A fairly wide plateau midway up the mountain.
Its back was pressed against the mountainside, the right was a cliff face, the left a slope of jagged rocks, and the front had a narrow sloping path.
Terrain where one could hardly be surrounded.
Hold the wooden palisade at the front, and it became a formidable natural fortress.
That was where the bandit hideout stood.
I was currently looking down at it from the summit.
The steep slope behind the hideout was the peak of this mountain.
At first, I'd approached from the front, where the palisade was.
That was the route the woman had escaped through.
But charging headlong into unfamiliar territory was reckless.
So I'd taken the long way around to reach this vantage point.
I studied the bandits carefully.
Just as expected.
They wielded weapons, but none were martial artists who'd trained their bodies.
Martial artists who could harness Internal Energy almost never resorted to banditry.
Mercenary work or even basic professional guard duty paid far better and far more safely than raiding.
That said, it wasn't unheard of. Occasionally martial artists, and sometimes even mages, did turn to banditry.
But those were exceedingly rare cases.
Time to go clean them out.
-You have a stupid habit of making easy things difficult.
That one was at it again.
The self-proclaimed Velkarion Asengrave.
But in reality, an eighth-grader Lich, my newest auditory hallucination.
I'd decided to go ahead and call it Velkarion, since that's what it called itself.
It had gone quiet for a spell, but now it was mouthing off again.
-If you could hunt a Seventh Circle Lich, you must've been at least a Sixth Circle dark mage. And yet you're choosing to fight with brute force like some idiot?
This was probably my subconscious crying out.
And honestly, it wasn't wrong.
Using Dark Magic would make dispatching these bandits far simpler.
But holding back on Dark Magic was the right call.
Regardless of discipline, the fundamental principle governing all magical phenomena could be summed up in a single phrase.
Equivalent exchange.
Standard magic expends mana to produce phenomena.
Spirit arts provide spirits with energy in the form of mana.
Divine magic operates the same way.
Holy power is consumed to produce low-level miracles.
And Dark Magic?
Offerings.
Any organic matter that has, or once had, life force can be paid as the price of Dark Magic.
The larger the specimen and the more life force it retained, the greater the magic it could fuel.
That was why Dark Magic was forbidden magic.
It began with the blood or carcasses of animals, then escalated to live animals, then to human blood.
All in pursuit of higher Circles.
And at the end of that road inevitably lay human sacrifice.
Before the regression, I'd dragged wicked men around alive to use as offerings for Dark Magic.
After obtaining the Liches' Life Seal Orbs, I'd used those instead.
So, restraint.
On top of that, all magical activity left traces.
No matter how you looked at it, it was dangerous.
The right approach now was to make the most of the power this body, Kalian Facial, possessed.
That said, I wasn't swearing off Dark Magic entirely.
If the moment came when it was necessary, I'd use even Dark Magic.
And so.
-How amusing, choosing the hard road when an easy one lies open.
I kept ignoring that eighth-grader Lich's drivel.
Ignore it long enough and it'll disappear eventually.
I kicked off the ground.
The fierce rush of wind beat against my eardrums.
Despite hurtling down the steep incline, my body maintained near-perfect balance.
It took fewer than five leaps downward.
In that short span, I'd already descended half the considerable slope.
Five more leaps to go.
On one of those leaps, I hurled a stone from my hand.
CRACK, SNAP!
The stone traced a razor-straight line through the air and struck the top of the palisade.
The upper plank shattered on impact.
"Wh-what the?!"
One of the gate guards yelped at the sudden destruction.
"Who goes there?!"
Another guard, taking it for an attack, bellowed.
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!
An alarm bell clanged furiously.
The simplest trick in the book: make noise in the east, strike in the west.
At the sound of the bell, every bandit's gaze snapped toward the palisade.
Several of the quicker ones grabbed their weapons and sprinted for the entrance.
The rest followed suit, all eyes locked on the palisade.
The gate guard cracked open a small viewing port and scanned the outside frantically.
Inside, a crowd of bandits had already gathered at the gate.
Impressive teamwork, at least.
TAP!
A light landing marked my arrival at the bandit hideout.
"What's going on?!"
One last bandit appeared belatedly.
A towering mass of a man, standing a full head above the rest.
That was the leader.
I could tell at a glance.
I had three stones left.
I took one in my right hand and drew my shoulder far back, loading the throw.
"Hey~ over here!"
I shouted, and in the same instant I moved the mana, the Internal Energy.
I focused my will.
In that instant, the Internal Energy in my Dantian responded to my will.
In a flash, Internal Energy stretched from my Dantian to the tip of my right hand.
Meanwhile, my shout had cast a momentary silence over the bandit camp.
Their thinking had stalled for a moment at the unexpected, unfamiliar sound.
The first to react was the tall brute. The leader.
"Who the hell......."
No conversation needed.
WHOOOOSH!
The stone I hurled cut a razor-sharp straight line through the air.
CRACK!
A crisp, clean impact.
And then.
THOOM!
The leader's massive frame toppled stiff as a board.
A puff of dust rose from the ground.
But the fallen leader didn't move an inch.
No ordinary body could withstand a stone thrown by a martial artist using Internal Energy.
He was already dead.
The two gate guards on the elevated platform were the first to grasp the situation.
"Th-the boss!"
"He's dead!"
As if they'd rehearsed it, each of them spat out exactly one line.
The dust cleared.
The stone embedded in the leader's forehead stood out with stark clarity.
"A-aaagh!"
"O-open the gate!"
A few of the sharper ones scrambled for the palisade gate's crossbar.
"Wh-why won't it open?"
"Push harder!"
Five men threw themselves at it, but the crossbar wouldn't budge.
Of course not.
They hadn't released the locking mechanism.
Well, from their point of view they'd run into a monster, so it was a natural reaction.
Even so, the pathetic display drew a sigh from me.
What to do?
The deliberation was brief.
WHOOSH!
I threw a stone.
CRACK!
The first man who'd reached the crossbar dropped dead without so much as a scream.
Every bandit, including those at the crossbar, stared at me as one.
"A kn-knight!"
"HIIIEEK!"
They pressed their backs flat against the palisade, whimpering.
Even then, they scrambled desperately to distance themselves from me.
I tossed the last remaining stone into the air and caught it, over and over, locking eyes with each bandit in turn.
Bandits generally came from one of two backgrounds.
Refugees who'd fled their lord's tyranny, or wanted criminals on the run.
But even refugees didn't warrant much sympathy.
It was the choice to raid and plunder others that was the problem, not the circumstance of being displaced.
Which made them excellent sources of funding.
I continued tossing and catching the stone.
The bandits' eyes clung to it as if magnetically drawn.
This stone had killed their comrades.
To them it must have been like the reaper itself, so it was only natural that their eyes were drawn to it.
I tossed the stone high.
Their gazes naturally followed it skyward.
And my body moved.
A single light push off the ground, and I was already in their faces.
Before their eyes could track back down from the airborne stone, I swung my blade.
SCHLICK-SCHLICK-SCHLICK!
The heads of the five men in the front row launched skyward.
The bandits who'd been watching the stone now saw the heads floating into their field of vision.
Their gazes latched onto the tumbling heads next.
Before they could even register what they were looking at, I swung the blade again.
SQUELCH, SHRRK!
The blade, swung with full force, carved through four more bodies.
This could not, by any stretch, be called a fight or a battle.
It was nothing but gratuitous violence.
Could human bodies really be carved apart this easily?
Even as I swung the blade myself, the overwhelming power felt almost unreal.
To think this was possible through sheer physical strength alone.
The more I considered it, the more formidable a knight's body truly was.
Screams erupted, and bandits fell one after another.
-Ugh, at this point you're just a butcher. A human butcher.
Velkarion was running its mouth again.
But ignoring it remained the best policy.
By the time the dying screams had become familiar, I stopped.
One last bandit remained.
No, the one I'd left alive.
During the slaughter, I'd intentionally spared him.
The man knelt flat on the ground, face pressed into the dirt.
While his comrades were being cut down, he'd thrown himself prostrate to save his own skin.
I stood at his bowed head.
He flinched once, but otherwise stayed frozen.
"You."
Only then did he raise his head.
"M-me? You mean me?"
"Yes, you."
He had a narrow jaw and even buck teeth, a face that called a rat to mind.
His behavior and his looks both screamed textbook opportunist.
Someone like this could be useful, however briefly.
"Lead the way."
The rat-faced man twitched in an odd way.
I'd seen that reaction just before.
The woman I'd saved from the bandit earlier had done the same.
Every time I spoke, she'd flinch or hesitate.
Whatever. What did it matter?
I ignored trivial reactions like that.
"Lead the way, I said. What are you waiting for?"
"Huh? Uh, where to......."
"Your leader's vault."
"Ah, ah! I know what you mean. There's no vault, but the boss hides his stuff in a secret storeroom."
"Right, there."
"Yes! I'll take you to the boss's treasure room!"
Exactly as his looks and behavior suggested.
The rat scurried through the corpses of his former comrades without batting an eye.
He walked into the very hut the leader had emerged from earlier, and without a moment's hesitation, pulled back the rug on the floor.
Beneath it was a trapdoor dug into the ground and sealed flat.
The rat opened it.
That guy had found the storeroom door without a moment's hesitation.
In other words, he'd known about it beforehand.
He'd clearly been biding his time for the chance to rob his own boss.
A rat-faced opportunist, through and through.
"What should I do?"
"What do you think? Bring everything out."
"Yessir!"
The rat scrambled below and hauled up everything stored inside.
Neatly bundled stacks of bills, precious metals, and more.
I found bags, sorted the loot by type, and packed it.
-That guy, that guy there is pocketing stuff.
The self-proclaimed Velkarion tattled.
Well, I'd expected as much.
This type was the quintessential opportunist.
Given the slightest opening, they'd move for their own gain.
Didn't matter.
He'd be buried on this mountain anyway.
"That's everything!"
Two things left to do.
I had the rat free the captive villagers.
I made sure to hand them a small portion of the spoils.
They needed at least enough funds to make it back to their village, or I'd never shake the bad taste.
"Thank you!"
"You are our savior!"
"Might we at least know our savior's name?"
I sent the grateful villagers on their way without delay.
The last remaining task was disposing of the rat.
With the bandit subjugation complete, I descended into the leader's underground storeroom.
I still needed to collect what the rat had hidden away.
The underground space was surprisingly well-made, with wooden planks lining the floor and walls.
-There, right there. Stick your finger in the knothole of that wooden panel and there's another compartment.
Velkarion chimed in enthusiastically.
-That rat bastard picked out only the Mana Stones and gems and stuck them in there.
I stuck my finger into the knothole and opened the hidden door. Velkarion was right.
But then I stopped.
"Huh?"
An involuntary sound escaped me.
Something was very, very wrong.