Rival? (4)
The bandits closed in on the expedition's camp under cover of darkness. Hundreds of them, not a footfall between them, not even the whisper of a breath — the sight of that silent tide sliding toward the tents was enough to freeze the blood.
These were men who could endure for hours beneath scorching sand. They had mastered the art of erasing their own presence. The desert was their stage, and on that stage their combat prowess was extraordinary. Ambushing a careless enemy by night was simply what they did.
They dropped low and crept to the very edge of the camp, then stopped as one. A few more steps and they would have entered the firelight. Nobody had given the order. Hundreds of bandits simply halted at the same instant.
Sentries stood by the campfires — and not one or two of them. Each fire had at least four men on watch. Twenty sentries, at a minimum.
Those idiot bastards.
One of the bandits spotted the watch and silently cursed the comrades who had already become permanent residents of Kiba Village. Those morons had ignored the chief's order not to move prematurely and jumped the expedition on their own, and now the whole camp was wound tight with suspicion.
The difficulty had gone up a notch. That was all. It was nowhere near enough to stop them from doing what they did best.
The captain of the Ninth Squad ran a hand over his own head. The men watching him pulled sand-caked cloaks from their coats and threw them on. Then they burrowed into the sand, and just like that they were gone — a signature ambush of the Snake Bandits, copied from the hunting method of the desert vipers.
Cloaked and buried, the bandits carved carefully through the sand toward the sentries.
A soft slither.
"Huh?"
One sentry turned toward the sound. He found nothing out of place, and after a moment he looked away again.
The sand moved once more. The sentries never realized the bandits had closed to within arm's reach.
A burst of motion —
"?!"
"Wha—"
A wet thunk.
"Ghk?!"
The bandits erupted from the sand, clapped hands over the sentries' mouths, and drove daggers into their throats. This was not their first time working together. No two of them went for the same target.
And that was no accident. These men were Masters — but only half of one. None of them could summon a Fairy. They were a special unit Salmus had assembled from incomplete Masters like himself.
They finished the job with professional care. They did not take their hands off those mouths until the last breath had left the bodies. Then, once they were sure the sentries were dead, they eased the corpses down so they would not make a sound.
Satisfied with their own handiwork, they signaled the men waiting behind them. Assassinating an expedition that had gone to sleep trusting nothing but its night watch — for these people, that was child's play.
The world, unfortunately, was not that generous.
A high, keening whine rose from the ground.
"Huh?"
The bandit who had stood up at his comrades' signal and started walking into the camp realized too late that light was welling up from the sand beneath his feet. It traced the shape of a magic circle.
"Oh, you have got to be shitting—"
A bad feeling hit him and he tried to scramble clear. The circle fired first.
Great Explosion
30 Bandits Annihilated
The circle erupted in a bloom of fire. Sand and blood and shredded meat sprayed in every direction. The blast radius was wider than anyone had guessed. More than thirty bandits inside it died on the spot.
"Wh-what was that? What the hell was that sound?"
The explosion shattered the night's silence. People who had been asleep came tumbling out of their tents in a panic — and froze at the sight of the corpses. Bandits and sentries, scattered everywhere.
"Damn it! Who the hell planted a trap here?!"
"Fuck it, they've already spotted us — just attack!"
"Kill them all!"
"OOOOOOOH!"
The ambush was a write-off. The bandits charged before the expedition could fully form up.
"Ah, for fuck's sake. They really did come at night. My skin's going to look like hell if I don't get any sleep."
Chae Gillard, a 4-star mage, scowled at the wave of bandits pouring toward them.
A heavy smack landed across his back.
"Gaaah! You deranged muscle-pig!"
"You crazy bastard! How did you even know they were coming?! When I saw you blow that expensive crap on a patch of empty sand I thought you'd finally lost your mind!"
The man beating on Chae's back was his companion, Thor Bikestone. Where Chae was lean and wiry, Thor was a thickly built slab of a man who looked like he could punch through a wall — which, given that his class was Warrior and Strength was his primary stat, he probably could.
"You lunatic mage! From this day forward, you are a Mad Scientist!"
"You absolute moron! A scientist is a scientist! I'm a mage!"
"Same difference! Holy shit, that was cool as hell! Pucker up — I'm gonna kiss you!"
"Aaaagh! Stop being a freak and go beat those bandit bastards to death!"
"Bwahahaha!"
Thor shoved his thick, gizzard-like lips forward. Chae recoiled in genuine horror and ducked behind his Fairy, jabbing a finger at the oncoming enemy. Thor let out a booming laugh and charged.
"Are you all right, Master?"
A green-haired beauty stepped up beside him — Entris, Chae's Fairy. Two more lovely women stood behind her. They were his Fairies as well.
"I am the opposite of all right. That brainless ape has clearly been routing every nutrient that should have gone to his skull straight into his biceps."
His Fairies watched their grumbling Master with fond little smiles.
"What are you standing around for? Go kill those thieves."
"Yes, Master!"
The two Fairies other than Entris sprinted toward the bandits who had forced the night raid. They were every bit as capable as their Master. Every time their blades swept through the dark, another bandit went down.
"Why aren't you going? You should be out there farming experience too."
"Heehee. I have something I need to do, you see."
"Something to do? What are you talking abou—"
The sand exploded upward. One of the elite bandits in a sand-caked cloak burst from the ground — he had tunneled all this way through the desert specifically to kill the man who looked like a mage.
A clean slash.
"Ghk?!"
He never got the chance. Before his dagger could even find Chae's back, Entris's sword punched through the center of his forehead.
Chae, who had nearly jumped out of his skin when a blade suddenly stabbed past his shoulder, looked from the dead elite to his Fairy. Then he nodded.
"Yeah. You stay right here next to me."
"Heehee."
Entris's smile was answer enough.
And so Chae, perfectly safe under her protection, was free to watch the expedition slug it out with the Snake Bandits.
"Kill them!"
"Die, you bandit scum!"
"Aaaaagh!"
This side's strength was nothing to sneeze at. They might have been ordinary people with no access to status windows, but the punitive force had brought no small number of Masters and Fairies.
Even so, the fight was dead even. The enemy had brought elites of their own. The desert itself was doing half their work for them. True to a band of raiders who had made this wasteland their hunting ground, they hid in the sand, flung it in people's eyes, and even hurled live vipers. They knew how to use the terrain.
"Aaaagh!"
"S-somebody help me!"
Still, the expedition held the edge in high-end combat power, so the bandits were dying in far greater numbers than the soldiers. I probably don't even need to lift a finger, Chae thought. Honestly, loading his ultimate — Great Explosion (Lv.10 / Advanced) — onto expensive Magic Paper and planting it as a trap already counted as more than pulling his weight.
"...Ah, shit."
He did not get to keep spectating in peace. He could feel a gaze on him, and he knew exactly who it belonged to.
Why the hell is Plasma staring a hole through me instead of killing bandits?
Plasma — the Witch Queen's Fairy, and the strongest man in the entire expedition — was watching him and only him.
The interesting part was that Chae already knew who Plasma really was. When Plasma had introduced himself, he had hidden his identity the same way he had with Alan. So how did Chae know?
Tsk. What a pain. Not that I have a choice. I'm going to end up under the Witch Queen anyway.
Chae clicked his tongue inwardly and raised his staff. The moment he called on a skill, the searing mana in his body answered its master's will and poured into the wood.
"Do you intend to fight, Master?"
Entris asked it with a puzzled tilt of her head. The Chae she knew would have sat this out until the last body hit the sand.
"Yeah. I've got an enthusiastic stalker, you see. If I want to look good for him, I've got to at least pretend to throw down."
"Pardon?"
"It's a whole thing."
Entris cocked her head, unable to parse any of that. By then the skill was ready. A miniature sun blazed at the tip of Chae's staff — his signature, the skill he used more than any other.
Fireball
Lv.16 / Normal
He hurled it into a knot of enemies at the rear.
The fireball tore across the night sky. Bandits screamed and scattered. Not all of them made it. Three took the blast dead-on and died in the flames; six more who had been standing too close hit the ground and rolled, beating at the fire eating their clothes. It was exactly the kind of work you expected from a Rare-grade Fire Mage.
Chae sent several more fireballs after them. The bandits, apparently deciding the mage had to die first, came sprinting straight at him — and ran into Entris. They died with her sword through their skulls.
"That's as far as I can go."
He took stock of the field and lowered his staff. Not because he was out of mana — because the bandits had pressed in too close to his own people. They knew as well as he did that magic stopped flying once the lines were tangled.
Even so, he had done more than enough. Plasma's stare, at least, had finally lifted off him.
"Bwahahaha! Thor Smash!"
"Aaaagh!"
"Ugh. That brainless ape... does he not get how embarrassing that is?"
Chae glanced over to make sure his friend wasn't in over his head, then let out a long sigh. Thor was not remotely tense. He was laughing his head off and slapping bandits across the face. The slaps were monstrous. The heads they connected with turned further than a human neck was designed to turn.
Leaving his companion to thrash around like a fish that had found water, Chae turned his attention to the rest of the field. He wanted a read on the other Masters and Fairies.
"...Huh?"
Four figures cut through the enemy lines like they owned them — two men, two women. Chae caught a clear look at the face of the man with the sword and shield, and muttered under his breath.
Those two... that was Alan Han and Kanisia Lora, wasn't it?
The day the expedition had left Baidu, that man had been one of the few Masters besides Chae himself who had sensed Plasma's killing aura. Maybe that was why Chae could not stop noticing him.
He fights ridiculously well for a 3-star. Hmm... is he actually 3-star? That level of skill is 4-star work.
Kanisia Lora, the 3-star, was performing exactly where a 3-star should — well, on the strong side for her rank, if he was being fair. Alan Han was a different story. He had introduced himself as a 3-star, but he was fighting on par with a 4-star.
A heavy downward slash.
That's a Strength stat of 60?
Chae's brow furrowed. Something about the way Alan had just killed a charging bandit was deeply wrong.
In Chae's professional opinion, it had been a brainlessly simple overhead chop. Alan had brought his sword straight down in a vertical line. The bandit had raised his own blade horizontally to catch it. Alan's sword had split the other man's weapon like paper — and then split the man himself in half.
The maximum Strength a 3-star could raise was 60 points. Even stacked to the cap, 60 points of Strength could not bisect a human being.
What the hell is that guy?
Alan Han had his full attention now. And as Chae kept watching, his eye caught the dark-blue-haired Fairy fighting at Alan's side. Aquaril — that was her name.
Unlike her Master, there was nothing crude about the way Aquaril fought. She was precise. She was cold. A single stroke took a head. One exchange, one corpse. The bandits died in a tidy, merciless rhythm.
A Swordsman, huh...
Remembering Aquaril's class, Chae glanced sideways at Entris with an odd look in his eye. She was a Swordsman too.
"Entris."
"Yes, Master."
"You see her? The tall Fairy with the dark blue hair."
"Who... ah. That Fairy, you mean?"
"Yeah. Her. She looks like a Swordsman too. If you two fought, who do you think would win?"
"Hmm..."
Entris watched Aquaril work with careful, appraising eyes.
"I don't have the confidence."
"What? You'd lose?"
"No."
A deep smile curved Entris's mouth. When she answered, there was not a shred of doubt in her voice.