Awakening Madness (5)
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I sprinted like a madman with my double-bladed axe in hand. I charged straight toward where the bandits had stopped, smashing into them before they could even scream.
“Everyone gather up and—fuck, what the—gahk!!”
“Wh-what the hell is going on—ughk!!”
I crushed their faces with the flat of my axe, killing them instantly. An elbow strike to the solar plexus, followed by an uppercut from my free hand. Even holding back my strength, the bandits’ bodies crumpled like rabbits getting patted by a bear. It felt like smashing stress balls.
Wham! Crunch! Splatter!
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!”
“Huuuuurgh!!!”
Caught completely off guard while relaxing in their hideout, the bandits’ discipline shattered. They couldn’t see anything, yet the sounds of bodies breaking kept echoing as their comrades fell silent one by one. In the face of terror, human altruism and friendship crumbled easily.
“G-gather up!! Get over here and fight, damn it!!”
“Fuck!!”
When one guy with actual leadership shouted, a few bandits huddled together with their backs to the wall. I read their movement and snatched up a nearby rock. After weighing the heavy stone in my hand a few times, I hurled it with all my might. The target was the solar plexus of a bandit hidden in the mist.
Thwack!
“Gehk!!”
I’d heard that a major league fastball had lethal power. It made sense—those things could fly from one end of a stadium to the other. If a normal human could do that, what about a fastball boosted by both mana and Beast Regression?
The heavy, murderous stone smashed into one bandit right over his leather armor and killed him instantly.
“Hiiiiiiik!!”
“What the hell!! What the fuck is this?!”
Whoosh! Whoosh!
One of the terrified bandits started swinging his sword wildly. From their perspective, the sound of air being sliced was followed by a comrade collapsing beside them. In the thick fog where they could barely see their own bodies, it bred absolute terror.
I picked up another stone and followed horror movie logic by activating my Vector-voice modulation.
“UkuooooRrrrrroooooo…!! (Sex…!!)”
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!”
My translation ability let me use monster speech too. The moment I spat out a line in troll language, the bandits freaked out.
“IiiiiiiiaaSyAzuDooooo!!! (Everyone prepare to dive!!!)”
“Where are you!!! Where the hell are you?! AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!”
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAGH!! Pleeeeeeeease!!!!!!!!!”
With beast and monster languages, tone was everything. There was a massive difference between “a human imitating the sound” and “an actual monster making the sound.” The language produced through my translation ability naturally became “100% perfect monster speech.” The vocal structure of a human might make the nuance slightly different—but in pitch-black fog where you couldn’t see an inch in front of you, who the hell would have the presence of mind to notice?
“POhhuhH!! NiiiiiiiaAAnnn!! (Yes!! Captain!!)”
“Ruuuuuuuuun!!! Run the fuck away from here!!!!”
“Somewhere to hide!! There’s nowhere to hideeeeeeeek!!!”
“EffsssU SsssaA!! (I can’t hear you~!!)”
“You fucking bastards!! Don’t you have any pride?!”
“Pride my ass!! We can’t die here!!”
“Uuu Wuuawu!!! (Oooh~ wow!!!)”
Patapatapat!
The bandits, consumed by fear, abandoned their weapons and fled. Their escape was impressively quick for a bunch of thieves—but—
‘──「Slow」.’
It was still slower than my legs, which had received Tirsi’s magic.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I chased down every single fleeing bandit and knocked them out. Even those who left my line of sight gave away their positions with their footsteps. My enhanced senses were incredibly convenient in moments like this. If it weren’t for the damn walls, I could have covered the entire area—including myself—in mist and still pinpointed every enemy’s location.
Whish—!
Boom—!!
“Kuhuuuurgh…!!”
I finished off the last one hiding in the corner with a brutal body blow. The bandit stared at me with eyes full of disbelief. I kindly offered him a blessing for his journey to the afterlife.
“Tthxee, Tthx. (Idiot.)”
“Glurgh…”
The bandit, now realizing the monster in the mist was me, foamed at the mouth and died.
Thump.
That seemed to be the last one. Not a single breath could be heard around me. After confirming every kill, I had completely wiped out every bandit on this side.
The axe ended up being completely useless. Oh well. I’d come back later with the guards, clean up the corpses, strip the bandits of all their gear, and sell it.
“Heh heh.”
Look at these cute little shits. For bandits, they sure kept their equipment in good condition. Their faces looked like they belonged to some mountain bandit from a shitty novel, but every piece of gear was basically money. Unlike goblins, these guys dropped valuable loot like equipment and stolen goods.
If I stripped them of everything and sold it all, then collected the reward from the transport guild on top of that, I’d basically become rich overnight. Since it was blood money, I’d set aside the earnings from selling their gear and use my saved wages plus the guild reward to buy Franc a pocket watch or something.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart pounded wildly from the fear and excitement of my first kill. I raised a hand that wasn’t covered in blood and made the sign of the cross, but it didn’t do much. So instead, I pretended to knead Franc’s breasts.
Squish. Squish.
Just imagining the soft, squishy sensation of Franc’s chest brought my heartbeat back to normal. The effect was insanely reliable. Yeah, this was much more my style.
“Lord, we look upon you as one would a peacock.”
With my heart calmed, I recited Bible verses as I crossed the river of mist. Chanting poetry that worshipped all gods filled my soul. The memories of Earth left inside me protected my mind from the mental shock. After all, Koreans are a people of dance, song, and poetry.
“A look that borders on anticipation, adoration, and something akin to neverending terror.”
In the blood-scented cave, I reminded myself of my own origin. Until recently, my goal had been to return home. That’s why I wanted to avoid killing as much as possible. I didn’t have the confidence to stand proudly before my family with hands stained in human blood.
“The soldiers blow their trumpets. Like star shooting by ear. The soldiers stomp their feet, like thunder in the air.”
What if, even if I returned home, I could no longer adapt to Earth’s peaceful daily life? What if this damned other world had become my new standard, so that when I went back to Earth, I would feel like it was the other world instead? That terrified me. Until recently, at least.
—Wanna drop the formal speech?
—Nord… I like you….
I had already made a family here. Francesca. My beloved woman. I could no longer imagine abandoning her and returning to Earth. At some point, this barbaric other world had become my new home!!
──The German physicist Albert Einstein once said that nothing could change his world. I accepted his words. Because I, Kang Bukho, was Nord the Nord, Noru the druid, and the husband of a lovable half-dwarf hammer girl!
“A petal falling, never to bloom again, a petal in flames, full of beauty──”
As if to settle my heightened emotions, I finished my recitation.
“──Even without a form, we will never stop walking.”
A space with a door finally appeared inside the cave. It looked like I had already reached the end. Had Tirsi not entered yet? Whatever. It didn’t matter.
On the wooden plank wall was a crudely made door. Maintaining the mist, I slammed my fist into the lock.
“Vector-lockpicking.”
Brute-force entry using enhanced bear strength.
Bang!
Crunch!
The pathetically secured door exploded under my Vector Bear Punch. I kicked the shattered door open and stepped inside. A group of bandits huddled together, trembling in fear. I waved my hand, disturbing the mist—not dispelling it, but driving it toward the walls to surround them like a siege.
I had questions for these bastards. The room was larger than expected and had multiple doors. It seemed they had turned a large natural cavern connected to other areas into their living quarters.
“I-it’s not a monster!!”
“It’s a person! It’s a human!!”
When I cleared the mist, the bandits realized their attacker was human and let out sighs of relief mixed with despair.
“Y-you are…?”
Among the bandits was a rather handsome man with sharp features. This fucker actually looked as good as me despite being a bandit. Still, his face was full of greed. Proof that he was a murderer and robber.
“Wh-why?!”
The handsome man who had been staring at me blankly suddenly shrieked like he was throwing a tantrum. Even as he yelled, the others stayed quiet and watched nervously. Looked like this guy was the bandit leader.
“Why did you come to bury us?! We haven’t even touched the ‘goods’ we were asked to deliver! We brought them all the way from Heisvent after they were sold to you people!!”
“Goods?”
I muttered. From the sound of it, they had been sold to someone and forced to steal. ‘But why the hell are you asking me, you idiot?’
Maybe these guys mistook me for an assassin sent by some organization. Why, though? Was it because Arthur Wayne’s costume looked too charismatic? After thinking it over, I decided to play along.
“……Where are the goods?”
While asking about the goods, I might as well ask about the hostages too. That was why I had cleared the mist in the first place.
“Th-they’re not here! They’re somewhere else!”
The leader’s face brightened like a Go player who had just found an escape route. The moment I showed interest in the goods, he fell into the delusion that he might survive.
“Two girls under ten years old! One boy! And one lucky find—a one-armed disabled man! That should be more than enough to meet your standards!!”
“……What did you just say?”
I asked back coldly, unable to process what the bastard had just said. No, it wasn’t that I couldn’t understand. It was so horrifically vile that I didn’t want to understand.
At my tone, the leader trembled, dropped his weapon, and fell to his knees.
Clatter!
“Y-you don’t have to pay for the goods! Please, just spare our lives! I’m begging you!!”
It was a pathetic display of begging for his life. But I didn’t care whether he knelt or used the momentum to smash his head into the ceiling and commit suicide.
‘Two girls under ten. One boy. One lucky find—a one-armed disabled man.’
I calmly repeated his words in my head.
‘……He kidnapped innocent preschoolers and a one-armed man.’
And on top of that, he had called them “goods.” Living, breathing people.
‘Is he talking about illegal slaves?’
Slavery was legal in Britannia. That was why slaves were granted some degree of survival and human rights under the law. It was also why some poor people willingly sold themselves into serfdom. Illegal slaves, however, were a heinous underground crime where civilians were kidnapped, trained, and sold to customers who wanted to “treat slaves harshly,” completely ignoring the law.
In other words, these bastards weren’t just robbers—they were involved in that kind of crime too.
‘Murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping, and human trafficking?’
As I reviewed the bandit group’s atrocities, a chill ran down my spine. True trash…! These fuckers were genuine garbage with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And yet these same pieces of shit were begging me to spare their precious lives!!
My hands shook with uncontrollable rage at their unimaginable wickedness.
──Kill them. This wasn’t murder. It was a good deed. The great sages once said that some people cannot be fixed. These bastards were trash that could only continue living through crime even if left alive.
Creak….
That was when it happened. A half-frozen bandit crawled through another door.
“B-boss……”
Frost covered half his body. It was the first time I had seen frost on a human body, but there was no way this bandit would survive. Even high-grade potions or healing magic would be useless once half the body had necrotized.
“Th-the goods… have been taken. A mage… attacked……”
The stuttering bandit’s lips were purple. He must have taken a direct hit from ice magic. For a mana-deprived, dickless bandit like him, it was a fatal wound.
“The rest of our comrades… were all… guh.”
That became his last words. True to form, the bandit couldn’t even finish his dying message properly before his head drooped.
Thump.
It was a miserable end, but no one paid any attention to his death. I was the same. I didn’t believe scum like this deserved to die peacefully surrounded by loving family.
I glanced at the bandit who had become a frozen slab of meat and spoke.
“Looks like the goods have been lost.”
The voice that came from my mouth was so icy that even I couldn’t believe it.
“Th-that’s──.”
The bandit leader trembled.
“It was all… all your comrade’s doing!!”
The bandit stood up. His expression gradually turned vicious as he realized his fate and began screaming.
He had finally understood that I had no intention of sparing them.
“You planned this from the beginning!! You made us gather the goods, then planned to kill us to shut us up!!”
“Hmm. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I flipped my cloak back and ignored his protests. Of course, rescuing the kidnapped people really was something my comrade had done.
‘Tirsi did a good job.’
Anticipating that the hostages might be used as leverage, we had split into two teams beforehand and divided our roles. I would create chaos inside using the Summon Cloud magic scroll, and in the resulting confusion, Tirsi would rescue the hostages. Everything had gone exactly according to plan.