204. Public Assault
204. Public Assault
A group of figures were dashing across the dark night sky.
They were sky thieves—bandits who preyed on the ultra-wealthy, the kind of people who turned their eyes to the skies.
The gang of sky thieves that emerged through the clouds numbered around fifty. Even for ordinary bandits, that was a considerable headcount.
And that many of them were actually flying through the sky.
To rob a rare airship, you needed to be able to fly.
Likewise, procuring an airship of their own to stage the attack was simply out of the question.
If they had the financial resources to acquire an expensive airship for raiding other airships, they could hardly be called a bandit gang anymore.
They'd have to be called privateers, backed by someone's support.
There were several ways to take to the sky.
Using flight magic, using personal jetpacks—the pinnacle of magical engineering—
or, failing that, taming flying magical beasts was also an excellent option.
Among the various methods, they were riding wyverns, a lesser dragon species often called small dragons.
It was a mystery how these rough-looking men had managed to ride wyverns, known to be so fierce that even seasoned knights struggled to tame them.
"Shall we test the waters?"
-Keureureuk!
At the very front flew a one-eyed man with a thick, muscular build, one eye covered by a patch.
As he stroked the wyvern's nape, the wyvern spat out a small fireball.
Compared to a dragon's breath, it was pitifully insignificant, but it was a fireball large enough to set fire to the deck of an airship made of fine wood.
-Kugung!!
The fireball, spat out with force, did not reach the deck.
As if an invisible barrier surrounded the airship, it deflected the wyvern's fireball away.
"Ha..! It's even got a defense system? This is a jackpot..!!"
He knew which family the ship belonged to from the crest emblazoned on its hull, but he hadn't been certain just how much there would be to plunder. Seeing it even had a defense function, this was the real deal.
It meant the substance was as solid as the flashy exterior.
But at this rate, they would be blocked and unable to board it.
The man drew a short dagger-shaped artifact from his bag, flew alongside his wyvern, and swung the artifact, instantly neutralizing the barrier.
An artifact capable of easily disabling an airship's barrier was also not the kind of item any ordinary bandit gang would possess.
The sky thieves descended toward the airship, threw up their hands, and shouted excitedly.
"Now... it's a raid!! Let's take everything!!"
"Yeah, Boss!!"
Yet at moments like this, no matter who saw them, they were unmistakably bandits.
.
.
.
.
The moment they entered the airship, they grew even more elated.
No people were in sight; instead, they saw golems.
It meant they were dealing with truly wealthy people, not just moderately rich ones.
Even the golems moving around on cleaning duty alone seemed to make everyone's eyes roll back at the thought of how much they must be worth.
For this airship, capturing it intact would be the most profitable.
Physical goods would be offered up separately; their direct profit came from ransoms.
"All passengers are to be taken as hostages, so don't handle them roughly. However, if they resist, you can kill one or two as an example."
"Understood!"
The man who had been at the forefront, the one-eyed leader of the sky thieves, grinned viciously.
'Heh heh, just offering the hull to that person and pocketing the ransoms for the young masters will be a tidy profit!'
He had originally been a mountain bandit, but after receiving 'a great being,' he was reborn as a sky thief who preyed on nobles.
They either hijacked entire airships, or they looted only the valuables, crashed the ship, ransomed the passengers back to their families, or sold the rest into slavery.
Once the looting was done, he was confident that no one could ever track them down.
Having already hijacked airships on two separate occasions, they had nothing to fear.
No matter how great a noble was, before the great being he served, they became nothing more than a lowly insect.
'The crest... it was definitely House Perda, wasn't it? I'll bleed them dry.'
Already imagining the vast amount of gold that House Perda would send, the one-eyed leader stepped into the corridor.
"Kuaaack!!"
The moment he entered, a scream from one of his subordinates rang out in the distance.
He followed it to a cabin and found a thick tree had bound one of his men tightly, crushing him and shattering his bones.
Inside, a casually dressed man held a high-quality wooden staff that looked like a wand.
'So that's the Perda.'
With his well-matched green hair, the handsome Nivas Perda was smiling with his mouth alone.
"Haha... you've really made a mess of my journey home, haven't you?"
Showing his displeasure without reserve, he gently waved his staff toward the sky thief caught in the tree.
"Kk... aaaaack!!! Boss, save me... kkaaaack!!!"
And then, within seconds, a person was crushed like a juiced orange.
Frighteningly, even as a person was crushed to death, no blood splattered on the floor.
The tree holding him captive had absorbed all the flowing blood.
The leaves of the tree, having soaked up all the blood, were red, not green.
This was Perda's pride: Plant Genesis Magic.
"Sky thieves, you say? If you've come to rob this airship, calling you a mere bandit gang seems a bit inadequate. Who sent you?"
For his airship, especially one carrying esteemed guests, to be attacked out of nowhere by a gang of thieves put Perda in an extremely foul mood.
Foul enough to grind them all up and use them as fertilizer for his plants.
"Nobody sent us... but going around on a fine ship like this is practically begging to be robbed. If you surrender quietly, I'm willing to let you off with just losing an arm. How about it?"
Even after seeing his subordinate crushed to death before his eyes, he didn't so much as blink and spoke leisurely, as if joking.
A pale aura blazed on the scimitar in his hand.
"Your skill at jokes is as poor as a lowly bandit's."
With a single wave of his staff, Perda caused four trees to sprout from the floor.
.
.
.
.
The fight between Perda and the one-eyed leader turned against Perda.
-Kwakang!!
"Kgh!"
Perda grew thick tree trunks to block the one-eyed man's kick, but he smashed through them lightly, striking Perda in the abdomen and sending him flying across the deck.
"For a young master, you fight well, but that's as far as it goes."
Perda grew the trees again, extending them toward the one-eyed man.
But when the one-eyed man's Aura Blade traced a shining arc, all the trees were sliced to pieces.
He wasn't quite at the peak of Expert level, but his strength was at the threshold of the Wall.
"I'll at least cut off an arm to send as a gift to your main house!"
The one-eyed man flashed a vicious grin and lunged at Perda.
Thick wooden vines shot up from all sides, but they couldn't hinder him.
At that moment, someone burst out of the corridor and attacked the one-eyed man's flank.
"Are you the leader?!"
It was Edgar, his body radiating intense heat.
"Hut?!"
-Clang!!!
In Edgar's hand was the blazing demonic sword Flamberge.
The one-eyed man immediately turned and responded to Edgar's attack, but his blade was caught on the wavering edge of the Flamberge.
"I'll be taking your sword..!!"
As Edgar brought the Flamberge down with force, the one-eyed man's sword was split in two.
"Don't get distracted!"
While his stance collapsed from his broken sword, Perda extended a long vine and seized him.
It held him for just one second, but that was enough.
"Kkaaack??"
A massive sword wound appeared on his back, carved by Edgar's Flamberge.
Though he had been slashed by a sword, it left a bizarre wound, as if seared by extreme heat.
"I'll put this down as a debt, got it?"
"Whoa, Edgar, you're so reliable. Add as much debt as you want."
Even though the wound on his back must have stung like a searing hot iron, the leader only laughed.
"The flaming demon sword... the great one will be very pleased with this."
Facing the frighteningly smiling leader, Edgar wreathed his sword in aura.
He didn't think the man would die from just this much, so he intended to land a decisive blow.
"A mere bandit dares to attack imperial nobles? You've got a lot of nerve."
"Let's finish this quickly and go clean up inside. There are still a lot more of them."
"Hey! That's far enough!!"
Someone flew in and landed on the deck.
The two immediately went on alert, but when they saw the figure held in his arms, they could no longer move.
"Huhaha! If you value this bitch's life, don't move a muscle!"
"You... let go of her this instant!!"
Shara Phrygia was in the grasp of one of the sky thieves, wearing only a one-piece nightgown.
Shara, caught in the massive thief's arms like a doll—his body seemed ten times her size—flailed her arms wildly, but the thief seemed completely unaffected.
"Haaa... you got yourself captured?"
"Why is the security here so weak?! I'm lodging a complaint with your family!!"
"You bastard, taking a hostage..!!"
"Uh-uh, don't move! Does it not matter if she dies?"
When a thick blade touched Shara's throat, Edgar stopped.
Maybe a coldly rational person could ignore it, but in his agitated state, he was forced to stop, afraid that provoking the man might really make him stab Shara's throat.
Following that, a whole group of sky thieves poured out onto the deck in a swarm.
Even just dealing with two of them was hard with a hostage taken, and now reinforcements arrived. The situation looked bleak.
"What, you came to help me? You didn't need to."
The sky thief holding Shara hostage laughed as he saw the colleagues who had shown up behind him.
But the words they spat out were things no one had expected at all.
"B... Boss!! Run away!! Something's wrong with this place!!"
"What's with you guys... why did you come outside?!"
"We didn't know it'd be like this! We didn't know...!"
"What? Can't you idiots talk straight?"
The one-eyed man yelled at the sky thieves, who were all ashen-faced and babbling incoherently.
The wound on his back was already stinging, and now his own damned subordinates were acting like this—things looked completely dark.
But the words they spoke were truly something that could drive a man out of his mind.
"Boss!! Inside... there's a monster inside!!!!"
"Dozens of us jumped him, but we couldn't land a single scratch!!"
"The kids are all dead!!! We're the last ones!!"
"What?"
In that instant, the seven thieves who had rushed outside were cut to pieces all at once.
Each body had its throat, legs, torso, and various parts severed differently. The one thing they had in common was that each had been cut by slashes along different trajectories.
The chunks of meat that had been people moments before thudded onto the deck, soaking it in blood.
At the end of the long-drawn Sword Path stood a little golden-haired brat, smeared all over with bright-red blood, holding a sword as tall as himself.
Bright-red blood dripped steadily from the deep ink-black blade.
'I couldn't see it...?'
Seven men had died in a single moment, and he had missed the trajectories entirely.
The corpses, sliced cleanly along completely different arcs, had clearly been cut not by one slash but by seven slashes—and he had missed seeing all seven movements.
With a single swing, the boy flicked the blood from his sword into the empty air and coldly looked up at the remaining sky thieves.
"Are you the leader here?"