The Mountain Bandits' Greed
“Instead, I do the dishes. Aren’t you amazed? That I’d actually do something like that for you.”
“You’re not the one doing it! It’s the spirits who shwiiirik and pababak everything! Some water spirit or whatever!”
“If it bothers you that much, you can shwiiirik and pababak your own cooking with spirits.”
“……Damn it. I just feel like I’m getting the short end of the stick here.”
Even while grumbling, Chad ladled soup into my bowl. There were quite a few pieces of jerky floating in it.
“Thanks, I’ll enjoy it.”
As I picked up a piece of bread, a sudden question occurred to me.
[Rai.]
[What is it, Master?]
Rai was stuck to my feet in his wolf form. Like always. Like he always would be. A shadow that never left my side.
[Serious question. In your opinion, what exactly is my role in this party?]
I couldn’t really call myself the team’s healer since I hadn’t healed anyone yet, and since there was no need to fight, I wasn’t an attacker either.
Lox was already in charge of handing out wisdom, and my specialty was eating the food, not cooking it.
I could barely read maps in simple areas, and even then my natural sense of direction was so bad that I got it wrong half the time. As for mediation… I just bickered with Chad every day. So maybe I was the designated pretty face?
[Doesn’t seem like you have one?]
[That answer was brutally honest. You?]
[Honestly, I think the party is better off without you having a role.]
[Have you lost your mind?]
[The Master I know tends to attract chaos, so…….]
That’s not true! …I was about to shout when I suddenly couldn’t.
I hadn’t even tasted the soup yet, but a sinister presence surged from deep within the forest. Rai shot upright and began barking fiercely in one direction, as if issuing a warning.
[See! Even right now!]
Damn. I couldn’t deny it.
“Ash!”
“Jeanie.”
We turned to each other almost simultaneously. I was faster at calling out, but Ash was quicker to grab my elbow and yank me aside.
The moment I was pulled one step away, an arrow flew in and slammed into the exact spot where I had been sitting.
Two more arrows immediately stabbed into the table. One of them nearly grazed Chad.
Watching a party member almost die right in front of me felt strangely unfamiliar.
Come to think of it, this table… I’d wondered why it had so many holes. They were all arrow marks. And that one over there was clearly a bloodstain!
“Don’t tell me this shelter……!”
“It looks like a trap!”
Phuhihihing!
Startled by the sudden ambush, the horses tied to the grass began rearing and thrashing wildly.
In that chaotic instant, Ash and Chad had already drawn their swords and were tensed, ready for the next attack.
Everyone except Lox—who had no combat ability—accurately sensed the direction of the hostility and glared that way.
When their surprise attack failed, a group of pitch-black bandits emerged from the bushes. Five, six… twelve in total. Exactly three times our number. And they didn’t look like pushovers either. The way they held their blades carried the vicious aura of men who had killed before.
“Slurp.”
They could do their thing. I still had to eat my soup. It wouldn’t taste good once it got cold.
“……How can you swallow that right now!”
“I’m eating it out of respect for the person who made it, and you’re still complaining.”
Since I’d called Undine, I was fine.
Oh, I’d protect Ash too. I was going to eat, so the rest of them could handle it themselves. I gestured at Chad—who was staring down at me with a dumbfounded expression—to pay attention to the bandits instead.
“Chad! Focus.”
“This woman is—!”
“We just need to watch out for ourselves.”
Ash, bless him, said exactly the right thing.
Unlike Lox and Chad, who could only guess at what I was capable of, he was the only one who had seen exactly what I could do and how I did it.
I sipped my soup and watched the bandits slowly approach.
When crossing mountains, monsters weren’t the only threat. Just as the saying went that the scariest thing was people, the sea had pirates and the mountains had bandits.
The reason I could watch this like it was someone else’s problem was because the situation didn’t feel threatening enough for me to step in.
Honestly, Ash could slaughter all of them by himself.
There was that much of a gap in power between the bandits and us, and Chad could do it too—if there weren’t four horses and fragile people like Lox that needed protecting.
Objectively speaking, even without me, this party’s combat strength was quite high compared to average.
“They look like nasty pieces of work……”
“What should we do?”
“The fact that they shot arrows first means they’re not the type to hesitate about killing people.”
If one of us had died in that first attack, it would have been easy to intimidate the rest. From the bandits’ perspective, negotiations would have gone much smoother.
Fortunately, we were all unharmed, and Lox was already hiding behind Chad, taking care of himself.
“Hide, Miss Jeanie! This is no time to be eating soup!”
Lox was so weak that he couldn’t even tell who was strong and who was weak. That was why he was frantically waving at me to get under the table.
Distinguishing between the strong and the weak was a kind of instinct. An acquired sense sharpened through training. It grew even more sensitive every time you stood at the crossroads of life and death.
“Everyone stay quiet. Let’s not provoke them.”
The distance between the bandits and us was now less than ten steps.
Ash whispered softly, lowered his sword, and strode straight toward the bandits.
It meant there was room for negotiation, so let’s talk.
It was the leader’s job, and also the position most likely to get him killed. After all, the bandits might choose to kill us all and take everything instead of negotiating.
If it were me, I’d skip the negotiation and just kill all the bandits.
Ash was too much of a pacifist.
“This is our territory. Intruders must pay the price.”
The bandit’s gravelly voice only made me snort.
Why? Do you even sell the water around here?
“If you want to pass safely, you’d better hand over everything you have. Otherwise, you’ll be burying your bones in this mountain.”
“We don’t have much.”
“How much?”
Every group had a leader, and the bandit chief seemed to be the bald man currently talking to Ash. Among the scrawny bandits, he was the only one with any meat on his bones.
He was casually swinging the axe resting on his shoulder, and there was even an axe tattoo on the side of his head. He must really like axes.
“Axe faction……”
“……Pfft.”
Lox barely held in his laughter while glaring at me like he wanted to kill me.
Why is he the one laughing and then getting mad at me?
“This is everything we can give you.”
Ash politely handed over the money pouch he was carrying. The bandit leader opened it, roughly gauged its weight, and nodded in satisfaction.
“Oh, I like it. Quite heavy.”
“We don’t want a fight. Please let us go.”
I wondered if that bandit leader had any idea he was being spoken to politely by the empire’s second prince.
‘I think that leader guy just looked at me.’
Is it your first time seeing someone eat soup?
Since I wasn’t wearing my hood, maybe my beauty was shining so brightly he couldn’t look away. At least he had good taste in pretty things.
“You know how to show sincerity. We understand peace too.”
“That’s fortunate. Then may we leave now?”
“Sure. The money’s enough, so just leave your belongings and you can go.”
Ash’s pouch was always quite full, yet the leader still wasn’t satisfied after taking it all. It seemed his greed was about the same size as mine.
“By belongings… what exactly?”
“First, all your food supplies! We’re hungry too.”
“Very well. We’ll give them to you.”
Ack! I’d better eat quickly.
I started gulping down the soup before they could take it.
“And hand over the horses you rode in on.”
“Two of them.”
“No, all four would be better.”
Anyone who would steal horses—essential and expensive for travel—couldn’t possibly be good people.
They were bandits to begin with, so they were all the same, but I’d heard that some with a shred of conscience would only take half of what you had, or ask where you were headed and leave enough food to get there.
So these guys were pretty rotten.
“……Fine. We’ll give you everything, so please let us go.”
Why not throw in your liver and gallbladder while you’re at it? I really didn’t like Ash’s approach.
I couldn’t understand why he was going out of his way to appease these bandits instead of spilling a little blood. Peace and loss weren’t exactly synonyms. It was something I simply couldn’t comprehend.
I expressed my dissatisfaction by tossing my empty bowl onto the table with a clack and shaking my head, but that was all.
Since Ash was the leader and I was just passing traveler number one, I figured not interfering was the bare minimum of courtesy.
The one more shocked than me at the idea of handing over the horses was Lox.
We still had to ride another four hours to the next city. If we gave away all our means of transportation, the ones who would suffer most would be the physically weak—me and Lox.
Of course, I could just ride Rai. So it was someone else’s problem.
“We’ll let you go, of course. Except for that woman.”
“That…… is that what I think it means?”
It was completely unexpected that I, who had been happily watching the show, would be mentioned. So that eye contact earlier wasn’t a coincidence.
“You know exactly what I mean. Traveling with a pretty girl is the same as offering her to us as tribute.”
“……I already gave you everything else.”
“That’s that. Your effort to protect her is admirable, but what we want most is that woman. We’ll treat her much better than you ever could……”
“Puhahahaha!”
The one who burst out laughing in the middle of the serious atmosphere was me. And Chad.
“Puhahak, you’re insane!”
“Ahaha! I’m dying! Right? It’s hilarious, isn’t it, Chad?”
“No kidding! Where’s the pretty girl here? Did that bandit get his eyes poked out or something?”
First, I kicked Chad hard in the shin. Then I grabbed Rai and walked out from behind the table.
“I was trying to stay out of it because it was too much of a hassle.”
[Looks like the ones who want to bury their bones in the mountain are these guys! Bandits belong in the mountains!]
“How dare they single me out. That’s not going to work. Everyone get out of the way.”
These bastards don’t even know how scary a Spirit Master can be! They just had to go and yank on the nose hairs of someone who was quietly eating her soup!
I shoved Chad aside, shoved aside Lox who tried to grab me, and walked straight toward the bandits. I tried to storm past Ash with angry steps, but that was firmly rejected.
Ash grabbed me hard.
“Let go!”
“You can’t! Please don’t!”
I thrashed wildly, unable to control my temper, but I was no match for him in strength, so escaping Ash’s grip was impossible. The problem was that Ash knew exactly what I would do.
“I’ll solve this peacefully, so let go! How peaceful would it be if I just killed them all!”
“You do know what peace means, right?!”
“Peace means my side—us—not getting hurt!”
[I agree!]
“So let go! I’m going to kill them all!”
“Miss Jeanie! Calm…… calm down!”
My resistance grew so fierce that my captured wrist started bending in a strange direction. In the end, Ash wrapped both arms tightly around my waist.
His solid arms wrapped around my stomach in one go, and with my upper body pinned against his forearm, I couldn’t even move my shoulders. Ash held me with his entire body.
Wow. What a warm set of shackles!