Bandit Suppression (5)
"Eek!"
"Ah—ahhhh..."
The two bandits went slack with despair the moment they saw the people bound and kneeling in front of the village chief's house. Right up until they'd been thrown in a cell, those bastards had probably been daydreaming about some happy future where they got their revenge on us. But when the cards were finally flipped, they were the ones who'd been played. They must have felt like they'd been shuttled from heaven to hell in the span of a single day.
"Did we get them all?"
"Who knows? Doesn't matter if a few slipped away, though. If anything, I'd love for them to run straight to the Snake Bandits' hideout and tell them what's happening here."
I answered Kanisia's question with a wish of my own tucked inside it. Credit where it's due: trudging around the desert was genuinely fucking miserable. You sweated like a pig just from breathing, for fuck's sake. So I sincerely hoped the ones who'd fled the village would find the Snake Bandits and let them know we were here.
They won't all come at once. Not at the start.
According to what we'd pulled from the request office, the Snake Bandits numbered around a hundred. Of those, the ones suspected to be Masters—including their captain—came to about five, and they kept roughly fifteen Fairies. For a pack of thieves, they'd built themselves a fairly formidable force. And an outfit that size didn't send the boss out the moment a few troublemakers showed up. The captain had a reputation to maintain. He'd send the underlings first.
Honestly, the four of us going head-to-head against more than a hundred Snake Bandits was impossible. If we'd been stronger than we were now, maybe. For the time being, we had to be careful with our lives. Which was why the strategy I'd settled on was to pick them apart. Whittle their numbers down group by group, then kill their captain, Salmus. And take the dungeon they'd been using for ourselves. That was our plan. Mine, really.
All right. Time to deal with these bandit bastards.
"By the way, Kanisia."
"Hm? What?"
"What do we do with this lot?"
"Do with them? What do you mean?"
She tilted her head, apparently not catching my meaning, and I nearly sighed. For a smart girl, she wasn't picking it up.
"These people are criminals who cooperated with the Snake Bandits. For all intents and purposes, they're the same side. So we'd have to drag them back and turn them over to Baidu."
"Yeah. So we do that. What's the problem?"
"Of course there's a problem. The four of us, hauling this many people all the way to Baidu? That's impossible. No—it's possible, technically, but we wouldn't get a reward anywhere near worth that much trouble."
"...So what is it you want to do, then?"
Had she caught the smell of blood buried in my words? Kanisia's face went stiff.
"We kill them. Right here."
"...What?"
"Hic—hic, hhkk—"
"Please, spare us! We were wrong! Please, just let us live!"
A racket of noise poured in from every direction.
"....."
"....."
But I was looking at Kanisia, and Kanisia was looking at me.
"You're going to kill... all of them?"
"Yeah. Don't make the mistake of thinking these are good people. They tried to kill us, and before we ever showed up they'd already hurt a lot of others. The whole village is a bandit den—that's what this means. Why they got into banditry doesn't matter. What they did does."
"....."
"You think they only killed and robbed bad people? They didn't. They would've preyed on anyone who stopped in this village, and they would've killed people like us—people who took a request and came here to wipe the bandits out."
"W-we never did that! We—ghk!"
One of the men rushed to defend them and went down under the scabbard Aquaril swung into him. The noise died with him. I picked up where I'd left off.
"We can't leave them alive. Sooner or later they'll come after us for revenge, and the moment we leave they'll go right back to banditry."
"W-we won't! We won't take revenge and we won't touch banditry again, we swear! So please, just our lives—"
Someone else cut in. I ignored them and kept my eyes on Kanisia, waiting for her answer.
"I'm the leader of this party. But I have no intention of forcing my will on everyone. I might make the wrong call and walk us straight into ruin, and when that happens, you have to stop me. You and I have to watch each other's backs. So tell me what you think. What do you want to do with them?"
"I—I..."
Kanisia turned her head and looked at the people on their knees.
"Waaahhh! I'm sorry! We've committed a crime worthy of death!"
"Please, spare us!"
"Kh-hhkk... please... have mercy..."
The villagers had figured out that their lives hung on Kanisia, and they turned their begging on her.
"Nnh...!"
The way they clung to life felt almost like madness. Kanisia flinched when she felt it. Then I saw her pupils start to tremble hard. What had she seen? I followed her gaze and found a small child gathered in a woman's arms.
Killing children was, without question, not an easy thing. What would those little ones even understand? And how, exactly, were children supposed to have taken part in banditry? The adults who'd joined in the raiding were steeped in guilt. The children were not.
"...Are you going to kill the children too?"
"We have to."
"...What?"
I answered without a shred of hesitation, and Kanisia's eyes went wide.
"I don't like leaving loose ends. Once those kids grow up, sooner or later they'll come looking for revenge. I'd rather not leave anything behind that can come back to bite us."
"B-but—those children...!"
"You're right. Those children don't know a thing. They were sound asleep in their parents' arms last night, and then we grabbed them and dragged them out here. But I still want them dead too. Like I said—I don't want to leave any unfinished business."
"....."
I'd shown her the cruel side of myself, and Kanisia's face went blank, as if she'd lost the words.
Who in the world actually wanted to kill children? But as I'd told her before, the thing that mattered most to me was my own life. This was not my previous life. This was not Korea. This was a living hell where everyone wore a sword at their hip and war could break out over nothing. A few modern clothes and a handful of conveniences didn't change the fact that this was a world of blood.
"What would you like to do, Kanisia?"
"I—I..."
She couldn't get an answer out. Watching her hesitate, I decided this was enough and nodded.
"All right, then. We go back to Baidu."
"...Huh?"
"The adults don't get to live. Every last one of them took part in banditry. Once a person tastes the easy road, they can never go back. Wickedness is like a drug. If we let them live, sooner or later they'll hurt people again."
"As for the little ones... we take them back to Baidu and hand them over to the soldiers. They'll be inheriting their parents' crimes, which isn't fair, but what can you do? That's the kind of world this is."
"Take the kids to Baidu with Abraham. I'll finish what I have to do here and catch up right behind you. Got it?"
"...Yeah. I understand."
Even if they were people who deserved to die, I wasn't keen on making children watch their own parents get killed. And wasn't the cliché of witnessing your parents' death and swearing a blood grudge a little too well-worn?
Kanisia nodded, though it cost her. She still wasn't moving, so I looked at Aquaril and Abraham.
"Yes, Master."
"As you will, Lord Alan."
"Waaahhh~ Mama~"
"No! I don't wanna go! Papa! Papaaa!"
The two Fairies pulled the children free. Of course the kids tried to stay in their parents' arms, but they couldn't match either of them for strength.
"Mm... if we only spare the kids, they'll be a nightmare to keep in line all the way to Baidu. I'm thinking of letting about three of you live. How does that sound?"
"Th-that's...!"
"P-please, spare me! I'll do exactly as I'm told, I swear!"
Another round of uproar. If they went to Baidu like this, slavery was a foregone conclusion. This world did not treat criminals with the humanity of my previous one. But wasn't it better to roll in a dung heap than to leave this life behind? Even if it meant becoming slaves, they howled over one another that they wanted to live.
"Ah, enough. Only the children's parents, stand up. I'll pick three from among you."
The parents rose from the ground, hesitant, and I chose three of them. All women—the children's mothers, every one. Even ordinary men might start thinking about running halfway there. Mothers were different. They had carried those children in their bellies for ten months. Maternal instinct ran deep.
If I let them choose among themselves they'd only start fighting, so I picked the three myself and handed them off to Kanisia and Abraham. After that, the group set out for Baidu ahead of us.
"Village chief. You'll be the last one I kill. You know why, don't you?"
"....."
"Haa... this is work. Real work."
"Master..."
"Hm? What is it?"
"...You need not have sullied your own hands. I could have done it. Why..."
"...Heh heh heh."
I let out a breath looking at the people I had killed with my own hands, and Aquaril spoke up, hesitant. The look in her eyes made me laugh. This many people were dead, and the only thing Aquaril was worried about was me. She felt no pity for the dead. The only person she cared about was me.
Kanisia ought to be more like Aquaril.
Kanisia wasn't a Fairy. She was a person, and a Master. I might have been the leader of the Snake party, but she wasn't a subordinate. She was my equal. A partner.
"I was the one who decided to kill them, so I should be the one to get my hands dirty. Why would I put that on you? And I'm not some paper-thin psyche. I'm fine. You don't have to worry."
"Master..."
I would have liked to pat her on the head for being so good—but my hands were caked in blood, so I couldn't. I smiled at her instead. Then I turned my head and looked at the people I had killed myself.
I've really broken, haven't I.
Bandits or not—people who had tried to kill me or not—I felt not the slightest shred of guilt about putting them down. If I was being honest, I had been like this from the moment I first opened my eyes in this world. It had been the same when I killed goblins. The same when I killed some princess's Fairy whose name I couldn't even remember anymore. The same even when I killed the Fire Dragon King, who had been a human being just like me. Instead of guilt, what I felt was a fierce, bright thrill.
Have I become a psychopath?
I probably had. A normal person could never have put on a slaughter like this.
"Heh heh heh. I don't even know anymore."
"Pardon? Master, what did you just say?"
"....."
Aquaril asked again. I didn't answer. I just laughed, and laughed some more.
Why a man who'd been hit by a dump truck in his previous life had opened his eyes in this one. Why it had to be the world of Fairy Masters. Why I felt no guilt when I killed people. I was done turning those questions over. Did brooding about it put food on the table? Did it make me money? Time to stop gnawing away at this monster's soul of mine with pointless wondering.
I had one goal, and only one: survive. And if something threatened my life, I killed it. If it got in my way, I killed it and threw it aside. If it grabbed my ankle, I killed it and was done with it. Because in this world, killing was the natural order of things. When in Rome, you follow Roman law, don't you?
"...Yes, Master. I shall remember. I will grow stronger."
"Good."
If you didn't want to die, you had to get stronger. You had to seize power. That was the law of this world. And it was the truth.
Whoosh—!
We piled the corpses in one place and set them on fire. The blood kept putting the flames out halfway through, so we had no choice but to smash up wood and burn that with them. Leave bodies lying around and you invited plague. They had to be dealt with.
The cost-benefit... actually seems to add up.
From my conversation with Kanisia, I had come to understand her values. Kanisia showed no mercy to an enemy who pointed a weapon at her. But when it came to people on the margins, or to children, she went soft and tried to be merciful. Understanding that about her mattered a great deal to me.
I had not the slightest intention of discarding her now. I was going to take her with me all the way to the end. If I had been planning to throw her away the moment things got inconvenient, I would have killed her back in Chinnimoni alongside the Blood Axe King. I'd had plenty of chances. I hadn't taken them.
Why?
Because she was my first companion.
If she ignored her own values and I pushed only mine, a clash of opinions would have come sooner or later, one way or another. If a situation like this one arose again—one where everyone had to die—I could put Kanisia on a different operation and keep her out of it. In other words, I had used the village bandits to understand her values, and in doing so I had bought myself a chance to head off a conflict before it ever happened.
Kanisia's values, and the lives of a pack of bandits. Not a bad trade.