Two people sat inside a wooden building.
The man occupying the seat of honor was an old knight clad in full plate armor. A scar crossed his face diagonally, and when combined with the stubborn set of his mouth, he looked like the phrase ‘bullheaded warlord’ given human form.
“Let’s strike them all at once.”
The man speaking before the old knight was a middle-aged bandit.
He was thick-boned and powerfully built. A circular bald patch had formed on his head, and he had grown his beard long in place of the hair he had lost. Together with his upturned eyes, it gave him the savage impression of a wolf.
“What do you intend to accomplish with fewer than three hundred troops?”
“Do you know how much grain those fewer than three hundred bastards eat in a month?”
The bandit felt his insides boil whenever he looked at this old fool who understood nothing about reality and knew only how to swing a sword.
The old man prattled on about chivalry and ordered them to take only money when robbing people traveling to and from the territory.
The idiot had even forbidden the slave trade when slaves were the most profitable goods of all.
“We need at least one thousand troops to take the territory’s walls.”
“Then how long do you intend to remain here stealing pocket change? Don’t you want to reclaim the lordship that was taken from—”
CRASH—!
The old knight slammed a hand onto the table and cut off the bandit chief.
Damned old bastard.
He still had plenty of strength.
“…Watch your words.”
The bandit chief sneered inwardly at the display.
‘He doesn’t even know whose work puts bread in his mouth. It’s about time to end this relationship.’
“I’ll gather the troops, so let’s end it in a single attack. If you use only the capable men among your knights, opening the gate should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?”
“It will not be so simple…….”
“No one uses this mountain road to enter or leave the territory anymore. The last travelers were those wagons carrying goods for the territory not long ago. Since then, not even an ant has passed this way. Everyone travels by sea now, so we’ll be forced into piracy when that was never our calling. Meanwhile, your knights and soldiers refuse to participate in banditry because of their precious honor, yet they devour our food like pigs!”
‘How does it feel to have someone cut you off? Filthy, isn’t it? Have a taste.’
The old knight glared at the bandit chief with fierce, bulging eyes.
A line of cold sweat ran down the man’s back beneath the killing intent.
“Ahem. I became agitated and spoke out of turn. In any case, we have reached our limit. I’ll travel around the nearby territories and fill our ranks with vagrants or anyone else hungry and filled with spite. Then we can attack together. When I looked recently, even some of your knights appeared to be wavering.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The old knight tapped the table with his index finger.
He pretended to be an honorable knight on the surface, but there was an old serpent coiled inside him.
The bandit chief had realized long ago that the old man had forbidden pillaging and the slave trade only because of the knights and soldiers beneath him.
‘And what if I’m wrong? Hunger itself has us under arrest anyway.’
“…Very well. Bring our numbers to one thousand, and we will attack together.”
“Don’t change your tune later.”
The bandit chief rose first after concluding the discussion.
When he opened the door and stepped outside, he saw his subordinates waiting.
“Artist, you stay here and keep the men below under control.”
“As you command.”
A man who alone wore neat clothing answered while bowing playfully at the waist.
Despite being a fallen noble, the madman called himself a jester—or an Artist.
Even that gesture was supposedly one of his personal artistic acts involving satire and humor.
‘Bringing a bastard like that would only give me a headache.’
He acted insane at times, but he wasn’t stupid.
He could guard the base and monitor the knights to prevent them from attempting anything foolish.
Once the bandit chief seized the territory, he would slit every knight’s throat.
Those nobles did nothing but take what he gave them while looking down on him for being a bandit.
He first encountered the knights when he attempted to seize the choice prize that was the trading city of ‘Parque.’
At the time, they were dogs who had failed to protect their master and been driven away.
The bandits had clearly outnumbered the knights two to one, and the knights had been weakened after starving for several days.
Yet the bandits lost.
They even had their food taken.
‘They say you catch a fox with another fox.’
The old knight told him that he would allow the bandits to operate on this mountain if they obeyed the knights’ orders.
It had been filthy and humiliating, but until last year, enough merchants used this road that he had no choice but to comply.
He had consoled himself with the fact that they earned twice as much money as bandits controlling the roads near other territories.
But that was only true until last year.
Beginning this year, more merchants started traveling by sea.
Now it has become difficult to find anyone using this road.
‘Since it’s come to this, I’ll just take that city for myself.’
A person only lived once.
Even if he couldn’t become a king, he should at least become a lord before he died.
***
“Ah, I want to go outside too.”
He wanted to express the artistic passion boiling inside him.
His name was Tortien, and he called himself an ‘Artist.’
He ranked fourth among the entire bandit group, including the chief.
But with the chief, deputy chief, and strategist all away gathering troops, he currently ranked first.
“Is this the place?”
“They said showing this should be enough.”
The vagrants kept glancing around as they showed the gatekeeper a sheet of paper bearing the chief’s mark.
A bandit assigned to receive the new recruits led them away somewhere.
Chaff.
They had probably fled after farming somewhere.
“Not beautiful at all.”
Their skinny limbs, bent backs, and constantly trembling eyes possessed no dignity whatsoever.
Faces like those looked equally shabby now and when twisted in pain.
The true delight was distorting a majestic face with agony.
“…Is it about time I leave this place too?”
Tortien enjoyed watching people’s eyes as he killed them.
The eyes of a human standing on the boundary between life and death held a beauty beyond comparison.
But for several months, he hadn’t been given any opportunities for artistic activity.
When he lost patience and casually cut down several of his subordinates, the chief had thundered at him.
‘One of me is worth more than a hundred bastards like them. This is why ignorant people are hopeless. Tsk.’
Tortien jumped down from the watchtower where he had been standing.
He approached the gatekeeper, draped an arm around his shoulders, and asked a question.
“How many have arrived so far?”
“Y-Yes? P-Please wait a moment.”
The gatekeeper was horrified when the madman who killed people for amusement while calling it art suddenly put an arm around him.
He hurriedly checked the number of recruits who had entered the base.
The paper on which the gatekeeper kept his records read ‘258.’
“T-Two hundred and fifty-eight.”
“Really? The chief must be more serious than I expected.”
Apparently, the chief truly intended to carry this out.
Only a few days had passed, yet they had already gathered almost as many recruits as the number of original bandits.
At this rate, they would probably reach the one thousand men promised to the Rebels within a month.
“Aaargh!”
“S-Stop!”
The cries of new recruits being beaten by their seniors rang out from a distance.
It was the bandits’ initiation ritual, establishing the hierarchy through violence from the very beginning.
Barbaric.
“We should pull one big score and leave soon.”
***
Rustle.
The night sky was cloudy, without a single star.
Using the darkness as cover, a shadow climbed over the wall and quickly moved toward the tallest building.
Avoiding the gazes of the humans wandering around was extremely easy.
It hid inside the deep shadows beneath the walls.
Once all signs of others vanished, it climbed the wall with the speed of a wild animal.
RATTLE.
It opened a closed window and slipped through the gap into the room.
[Hm?]
The Goblin Assassin expressed confusion inwardly in its species’ characteristic phlegmy voice.
An unfamiliar human was inside the room.
Apparently unaware that the Goblin Assassin had entered, the man kept searching beneath the bed and through the drawer beside its head.
“Damn it. Feels like he should have emergency money hidden somewhere around here.”
The Goblin Assassin considered killing him.
However, its orders were to leave this object behind and withdraw without being discovered by anyone or killing a single person.
[Lucky human.]
Licking its lips in disappointment, the Goblin Assassin left the man, who remained absorbed in searching the drawer with his back turned.
It placed a box on the table in the corner of the room.
Then it departed as silently as it had entered.
“…What? It didn’t attack.”
After the Goblin Assassin left the room, Tortien stopped pretending to search and returned the dagger to its sheath.
Humming, he approached the table.
He had noticed the creature when wind entered the moment it opened the window.
“I was going to turn the joke around on it.”
He had planned to pretend ignorance, then bury a blade in its stomach when it attacked.
But it had simply left.
Boring.
“…What’s this?”
He hadn’t seen its face because his back had been turned.
Instead, he opened the wooden box left on the table.
Inside rested a glittering Crystal Orb and a letter written on parchment.
The letter explained the Crystal Orb’s identity and how to use it.
“…So the chief had a secret friend.”
Now he understood why the chief had suddenly gone out personally to gather troops.
According to the letter, Tortien had nearly been discarded like a hunting dog once the rabbit was caught.
“I’ll discard them first before they discard me.”
***
Roughly four hundred bandits descended along the mountain road.
At their head walked a lone man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a red cloak.
Beneath the cloak, he wore a pure-white shirt and black boots reaching his knees.
“Hey, is this right?”
“Weren’t we supposed to gather more men before going?”
“I don’t know, so shut up. Don’t irritate that lunatic for no reason.”
“If anyone gets fucked, it’ll be that bastard.”
Tortien led the procession down the mountain.
After walking for roughly one hour, they reached the fork leading toward the territory.
One road led directly to the territory.
The other headed toward the portal to the ‘Land of the Greenskins.’
“All right. Take the men down that road and hunt some goblins. I’ll train the two hundred newest recruits.”
“Suddenly?”
FWEET.
Blood sprayed from the veteran bandit’s throat, and he fell forward.
Gulp.
“It’s training. Training.”
“H-How many should we hunt?”
“Exterminate every last one.”
The Artist had no intention of leaving the insolent goblins alive.
Moreover, the veteran bandits who had grown more independent would certainly resist if he announced an attack on the territory.
It was better to take only the few who followed him and the naïve recruits who knew nothing and were easy to exploit.
“U-Understood!”
PATTER-PATTER.
Watching the corpse twitch intermittently as it formed a pool of blood, the veteran bandits hurried away.
Tortien watched them with satisfaction, then turned toward the road leading to the territory.
Ruining a picture someone else had worked hard to paint was another form of art.
HMMMM.
Not long afterward, the bandits stood in lines at the boundary where the Black Forest ended and the wheat fields began.
The eleven most recent recruits were gathered at the front.
“Stand exactly where you are!”
One man stood in the center of ten bandits, aiming a vibrating Crystal Orb toward the city wall.
Beams of light extended from the vibrating orb and connected to the ten men.
HMMMM.
As the light emerging from the Crystal Orb intensified, the ten bandits withered in real time as though a vampire were draining their blood.
[Karema tal kan ta!]
The incantation resonated from the Crystal Orb itself.
With a deafening roar, Destruction Magic fired toward the city wall.
SHATTER.
The magical barrier protecting the territory’s walls collapsed like breaking glass.
“Ghhhhh.”
The bandits connected to the beams collapsed onto the ground, having aged by several decades.
The novice bandit holding the Crystal Orb had his hand melted and fused to it.
The lucky survivor dropped to his knees, gasping heavily.
His clouded eyes stared at his aged reflection in the orb.
Rage gradually filled those dim eyes.
“Whew. That’s incredible.”
While Tortien admired the gift from the goblins, the explorers who had been wandering in confusion through the wheat fields fled toward the forest on the opposite side.
One of the five mounted bandits asked him a question.
“What should we do?”
“Deal with them.”
“Yes, sir.”
They were former mounted brigands who had joined recently.
The strategist had supposedly recruited them after finding five men robbing travelers along a back road leading to some nameless rural village.
When the apparent leader gestured with his chin, two of them rode forward.
They had apparently made decent money, because they possessed reasonably proper equipment.
One of the two died when the explorers fought back, and they allowed one woman to escape.
Useless bastards.
“Tsk.”
When Tortien clicked his tongue, the former mounted-brigand leader behind him rode after the woman.
The lasso he threw playfully wrapped around her neck.
Several bandits whistled at the sight.
They watched as the riders dragged the woman back by the lasso.
Then the Crystal Orb activated again.
HMMMM.
“You son of a bitch-!”
Realizing he had been used, the novice bandit aimed the Crystal Orb at Tortien in rage.
A milky-white light, weaker than before but still seemingly powerful, erupted from it.
The beams extending from the Crystal Orb absorbed the last remnants of life from the bandits lying nearby.
SLASH.
Tortien shot forward like an arrow and reached the space beneath the Crystal Orb in an instant.
His rapier lashed out like a switch, and the arm holding the orb fell to the ground.
Yet the ominous light still didn’t disappear.
Tortien picked up the arm fused to the Crystal Orb and aimed it toward the city wall.
KABOOM—!
Destruction Magic struck the wall once again.