Chapter 2: Discovery to Looting

The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary — LNCrawler · All chapters

Chapter 2:
Discovery to Looting

THE BANDIT CAMP was surprisingly easy to spot—mostly because they hadn’t made any attempt to conceal it. On the other hand, by sheer numbers they were a force to be reckoned with; their combat potential rivaled that of a small army. Until the kingdom mustered a force large enough to quell their looting, nothing in the area presented a threat to the bandits. What was there to hide from?

“I was expecting this, but seeing them firsthand is something else,” Lapis murmured.

They were about a stound—one-twelfth of a day—out from the destroyed town. The bandits had lit a large fire right in the middle of the open plains, so imposing a sight that their lax security was unlikely to get them in any trouble.

“They’re doing whatever they please, but I doubt they’re going at it without any thought at all,” Lapis muttered, frustrated. With nowhere nearer to hide, they were keeping low in a slight depression just out of range of the camp’s firelight.

Since two hundred bandits weren’t worried about head-on confrontations, their main concern would be surprise attacks and traps. Rather than choosing terrain in which to hide, which would hinder their own view, they set up a camp that ensured full control of their surroundings. Were they really canny enough to do that on purpose? Impossible to say, but the results spoke for themselves. It would be safer for Loren and Lapis to operate on the assumption that these bandits knew their stuff.

“We can’t just think of them like they’re idiots. We should accept that they’re a little clever when we make our move,” said Lapis.

“Yeah, that’s all well and good. But I can’t really see our angle here.”

If they came out of hiding, the lookouts would see them. Even if they wanted to cobble together a plan, there was nothing but open fields all around. No cover, no distractions, no nothing.

Loren was a mercenary of considerable skill, and he was more or less aware of that. What he wasn’t conceited enough to think was he could cut through one hundred foes, let alone double that.

“The cliché would be to attack with fire or water, but I don’t see how we’re doing that here. Even if we could set up a trap, we can’t make something big enough to take out the whole lot.”

“You sound pretty knowledgeable, Mr. Loren.”

“I’ve been on both sides of this coin before. And this bet’s no good.”

There was nothing nearby to burn, and no river or marsh to lure the bandits into. Empty plains stretched in every direction, granting no options for either offense or defense. That did go for both sides, and it would have been a different story if they were equally matched. Unfortunately, the gap between them was despair-inducingly wide, with nothing to fill it.

“You have a point. Of course, I could always use a bit of large-scale magic to annihilate them, even if it means overexerting myself.”

“You can use magic like that?” Loren asked.

“Who do you think I am? Even if I don’t have my limbs and eyes, I’m still a powerful demon. I even have my left arm back now.”

Lapis waggled her left hand as she said this, but Loren found it difficult to believe. He knew that powerful magicians could turn a war on its head, but taking out two hundred enemies with one spell? That was a fairy tale.

“Of course, it wouldn’t be without paying a hefty price. I’d like to avoid that if possible. And so, Mr. Loren, there’s one thing I want to ask you.”

They were huddled in a small indent, keeping as still and small as possible. Lapis stared hard at him, well within the boundaries of his personal space. Even in the darkness of the night, with only the faint glow of the distant camp, Loren could see it in her eyes. She was looking right through him; she knew about Scena.

“I believe we should put all our cards on the table. What do you think?” she asked.

Loren had never told her about Scena, the girl who had become an undead monster and now lived within him—or rather, within his astral body.

He had been saved a few times by Scena’s power over death, and he was pretty sure Lapis already had it all figured out. She had merely pretended she didn’t until he was willing to cough up a proper explanation.

Bringing it up now meant she was placing her bets on Scena’s power—likely because there was no other alternative.

“It’s reasonable for you to be wary of me,” Lapis said. “I understand that I’m no one to trifle with. It’s just a little sad that you don’t trust me…”

“No, well, you know…”

She seemed truly let down, her face clouded over, and Loren felt guilty for ever having kept the secret.

“However, considering our current predicament, I think it’s time to yield and offer me some information. How does that sound to you?”

Scena sent him one last thought. <I think we should just be honest with her about it, Mister. It hurts my heart to keep her out of the loop.>

It seemed she agreed with his feelings on the matter. It seemed to Loren that he wouldn’t get a better opportunity to come clean.

“It’s about Scena,” he said. “The girl we failed to save on that quest…”

Lapis cut him off, “Understood. I take it that means you’re finally ready to talk?” Taken aback, Loren nodded. Lapis went on. “Then am I right in assuming that Ms. Scena used her powers as a Lifeless King to rent a room within your astral body? That your soul usually serves as a cover so it’s hard to tell, but if she exudes her astral body, she can use a portion of her powers?”

“So you already knew.”

Of course she did.

“There’s a big difference between having a hunch and receiving confirmation,” Lapis told him, her voice low and her face serious.

“Are you able to see Scena?” Loren asked.

Lapis shook her head. “I can’t. I felt you giving off a strange aura, and I thought that aura resembled that of the Lifeless King we encountered. Later, when you used those abilities, I got a somewhat clearer grasp of the situation.”

“That’s still amazing.”

“Oh, I’m not that great. And so. Now we can put a plan together.” Lapis smiled and placed a hand on Loren’s shoulders. Then, before he could grasp her meaning, she nonchalantly told him: “All right, Mr. Loren. Go charge in.”

“Hey, now… You want me to die?”

She made it sound so easy. From where he stood, rushing two hundred former mercenaries alone wouldn’t turn out any kind of pretty, even with the element of surprise on his side. It was clearly idiotic—he didn’t even have a million-to-one chance of survival. He had to wonder if he’d done something to make Lapis hate him.

“I’ll provide support, don’t worry.”

“But I’m still…gonna die, right?”

“The match will be settled once you cut down the first few.”

She didn’t seem to be joking around, and it didn’t sound like she wanted to send Loren to his death. Even still, he didn’t see any chance of victory.

In contrast to his anxiety, Lapis looked completely convinced. “I wouldn’t attempt this plan if it were you alone, Mr. Loren. But it should be a different matter with Ms. Scena. I think we have a good shot.”

“You’re serious…”

The two of them stood no chance against two hundred. Twenty of them wouldn’t have stood a chance, but here Lapis proclaimed her confidence in Loren on his own. To be honest, he didn’t really get her angle, but she seemed absolutely certain. Not only that, but Loren didn’t have any better ideas. Unable to refute her, his only options were to take her offer or turn and leave.

“This is crazy talk. Can I believe you?”

“Just leave it to me, Mr. Loren. I don’t plan on losing you here, and I don’t plan to be done in by bandits.” She patted her chest, everything he could read in her expression devoid of lies or hesitation.

I’ll trust her then, he decided, lowering his sword from his back and gripping the hilt with both hands.

“Mr. Loren, I cannot converse with Ms. Scena. Is she able to hear my words through you?”

“Yeah, she said she shares my sight and other senses.”

“Then please listen to me, Ms. Scena. I want you to make some good allies. Would you be able to do that? If you can’t, please tell me.”

<Umm… Yes, understood. Tell her I can do it.>

“She gave the okay,” Loren answered in Scena’s stead.

Lapis nodded, her eyes turning to the bandit camp.

No change at the camp. The bandits hadn’t noticed Loren or Lapis yet—at least, no alarm had been raised, and there were still sentries patrolling at regular intervals.

“Then let’s begin. We’ll rain hell upon those bastards who ruined our beds and our supper.”

She delivered this line so deadpan that Loren nearly tumbled over where he stood.

She looked at him curiously, and he answered with a wry smile. “Real petty, all of a sudden.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Loren? Grudges driven by food are among the worst variety thereof. And now we have our night’s sleep lost on top of that. After such insult, we’ll see them dancing with the devils in hell one way or another.”

“What about avenging the townsfolk?”

Lapis looked at Loren as if she had only just remembered the carnage. Her lips curled into a malicious grin. “Oh, if you want to add that dreadful whatnot to the pile, we shouldn’t even give them the chance to repent.”

“I’m starting to pity them.”

“That’s not a good habit, Mr. Loren. I need you to be merciless, levelheaded, and absolutely inhumane.”

“Why do I gotta be inhumane?”

He shuddered to imagine what sort of inhumanity a demon could think up.

Without a twitch in her expression, Lapis said, “Please don’t complain when the results are inhumane regardless.”

“What exactly are you putting me up to?”

“No different from the usual. Confront the enemy, slay the enemy. That’s all there is to it.”

If that was really all there was to it, that certainly was their routine. Lapis even prepared a few familiar blessings and spells to support him.

“I’ll leave the timing to you,” she told him. “I’ll provide support when I can.”

“Fine, we’ll go with that. I’ll be prepared for the worst.”

A large body and a massive sword—yet he moved unimaginably quickly with both as he slipped from the cavity into the night air. He didn’t get far before the keen-eyed lookouts spotted him. Archers gathered to deal with this suspicious intruder.

I’ll be filled with arrows at this rate, Loren thought. Lucky for him, the moment before they unleashed their bolts, an explosive light burst out from behind him. The surroundings went pure white.

With the light radiating from behind him, Loren was hardly affected, but the archers taking aim were suddenly showered with it after long hours peering through darkness. They were completely blinded, a few of them even dropping their bows.

<Go, Mister! Go!>

“No need to tell me twice!”

The split-second opening was more than enough for Loren. He cleared the distance to the camp, using his momentum to charge straight into a corner of the gathering.

Once he decided he would do something, Loren knew no hesitation. While he was ashamed to admit it, there were times in his mercenary days when he’d found himself throwing his body and sword at over a hundred enemies. Alone.

Not that he fully trusted Lapis’s conviction. The bandits just weren’t in perfect fighting form. They were either asleep or partying after the day’s plundering, so he figured he’d be able to cut down at least a couple.

Of course, he was completely in the dark about what was going to pull his ass out of the fire after that. Without a plan, he would be surrounded and taken out, but he had to tell himself it would work out somehow.

It wasn’t particularly commendable to go with the flow like that, but every mercenary found himself cornered sometimes. Only the ones who could make the most out of a terrible situation survived.

“Wh-who are—gah?!”

With the light—presumably from Lapis—on his side, Loren leapt forward and swung his sword at the first man to stutter out a question.

Loren’s foe raised his hands to shield his eyes and failed to put up any defense against an upward slash with all Loren’s weight and speed behind it. Loren felt hardly any resistance as his sword bit into the bandit and chewed all the way through.

The damp sound of severed muscle and the hard crunch of bones filled the air while the torso of the bisected bandit spun circles through the sky. The rest of his body slumped to the side, disgorging blood and guts.

That’s one down, Loren made the mental tally mark as he pressed forward. His first enemy hadn’t had a chance to scream; the rest of the archers didn’t yet grasp their situation. He managed to slip right into the midst of their ranks, swinging his sword in a wide arc.

He caught one in the chin and heaved upward. This one did scream as his face was split in two. Another, Loren managed to sever at the shoulder. As the man lost his balance and fell, Lapis’s light dissipated, and Loren was back to relying on the bonfire.

He could see some men flailing their weapons wildly, completely blinded. Others shot arrows into the dark, hollering as they peppered the empty plain with aimless arrows. Loren dispatched the blind, immobile men he’d wounded in his first strike.

“Enemy raid! Enemy raid!”

“You little shit! Where did he crawl out from?!”

The flash and the screams alerted the rest of the camp. Loren knew that much was inevitable, and he didn’t panic. He counted up the number of fallen bodies and sent a message to Scena.

“I took out a few of them!”

The powers of a Lifeless King unfurled from within him. A fog so devouringly black that it stood out against the night crept along the ground, hovering over the bodies of the slain bandits before enveloping them completely. The slowly forming black mass slunk over the corpses, letting out an ear-grating rumble.

Loren understood that Scena could turn dead things into zombies and skeletons—but he also knew he was the worst harvester to supply her with the necessary components. Enemies slain by his blade were mercilessly scattered in every direction. How could she make anything useful with that?

She sure proved him wrong. After swallowing the scattered bodies, the mass of creeping darkness coalesced into one heaving whole.

“I don’t care, just hurry up!”

There was a limit to what a one-man sneak attack could accomplish. Resisting the onset of panic, Loren continued cutting down the mercenaries even as they gathered themselves into proper formation to face him.

Each time one of his heavy blows felled a bandit, the black fog overtook the body and fed it into the black mass. Little by little, with each limb or bit of body, it grew, until Scena finally called out, <Come to me! Undead Knight!>

A thick left arm punched out from the mass of darkness. At first glance, it looked human, but it was several times too thick, and its skin had the dried-out, desiccated texture of a mummy’s. The sight of it sent a roil of fear through the bandits.

The arm was immediately followed by a torso, then a massive head. The rib cage, little more than skin stretched over a bare skeleton, matched its arm for size. It had a rusted breastplate strapped over its leather and bones. Limbs encased in tarnished armor, faulds, and greaves followed. Last to emerge was a right hand gripping a rust-red halberd.

Loren was quite large himself, but even he had to look up to take in the bulk of Scena’s undead knight. The surrounding bandits froze, petrified by the sheer intensity of its massive halberd. The summoned creature unleashed a roar into the night sky so great that the ground shook beneath it. Like lightning, it lashed out with its weapon.

That corroded blade didn’t look fit to cut anything, yet by virtue of its wielder’s strength, it tore straight through the bodies of the bandits standing dumbly before it. Their husks flew into the sky.

The undead knight moved as casually as a farmer harvesting wheat with his scythe, yet each swing inevitably claimed multiple lives. The scene was a complete nightmare. Loren couldn’t help but stop and stare, his sword arm stilled.

“You call that ‘nothing good’?” he asked.

“I don’t want to fight something like that…”

Without paying the slightest mind to defense, the undead knight recklessly swung its halberd at any enemy that was unlucky enough to catch its attention. Naturally, the bandits rallied themselves to counterattack. It was peppered with arrows while heavily armored fighters closed in and beat at it with their weapons.

Those weapons did have some effect—the arrows pierced through flesh, the blades sliced off bits of bone—but the undead knight ignored all this entirely, swinging its halberd without flinching or yielding. The undead had no sense of pain or fatigue; it would continue fulfilling its purpose until completely destroyed or exorcised.

“You really think I could take that?”

As if to punctuate her words, the dark fog swallowed up the bandits slain by Scena’s first summon. It swelled up once more as a black amalgamation, and a second undead knight appeared.

“This is getting out of hand,” Loren said.

He wasn’t keeping a precise count, and he didn’t know how many he had defeated, but Loren knew he couldn’t match the speed and efficiency of the undead knights. He leaned his sword against his shoulder and watched. The bandits were already helpless against the slaughter wrought by one undead foe, and now it had a buddy.

The killing went twice as fast, piling up twice as many corpses, and it wasn’t long before a third and fourth undead knight were born.

“The hell are these things?!”

“It’s hopeless! Our attacks aren’t working!”

“Run away! It’s stupid to take on these monsters!”

When the fourth one joined the party, the bandits lost all morale. Their attacks were technically working, but the massive undead shrugged off any damage. And so, terror-stricken, the bandits scattered in all directions like baby spiders under a boot. The moment she saw this, Scena created something new.

A zombie dog, it seemed, required fewer bodies than an undead knight. Scena’s call was answered swiftly. Several half-rotten dogs emerged from her fog, jumping at the backs of the fleeing bandits to cut them off.

“Dammit! What are they?! Where are they coming from?!”

Perhaps because they were easier to summon, the dogs could be halved by a bandit’s sword or crushed by heavy blows. Unfortunately for the bandits, the rate at which the dogs were created greatly exceeded the rate at which they were destroyed. A bandit who fell in the commotion had his windpipe bitten through. Another had his stomach gouged out, his organs snapped up as a feast for multiple dogs.

Scena’s jolly laughter echoed in a corner of Loren’s mind. He turned his pale face up to the sky and muttered, “Whoa… This is the first time I ever thought you were scary. And wait, why can you use humans as ingredients to make dogs? Someone explain that to me.”

<That’s a good question,> Scena mused, then scrambled to smooth over Loren’s hollow stare of disbelief. <No, I mean, well, I just got a little excited, that’s all! I’m not a scary girl! I swear!>

It was a bit late for such protestations.

The camp watch beacons toppled over, igniting their tents. At the edge of the growing firelight, the undead knights were still hard at work turning humans into lumps of flesh. Nearby, the zombie dogs gnawed on the viscera of screaming bandits. What had once been a campsite was now the spitting image of hell.

The only thing Loren had done was cut down the first ten or so bandits. The resulting carnage was remarkably self-sufficient.

The bandit crew had been too bloated, too fattened on its own spoils, for one party to hunt. Loren had thought slicing off even enough to split up the group would be optimistic. But now almost every soul out of two hundred was rust on the halberds or food for the dogs. It was such a mess, he couldn’t even figure out if any of them had been lucky enough to scramble away.

“What is this? How does this even happen?”

“It is a valid tactic that only works at night, and only against those outside the realm of the law.”

Lapis was beside him before he knew it. Loren turned a doubtful eye toward her, and she looked somewhat hurt by this.

“Don’t look at me like I’m some sort of monster,” she said sullenly.

“After seeing that, anyone and everyone looks like a monster to me.”

From his initial attack to the bandits’ total annihilation—as far as Loren was concerned, it had all happened in the blink of an eye. Until just a minute ago, the brigade had been so large it would have taken an army to deal with. Not even a scrap of that strength remained. All he saw were fleeing men being sliced, dragged, and bitten to death. They screamed, pleading for help as they were devoured with relish.

“They got what they deserved. I see no room for sympathy.”

“Even so, I sympathize with them just a little bit…”

Loren didn’t endorse their actions, not in the slightest. In fact, if these brigands were captured, tried, and hanged the normal way, he wouldn’t feel a thing. However, he wasn’t sure anyone’s crime was bad enough to warrant being swarmed by the undead and slaughtered without warning or a chance to fight back.

“May your sinning souls be reborn as good boys and girls in the next life,” Lapis prayed. “Now then, Mr. Loren. Once this calms down, let’s retire the undead and look for some nice loot.”

“When it comes to being blackhearted, I’d say you really give them a run for their money, Lapis.”

“What are you talking about? I’ll have you know my chest is white as snow. What part of it is the least bit black? Wait, Mr. Loren? Quit turning away—look at me! Hey!”

“Shut up! Why are you lifting up your clothes? Calm down! Let go of me!”

Lapis ignored the screams of agony rising around them, determined to wrench Loren’s head around to look at her. Loren struggled to escape from her demonic grasp.

Realizing she had been excluded, or rather, temporarily forgotten, Scena ordered her undead to search the area, then kicked back for a break in Loren’s astral body until one of them remembered her.

“Now then, now then, it’s time for our fun looting session,” Lapis said with a cheerful smile. By contrast, Loren looked as downtrodden as ever as he scanned the former camp.

It was still night, and their surroundings were dark, but the beacons and cooking pots toppled by Scena’s undead still burned, merry flames among the tents. Loren had a decent view.

A decent view of a miserable sight.

All that aside, though, the number of corpses was surprisingly low. Most of the flesh had either been collected as material to summon undead or ended up in an undead dog’s stomach. There was nothing to be done about the blood splatters, but this was quite tame, considering the circumstances.

Unconcerned, the undead knights patrolled the area while the zombie dogs ran about looking for any survivors.

“What do we do about this?” Loren muttered.

The number of undead Scena had summoned could easily surround and obliterate a small settlement. Loren understood they’d needed the help to deal with a small legion of bandits, but maybe they’d just replaced a bandit brigade with an undead one. He had a sinking feeling about which one was the bigger threat.

“Weren’t we just supposed to rough them up a bit so they’d be forced to split?” he asked.

“I’m surprised by how well it all turned out,” Lapis said.

Scena’s voice reverberated in his mind. <It’s all right, Mister.>

Lapis couldn’t hear how incredibly cheerful Scena was being in her attempts to alleviate Loren’s anxieties.

Scena happily explained that she had skipped over some of the proper procedures to so quickly assemble the numbers required. Her hulking, rotting children would return to dust once time or sunlight wore the magic away.

The army of the undead, so suddenly summoned up in the dead of night, weren’t about to go on any rampages through the surrounding settlements.

“They’re really gonna disappear?”

It was hard to believe such a powerful force could just up and vanish. They still looked pretty energetic to Loren, and he had a sinking feeling that it would be impossible for him to dispatch all of them alone.

“Not that having them disappear will solve all our problems,” he murmured.

“Oh?” Lapis asked. “What other problems are there?”

“According to Scena, these guys will disappear at sunrise. When that happens, no one’s gonna believe us when we tell them what happened here.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

The bloodstains smeared across the grass, tents, and every other surface made it obvious that many people had died painfully in this place. If the perpetrators disappeared into sunbeams, that left Loren and Lapis holding the bag with no explanation.

To Loren, it was only natural that step two of this process was reporting the bandit extermination to the guild. But Lapis stared at him as if she didn’t understand a single word coming out of his mouth.

“Well, don’t we have some obligation to report what happened to them? Or some government official or something? A whole rest town was overrun. A lot of people died.”

“That’s strange. What exactly are you saying happened here?” Lapis asked, playing dumb. Loren was ready call her out on it, but he shut his mouth when he realized what she had in mind.

It can’t be. He stared at her, unable to tear himself away. She pulled off genuine confusion pretty well, shaking her head and folding her hands in front of her chest.

“What a tragedy it is! I have no doubt in my mind that countless lives ended here, but I haven’t the slightest clue what could have caused it. Even if we wanted to determine the terrible cause, we have things to do and places to be. Let us pinch only what the dead no longer need and leave the investigation to someone more suited to the task.”

“We’re really doing this?”

“Whatever could you be talking about, Mr. Loren?”

<What’s she talking about?>

Scena, at least, seemed honestly confused. Loren scowled and explained: in a nutshell, Lapis intended to pretend that she didn’t know how or why the town had been attacked, nor why someone had set up a large camp nearby, nor even why the camp had been annihilated by undead—or whatever.

“There’re no witnesses or evidence…”

The rest town had certainly been destroyed by the bandits, and most of the townsfolk reduced to ash along with it. The bandits at fault had subsequently been killed by undead and harvested to make even more undead.

<It’s true. There are no witnesses!>

“As long as we keep our mouths shut, the truth will be left in darkness… Though you might want to sew my lips shut, just in case.”

“How scary, Mr. Loren. More importantly, you should get to searching already. We need to take what we can and get out of here.”

Lapis could casually blurt out the cruelest things. Unfortunately, there was some sense to her barbarism. Loren sighed as he let her beckon him through the campsite. The bandit camp wasn’t far from the town, and the town was—had been—a place for travelers to rest their weary heads. Eventually, someone else would make the long trek out.

And what if that someone found the charred remains of the town? If they turned back, whatever. But any decently skilled adventurer might try to gather information before they returned to civilization. And that search would lead them straight to the scattered bodies of the bandits, which in turn could lead them right to Loren and Lapis, whereupon of course they would demand an explanation—one Loren did not want to give, especially not while the undead were still kicking around.

What could he possibly say? That they had employed a Lifeless King to destroy the bandits? If he trotted that one out, they’d be the next bounty on the guild’s list.

Despite the chaos, Lapis had put some thought into their troubles. Or so Loren assumed, until she came at it from a completely different angle.

“If anyone else comes,” she said, “it means we’ll have to split our spoils.”

“You’re even more of a bandit than they were.”

“What are you saying?! I’m simply proposing that we collect valuables from this campsite where everyone mysteriously disappeared.”

How shameless can you be? Loren thought, but he wasn’t keen on sharing either. All this loot had originally belonged to victims whose names he didn’t even know, sure, but it was the bandits who’d stripped everything from the town. Any rightful owners were dead. He couldn’t exactly give any of it back. That being the case, they might as well put it to good use.

“Food and clothes will take up too much space,” said Lapis. “If they ended up with any captives, young girls, or the like, you can’t take them with you.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. We’re aiming for jewelry and precious metals. Hard cash if they have it, but you can ignore the copper coins. Too much weight, too little value.”

“Your inner bandit is peeking through again.”

They kicked their way through the smoldering tents, fishing through whatever was still intact. Bandits or not, the whole organization had needed food, clothing, and daily bric-a-brac—indispensable to the bandits, maybe, but nothing worth it for Loren and Lapis to haul around.

“They shook down an isolated rest town. I doubt we’re going to find many precious metals.”

Bandits might have craved jewelry and ornaments, things easily melted down and exchanged for cash or barter, but to farmers and other simple folk who lived in such towns, baubles didn’t put food on the table. They didn’t have means or reason to purchase such pointless things.

As proof of this, Lapis found little in the way of worthy plunder as she searched through tent after tent. No milkmaid or blacksmith made a habit of dressing up, so Loren didn’t know what she expected. She didn’t try to hide her disappointment.

“Shouldn’t they at least have some money?” she complained.

“I mean, we should find a bit of it.”

Not that Loren had high hopes for that either. If no one in town was buying or selling valuables, most coins in circulation would have been copper or silver. There just wouldn’t have been the sort of wheeling and dealing that required fistfuls of gold.

In short, the bandit brigade had mostly made off with food, ordinary goods, and copper coins. It was possible they’d been after the people more than anything.

If abduction had been the aim, Loren doubted they’d find any hostages. Scena’s undead recognized Loren and Lapis and let them be. However, it was hard to believe they’d be willing or able to distinguish between bandits and poor townsfolk.

“Wow. This one is filled with copper coins. Is it really worth the effort to carry this much spare change?”

Lapis finally found the money stash she was looking for, but Loren had expected this outcome. Sure, a bandit had to take what they could get, living from mark to mark. But he could hardly expect Lapis to load so much copper on the donkey. She’s not really taking it, is she?

An excited shout broke through his thoughts. “Mr. Loren! Have a look at this!”

“What is it? What’s exciting enough that you had to yell about it?”

He walked over to where Lapis was rummaging through her umpteenth tent and had stopped to point at something. His eyes fell upon it.

It was a large box. At first, he would have guessed it contained clothing. However, Lapis had thrown open the lid to reveal nothing of the sort. Well, it did contain clothing after a fashion, but those clothes were being worn by an unconscious person curled into a tight ball.

Blond hair just brushing slim shoulders. Near-translucent white skin, and a plain green top and breeches. Probably a pre-teen. Their strange, fine features made it difficult to discern whether they were a boy or girl. Unfortunately, their beauty made obvious why the bandits had taken them.

What surprised Loren the most were the child’s ears. Like those of an archer they had once met in a silver-ranked party, the child’s ears were long and slender.

“An elf?”

“Looks like it. This is smelling like trouble again.”

They couldn’t just close the box and pretend they hadn’t seen anything, but toting a kidnapped child around was asking for trouble.

Loren looked to the heavens. Why did it have to be here of all places? he complained.

All the while, Lapis looked at him with a thin smile, just as uncertain.