For a Better Tomorrow (2)
Once they were all bound by Binding, we finally had a moment to catch our breath. To confirm the identities of these bold attackers, the mage floated a sphere of light and brightly illuminated the surroundings.
“Please—we were wrong. Just once, just once, show us mercy.”
“We failed to recognize how precious all of you are. Please, please spare our lives…”
“O Sea Dragon…”
“Have pity on us…”
But the faces that came into view were somehow unsettling.
Those who have resolved to take from others for their own sake. Many take pride in making plunder their livelihood.
Beasts tamed by humans. Loyal and valiant.
The monster classification listed them all as bandits, yet the ones cravenly begging for mercy were well-built and properly equipped, while those crying out to the Sea Dragon looked far too wretched. If they didn’t even have proper swords and were instead clutching kitchen knives or harpoons, you could more or less guess the rest.
“These bastards…”
On top of that, the latter group had thick leather collars fastened tightly around their necks. There were far too many details that made it hard to believe they belonged to the same crew.
“Ha! You tried to kill us, and now you beg for forgiveness?!”
Meanwhile the Inquisitor slammed her mace into the ground and let her rage explode. Given that she had been ready to chop off wrists over simple theft, this was hardly surprising.
“I have no intention of covering up their crimes, but some among them appear to have circumstances of their own. Inquisitor.”
“They tried to kill us. If the ones passing through had been ordinary people instead of us, they might truly have died. And still we are to consider their circumstances?”
“Hey. Are you blind? Do those ones and these people look the same to you?”
“Even so, they are still attackers, are they not?”
“Ah, for real—talking to her is impossible…”
This was getting extreme. I took a fresh look at the Inquisitor’s thick-headed streak and turned my eyes to the trembling prisoners.
The shabby ones kept praying, but the proper bandits were rolling their eyes this way and that. Those ones truly looked beyond reform.
“Inquisitor—does a crime committed under oppression and coercion still count as sin?”
“But… victims nearly appeared.”
“Of course. The victims have no obligation to understand that. But did we suffer any loss? Was there irreversible damage? There was not, was there?”
Fortunately, just as Dev looked ready to explode from sheer frustration, the Archmage gently coaxed her.
“Forgiving them and moving on simply because no harm occurred this time is no different from leaving the door open for future incidents.”
“That is not wrong. Yet these people likely took up weapons under another’s coercion. In other words, if not forced, they would not have raised arms.”
“That is not certain.”
“Your expectation that they would take up arms again is equally uncertain, is it not?”
“…”
“Understanding that difference and granting them a chance—that is what we call mercy.”
As expected of a sage. The Archmage coaxed the Inquisitor in an instant, then turned his gaze.
“I have kept you waiting long. Now then—you appear to have circumstances of your own. Will you tell them to me?”
At his words, those who had been pressing their heads to the ground in prayer lifted their faces a little.
“Y-you’re going to spare us?”
“If your circumstances fall within the realm of understanding.”
A flicker of hope entered the praying ones. Yet their eyes kept darting sideways, as if gauging the real bandits. Purely by chance I read the lip movements of one of them—the bandit-looking sort. Say it properly. I had thought they were merely reading the room, but he was actively making them watch their tongues.
“You little shit.”
Before I could step forward to punish him, Dev kicked the bastard’s head. Teeth seemed to fly out, but that was his own fault, so I couldn’t care less.
“Do not mind them. Speak freely.”
When the Archmage added that, the praying ones rushed to pour out their long, tangled stories.
“We originally made our living by the sea. But the sea went mad and we could no longer catch fish…”
“So we tried to find food in the mountains, only for the bandits who had claimed the place to…”
“They told us that if we didn’t rob travelers and bring the goods back, they would kill us!”
In short, they had been taken prisoner by the bandits; some were locked in the stronghold while others were forced into the raids. If that was true, their lot was truly wretched.
“This is the first time we have attacked four people like you. We still haven’t killed anyone.”
“Just once—give us one chance. We will never do this again.”
Given their situation, even if the system classified them as bandits, there seemed no real need to kill them. The bandits had led the attack, and these people hadn’t even properly joined in. Moreover, this had nothing to do with demons. Even the Inquisitor and Archmage, who had once fought us over a misunderstanding, had been forgiven and let go; these ones fell well within the bounds of my roleplay’s capacity for mercy.
“And how are we supposed to believe that?”
Yet once again the Inquisitor didn’t so much as blink. Dev’s rising blood pressure was practically audible.
“Are you blind?”
“What?”
“Their clothes alone are completely different! And look at the collars on their necks, the rope marks on their wrists—can’t you see those? Even if they had no camaraderie, no bandit would do this to a partner in crime.”
He went on to cite the dragon figurines only the praying ones carried, the salt stains on their clothes from sea wind, and other details, proving their story true. His eye for reading people truly was exceptional.
“Hm?”
Well then. With things this clear, it would be odd not to act.
“What are you trying to—”
“Demon Knight?”
Clang!
I brought my sword down and severed the chains. Lacking the confidence to shatter the links touching skin without wounding anyone, I aimed at the parts rising from the ground; luckily, breaking those alone destroyed the whole set.
“Th-thank you. Thank you…”
“The Sea Dragon will bless you…”
“Gratitude is unnecessary.”
Thanks were none of my concern. Hadn’t they said more people were still held at the stronghold?
“Tell me the bandits’ location.”
This had nothing to do with demons, yet a man who had once been a knight would never walk past something like this. There was no urgent business, and it would not take us far out of our way.
“…!”
The freed people widened their eyes; the Inquisitor, who had been about to protest something, finally closed her mouth.
“…Anyway, Sir Knight.”
Dev, for some reason, smirked and muttered that nonsense.
“Y-you’re going to save them?”
“I have no hobby of leaving vermin alone.”
Though the Archmage’s pleased expression was a bit much. The sins of my roleplay ran deep. Still, I was grateful they hadn’t treated it as breaking character.
“Is that the place?”
“Y-yes. There it is.”
Guided by the people—though in truth most of them barely knew the way, so Dev found most of it—we climbed the mountain. What soon came into view was a wooden palisade blocking the mouth of a cave, along with a watch post. The slope was steep, and the surrounding trees had been cleared, so approaching without being spotted looked difficult. The rocky terrain would make climbing a little harder as well.
“A cave, of all things. They’ve nestled themselves in a troublesome spot.”
“With hostages inside we can’t just pour smoke in, either…”
While the Archmage and Dev, the party’s brains, fretted, I took a step forward.
“Oh no, milord, not again…!”
The two of them seemed to sense it and let out thin cries, but they couldn’t stop me.
My feet touched ground thick with weeds. Naturally the bandits’ watch post went into an uproar and soon began loosing arrows.
“I will—”
“No. Inquisitor, fall back.”
The Inquisitor, who had been about to leap out of the brush after me, was held back. That left me alone to take the arrows, but it was the path I had chosen. I would just have to endure through sheer grit and malice.
Kwaang!
Well, it didn’t look as though I would need to go that far on grit and malice alone.
Kurururung—
I swung the zweihander and loosed a Chamgyeok. The watch post was sliced diagonally and collapsed; the arrows were flung aside by the blast of wind from the slash.
“Kyaaaaah!”
Collapsing logs and people tumbled down together, but so long as they didn’t reach me I had no interest. I sheathed the zweihander.
No special reason—I simply wanted to test combat while wrapping my body in black energy. Inside a cave, a weapon as long as a zweihander would be awkward to swing.
“What’s all the racket?!”
“What the hell is that?!”
As I stomped my way up the slope, figures burst out at the noise. At the same moment black energy gathered around my feet.
Because it was a steep section I only pushed off with the balls of my feet, yet my body shot straight to the cave mouth in a single bound.
“What—”
It wasn’t defined as a separate skill, but if it had been, the description would probably have read something like “increases jump power and running speed.”
With that idle thought I seized the throat of the man who had stuck his head out of the cave.
Whoosh—
The grabbed man was yanked backward and hurled down the hillside.
“You son of a— Keok!”
Next, the one behind him had his neck seized by my right arm. I didn’t much care for contacting others with my right arm, but the thing I had grabbed now was not a person—it was a criminal.
Kwang!
I slammed him into the wall, turning him into a piece of modern art, then slowly entered. I hadn’t even wrapped myself in energy, but my grip strength was originally formidable enough that this alone was sufficient to knock someone out.
Udeudeuk.
…More than sufficient—excessive. I sometimes couldn’t gauge how much force to use, and accidents where I shattered cervical vertebrae would occasionally occur. Still, it wasn’t intentional. They weren’t civilians; they were criminals. I rationalized that there was room for leniency.
“What’s going on?!”
“An intruder?!”
Keong keong!
More than that, this cave looked far too much like a dungeon.
Peok!
I punched every man who came out and escaped into idle thoughts. I had reason enough. At the end of the long, ordinary rock tunnel lay carved stairs and cracked, crumbling pillars. The walls were natural rock piles jutting out in attractively uneven shapes.
“…Ruins?”
It didn’t seem entirely artificial; rather, an existing cave had been worked once into ruins, and the bandits had occupied it secondhand.
“You bastard—!”
Peok!
“Keok!”
I drove my fist into the face of someone who popped out around a corner, kicked a dog aside, and switched on a flashlight. The bandits had hung torches, but this was brighter.
“Kill him!”
Yet there seemed to be far too many gnats for sightseeing.
I swatted the flying arrows aside with a gauntleted hand. One, two, two-and-a-half beats of swinging, and every arrow snapped and bounced away in all directions.
But was that enough to end it?
I charged and drove a flying knee into the face of the archer. For the one behind him I quickly drew a dagger from my coat and flung it. My aim wasn’t particularly good, but the distance was short enough that the dagger buried itself precisely in the back of the hand holding a sword.
I dropped with the collapsing body, seized by gravity. Thud. I didn’t forget to step on the chest of the one who had fallen first—the one who took the knee.
Peok!
At the same time my body spun and launched a roundhouse kick. The enemy whose attack timing had been stolen by the dagger in his hand took the blow to the temple and crumpled on the spot.
I flicked the flapping hem of my coat out of the way with one hand, then stepped into the cavern that opened beyond the ones I had just cleared.
On the side walls, murals remained—cracked and half-collapsed, yet still recognizable—and in the center of the chamber rock fragments lay like obstacles.
Using the rocks as cover, I confirmed the ones hiding and began clearing them from nearest to farthest. Guided by the Survival Instinct skill, my body spun as I leapt from rock to rock, dodging the incoming arrows.
Tak.
My body rotated a full 180 degrees, overcame the roughly three-meter ceiling height, and planted a foot on the roof. By arching backward I opened my field of view to two enemies hiding behind a boulder.
Kwak.
I put force into my foot and launched from the ceiling. Of course I had zero intention of smashing my head into the floor, so I rotated immediately and drove one of them down.
The enemy who took the hit in the unfortunate spot between neck and shoulder toppled, and the sound of a spine shattering rang out.
“Hieek!”
The remaining one at least had decent reflexes and swung his sword. My waist bent to avoid the blade, and my left arm smashed into his side.
Kwaang!
His body flew a good distance.
At that exact timing an arrow came streaking in. It had aimed for my head, yet somehow by tilting as far sideways as I could I managed to dodge it.
My lips curled up at the corners.
“Vermin.”
Beyond the rocks, the bandits stared at me with faces that said they had goosebumps.
“How dare you.”
My legs kicked off the ground like a bullet struck by a firing pin. Energy wrapped around my fist and slammed precisely into the spot where the archer had been.
Kwaang!
The rock connected to the wall shattered to pieces. If the target hadn’t gone limp and slid down, his body might have ended up looking the same. Of course, even then I would have dodged and hit the wall instead.
“A-a monster…”
Separately, this attack power was beyond even my own expectations. I had practiced light jumps and running plenty at dawn and gotten the feel for them, but I hadn’t been able to practice striking anything—no targets, and too much noise. So I hadn’t known it produced this kind of destructive force. If I had, I wouldn’t have hit so hard.
“Uuugh…”
Still, he hadn’t collapsed. I would let it slide with that. Just this once.
I muttered that sort of thing to myself as I pulled my arm free from the rock. The one sprawled beneath me looked up, and a dark stain was spreading between his legs.
Tang.
Ting-ting.
Clatter.
The sound of weapons hitting the ground began to play like a chorus.