Although the corpse was now lighter by the weight of its head, the sound of a burly adult man collapsing to the ground felt louder than expected.
“...Oh, fuck!”
That was enough to snap the bandit bastards out of their momentary daze.
“Kill that bastard!”
I did not know whether the fallen man simply had not been their leader, or whether they had never had a leader to begin with.
The moment one of the survivors shouted, bowstrings were drawn toward me.
‘TING! TING!’
The far right. And the second from the left.
The arrow flying from the right was weak enough for the Arcane Barrier to stop, so I left it alone.
I blocked the arrow from the left by swinging a piece of wood from the pile of firewood.
It was unfortunate that it was not a sword, but it was large enough to knock aside an arrow.
The instant I confirmed that the arrow had lodged in the wood in my hand, I aimed my staff at the second man from the left.
“...Ghk!”
A beam of light shot from the tip of my staff and pierced straight through his heart.
“Hey, fuck! You said he wouldn't be able to do anything!”
“You didn't know either, bastard!”
While they fell into confusion and turned on one another, I immediately aimed my staff at the second marksman.
“Khak!”
The beam of light extending from the tip of my staff pierced the heart of the man standing on the far right.
I had one use of light magic remaining.
And four enemies left.
That should be more than enough.
“R-Run... No! This is a tactical retreat!”
Apparently, blindly charging in with superior numbers counted as a tactic to them.
The loudest man among them shouted and tried to flee.
‘TAP.’
I took one step forward to close the distance and used Wind Blade.
Just like the first man, his head was separated from his body.
“If you draw a sword, you should be prepared to die. Did you think you could threaten someone else's life and shamelessly walk away alive?”
“““......”””
The same emotion appeared on the faces of the remaining three as they watched him fall without putting up any meaningful resistance.
Their only way to survive was to kill me.
The three bandits readied their respective weapons and began charging at me with slight delays between them.
“Die!”
The first of the three to reach me wielded a longsword.
I swung the chunk of firewood in my hand toward the gray blade sweeping through the air.
Had he been holding an axe or a mace, the blow would probably have been powerful enough to smash both the wood and my skull.
Unfortunately for him, what he held was a sword.
And not one sharpened finely enough to cut through firewood, but merely an ordinary blade.
“Wh-Why won't this...?!”
The blade became lodged in the wood I was holding, leaving him flustered.
I stepped closer and kicked him with my right foot.
“Khak!”
With a dull groan, he lost his grip on the sword and toppled face-first onto the campfire.
The moment the light disappeared, the surroundings were temporarily plunged into darkness.
It was the moment when a mage gained the advantage over a swordsman.
As long as I could recognize the mana reactions in the darkness, dealing with them was not particularly difficult.
“Aaargh! H-Hot...!”
The man tried to rise with the campfire burning across his back.
I cut through his neck with my third Wind Blade.
“You son of a—!”
A man to my right swung at me with a buckler strapped to his fist.
I plunged the longsword I had taken from the dead man into his upper body.
I drove it in hard enough to send the piece of firewood lodged on the blade flying away.
Unless he was an undead, he was obviously dead.
“Wh-What?!”
The first thing the last surviving man saw when the temporary darkness cleared was the corpses of the other two.
It was more than enough to leave him bewildered.
“You fucking—Aaargh!!”
Cutting off one arm of someone who looked away during battle was not difficult.
The right arm that had been holding an arming sword fell away from his body along with the weapon.
“Ugh, aaaaaaargh!!”
He clutched the place where his arm had been and dropped to his knees.
I picked up one of the swords lying on the ground and brought it to the back of his neck.
“H-Hiiik...!”
He immediately forgot even his pain, recoiling in terror from the threat before his eyes.
“P-Please spare me, my lord!”
“......”
“W-We failed to recognize you and committed a grave offense! Please, my lord, spare my life!”
He appeared to have no concern whatsoever for the companions who had fallen before him.
With only one hand remaining, he knelt and begged me for mercy.
“Guide me.”
“...What?”
“If you want to live, lead me to your base.”
“W-We're the only ones! I swear, there is no one else!”
“Spout that nonsense one more time and I'll cut off your left arm too.”
At the threat I made while pressing the sword toward him, he nodded with a deathly pale face, his body trembling.
“W-We do have a base. B-But these really are all our people....”
“Guide me.”
“M-My arm....”
“Would you like me to balance you out by taking the other one too?”
“N-No! I'll guide you!”
I grabbed the back of his neck and hauled him to his feet while he continued telling half-truths.
Then I picked up the arming sword of a suitable length that I had used to threaten him and secured it inside my cloak.
I had already used light magic twice in the previous battle, so I needed at least one secondary weapon.
***
The bandit guided me through the forest to a large house that appeared to be their base.
Judging by the size of the building, which even the tall trees failed to conceal, it could have passed for Baron Ormund's mountain villa.
If these bandit bastards possessed the skill to construct a base of this size in the mountains without Baron Ormund noticing,
they would probably have made far more money in construction than they ever could as bandits.
“Th-This way.... Th-This is our base....”
“It is larger than I expected.”
“Y-Yes, it is....”
“It is far too large for seven bandits. And a brick house in the middle of a mountain instead of a wooden one is suspicious as well.”
“......”
“More importantly, you are terrible at hiding your presence.”
As was usually the case with untrained bandits,
they were clumsy at concealing their presence when a stranger appeared.
Judging by the signs of two agitated people within the darkness,
it seemed unlikely that I could avoid another battle before taking the base.
“Kill this bastard! He killed all the boys—!”
‘SLICE—!’
The man realized there was no way for him to survive and began screaming at the top of his lungs.
I made him quiet with the arming sword.
‘TING! TING!’
Soon, I heard two arrows flying toward me from the darkness.
I blocked the first arrow with the body of the man who had been shouting moments ago.
I drew the arming sword from inside my cloak and deflected the second.
I immediately shifted my gaze and fired a beam of light toward the direction the first arrow had come from.
“Keugh...!”
The final scene revealed by the faint beam was a bandit archer with his heart pierced by Radiant Strike.
There were still too many enemies for me to waste time hesitating.
I whipped up a gale around the arming sword in my hand, shaping the wind to help it fly.
Then I hurled it with all my strength toward the direction the other arrow had come from.
‘SQUELCH—!’
“Khahak...!”
The dull scream from the darkness told me the man was dead without any need to confirm it with my eyes.
“What was that?!”
“What is all that noise?!”
From that point onward, all I had to do was bring down each enemy who appeared before me.
“What happened to this bastard...?”
“What the hell is this...?”
“You damned....”
The men who rushed out of the house all collapsed before my Wind Blades, uttering stupid remarks in unison.
“......”
After the final three fell, I could no longer sense any hostile presence.
Only the corpses of things that had once been human—or perhaps were less than human—lay scattered across the ground.
“Haa....”
I had only killed men worse than beasts, and it was something someone would have needed to do even if I had not.
Even so, killing actual people was still an unpleasant sensation.
I moved the corpses blocking the entrance some distance away, then entered the building through its open door.
Inside, I found five or six men and women lying on the floor with their entire bodies bound.
“...Huh?”
Most of them appeared to have lost consciousness from pain and exhaustion.
But one person among them was awake, and her eyes widened when she noticed me.
She had seen nothing but bandit bastards dressed like ragpickers, only for a properly attired mage to suddenly appear.
She had probably begun to hope that I was not one of them.
“Um, I....”
Of course, she still could not be certain whether I belonged to the same group as the bandits.
Words of conviction could not easily leave her mouth.
“I have eliminated all the bandits. You may rest easy now.”
“Ah!”
At my words, she let out a short exclamation and brightened as though she had finally seen hope.
It was time to finish what remained.
***
The rescue of the hostages held in the bandits' lair proceeded without difficulty.
First, I untied the young woman who had been awake.
Then I woke the others one by one and freed them from their restraints.
After that, the five or six captives and I immediately descended the mountain without delay.
Had I not rescued them that day, they would probably have been sold as slaves to a foreign country or distant region within a few days.
They seemed to understand exactly what kind of situation they had been in.
The moment we reached a safe place, they repeatedly thanked me.
“Oh, thank you, my lord! I don't know how I could ever repay this kindness....”
“We are truly indebted to you, sir.”
“For a time, I thought we were certain to be sold into slavery. But it seems there was value in holding on to hope until the end.”
From what I could tell, most of them had been abducted while passing through the Ormund territory, or had been attacked and captured while camping on the mountain behind the manor as I had.
Normally, no one would imagine that a band of bandits lived on the mountain behind a noble's manor.
In fact, many adventurers and merchants chose places near a territorial lord's manor as their campsites for precisely that reason.
It would be unfair to accuse these people of being careless about their safety over something like this.
This had not been my primary objective.
Even so, my actions had saved six lives.
Six lives far more valuable than those possessed by the dozen or so bandits who had died by my hand.
“I intend to take a carriage to Highgarden now. Would any of you like to accompany me?”
Three of the six men and women raised their hands in agreement.
The young woman who had awakened first and helped me rescue the others was among them.
As we traveled the same road in a carriage bound for the Highgarden territory, I gathered information from the three of them regarding the bandits' identities and methods.
Before long, the carriage crossed the border of the Ormund territory and entered the central region of Highgarden.
The moment we entered the outskirts of the city within the margraviate, two of the four passengers left the carriage first.
“You not only rescued us, but even escorted us this far. I hardly know what to do with myself.”
“Be more careful next time. Whenever you travel a long distance, make sure to hire an escort.”
“I will remember that without fail.”
Once only the young woman and I remained in the carriage,
she met my eyes and thanked me once more, just as she had before.
“Thank you so much for rescuing me. I will be certain to repay this debt.”
“I merely did what needed to be done. You do not need to concern yourself so deeply over it.”
“As the daughter of a fairly well-known trading company, I cannot simply wipe my mouth and pretend nothing happened.
Our company has several stores in the Highgarden Margraviate. If there is anything you need, I can repay you with as much as you require....”
She introduced herself as the daughter of the Wintemere Trading Company and began listing the rewards she could offer me immediately.
But the instant I heard that she was a child of the Wintemere Trading Company, there was only one thing I wanted to ask of her.
“This may sound somewhat strange as a reward, but would you be willing to testify?”
She readily nodded.
At that moment, a hunch flashed through my mind that the remaining matter would be easily resolved.