I tore and killed. I slashed and stabbed. I angled my sword to knock aside the spearpoint thrusting toward me, then took the sword stabbing at my back with my body.
I trusted my armor and trusted myself. On top of that, I trusted the enemy’s shortcomings.
The enemy was made up of bandits. A sword could certainly be a threatening weapon against armor, but only when wielded by an enemy skilled enough to accurately thrust into the gaps in armor.
It would be different with a dagger that could do nothing except ‘aim for gaps in armor,’ or a blunt weapon that could inflict a considerable impact by striking anywhere. But there was no way an ordinary longsword could stab me to death.
I kept moving. If I swung my sword honestly from a fixed position, five or six people would swing weapons at me every time I swung it.
I kept turning my body so that there would be no enemy thinking, ‘I am safe right now.’ I made sure to kill the enemy I targeted, making the bandits before me tremble in fear.
I constantly thought about the movements I needed to make and carried them out. I removed the dangerous enemies in order and certainly avoided the attacks I had to evade.
“Y-you bastard!”
‘Ah.’
The man who appeared to be the leader of the Bandit Gang swung a heavy morningstar at me.
‘That won’t do.’
I could block it with my sword, but even my sturdy blade would be strained if it took that impact head-on.
“Hup!”
I sharply twisted my body to the side and avoided the attack. At the same time, I cut off the arm of the enemy beside me.
“Ugh, ughhh!”
‘Is this the last one?’
Excluding the one man fleeing, only the leader of the Bandit Gang remained.
‘It was not easy.’
The bandits’ morale was not high. When their comrades kept dying right beside them, it was in a bandit’s nature to turn his back on the enemy. Yet these men had fought me and died almost to the last.
The reason they had been able to fight for so long, to a degree unbefitting bandits, was probably because their leader was still alive.
‘It is a little inefficient, but…….’
The way to win efficiently on a battlefield without taking losses was, naturally, to break the enemy’s morale. And the easiest way to break morale was to kill the enemy leader.
But I had not done that. No, I could not.
‘If I truly meant to fight him, he was not an enemy I could not kill, but…….’
Killing their leader was something that had to be done very carefully.
I could not strike his head, cut off his arm, or stab his heart.
I had to cut off his head. At the precise moment, with an attack not a hair’s breadth off the mark.
He was not wearing proper metal armor like mine. If I stabbed him with my sword, there would be a little resistance, but I could pierce his heart well enough.
But I could not do that. I could not compromise when such an opportunity lay before me.
“Die, you rat bastard!!!”
He seemed to have mistaken my failure to attack him until now for fear. That was not it.
“Who knows…….”
I corrected my stance and swept my sword out before me, checking his advance. I took a stance in which, if he pressed his body even one step closer to me, he could not avoid being cut by my blade.
“Tch!”
He corrected his stance again. At that moment, a voice came from behind me.
“We will help you!”
Iris and the other mercenaries ran up. It seemed they had already finished dealing with the enemies who had slipped behind me.
“Only surround him! Only surround him! I will deal with this man myself!”
Tense as I was, I stopped my mercenaries from killing the leader of the Bandit Gang.
I had kept him alive with such difficulty. I could not let my subordinates spoil things.
“You are saying you will kill me alone? Me?!”
“Because you are not that remarkable.”
‘Remarkable people’ were rare in this world.
In my mercenary company, that meant me, Iris, and Dana. Other than those three, the rest were not exceptional people. They could die at any time and be replaced at any time.
The role of such utterly ordinary people was not to achieve results beyond their limits through their own ability and skill.
It was to show results commensurate with what had been invested in them. In other words-
‘A rack.’
An armor rack. A weapon rack.
To last a long time in their place when given high-quality armor. To show results worthy of a good weapon when one was placed in their hands.
The enemy was no different.
From the beginning, I had not feared the leader of this bandit gang. His skill with weapons and build were a little better than those of the other bandits, but he was still ordinary in the extreme.
What I had been looking at—or, more precisely, coveting—was the armor he wore and the helmet he had on.
A kettle hat. A helmet that looked like a steel pot. It was nothing special, but it was still a steel helmet that could do the basics well enough.
Gambeson armor. Armor made of thick cloth and leather. Wearing it would not let someone ignore several attacks as I could, but it was far stronger than having nothing.
In this world, armor was a human right. A mercenary made to stand on the front line without armor had to overcome the peril of death in every battle.
And though I did not know where he had obtained it, he was even wearing a breastplate made of steel plate.
It did not protect his sides or back. It was merely a plate of steel capable of protecting his chest, but it was armor all the same. It was an item that could preserve the life of a mercenary standing on the front line.
I had been aiming for it from the beginning.
“Hyaaaah!”
The leader of the Bandit Gang came at me. Perhaps his patience had run out, because his movements were far too clumsy.
“Ha.”
With my sword, I lightly stabbed the fingertips of the bandit gang leader rushing at me. The one place not protected by armor or helmet.
“Aaaaargh!”
‘Now!’
While avoiding and blocking his attacks, I had not injured him even once.
I could not let that ‘fairly good’ armor and helmet be damaged by my sword even a little.
After gripping my sword again, I thrust accurately at the bandit gang leader’s neck.
“……Ha.”
I succeeded. Blood flowed from his neck, and he collapsed forward.
It seemed I had gained quite a lot from this battle.
***
“All right, shall we sort things out?”
We collected the loot. We moved the corpses to one side and recovered everything they had carried.
There was not much food. But from time to time, we found a few gold coins and medicinal herbs the men had hidden in their pockets.
“The gold coins…… Seventeen Gold altogether. That is quite a lot for a bandit gang.”
Unless they were proper adventurers or a wealthy competing mercenary company, bandit bastards like these did not carry much money.
But the real profit was elsewhere.
“Anna will wear the gambeson armor and breastplate we obtained this time.”
“I do not think I rendered such a great service.”
“In my mercenary company, weapons and armor are distributed to the people who need them according to my judgment. No objections will be accepted.”
Depending on the situation, it would not be impossible to have a system that distributed loot ‘to the people who rendered merit.’
But I did not want that. To lead a mercenary company with so little to live on, I had no choice but to enforce efficient distribution.
“Jema. This morningstar is yours. It will feel somewhat different from an ordinary club, so get used to the weight and its center of gravity.”
“Understood!”
Perhaps because it had been the weapon used by the bandit gang leader, its condition and quality were better than the other weapons.
It was not special. If we entered the workshop of a capable blacksmith, it was something we could buy with gold coins.
But we did not have enough money to spend gold coins on weapons. Not yet.
“Niv, use that spear. It will only be a secondary weapon. Ember, take the dagger.”
After distributing the weapons appropriately, I tied up the remaining weapons with rope.
“We can keep the rest, then sell them or give them to other mercenaries.”
It had been a fight that put our lives on the line. In truth, every battle our comrades faced at this stage was no different from a fight that put their lives on the line.
Even I, who was comparatively strong, could have died in this battle if I had been terribly unlucky. That Anna and Jema, who stood on the front line without armor, had not been injured was no different from one hundred percent luck.
But the gains were not small. The gambeson armor worn by the leader was of quite good quality and sturdy, and the breastplate was the sort of item that made one think, ‘Did he scavenge this off a knight’s or wealthy mercenary’s corpse somewhere?’
Including the helmet, the likelihood of Anna dying in one blow had decreased greatly. I would not have to worry about an unexpected accident collapsing the entire front line and the rear disappearing like snow under the sun.
“Let us return to the merchant.”
The fact that the merchant had not run away was good news for me as well.
Even if they abandoned us and fled, realistically we had no way to punish them.
They could conceal the fact that we had made a contract here, arrive in another village or city, then falsely accuse me and try to wipe us out to the last person.
‘They did not go that far.’
My proposal did not seem to have offended that merchant.
‘We live.’
Until we arrived at the next village, we would not go hungry. Using the Gold we had secured, we could solve some of the problems we had put off.
Receive treatment at a temple and restore our mercenaries’ bodies to normal, meet a blacksmith and repair my armor, buy armor that could protect my mercenaries’ chances of survival even a little.
‘Ha…….’
It would not be easy. But compared to the situation where we had been worrying about food, it would be acceptable to call such concerns a luxury.
With a forced faint smile, I returned to the merchant.
***
The merchant was looking at me with admiring eyes.
“Y-you were truly amazing!”
“Ah, is that so?”
“I was watching from the back as well! The way you charged bravely at those bandit bastards alone, cutting them down like the knight in a martial ballad!”
“Thank you.”
The merchant was greeting me excitedly, like a young female fan who had seen an idol.
It was a little sad that I had to tell someone like this the reality. But what had to be done had to be done.
“There were sixteen.”
“Yes! There were so many! But you dealt with all of them-”
“According to what we discussed at first, there should have been at most around ten of them.”
Things that needed to be addressed had to be addressed.
“U-um. That is…… It was an urgent situation, so it was difficult to determine their numbers.”
“I see. The bandits you ‘estimated’ at ten became sixteen. In that case, perhaps you can ‘estimate’ the four hundred Gold we agreed upon at six hundred Gold instead?”
I looked at the merchant with a solemn gaze.
Because if I put even a little more force into my eyes now, I might be able to squeeze out a little more money.