The empire was in chaos due to territorial disputes, making it extremely dangerous, as usual, to travel recklessly.
This was an era where wars frequently broke out.
Where blood splattered and steel clashed, mercenaries naturally gathered.
Defeated soldiers fleeing for their lives or mercenary groups shattered into wandering remnants lost all sense of restraint.
Many were already living dual lives as thieves and mercenaries.
If they ran out of even the meager funds they had worked hard to secure, they would instantly switch to full-time banditry.
“Ambush! It’s an ambush!”
“Get your weapons, you bastards! Move!”
Amidst Radomar’s enraged shout, Keldric gripped his longsword tightly and peered into the darkness.
There was movement in the shadows. It wasn’t beasts or monsters.
The figures moved on two legs, and the occasional glint of weapons caught in the Iron Claw Mercenaries’ torchlight betrayed their identity.
They were bandits. Keldric’s gaze darkened.
These were the kind who made a living robbing passing travelers or merchants, their profession rooted in plunder.
Such individuals generally lacked proper armament.
Their tactics relied on night raids and overwhelming numbers.
Radomar, who had been waking the other mercenaries, rushed over to Keldric, his face stricken with urgency.
Even for someone like Radomar, a seasoned mercenary who had experienced countless situations, the sudden chaos in the dead of night was overwhelming.
“Sir Keldric! What should we do?”
Mercenaries generally operated with a degree of autonomy, but not this time.
The Iron Claw Mercenaries were under Keldric’s command, bound by a contract with the Count of Bogenberg.
No one could decide to retreat or charge forward recklessly.
Thus, Radomar had no choice but to trust the young knight before him to make a wise decision.
“Form up around the campfire! Shield bearers to the front, spearmen behind them to keep the enemy at bay!”
“Understood!”
“And Alyssa!”
Alyssa, who seemed momentarily stunned, quickly gathered her composure and turned to Keldric.
Her magic was both potent and deadly, but the time it took for her to cast spells was a drawback.
“Take position by the campfire! Don’t overextend by attacking the enemy. Focus on lighting up the surroundings instead!”
Nodding, Alyssa hurriedly called over Arno and Helga.
Even without enough light to drive back the darkness, Keldric tightened his grip on his longsword and took a step toward the shadows.
Warm breaths escaped from inside his helmet. The heart of a warrior preparing for battle pounded fiercely, as though it had just finished sprinting.
But Keldric quickly steadied his breathing. He had fought in the dark before.
Carefully and silently, he advanced. The bandits lurking in the shadows made no move to approach the light.
Keldric’s eyes scanned the darkness. With the torches behind him, he caught a fleeting glimmer of metal in the distance.
Then, he noticed something small glinting faintly in the air.
Even without much thought, he immediately realized what it was.
Lowering himself swiftly, Keldric shouted.
“Arrows incoming!”
“Arrows! Shields up!”
Radomar, a seasoned mercenary, roared, and the well-coordinated Iron Claw Mercenaries promptly raised their shields in unison.
Pavabak!
A dozen or so arrows flew by, all but two of them hitting the mercenaries’ shields as they hit the ground. Keldric was convinced.
‘These are not fools!’
Anyone could simply shoot a bow, but being accurate with it was another matter.
Even with torches and bonfires glowing in the darkness, it was quite a challenge to shoot a bow in the dark when you couldn’t see your own hand.
It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect to see from a band of tramps and beggars, a ragtag bunch of bandits.
Keldric gripped his sword and walked quickly. He would have been a hedgehog if he hadn’t been so quick, taking arrows as he went.
His massive body melted into the darkness, moving with a silence that belied his size. Keldric’s eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness as he remained extremely silent.
“Lord Keldric!”
And with that, the flames erupted.
Alyssa had created the flames. A bright flame, incomparably brighter than a torch, erupted not far from Keldric.
Several bandits, panicked by the sudden burst of flame, appeared clearly in front of Keldric.
They had intended to gnaw at them slowly, shooting arrows in the darkness, but that had been rendered useless by Keldric and Alyssa’s presence.
“What……!”
Keldric swung his longsword without hesitation.
The rich feel of slashing flesh and crushing bones ran through his hands.
“Ack!”
“Holy shit, drive!”
A bandit fell, slashed from shoulder to shoulder, followed by two more.
Keldric looked at the two bandits with shields and was a little confused. They were a bit annoying to deal with with the Longsword.
However, they were only annoying if they were wielding the longsword unskillfully, not unbeatable.
The Longsword is essentially a two-handed weapon, but Keldric was able to wield it just fine with one hand.
His right hand, freed for a moment, went straight for his shield.
The rogue tried to block it, but his shield buckled under the blow, and his fist connected with Mingchi’s.
Kwaang!
“Pfft?!”
The armor was gambeson, and the shield was nothing but wood. Keldric realized that the bandits were not so well armed.
Once they were down, the rest was a matter of course.
First, Keldric thrust his longsword at the fallen bandit.
The swift, powerful thrust caught the rogue in the chest, and he fell with a thud.
“Fuck you!”
Meanwhile, the bandits weren’t playing around.
The noise startled them, but they quickly regained their senses and charged at Keldric.
Two carried shields and scimitars, and one carried a crude spear.
Unfazed, Keldric swung his longsword wildly. There was a boom, followed by a murderous sound that ripped through the air.
One of the bandits, who had fumbled with his spear, was caught in the trajectory.
The shaft snapped in an instant, and a sideways slash, too quick to react to, flew toward the shielded bandit’s side.
“Argh!”
The longsword bit into the bandit’s side like a wolf.
Blood, torn gambeson, and shreds of cloth fluttered in the flames that roared around them.
At the same time, Keldric snatched the broken spear head out of the air with his left hand.
“Grrrr, that black…!”
The spear head struck like lightning into the nape of another bandit’s neck as he staggered back with his shield. Hot blood spattered across the field.
Keldric did not stop there. It was better to stand still, to rest, to dodge at least one arrow.
As if to prove his point, a couple of sharpened arrows flew past him, aimed for his head.
Rolling quickly to the side, Keldric dodged and went in search of another bandit, and there were more than a dozen of them in the immediate vicinity.
“Wha-!”
Keldric’s gruff shout echoed across the field. Several bandits turned to look at Keldric with panicked eyes.
A gigantic figure emerged from the flames, and a helmet like a tin can on his head!
He looked like a man who would scream “knight” to anyone who saw him.
In fact, several of the bandits took a few hesitant steps back.
“Strike at once!”
There was a leader among the bandits.
He carried a short sword and shield, and when Keldric locked eyes with him, he walked straight for him.
A couple of the panicked bandits blocked his path.
But Keldric was unfazed and swung his longsword.
Quadrup! Kwadzik!
It wasn’t a slash, but more like a chop.
Four bandits fell to Keldric in a single blow, their flesh splitting and blood spurting in a series of gory sounds.
“Help Sir Keldric!”
“You bastards, you owe me a meal!”
With Keldric’s diligent thinning of the ranks and Alyssa’s clear line of sight, the battlefield was now clear for the Iron Claw mercenaries to move forward.
The mercenaries, huddled together like turtles, charged. Without the flames spreading thanks to Alyssa, the field was hardly what one would call dangerous.
But the most dangerous thing here was Keldric.
Keldric surveyed the situation, his breathing a little ragged from the excitement of battle.
The Iron Claw mercenaries had come out of the woodwork to face the bandits.
Outnumbered, the bandits had a slight advantage, which would have been even greater if not for Keldric’s reduction.
As he took a moment to catch his breath and survey the situation, he realized that the leader of the bandits was nowhere to be seen.
Keldric ripped the bandit’s gambeson off the ground.
Wiping the thick blood from his longsword with it, he strode briskly away, the bandits gathered around him not daring to charge.
If they didn’t come from that direction, Keldric would.
“Stop him!”
“You dog! asshole!”
“KUCK……!”
Keldric swung his tribal longsword at any bandit he saw, knocking them down.
Most were lightly armed and often went down in a single blow, but there were a few who wore flimsy metal armor and carried shields, and those didn’t go down immediately.
But once a gauntleted fist landed on their head, they were heavily armed and naked, and they just spit out their guts.
Four more bandits were defeated in this manner.
The bandits the mercenaries were dealing with were either slowly consumed by Alyssa’s flames, or they were demoralized and fell to their deaths.
At this point, several of the bandits, including the one who had shot the bow in front of me, turned and fled.
Keldric had no intention of letting them go.
If they were just clumsy bandits, they looked like they’d been living off the sword for a while.
Picking up a crude spear from the ground, Keldric took a deep breath and shouted into the air.
“Avelyn!”
A horse’s whinny, “Hee-hee-hee!” came from far behind him.
The steed, blacker than the darkness that fell over the field, galloped toward Keldric.
Avelyn did not slow down. Keldric gauged her speed, and when he was close enough, he leaped into the saddle and mounted.
Then he drove right into Aveline, who didn’t slow down.
“Heh!”
“Knock the horse over!”
The bandits who had been scurrying in front of him, seeing Keldric closing the distance in an instant, panicked and aimed their bows or drew their weapons.
Quadrup-!
The bandits had to keep running. The spear in Keldric’s hand instantly pierced one of the bandits.
But Keldric didn’t stop.
He tossed the skewered bandit aside, and with a precarious spear thrust, took down two more.
As he frantically drove Avelyn, Keldric’s eyes caught sight of the leader bandit from earlier.
“Aveline, let’s go!”
Aveline shouted back, jostling wildly. The distance closed in an instant, and the panicked bandit drew his short sword in a last ditch effort.
Keldric raised his spear with his right hand. The crude spear, overwhelmed by the force of his grip, screamed.
“Gulp!”
And in a flash, the spear in his hand disappeared into the darkness.
Slash!
“ Ugh!”
The spear sliced through the darkness and lodged squarely in the shoulder of the lead bandit.
As Keldric drove his horse toward him in a panic, it was not enough that he was pinned down, but that it went clean through.
Halting Avelyn at his feet, Keldric leapt from the saddle and stalked toward the leader of the bandits.
“You freak!”
The bandit cursed, and without raising an eyebrow, Keldric threw his fist.
BANG!
Yellow teeth and dark blood sprayed out. The leader of the bandits, his fist firmly planted in his face, was stunned, unable to even scream.
Keldric stripped the bandit of his gambeson, ripped it in half, and tied it around him like a rope.
He lifted him up and hoisted him onto Aveline’s back, the dangling leader swaying helplessly.
“This is getting to be a pain in the ass.
Indeed, the camp was in shambles. The fact that the lurkers had fled was a bonus.
Keldric frowned as he surveyed the field strewn with bandit corpses.
The fires had begun to die down, and a group of mercenaries, vaguely organized, were wandering around looking for him.
☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩ ☩
Keldric drove Avelyn back toward the camp.
As Keldric approached, a gaunt and gaunt man with blood splattered all over his body, Radomar and the mercenaries were horrified to see him.
“Ugh, fuck….”
“Whoa, mister. What is it?”
It was Radomar who stepped forward. After surveying the wounded mercenaries, Radomar looked at Keldric in disbelief.
“Ke-Keldric, are you all right?”
It was more of a polite question.
Keldric had fought more than a dozen bandits alone, and he was unscathed.
Thick blood dripped down his helm.
“No problem. Besides that, did you miss anyone?”
“I missed a few, I apologize.”
“It can’t be helped.”
As a substitute, Keldric tossed the captured boss bandit to the ground.
The limp bandit rolled across the floor. Radomar and several mercenaries glanced over.
The twitching bandit was completely bloody.
His nose was broken, his teeth completely shattered, and his shoulder was dripping with blood from a spear’s clean piercing.
Elsewhere, the bodies of the bandits Keldric had slain were all but mutilated.
Their arms were cut off, their legs were severed, or they were chilling in a pool of spilling guts, or all three.
“Holy shit…….”
One of the mercenaries muttered. Radomar echoed the sentiment.
“But why?”
“Oh, no.”
The tumult of the late night was filled with flames and blood.
Not a drop of it was Keldric’s.