Chapter 335 - 335: Rigel vs Bandits

The instant the first one collapsed, the remaining seven's movements all dulled at once.

Fear stood first, and shouts burst late.

"Y-you! What did you do!"

"I only threw a stone. …Well, if it hits the forehead you die."

Rigel returned it calmly and lightly pulled the reins as if killing the carriage's sway.

He did not drop speed.

Because the instant he stopped it would be a pain to have them tangle onto the carriage.

The bandits scattered left and right and tried to circle around.

At the forest edge shadows were thick, and the footing was slippery with dead leaves and twigs.

Rigel rolled two small stones at his fingertips.

The next instant.

The stones flew becoming lines and accurately smashed two men's throats and eyes.

Even the groans were short.

The fallen bodies rolled on the ground, and blood wet the leaves black.

"Hi…!"

Behind, Miena's breath caught.

She had seen it.

Even not wanting to look her eyes had chased it.

Before understanding caught up her body put rejection on the surface.

"You don't have to look."

"But…"

"Cover your ears and lie down in the back. I'm here. There's nothing to worry about."

Five remaining.

They seemed to have finally understood they could not win by a frontal approach.

There was no one who charged in.

Instead one arrow flew.

The aim was the horse.

"Naive."

Rigel only swung his sword lightly and deflected the arrow.

A metal sound rang, and the arrow stopped stuck in a tree.

The bandits visibly flustered.

"Uoooooh!!!"

The one who lost patience was a man holding a thick-bladed axe.

He probably intended to keep his sanity with spirit and anger.

He leapt in together with a war cry.

Rigel got down from the carriage.

He put his feet on the ground and entered the axe's trajectory by only half a step.

A dull feel.

Then the sound of the bandit's knee crushing.

He dropped an elbow where the man collapsed.

The head was struck against the ground. It ended there.

The forest fell silent as if nothing had happened, and the silence stood out all the more cruelly.

"W-what the hell is this guy…!"

"No matter how you look at it… too strong!!"

Two bandits tried to flee.

But they fell the instant they turned their backs.

Stones split the backs of their heads, and their necks folded at a strange angle.

With this only two remained.

Both discarded their weapons and put their knees in the mud.

What had been a wolf pack until just now suddenly made puppy eyes.

"W-wait! We have money! Don't kill us here!"

"We were wrong! Forgive us!"

The begging for life scattered in the forest as a grating sound.

Rigel did not reply.

If he replied it became conversation.

Conversation called feeling.

It was a pain.

First one.

At a speed the eye could not catch he stabbed his sword into the throat.

It ended with only breath leaking.

Then the last one.

He increased his words even more.

The quality of desperation was different.

"Wait wait wait! Information! I'll give information!"

"Information?"

"There's valuables at the hideout! Not only that, there's an adventurer party we ambushed and captured! Young women!!"

Miena trembled small.

Not so much at the filth of the words as at the reality contained there.

Rigel looked down at the man and asked in a voice without feeling.

"The place."

"I'll tell you. I'll tell you so… let me go! That's the condition!!"

A condition.

Negotiation.

Bargaining.

Rigel for only an instant chased the swim of the man's gaze.

His gaze was sucked many times toward the depths of the forest, the shadow of a slope.

A scrap of cloth caught on a branch.

A beast path trampled.

There were no wheel tracks, but there was coming and going of people. Only there it was strangely "alive."

"That's enough."

"Ha? H-hey, wai—"

Before he finished speaking the man's head flew.

The body arched without force and fell backward.

Blood drew an arc and scattered heat on the dead leaves.

Quiet returned to the forest.

Miena timidly peeked her face from the carriage.

Her gaze tried to avoid the corpses and bounced unable to avoid them.

Her throat sounded, her lips dried.

"M-Master… that person just now… didn't say the place…"

"No need to make him say it."

"But at the hideout there are people captured…"

"The geography is in my head. The undulations around here, the breaks in the forest, places easy to hide. The position bandits stop a carriage, the way they take escape routes. All of it becomes hints connecting to the hideout."

Rigel announced it matter-of-factly.

In truth making the bandit spit the hideout's location would have increased certainty.

Even if there was a possibility of being told a lie, more information sources was better.

There was also the option of asking, then breaking the promise and killing.

But that was impossible in front of Miena.

Before her he did not want to break the outward appearance of "a man who keeps promises."

To eventually execute a pleasant rape operation involving Siena, that was a line he would not yield.

"…Now then."

Rigel wiped his bloodied fingertips with cloth.

Then he returned to the driver's seat as if nothing had happened.

At that smoothness Miena swallowed her breath small again.

"Sit properly. We're making a detour."

"A detour…?"

The voice asking back was small, yet not one for fleeing.

Because she was scared she wanted to confirm.

What she would be dragged into from now.

"We're going to the hideout. Valuables and the captured bunch, I'll recover them."

Recover.

Not rescue, recover.

In the choice of words Rigel's values seeped.

But in the end what he would do was the same.

"…Will we be all right with just us?"

"You saw. I'm strong. There's no problem at all."

The reins sounded.

The horse neighed.

The carriage left the road and slipped onto a side path stretching into the forest.