The Reason There Were No Bandits
"Kyaah!"
"Kyaah!"
"Kyaah!"
Clatter! Dozens of skeletons let out piercing shrieks and charged at Elsid, bones grinding with every step. Yet their advance was halted by the two swords he wielded, unable to close the distance. With his back still turned, Elsid lifted a foot and delivered a powerful rear kick.
Crash. One skeleton was sent flying into its companions, shattering their formation. The entire group of over a dozen had to pause and regroup. Seizing the opening, Elsid spun around and leapt straight into the heart of the broken ranks.
He cleaved through the neck bones of the lead skeleton that had lost its balance. Since he was fighting the already dead, his blades had long since left their scabbards, gleaming with lethal sharpness.
"As expected, this isn't enough, huh?"
Unlike zombies, severing the neck only slowed the skeletons—they couldn't see, but they kept moving. Elsid clicked his tongue and drove the hilt of his arming sword into the skull of one still clacking its jaw, shattering it completely. Only then did the skeleton finally stop moving.
With a faint smirk at the sight, he swung both swords in rapid arcs at the remaining skeletons swarming around him.
Slash! Crack! Whoosh! Snap!
The sounds of cutting and crushing blended together as the skeletons one by one became nothing more than motionless corpses. Among them were warrior-types armed with a rusty longsword in one hand and a round shield in the other, but it made no difference. Elsid deflected or redirected their strikes, turning their own attacks against one another.
Whoa... he's incredible.
Rain, watching from behind, felt the same awe he'd experienced when Elsid had single-handedly carved through hundreds of zombies with nothing but two swords. What he was witnessing now was the true meaning of a swordsman.
Slash!
"Haaah..."
By the time Elsid had felled the last of the skeletons blocking his path, he exhaled deeply. At his feet lay over a dozen skeletons reduced to scattered bone fragments. He then escorted the exhausted Rain to a safe position in the rear.
"Where have you been all this time?" Rain asked the moment they arrived.
"Ah, I spotted something suspicious on the cave wall while we were moving. I slipped away from the subjugation party to check it out."
"Suspicious?"
"Yeah. When I knocked on the wall, it turned out there was a hidden passage leading back toward the cave entrance."
He'd only left because of a bad feeling, moving quietly so no one would notice. He hadn't expected to actually find anything. Bored, he'd simply tapped the walls with his sword as he walked—and discovered the secret route.
"Then the reason we haven't seen any bandits while advancing..."
"They were using their own hidden passages to circle around behind us, planning to strike from the rear."
At the end of the passage, he'd found the bandits grinning maliciously, ready to ambush. "Fortunately, I broke all their legs and tossed them at the cave entrance, so there's nothing to worry about. Just in case any tried to crawl away, I dislocated their shoulders and tied them up too."
The rear guard had numbered fewer than fifty, all low-ranking thugs. With rope conveniently found in the bandits' saddlebags near the entrance, Elsid had been able to bind them thoroughly without trouble.
"Is that really true?"
"Yeah. You'll see when we get out."
"I... see."
The brief, matter-of-fact exchange ended, and Rain finally accepted it.
"So, what are you going to do now?"
"I'll stay here. I'd only get in the way if I followed."
Elsid had asked the resting Rain, who replied that he'd only slow them down and would remain in the rear.
"Got it. Rest up."
"Be careful, Elsid."
After exchanging farewells, Elsid pressed onward while Rain stayed behind to recover.
"I was wondering where you'd gone. So you're here?"
While resting, Rain encountered an unwelcome face.
"Kane. What about your followers?"
Kane appeared before him alone, his face smeared with dirt.
"Hmph. They were only good enough for odd jobs in the Black Wolf Knights anyway. Plenty of people would lick my boots just to get scraps from me. Why should I care about them?"
"Even knowing that, you still keep them around..."
Rain couldn't hide his disappointment as he compared the old friend standing before him to the swordsman he had just witnessed. Once again, he wondered—why had this person changed so much?
***
While the two former friends argued bitterly in the rear, Elsid continued deeper into the cave. To his surprise, he arrived at a chamber where torches lined the walls, illuminating everything clearly.
"Ugh... save me..."
Even more shocking was what he found next. The moment he stepped inside, Elsid saw a middle-aged man wearing a yellow hood, his face covered in a thick beard, clutching a bleeding neck as he died.
"A monster..."
Thud. The man muttered something, but his words trailed off as he collapsed to the ground.
"He's dead."
Elsid approached and checked for a pulse. The man was gone. Without any chance to act, the bandit—likely one of the hideout's guards—had passed into the afterlife.
Just then—
Rumble.
A strangely familiar vibration rose from beneath the earth.
"Kyaak!"
"Kikik!"
"Kyagyak!"
As expected, when the tremors ceased, undead appeared before him.
"A full set this time, huh."
The undead consisted of both zombies and skeletons, each in animal and human forms—four types in total blocking Elsid's path. Yet after fighting so many, he had begun to understand their patterns. Whether animal or human, they all moved purely on instinct. Their attacks lacked any feints, and even in groups they failed to coordinate. Their combat style was utterly one-dimensional.
Thanks to that, Elsid could freely practice swinging his swords in real battle. He didn't need a sparring partner. Torches lined every stretch of the path, so he never had to worry about darkness.
"Still, this is tiring."
The only real problem was the lack of rest between swings. He'd walked quite a distance past the dead bandit guard, yet there wasn't a single person in sight. Why were skeletons and zombies in a bandit hideout? He wanted answers as soon as possible.
While lost in thought, Elsid's expression suddenly hardened.
"So that's what it was..."
He had spotted it—an open clearing large enough for hundreds of people, and at its far end, a red door. The red door looked strangely familiar.
Rumble.
At that moment, the ground shook. Countless hands burst from the earth, and hundreds of zombies and skeletons began filling the clearing.
"Feels like I've met every undead I'll ever see in my life, all in just a few days."
The sight reminded him of the dungeon he'd explored with Rain's party days earlier. But the real surprise was yet to come.
Thud! Thud! Boom! Boom!
The tremors grew stronger, like the beating of a massive drum. Elsid felt the ground itself reverberate. Then he saw the source.
"A chimera..."
A creature with a scorpion's tail, a lion's head, bat wings on its back, horse legs, and the thick torso of a cow—parts of countless animals fused together. The chimera appeared alongside hundreds of undead.
For a moment he mistook it for a manticore from the monster encyclopedia, but far too many different creatures had been combined. And unlike the rotten minotaur-centaur he'd seen before, this one was...
Alive.
Its body radiated vitality with no trace of decay, and its eyes held charisma rather than madness. It was not dead. The chimera stood before him, unmistakably alive.