion. The gardener jumped in fright and ducked his head, quickly picking up the silver and going to find the butler.
The executive had concealed his identity thoroughly. Most of the mansion's employees knew him merely as a royal noble and government official.
His insides boiled, but the bandit executive could do nothing. Some guild had cropped up within the royal capital, and they were unifying the back alleys at a terrifying speed.
What the hell is the Language Restoration Guild?
The purpose the guild put forward was completely nonsensical. Among the back-alley syndicates they were crushing, several were criminal guilds he had personally backed. Because of that, he couldn't even pull himself out.
Damn it.
He couldn't do anything about the bastards targeting his dens right now either. Even if he stepped forward, nothing would change. He had no remaining troops, nor any swordsmen left to send. The opponent's preparations were far more solid. They were striking with absolute intent.
He had no choice but to send word to the main headquarters. The thought that he might die like this filled his mind.
Fuck, fuck!
His businesses were shattered, and the enterprise-villages he had spent his life building had vanished. The executive wanted to scream, but his attendant stopped him.
"Are you going to throw away your value just like this? Find out the name of the bastard who did this. That is your best course of action."
It was sound advice. The executive strained every nerve. He showered the information guild with gold coins and hired several mercenaries. This was the name he finally obtained.
"Marcus, you fucking bastard!"