Chapter 90: The Bear Eliminates the Bandits

Chapter 90:
The Bear Eliminates the Bandits

 

THANKS TO KUMAYURU’S “murderbear” act, we got the location of the hideout from the two lookouts. Now, what to do about them?

As I thought it over, Blitz and the others came into view. They seemed to be having a lot of trouble getting up the steep slopes. Glimos had the worst of it, with her giant sword. Relief washed over them at the sight of me.

“Yuna, are you all right?” asked Rosa.

“I’m fine.”

“How did it go?!”

“They were bandits.” The party looked over the men pinned under Kumayuru. “I got the location of the hideout from them, so I was planning on heading over there now. What should we do with these two?”

“It’s not as though we could bring them along,” Rosa mused, “and we can’t just leave them here either.”

“In that case, how about we dig a hole and bury them?” We could just dig them out later.

“Wh—please no!”

“W-we t-told you the l-l-location, didn’t we! Didn’t we?!”

“Ehh, you’ll be all right. We’ll make sure your heads are above ground and everything.” Though if we forgot about them, they’d be stuck there for the rest of their incredibly short lives.

“I’ll stay behind,” Glimos spoke after finally catching her breath. “This sword makes me dead weight. I’ll take these two and wait down there.” She pulled a rope from her item bag and started to tie up the robbers.

I nodded. “Right. If they’re lying, we’d have to question them again, after all.”

“In that case,” said Rosa, “we’re counting on you, Glimos. If we don’t come back, please tell the guild.”

Glimos obediently nodded at Rosa’s instruction, and I wondered when I last heard Blitz bother to give an order himself.

 

We left the two captives in Glimos’ hands and headed to the bandits’ hideout.

It looked like they were using the path heavily; the thing looked almost like an animal trail now. Once we were headed in the general direction, I’d be able to use my Detection skill and Kumayuru to narrow it down.

“Still, you know,” said Rosa, “I was pretty surprised there actually were guys there.”

“All thanks to my bear!” I wasn’t going to tell them about the Detection skill, after all. Well, Kumayuru had helped, so it wasn’t exactly a lie.

“I want a bear too…” Ran enviously hugged Kumayuru.

Hm. Good luck with that.

After traveling a while longer, several dozen human signals appeared, unexpectedly close. This was it.

“We’re just plowing forward right now,” said Blitz, looking anxious. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“It’s fine. We have my bear. Now all we need to do is get close.” I already pinpointed them, after all.

“But there’s a chance the bandits you caught were lying,” said Blitz.

Sheesh, this was such a pain. Kumayuru, please—and then, as if hearing my thoughts, Kumayuru reacted.

“Looks like my bear found them.”

“Really?”

“Yep. And they’re close. Do you need a break?” I didn’t—I rode on Kumayuru the whole time.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m also good.”

“I can keep going too.”

Cool. I decided to keep heading forward. Kumayuru flattened the vegetation and the three of them followed in its wake. The signals were getting closer.

“I think we’re almost there. Keep quiet.” The three behind me nodded silently. We brushed aside the vegetation and saw an open space with, farther on, the mouth of a cave. About ten guys lazed in front of the cave, with a bunch of women serving them drinks in the middle of the day. It was exactly as our two prisoners had told me.

The women were probably the bandits’ captives. Ugh. When I used my Detection skill to check, there were signals inside the cave too. Wish I could just magically know if this meant more prisoners or more problems.

“This really was the place, then.”

“Looks like they’ve got some hostages too.”

“What should we do?”

“I can take them all,” I said.

“Yuna, this isn’t the time to be playing around.”

“Hostages spell trouble, Yuna.”

“I think our only option is to take them by surprise.”

The three of them spoke in quick, hushed voices. The biggest problem was the women they captured. On top of that, the signals in the cave. Sooner or later, they’d notice their lookouts hadn’t returned. We didn’t have much time.

“Should we call Glimos?”

“It’ll take her a while to get here.”

“Then what should we do?”

This was useless. No mattered how much the three of them chattered, they weren’t going to come up with anything.

“If this is too much for you, I really can just go in by myself. That wasn’t a joke.” I wanted to hurry and get back. Didn’t I have a meal waiting for me? I ordered Kumayuru to start moving…

“Wait, Yuna. Let’s talk this over.”

Nah.

Kumayuru and I leapt into the clearing. It was about then that it occurred to me that, just maybe, this kind of thing was why I was always terrible at playing with a party rather than going solo. Much to think about.

“What was that!”

“A bear!”

“It’s a bear!”

Points for accuracy, guys. I jumped down from Kumayuru and, the moment my feet touched ground, created a deep pit under four of the robbers that stood farther away from the women. Down they went. They were probably going to be hurt once they hit the bottom, but they were lucky I hadn’t killed them.

“Kumayuru! Don’t let anyone escape!” I would’ve preferred Kumayuru protect the imprisoned women, but I didn’t want it to scare them.

“Who the heck are you?” The rest of the men wobbled together as they stood up, slow from all that idiotic day drinking. The moment they picked themselves up and stepped away from the women, I hurled air shots at them and blasted them back before dropping them in pits.

“Yuna, behind you!”

I turned around. A fireball hurtled towards me. At once I held my left, white bear hand up to the fireball and…the fire disappeared. Three men stood before me, staves in hand. They tried to lob magic at me again, but I deflected it to the side and fired an air shot at their heads. Wasn’t hard, considering I had target correction, and the air shot was invisible to boot. Dodging was almost out of the question.

“Kumayuru, could you?” If they could use magic, they could probably get out of the hole.

That left three men. “Who are you supposed to be?!” They gathered in one place and called out to me, holding a hostage in their clutches.

Probably best to just go for it. If I let them monologue, the other bandits might recoup. And then there was the cave… The cave worried me.

So I didn’t answer, but just launched air shots at the two men who turned their swords at me, sending them flying. Now there was just one guy left.

“Wha—” The man with the sword held close to the woman just…blinked for a moment. Now…strengthening magic! I closed the distance between us and grabbed the man’s sword with my white bear puppet. I could have just punched him, but didn’t want to risk knocking the sword into the woman.

“Let go!” The man tried straining, but the sword didn’t budge. “You monster!”

No quips. Just a punch to the face with my black bear puppet now that I had the sword more securely in my grip. He went flying.

“You okay?” I called out to the captive woman. Quivering, teary-eyed, she just nodded. Quivering because of the bad guys, right? Not that it mattered much either way—it was over. I was the only one left standing. All the women seemed fine, and Blitz and the others were running to the women and reassuring them.

“Yuna, you’re not hurt, are you?!” Rosa ran over to me.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you really? It looked like you got hit by magic.”

But I deflected it with my white bear puppet. It’s fine. “That’s not going to hurt me. So…could you take care of the bandits and the women?”

That was the point at which they emerged from within the cave. Several of them, all big, fierce-looking warriors. The man standing in the center gave off these weird vibes. He wielded a massive sword and a spiderweb scar ran across his face.

“What’s going on here?!” the scarred man looked at the situation around him and howled. “Are you the one who’s responsible for this?!” He wasn’t looking at me, but at Blitz and the others. “Are you…Blitz? And Rosa.”

Did they know each other?

“Omos, is that you?” asked Blitz. “What are you doing here, you scoundrel?!”

“I’m working.”

“Working?!”

“Did I stutter? I attack travelers on this road, steal their money, and take their women—easy.”

“Who’s that?” I whispered to Rosa.

“An adventurer we met a few towns ago. He’s powerful, but he’s a selfish, sexist old brute. No one could stand him enough to work with him, so he disappeared from the town. Even so, I never would have thought he’d turn to banditry.”

“Banditry? How dare you. This is adventuring work!” He flashed his teeth. “I got a formal request from the trade guild master.”

“From the trade guild?” Now that I hadn’t expected.

“You’re really going to tell us that?” Blitz sneered, standing tall before him.

“What does it matter? You’re going to die, boy, and your women will serve me drinks in the sun.” He burst into cruel, hacking laughter.

“You revolting beast!” Rosa screamed.

“You comely lass,” said Omos, with a thin, lopsided smile. “To think that fate would bring us to meet again.” He licked his lips. “How fortunate for me.”

Blitz drew his blade, and…the scarred man named Omos went flying.

Because I punched him. He just had a really punchable face, and besides, his yammering was getting on my nerves. I hopped onto him and punched him again. And again. I whaled on his black-and-blue face for a while, though I stopped short of sending him unconscious, of course.

“You bastard!”

Bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch!

“G-Get away!” he moaned. He reached his hand out to me.

Taking his criticism under consideration…

Bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch!

“St-Stop…”

Nah.

Bear punch, bear punch, bear punch, bear punch!

His face looked like something an amateur ceramics class would throw away. He tried to extend his hand out to me again…and I knocked it away and kept punching. The man’s hand limply fell to the ground.

“Ahh, now that felt good.” I cracked my knuckles and stood up. Oh. Huh. Blitz, the robbers who came out of the cave, and the captive women were all looking at me. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” someone stammered.

“Did you want a go at him too? You can’t really get his face anymore, but there are other bits. Go for it. I mean, don’t kill him, but go for it. We’ll question him later.”

“You held back…” Rosa seemed appalled at the sight of the man’s mess of a face. Looks like he might have gotten a few more scars? Good for him. Something to keep the bigger scar company.

Plus, something he said stuck with me—that he was asked to do this by the trade guild master. The adventurers who attacked me at the inn also said the same thing. At this point, I was starting to wonder if the man had even dredged up the kraken.

“So, are you going to come in quietly?” I asked the rest of the goons who came out of the cave with Omos. “Or do you wanna end up like him?”

The bandits looked at Omos’ face. The bandits looked at me. The bandits looked at the ground and then threw their weapons there.

“The cave,” I said. “You got any other friends in there?”

“No. Just got more women.”

We rescued the women from the cave, and recovered a bunch of stolen property while we were at it. It seemed they had horses and carriages at the foot of the mountain, so we made use of them. We tied up all the bandits, tossed them into a carriage, and headed back to the seaport.

“We really didn’t do anything,” said Ran.

“Yeah, and I can’t believe Omos went down that easily,” said Rosa.

Omos was conscious, but unable to move. He tried to make a commotion once when he woke up, so I used wind magic to toss him into the sky and let him hit the ground several dozen times––with an air cushion over the ground so he wouldn’t die, of course. When he fainted, I’d spray water on him and wake him up. He did beg for death a little, which was fun, but I wasn’t going to let him take the easy way out. There were a ton of things I needed to get out of him, and he needed to ultimately answer for his crimes…but not to me. To the women he captured and enslaved, the families of the people he butchered, and the starving townspeople.

We collected Glimos on our way back. When we got back to the town, the man guarding the gate ran over to us.

“This is…” He looked surprised to see us. And the kidnapped women. And the tied-up bandits.

“We caught all the bandits,” said Blitz. “We came to report that to the adventurers’ guild master.” And there he was, acting like the leader again. Ah well.

“I’ll report that immediately!”

The guard ran to the adventurers’ guild. While he was doing that, we helped the captured women off the carriage. They cried together. Hugged each other. I could imagine what they’d been through, but I didn’t really know what I could say to them. On top of the bandits’ treatment, there should have been the other people they left the seaport with—husbands, parents, kids.

And there weren’t any. Not anymore. So I said nothing, even as they went on thanking me.

This wasn’t Japan or a game world, but a fantasy world. A world. I couldn’t forget that.

After a while, Atola and a guild employee came by.

“Yuna! You really did apprehend them then?!”

“With Rosa and the others’ help.”

“We really didn’t do anything though,” Rosa said, but that’s not true—they had tied up the bandits, taken care of the kidnapped women, and driven the carriage. It wasn’t like I could do all of that.

“You’re kidding me. These are the bandits you captured?” Atola stared at the ones in the carriage.

“You recognize them?”

“They’re adventurers from our seaport. I was certain they ran because of the kraken, but…” She spat on the ground. “Bandits. Disgraceful.”

The former adventurers stared blankly at the ground, away from Atola’s gaze.

“We did hear something interesting from these guys we caught,” I said.

“Something interesting?”

I told her about the trade guild master.

“That is very interesting. I found out quite a bit myself too.” Atola smiled, and the smile was sharp and wrathful.