Slaughtering the Bandits
Before long, Lupin reached a mountainside a short way off—and then came the whooshing. A generously built giant of a man strode into view, noisily swinging a guitou dao, a crude cleaver-like blade in the Chinese style fixed to a long haft.
"You there, woman. Stop!! Unless you want this body's Black Wind Blade—faster than the wind itself—to cut you clean in two!"
Lupin hooked a hand beneath her left breast and lifted it, the signal that meant we're friends. The iron tally on her harness swung and clinked. But the hemisphere that had been covering it put on such a stimulating demonstration of physics that, aside from the Stronghold Chief, not one of them spared the tally a glance.
An iron tally? That's the Stronghold Chief of Mocheuk Mountain's, isn't it?
Cheonghwa's land was filthy huge, the mountains on it past counting, and people packed in thick along the borders—which meant just as many bandits. With numbers like those, an iron tally was a vital friend-or-foe marker among the outlaws. Someone wearing an iron tally? That was a person you did not attack. Not at first. If they were an ally, then of course you didn't. If they weren't, then they'd taken it off an ally, and you naturally read them as someone strong. If it belonged to the chief of the mountain across the way, you had all the more reason to go tense.
A shame to let a woman like that walk on, but letting her walk was the right call. If a woman like that had been running with the Green Forest, it would have been strange for the rumor not to have spread long ago—and the clothes weren't familiar either, so she couldn't be taken for one of their own.
"Tch. Just go."
With no other choice, the Stronghold Chief waved her off and made to let her pass. In the very next moment, though, Lupin asked in a loud voice:
"Stronghold Chief? What's a Stronghold Chief?"
She'd brought the tally along without even knowing that?
What kind of woman was this?
The still-living Stronghold Chief pointed at the iron tally hanging at his own waist.
"The hundred and eight leaders who belong to the 108 Green Forest Strongholds are the Stronghold Chiefs. I am one myself."
"Ooh, so you're like a branch manager. Then could you let me join the 108 Green Forest Strongholds? You do take new recruits, don't you?"
The Stronghold Chief was thrown. There were plenty of bounty hunters who played at being civilians, crossed Green Forest territory, and massacred the packs of bandits that came swarming out—but this was the first time anyone had popped up out of nowhere and volunteered to join. And not even a man. A woman. The Green Forest was mostly men, a gang that stripped a woman the moment they laid eyes on one, and she didn't seem to know even that.
What mattered was that he couldn't feel a shred of aura from Lupin. Seen that way, she looked exactly like some ordinary person running a scam with an iron tally she'd picked up somewhere. Concealing one's aura was an advanced art. Hide it, and all you got for your trouble was the mockery of small fry and other unpleasantness, so an Aura User almost never hid their aura if they could help it. Why else would every armed organization under the Imperial Alliance keep a standing code of conduct that said, Display your aura with pride?
Arrogant little bitch...
Sword and iron tally at her hip, and she meant to sneak into the Green Forest pretending to be strong. The Stronghold Chief was no moron. As if he'd fall for a trick like that. Sow of a woman. She'd walked right into it. He'd been irritated anyway, nothing coming in but scrawny, half-starved bitches—and here was one he could haul off nice and natural, lock away, and enjoy at his leisure.
...And so yet another Stronghold Chief decided the manner in which his life would end.
"Judging by your face and your dress, you don't look like you're from Cheonghwa. What are you hoping to do, joining the Green Forest?"
At that, Lupin looked over the bandits' clothes and saw that even the shirts were different, sure enough. You know the kind—mandarin-collar shirts, the Chinese style where the collar stands up and never folds down. If she'd known it would be like this, she should have changed shirts before coming. She belatedly regretted skimping on the disguise. Too late to change now, though, so she put her mouth to work instead.
"Life's been dry as dust... I thought I'd try living a little more fun. I heard if you join the Green Forest Eight Treasures, you can plunder, kill, and rape however you like."
She'd said it so naturally that, aside from a few of them, nobody even registered how strange the sentence was. In truth, more of the bandits were startled by what Lupin had actually said than by "Green Forest Eight Treasures."
"Rape? You're a woman."
"A woman isn't allowed to fuck a woman?"
With a bewitching flutter of her hands, Lupin was putting to shameless use exactly what she had learned from Ekaterina a little while ago. And the performance set every bandit's lust on fire. When Ekaterina toyed with her hands, madness poured off her eyes from the very first glance—a hard hit of touch that one wrong and I'm the one who dies. Lupin, though, was just smiling, bright as anything. Plain as day: some woman who didn't know a thing, crooking her finger and acting cute. How could they not want to see her pinned and ground under them, crying out in climax, drowning in despair?
Maybe that was why the bandits, unable to hold themselves back, clenched everything below the belt and came walking out from behind the trees, one after another.
Chief. Let's do it. That thing.
All of them cried it—in their hearts, with their eyes. Men well used to several of them toying with a single woman had already formed a hive mind through their third legs and finished coming to a consensus. If that was what everyone wanted, nothing to be done. A little hasty, perhaps, but with things this far along, there was nothing for it but to enjoy a grand banquet back at the main stronghold.
The Stronghold Chief gave the signal by lazily turning over the line he always used.
"Ha. I like that spirit. Fine. I'll take you to our main stronghold. Get through the initiation, and we'll accept you as a brother of the Green Forest."
"Kyah, this is gonna be so good~."
Lupin bounced in place, snickering, and the soft heavy curves hidden behind her shirt rose and fell. The entire bandit pack locked up as if paralyzed, unable to move from the spot. Only the Stronghold Chief, somewhat accustomed to stimuli of this sort, could still move—and even he creaked as he did.
He had called it an initiation, but what he meant was that she would be put to work handling the bandits' lust. Down in the basement of the main stronghold, in fact, two women dragged in for exactly that purpose were already sprawled about, worn down to skin and bone. And so, the instant he showed his true intent, the Stronghold Chief became a cripple with neither his two hands nor his two feet. The moment Lupin saw those naked, emaciated women, her reason had simply up and vanished.
"Guhhh. Hnnnnghhhh. Hhhggk...!!"
He was wailing at the top of his lungs just because he'd gotten a little shorter, by about the height of his feet. Watching that, what was Lupin supposed to think except, and what exactly did you do right, that you're crying? Even so, the Stronghold Chief was still alive. The ones outside, waiting their turn with their pants down and working themselves back and forth, had already been sliced clean across and were rolling on the ground.
"All right, stop. Quit crying. Where's the vault?"
"Kuh-huhhh... kuh-hehhhh..."
She didn't have time for this.
The Lightning Sword came down with a hard crack, stabbing into the ground right in front of the collapsed chief's crotch.
"I'm busy. I'll give you five seconds. Otherwise your third leg might go flying too."
"I—I get it. I get it! I just have to tell you everything I've got, right...?!"
"Right? A bandit... talking down to me?"
"Aigo, Lady Hero! I was rash! Please, spare me just this once!!"
Lupin asked, as if she meant to kill the mood entirely.
"But what's a Lady Hero?"
That single question flipped the atmosphere on its head. The terror of death the Stronghold Chief had been feeling eased, somewhat....
"Th-that is... as you are a lady errant, it is only proper to address you as Lady Hero...."
"Oh, so it was a title. Ah. Was it... 'mer-hero'? No, they say 'mer-hero.' Great Hero? Is that the one? Great Hero, Young Hero?"
"Y-yes, that's right. If Great Hero pleases you more, then Great Hero...."
"Mmm~ Great Hero. That's a nice title. I'd been wanting to hear it at least once."
Back in Lupin's homeland, people cursed them as the uncivilized bastards of the continent—and yet every now and then, when some sage popped up who rose above the continent's brainless mob, they would call him Great Hero, real respect packed into the word. So Lupin liked the title Great Hero very much indeed. Lady Hero, she'd hardly ever heard.
"Anyway. Where's the vault. The vault where you keep the things you took off people passing through."
"The vault is... there. Lift that wooden chest, and it comes out...."
Lupin scrambled over in a rush and kicked the big wooden chest. Crack! It burst apart with a terrific noise, splinters scattering in every direction, and from inside appeared a single red box that looked a shade more expensive. One glance said it wasn't the bandits' own property, but something taken from other people. And when she set a hand on it, wouldn't you know it—a status window popped into being with a bright little chime.
"Oh, and it's even a relic!"
Lupin opened the box with a blissful look on her face. The dopamine in her body climbed sharp and fast. Her breathing grew short, heat rose in her face, a tingle gathered low in her belly, and a shiver of emotion rushed through her. Strange, really. No matter how many times she opened a box, she never got sick of it. New every single day. A fresh little thrill.
And inside the box she had opened......
"Ack!"
There was a cylindrical metal device for playing sound. Unpleasant memories surfaced, and Lupin clutched the spot between her brows.
No. Even so, this is a relic. Relics ought to be treasured.
Cases where the box itself was the relic were rare, besides. Of course, in the instant she'd mistaken it for a music box, lost her temper, and started throwing things, several wooden splinters had already buried themselves in the Stronghold Chief's back. The "ack" just now hadn't come from Lupin at all. It had been the chief's scream.
"An object from the northern lands, most treasured by the princess of a fallen kingdom—one that had, presumably, given voice to a lovely sound."
She ran the appraisal, and it seemed to be an object with a ghost in it. Something about laying to rest the grudge of a spirit killed by the Demon King's army, yadda yadda. The description ran long, so Lupin skipped it on her own and muttered:
"A music box, and it's cursed on top of that. What kind of item even is this."
Lupin had been too busy just surviving reality to put much faith in things like the occult—what had finally made her certain she'd died and been reborn as a Dimensional Drifter was the moment right after she'd confirmed the treasure chests. So a curse wasn't going to scare her. One look, and all she thought was: annoying object. But letting her open a cursed thing just like that? If that wasn't the Stronghold Chief's wicked intent, then what was it? Practically the same tier of fraud as trying to scam someone with a treasure chest.
Lupin shut the music box's lid, stuffed it roughly into a pocket, and strode briskly up to the Stronghold Chief. Her eyes gave off an ominous light.
"This wasn't some vicious scheme to put a curse on me, was it? You'd better hope it wasn't."
"H-how could it be, Great Hero!"
"Yeah? Then, for this Great Hero's sake, why don't you tell me where the other bandits are?"
Groaning in pain, the Stronghold Chief squinted and pointed somewhere with an arm that no longer had a hand.
"There, the peak you can see over that way. That's Mojeon Mountain...."
Lupin undid her tied-up hair and shook it into a careless mess. Then she pulled on a standard Green Forest uniform that had been lying in one corner of the stronghold, over the clothes she was already wearing. Cinch the waist sash, hang the iron tally neatly over the top of it, and...?
"This ought to fool them now."
There was simply no way she could look like anything but a bandit. And just like that, Lupin was reborn as one perfectly respectable bandit.
The 108 Green Forest Strongholds might have looked like a federation, but in truth their cohesion wasn't much to speak of. A king among the chiefs—the one called the Grand Stronghold Chief—did exist, and yet the Stronghold Chiefs sat so far apart that they almost never had cause to meet. Crossing the Cheonghwa Empire from one end to the other took nearly two months by train alone. Scattered along that vast stretch of land, through the mountains and the borders, there was no way they could be properly bound together.
Still, chiefs posted on neighboring mountains did tend to know one another. And so....
"You've brought all the treasure on this mountain, I assume?"
Dragged in one after another like a string of sausages, they ended up turning over to Ekaterina every last bit of the wealth they had accumulated.
"Y-yes. That's right!"
"Damn it... five years I spent gathering this...."
By long-standing custom, the Rounds did not step in personally to clean up petty bandit packs like these. The North Country, or the Church, might stir at any movement from the Rounds; it could also mean snatching work away from the people under them; there were any number of reasons. The bandits, then, had no choice but to be utterly dumbfounded. She was the strongest there was in single combat, on top of everything else. Hunting them down in a sweep while commanding nine clones, she cut them down so fast that word of it never even reached the other mountains.
In short, it was a catastrophe for the 108 Green Forest Strongholds.
"Good. Where's the next mountain?"
The Stronghold Chief, his whole body mottled with blood-bruises, muttered as if he had given up.
"That peak you can see over there. Mojeon Mountain.... There are about five strongholds on that mountain...."
At some point the cart had been loaded full with some thirty boxes, and Ekaterina, gazing at them, smiled in satisfaction.
"Huh. A hundred a week might not be such a big deal after all...?"
