Rather Than Die, I'll Get Strong and Devour the Bandits
I decided it was better to get stronger and swallow the bandit group whole. Without hesitation, I swung my fist straight into the 4th squad leader's face.
The squad leader reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and tumbled backward with a loud crash. "You crazy bastard!" "Hey! Fuck, grab him!" Two of them seized my shoulders while another smashed the back of my head with a liquor bottle. The sound of the bottle shattering rang out, and I thought my eyeballs were about to pop. It hurt like hell. My mind went completely white—I thought I was going to pass out for a second, but I recovered quickly.
"Let go! You worthless pieces of shit!" I thrashed and screamed like a rabid dog trying to break free, but with three grown men clinging to me, escaping was nearly impossible. I should've built up my stamina earlier so I could turn into a rampaging bear.
"How dare that son of a bitch...!" The 4th squad leader, who'd been knocked down by the surprise punch, spat out a mix of blood and saliva—probably because he'd bitten his tongue—and rose from the floor. He stood tall in place, staring directly at me with eyes that shot lasers of pure rage.
"Hold that bastard tight!" he shouted in a voice thick with fury, then drew the dagger from his belt. My eyes widened at the sight of the blade. You son of a bitch. This was cheating.
Watching the dagger slide free from its sheath, a dark thought crossed my mind: I'm dead now.
"Squad leader, please don't! Squad leader! He's my friend!" Freyr tried to intervene but got slapped across the face and sent flying.
The squad leader approached me with both my arms still restrained, his eyes gleaming with murderous intent as he raised the knife. "You fucking mutt. I'll start by crippling one arm so you can live the rest of your life as a fucking invalid."
He glanced at my right armpit. Was he planning to sever the tendons? At that moment, a fist-sized rock flew in like a bullet and struck the wrist of the hand holding the dagger.
"Ow!" The squad leader grimaced and clutched his wrist. We all turned at once toward the direction the rock had come from.
Before we knew it, Marcus and Nancy had approached and were watching us.
"Hey, Vick. What exactly are you doing with our kid?"
"Perfect timing, old man! This bastard hit me! This snot-nosed punk actually punched me in the face!" Vick glared at me again, eyes bulging. "I need to teach him a lesson he'll never forget!"
"Let our kid go while I'm still asking nicely."
"Shut your mouth!"
"If you lay even a single finger on that boy, I won't stand by quietly. I'm old, but my skills are still quite useful." Marcus reached into his inner chest pocket and pulled out a set of sharp throwing stars. He positioned four of them between the fingers of his right hand, ready to throw at any moment.
The members of the 4th squad holding me all froze with panicked expressions.
"S-Squad leader, what should we do?"
"That old man coats his throwing stars with poison...!"
A few seconds of icy silence hung in the air, as if they were genuinely terrified of Marcus's skill. Vick glared at Marcus like he wanted to kill him, but eventually lowered his dagger.
"You little brat. You'd better live the rest of your life on high alert." He grabbed the back of my neck in a threatening grip, then kicked over a nearby table to vent his frustration before storming into the barracks, huffing and puffing. His men hurriedly followed after him, and I was finally released from their hold.
"Thank you, Marcus."
"What the hell started this fight?"
"He tried to order me to do something ridiculous, so I talked back a little."
The back of my head was burning and throbbing. When I touched it, I found a massive lump, swollen like a hill. That liquor bottle really did a number on me. But wait... wasn't head trauma supposed to bleed? There was no blood, just a huge bump. I suddenly worried I might collapse without warning.
"I went and got Marcus. Pretty smart, right?" Nancy said with a bright, cheerful smile. "I figured something like this would happen since the 4th squad is full of the worst scum in our entire bandit group."
I thought about thanking her but decided to ignore her instead. I knew exactly what she was after. She'd only helped me because she expected something in return. If I thanked her too easily, it would be like admitting I owed her, and that made me uneasy about what price she might demand. It was better to play dumb and act like nothing happened.
Nancy walked with us for a while before she was called away by a member of the 8th squad and had to turn back. As soon as we returned to the 15th squad's barracks, Marcus laid me down on Phelton's bed and ground up some herbs to apply emergency treatment to my swollen head.
Having lived in a world with advanced medicine, I desperately wished we could look inside my skull rather than just smear herbs on my scalp, but what could I do? We had no choice but to rely on folk remedies for now. It would be nice if there was even one priest in this bandit group, but those noble, pure-hearted people would never join a shithole like this. I made a firm promise to myself: once I earned some money, I'd stock up on healing potions.
"The pain will probably last about a week. Be careful not to slip and crack the back of your head while walking. It'll make the wound worse."
"That's not even a little funny," I replied with a straight face. Marcus let out a small chuckle. He wiped his herb-stained hands on an old cloth and sat down on the edge of the bed where I lay.
"Listen, kid. Ever since we came back from the city, your eyes have been full of poison. Of course, people like us need that kind of edge, but right now you look like you could explode at any moment. Calm your heated heart and try to be more generous. If you keep getting into fights with the other members like today, you'll be the only one who suffers—especially since you don't know the first thing about martial arts."
I stayed silent for a moment, then, still lying on my side and staring at the wall, quietly spoke up.
"I thought we were one family."
"Of course we're one family."
"No, we're not. I thought living together inside the same fence called the Elk Bandits would make us care for each other and look out for one another, but I was wrong. Sometimes I wonder why we even escaped the city to come here. No one shows any interest in us. No one said they were glad we made it back alive, that they were sorry about what happened to Phelton and Harry, or that we should keep our heads up. No one offered any genuine comfort. That made me so angry, and it became the reason I started hating the people here."
Marcus nodded and said, "That's because you had expectations. The men here all know it too. That if they die, there won't be a single person who'll mourn them. Death in a bandit group is worse than a dog's death. We're all living the most worthless lives at the very bottom. Since each of us already knows we're failures in life, we stopped expecting anything long ago. With no expectations for life, even our feelings toward others have dried up. Our sense of guilt has become paralyzed as well. We've forgotten when we should feel sad, when we should laugh sincerely, and what it even means to do wrong. In short, if you stop thinking of the people here as human beings and stop expecting anything from them, you'll feel a lot more at ease."
My mind felt strange. Almost hazy. Maybe it was because my head hurt, or maybe because Marcus—who'd escaped the city with me—felt more comfortable to talk to than before. I poured out the thoughts in my head without any filter.
"The truth is, I'm scared. If I keep hanging around with people like this, I'm afraid my life will end in a meaningless dog's death that no one will mourn or even remember. Like an ant being crushed underfoot. After seeing what happened to Phelton and Harry, I was terrified I'd end up the same way. It's such a pathetic, miserable way to live. Who would want to live in a place like this?"
Contrary to my expectation that he'd get angry at my sudden confession, Marcus smiled warmly and gazed gently at the candle that softly lit the room.
"If you want to live a life that's not pathetic inside the fence where these beasts dwell, then you have no choice but to become strong. Unlike the outside world where laws and order exist, this is a world where only strength matters. If you're strong, these beasts will follow you. They'll bark when you tell them to bark, laugh when you tell them to laugh, and even pretend to die when you order them to. It's not complicated—it's an incredibly simple world. If you want these beasts to mourn Phelton and Harry, become strong enough to make them do it. If you want to stop them from doing vile things, then forbid it or educate them."
He was right. Since I'd already been branded a bandit in the outside world and had nowhere else to go, I might as well become their leader and reform this garbage group so they could live constructive lives instead of destructive ones. I was still a newcomer to this other world who could do anything. My strong curiosity meant I could accept anything easily and learn quickly. Plus, I had the golden orb—a cheat key that let me see through anyone who posed a threat to me.
My eyes snapped open, and I sat up abruptly.
"Should I learn martial arts?"
"That would be good. Starting tomorrow, you'll train with me. I believe the secret techniques I learned in the assassin guild when I was young will be a great help to you. And while we're at it, I'll be happy to pass my skills on to the next generation."
Since my job had been set as a bandit the moment I arrived in this other world, I decided that rather than becoming some petty thief, I'd aim to become a master bandit. From the next day onward, I devoted myself entirely to training.
"If you want to become a successful bandit, you must become a thorough beast. You can't rise in a bandit group as some half-human, half-beast with an ambiguous position. You can reveal your will to reform our bandit group once you've reached the top. It won't be too late then."
Following the rigorous plan Marcus had laid out, I trained my basic stamina without complaint, learned the theory and practical use of memorization and traps, and absorbed what a man had spent decades mastering day by day.
"We are bandits, and we must commit banditry to make money. Forget about guilt. Guilt is nothing but a trap created by humans. In a world where beasts live, guilt does not exist. Dogs commit incest without any sense of guilt, and mother fish devour the fry they just gave birth to without hesitation. Never forget this. You are a beast too."
With the appearance of the Ryan Heart unit, our bandit group's activities became restricted. Thanks to that, I had more time to learn. As I spent my days in a blur of training, I transformed from a puppy into a wild dog before I knew it.