The adventurers participating in the quest faced three main types of enemies.
Grrroowwwwl! “Wolves! A pack of snow wolves is coming! Everyone, prepare for battle!”
First, there were the ferocious beasts that had developed a taste for human flesh.
These guys were mostly no big deal. A snow bear could be a problem, but wolves were beasts that even a rookie adventurer could handle one-on-one—unless you were a barehanded fighter. Those guys would just end up offering their arms as lunch for the wolves.
Anyway, our forces consisted of five iron-clad fighters and five bronze-clad ones… including the hired hands from the guild, we had over twenty adventurers. There was no way a pack of wolves could pose a threat.
Yelp! Argh!
The wolves, charging in ferociously, were reduced to screams and turned into merchandise for leather goods within seconds, as if it were their day at the butcher’s.
Smash!
Bardu, a bronze-clad adventurer, swung his spiked club and literally crushed a wolf’s skull. The snow wolf, with its top jaw completely torn off, fell over with a silly plop, while Jane’s arrow found its way straight into the throat of another wolf that charged in behind.
“I’m gonna feast on wolf meat for dinner tonight!”
Bardu licked his lips, smashing down the head of a writhing wolf with a large shield. Even though they were beasts, he felt hungry enough to be appalled by the sight of brain oozing out of a crushed skull.
This guy was definitely not the model adventurer one would expect.
“I don’t know, it smells too bad for me.”
I shook my head as I pierced one wolf from head to tail with my sword.
“Heh heh, that’s just because you don’t know how to eat properly!”
That sounded like something the deli owner who forced me to try cooked insect larvae would say.
“Is that so?”
I shrugged and kicked aside the wolf corpse to pull out my sword. If they don’t force me, why bother arguing? Compared to the larvae I didn’t even want to think about, wolf meat seemed like a delicacy.
—
The second threat was the roaming monsters that had escaped from the dungeon, but those didn’t seem like a concern either.
Maybe in the central or southern regions, but monsters in the north wouldn’t come outside the dungeon unless they had no other choice. They probably didn’t want to wander around in the freezing snow either.
Even the undead, immune to the cold, rarely strayed from their strongholds—unless they were being controlled by someone, like last time.
So, there was really only one final thing we needed to be cautious of.
The most common yet the most troublesome type.
“Wait, everyone, stop for a moment.”
“…It’s an ambush. About seventy paces ahead, probably bandits.”
Jane and Runnam, who were tasked with scouting due to their keen eyesight and hearing, halted the group and alerted everyone to the ambush up ahead.
It was bandits.
Those math-loving thugs who figured out that it was far more efficient to take rich people’s money instead of working hard.
They were the most troublesome enemies for the guild and its escorts.
Farmers who fled to the mountains to avoid taxes were nothing, but the specialized bandits who even set up camp would actively use whatever they had on their shoulders.
Traps, ambushes, hostage situations, night raids, deceptions, even fire tactics.
If deserters or adventurers mingled with them, they would employ basic military tactics or magic.
To put it bluntly, they were a massive headache.
I managed to scrape by thanks to my armor and Brunhilde’s sword skills, being the first to ambush them. But if they spotted us first and attacked, it’d be a tough battle just to barely save my skin.
Of course, right now, it would probably be easy to deal with them.
“Seventy paces… can we strike first?”
Rug, the team leader, slowed the wagon down with hand signals, asking the adventurers in the escort if they wanted to strike first.
“Well, we only have one magician… Hilde, what’s the range of your party’s magician?”
Amina pointed at Amy with a gaze. Since there was only Amy on this quest, the idea was to approach within the range of her magic and start the attack.
“Amy?”
“Uh, I haven’t measured, but I would guess around forty paces.”
Amy, who was being carried by Kikel, answered uncertainly.
“Forty paces… that’s a bit ambiguous. Ben, Hamill, grab shields. If any arrows fly, protect Runnam first.”
After hearing Amy’s answer, Amina brushed her chin with her fingers and ordered her party members to prepare for combat.
At a distance of forty paces, the bandit’s attack could arrive before Amy even managed to cast her magic, so the order was to be ready to lift shields at a moment’s notice.
In other words, we would keep approaching until we reached that forty-pace mark.
“Hm. That seems good.”
Bardu, who had been listening quietly, nodded in agreement. He stretched out lightly and approached Jane, who was at the front.
He placed a hand on her shoulder and started chatting and laughing with her casually.
A natural act, a wise decision.
Jane had a shield, but for some reason it was tiny like a pot lid, so it was probably only good enough to block a sword but wouldn’t withstand several arrows. It was necessary to have a front line equipped with a large shield right next to her for protection.
We advanced another thirty paces, and still there was no ambush from the bandits that Bardu and Amina feared.
Most likely, they were waiting for us to close the gap before jumping out with weapons drawn.
But that was a misunderstanding.
“Ignis Sagitta!”
The moment we got within forty paces, Amy, holding her magic book in her left hand, shot a fire arrow into the thick underbrush where the bandits were likely hiding.
Three flames erupted in the air, leaving long trails as Jane and Runnam quickly pulled their bows and launched several arrows.
Grah!
Gyaaaaaah! The fire, the fire!
The bushes echoed with screams and cries. A pathetic bandit with an arrow stuck in his head fell over dramatically, and another bandit struck by a fire arrow was flailing around like a human torch.
“No way! What kind of magician is this!”
“Damn it! Somebody pour some water on me!”
“Crap, they found us! Charge in! All hands on deck!”
The bandits, thrown into a panic as three of their group were suddenly engulfed in flames, scrambled.
“Ha ha! What a bunch of misfits!”
Bardu burst into laughter and spun his spiked club above his head as he charged toward them.
“Hamil, Ben, just in case, keep an eye on the wagon and horses. Runnam, you too.”
“Sure thing!”
Amina drew her sword and launched herself at the bandits, while Ben and Hamill took their wooden round shields and stuck close to the wagon, ready for any potential arrows flying at them.
And our party…
“I’ll, I’ll go earn the bounty!”
“Caw! Panic incoming! I’m throwing up!”
Kikel, who had put down Amy, charged with a thundering gait, bashing one bandit with his shield before skewering him with a spear.
The bandit trembled and fell, his tattered leather pants soaking through with a dark stain.
“What is this?! A monster, a lizard monster!”
“Caw!”
Kikel laughed in the face of a bandit shocked upon seeing a lizardman for the first time, swiping his tail at their waist.
Smash!
“Ahhh!”
“Don’t throw me here!”
The bandit screamed as his side hit the ground, only to be chopped in half mercilessly by Friede’s great sword.
The upper half of the bandit spun in circles, blood and guts spraying everywhere.
“Everyone’s pumped up, aren’t they?”
I leaned against the wagon, casually swatting away chunks of flesh flying towards my helmet, chuckling as I watched the adventurers vent the stress of the march through murder.
“…Aren’t you fighting?”
An escort guard beside me looked at me in disbelief and asked.
I wasn’t holding a shield, nor throwing arrows or magic—just standing there as a pure swordsman.
“It doesn’t seem necessary,”
I chuckled and shrugged.
I didn’t really need to join. In only about twenty seconds into the battle, nearly half of the hidden bandit’s party had turned into meat.
If I went in now, the battle would likely end after I took out just two of them.
Once the ambush failed and they fell into confusion, there was no reason for me to jump in when already smeared with blood.
Given that I hadn’t even washed yet, there was no way I could risk getting covered in blood.
Thus, I just stayed put next to Amy.
Is it even okay for me to slack off like this as hired escort?
Why not?
“Plus, if any other enemies were to attack us, we’d be a bit uneasy with just the iron guards and the magician, right?”
Well, there you go. I had a good excuse, didn’t I?
I wasn’t slacking off; I was keeping watch over the wagon. If any problem arose with it, I’d ensure to deal with the bandits and still collect extra pay.
All part of the job division. Protecting the money is more important than slaying enemies. That’s common sense for any adventurer.
“…Wow.”
“To just get away with that… truly ‘Thick-skinned’…”
Perhaps due to their lack of experience and skill, the iron-clad adventurers who didn’t grasp my deeper meaning looked at me with incredulous faces, chuckling to themselves.
—
The bandits who dreamt of striking it rich ended up wiped out, leaving behind only bare corpses stripped of anything valuable. They met their end worse than the wolves, which were already reduced to scraps of fur and meat.
“I absolutely can’t understand it.”
“What can’t you understand?”
As I watched the adventurers immediately sell the gear of the bandits they’d slain, I mumbled to myself, a sudden thought crossing my mind.
“Why on earth are these guys doing bandit work here? Even hiding in this freezing mountain.”
No matter how I thought about it, it just didn’t make sense.
“If you’re going to live hidden in the mountains, wouldn’t it be better to head south?”
It’s at least warmer down there. In the northern mountains, if you slack on heating even for a day, you’d turn into a popsicle.
I doubted that the heating costs wouldn’t exceed the income from banditry unless they were extraordinarily lucky.
“…True?”
Amy nodded as if she had gained enlightenment beneath a wild pear tree.
Though she hadn’t considered the question before, upon hearing me, she agreed it was indeed strange.
“If they try heading down south, it’ll be difficult to settle down properly. The bandits there have already established their turf.”
“Oh, I see.”
The young man named Hamill, who had been cleaning the blood off his axe nearby, answered.
Banditry seemed to be a competition with established territories, meaning the good spots were already owned, huh?
To break into those areas would require either crawling under the original bandit group or fighting them head-on to seize their hideout.
Any option usually resulted in a high chance of death.
“Looks like those guys have it hard too.”
“Indeed.”
They could just form an alliance like the ‘Forest Bandits,’ but apparently, such thoughts never crossed their minds.
Well, in martial arts novels, it’s said that authorities can’t touch the thugs due to some strange restrictions, so large-scale plundering clans could form.
But here, in a world like this, a bandit gang forming a large-scale alliance of a thousand? Which country would just let that happen?
The fact that bandits could establish a camp and act organized only happened when they didn’t upset the higher-ups.
Once they crossed that line, a sweep order would fall immediately.
I would bet they wouldn’t last a week before being utterly battered!
An organization that served only as a nuisance to the kingdom would be wiped out using armies, knightly orders, or even hero parties if necessary.
In the end, those bandits from Hervor were left with no choice but to endure the cold of the snow mountains stubbornly.
“If they had that kind of spirit, wouldn’t it be better to just do honest work instead?”
“Then they’d have to obey the law, right? Maybe they didn’t want to follow it.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
If they preferred to steal, kill, and wreck havoc, banditry seemed to be the only path available.
The first two were doable for adventurers too, but the third was so far out there that only those with exceedingly perverse desires would dare attempt it.
This world was crawling with every kind of monster, yet finding a lunatic who would try to assault goblins or giant spiders was rare.
Funny enough, the seemingly sane earth was full of cockfighting, goat wrestling, and all sorts of wild stuff, and there were even pictures of real goblins floating around online!
Isn’t this just proof that hope exists even in a world like this?
