Snake Bandits (2)
An ambush?
Gesfalt, captain of the Snake Bandits' Third Squad, swept his gaze around the man who had appeared alone in a clown mask. According to Geos—still sprawled on the ground, groaning—four people had attacked the village.
But only one of them had shown himself. So where the hell were the other three hiding?
There was no shortage of places to hide. This was a village, after all, small as it was. Houses were everywhere.
Footsteps hammered across the dirt—then a wet, shearing slice.
"Gahk!"
"C-Captain!"
"That—that crazy bastard!"
The man in the clown mask—Alan—charged the bandits first. He swept past Geos and, in the same motion, swung his sword and took the man's head clean off.
"What are you standing around for? Kill him!"
The possibility of an ambush still nagged at Gesfalt, but the lunatic charging at them like a wild boar had to be dealt with first. At his command the tightly bunched bandits scattered. Aside from Gesfalt himself, every last one of them was an ordinary civilian.
Then they hurled the steel nets they'd prepared at the clown-masked man.
"Tsk. This again?"
Alan clicked his tongue. He'd already eaten this attack once from the bandits in Jert. Steel nets were a pain in the ass—hard to cut, and once they tangled together, even he couldn't easily fight his way out. Trying to force them apart with raw strength only knotted them worse. The best play was simply not getting caught in the first place.
"I'll put your little gift to good use!"
"What?"
Alan suddenly bellowed something that made no sense at all.
"Aaaagh!"
"Gahk!"
"The hell?!"
Screams erupted from every direction. A startled Gesfalt whipped his head around and found his men collapsed on the ground, clutching their legs.
...Vipers?
As if their work here was done, more than ten venomous snakes slithered off toward the houses.
"What the hell is going on, Kit?!"
"I—I don't know, sir. The snakes... they won't obey!"
"What did you just say?"
Kit, the flute bandit, blew the pipe that was supposed to command the snakes. Not a single serpent in the village so much as twitched in response. This had never happened before, and Gesfalt was thoroughly rattled.
"Tch! Useless piece of shit!"
Gesfalt clicked his tongue, gritted his teeth, and drew his sword as he charged Alan. The original plan had been to let the vipers do the killing, or at least wear the bastard down with the steel nets. But every trick they usually relied on had failed, so he had no choice but to step in himself.
He could have run. He couldn't.
If he slunk back having lost most of his men, the other captains would laugh him out of the camp. On top of that, the people of Jert—the village under his jurisdiction—were all dead, and most of the men who'd been stationed there were on the verge of dying themselves. If he fled alone after all that, he might lose his captaincy.
No. He would lose it. Guaranteed.
Gesfalt was a Master who had received the Divine Selection—but a half-baked one, without a single Fairy to his name. He'd had two Fairies once. He'd lost them both in a fight with another bandit crew. That had been a year ago, and the chance to summon another still hadn't come.
"You miserable clown bastard! I'll fucking kill you!"
So he needed at least the head of the man in the clown mask. Alan. The root of this entire disaster. That much, at least, would let him save face.
What he didn't know was why Alan had shown himself alone in the first place.
They're here.
From the rooftop of the tallest building in the village, I confirmed the bandits gathering at the entrance and immediately pulled up their status windows.
Only one of them I need to watch... and even he isn't worth my time.
About twenty bandits had shown up. Among them, only one was a Master. And even that lone Master was no match for me. Three-star, level forty-nine, stats lower than mine across the board. The only number he had on me was Luck—the bread-and-butter stat of the Thief class.
No Fairy, either.
Not a single one. Being a Master didn't automatically mean you had a Fairy. Unlike me—who could raise an entire Fairy army this instant if I just had enough gems—the Masters of this world couldn't summon Fairies whenever they felt like it.
What was the line again? Live diligently and a Fairy will come to you? Even that was wildly inconsistent. Some Masters went to their graves without ever summoning a single one. True to form for a weeb game, every last luck-based, screw-you RNG mechanic had been ported into this world intact.
This is doable.
More than doable. And the three venomous snakes that followed me—Snake One, Snake Two, and Snake Three—were already lying in wait along the village paths. For the record, if these bandits had been too big for me to handle, I was fully prepared to just run. No point risking my neck when there was so little to gain.
The moment they step inside, we hit them.
Take down three with the snake trio's ambush, then drop on them from above. Easy way to thin the herd. I ran the fight in my head a few times and settled in to wait for them to come in.
A flute trilled through the air.
...Huh?
Instead of entering the village, the bastards released ten venomous snakes into it. I couldn't help the grin that spread across my face.
The second those snakes laid eyes on me, they came bounding over like puppies who'd just found their owner. I was starting to wonder if I put out some kind of pheromone that drove snakes insane—the reptile equivalent of catnip. I even put the newly arrived vipers on ambush duty in the streets. Then the fighting started.
What? Why the clown mask?
To put even a little fear into them. Make them feel the pressure.
A man appearing alone in front of a crowd—and that man wearing a grotesque clown mask. To the bandits, I must have looked like a raving lunatic. And right beside them, a mountain of corpses was going up in flames.
A clown mask had a mysterious power all its own. The mere sight of one constricted something in people's heads. That was why, in my previous life, crimes committed in clown masks—or copycat Joker jobs—happened so often.
"Hup!"
Anyway. Back to the point. I slipped the steel nets sailing in from every direction with almost lazy ease and charged the bandit captain.
Steel rang on steel.
"Kh!"
He met my swing with one of his own. The moment our blades locked, he felt it—he was losing the contest of strength—and bit down on his lip. I kept swinging. So did he. Whatever else you could say about him, the man had put in his hours of plunder. His Agility was lower than mine, but he still answered my attacks well enough.
"Nngh..."
"Hang in there, Captain!"
"W-where's the snakes...?"
A few bandits had survived the viper ambush, but none of them dared to move. They had no idea when the snakes might strike again. A Master with high Durability could last a long time even after a viper bite. Civilians who couldn't see a status window were a different story. No matter how sturdy they were, their Durability barely cracked ten points.
In the end, all the survivors could do was cheer for their captain and keep glancing around to make sure a snake wasn't sliding up on them. And it should go without saying that none of that cheering did their captain a damn bit of good.
"Hah!"
"You crazy son of a bitch?!"
Mid-swing, I suddenly threw my sword. The captain panicked and batted it aside. I'd put everything I had into the throw, so even though he blocked it, the impact knocked him off-balance and sent him staggering.
I didn't waste the opening. I closed the distance, pulled a shield from my inventory, gripped it in my right hand, and smashed it into him.
"Gaaah!"
The captain screamed and went over backward. I climbed on top of him, seized the shield with both hands, and drove it down with everything I had.
"Ghk! Gahk! Aaaaagh!"
He threw his arms over his face in desperation. I didn't care. I kept slamming the shield down. My Strength sat at a full sixty-nine points—sixty-one plus eight. A number he had no hope of enduring.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Somewhere around the thirtieth blow, the screams stopped. His arms were bent at grotesque angles, white bone punching through the meat. The face he'd tried so hard to protect had caved in. There was nothing left of it you could have called a face.
You have acquired 2 Potential Points.
"Heh heh heh."
I looked at the windows floating in front of me and let out a laugh. One more level and I'd hit sixty. And at sixty, I could promote to four-star. Three-star or four-star, you still needed Medium Growth Stones to raise your stats either way. No reason not to promote. The second I hit sixty, I was going up.
I stood and looked at the bandits frozen where they stood. Their faces had gone a bloodless blue-white, and they stared at me, trembling.
"One... maybe two. That's all I need alive, right?"
Heh heh heh heh heh. From behind the clown mask spattered with the captain's blood, I started to laugh.
I killed every bandit except two. A few of them, survival instinct kicking in, tried to bolt—but they weren't outrunning me. Not with an Agility stat that left ordinary people in the dust. Ironically, the only two who lived were the ones who didn't run. You could say their survival instinct had pointed them in exactly the wrong direction.
"Th-that's everything I know."
"That so?"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"I'm about to ask the other guy the exact same questions I asked you. If his answers come out different... you know what happens."
"P-please believe me! I didn't lie!"
"I hope you didn't. I'm not some blood-crazed maniac, and I don't particularly enjoy killing people at random."
The bandit said nothing.
"Snake Three. If this bastard so much as twitches, bite him. Got it?"
Ssssss!
Snake Three answered like he was telling me to leave it to him.
"Eeeek?! P-please! Please don't kill me! I really didn't lie!"
The second Snake Three coiled tight around his legs, the bandit I'd just been questioning lost his mind. He was so terrified he pissed himself.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. What's a grown man so scared of?
If a venomous snake wrapped itself around my legs... I swear to God I'd shit myself too, not just piss. I mean, fuck. It's a viper. A viper. You know how many people die from snakebites? But this one likes me, so it isn't scary. It's actually kind of cute.
...Wait. Is that even Snake Three?
Honestly, I wasn't sure. I'd named them Snake One, Snake Two, and Snake Three based on their size, but with ten new ones added to the roster, telling them apart was a nightmare. It's not like they were twins. Why did they all look exactly the same?
Anyway. Interrogation done, I left the bastard with Snake Three and headed for the other one I'd stashed elsewhere.
"Eeeek! P-please spare me! I'll tell you everything I know! No—I'll serve you as my big brother for the rest of my life! Just—please, my life, that's all I'm asking...!"
The last guy had it easy. This one was surrounded by the other twelve vipers, Snake Three excluded, spread out in a living carpet around him. The bandit—who had to be decades older than me—was calling me big brother and begging for his life.
Hmm. Looking at the state of him, I had a feeling every question I asked was going to come out very, very smoothly.