That day, Zadiris was holding a study meeting with the young girls from the village to teach them about grasses, fruits and mushrooms that could be used for making medicine or food.
Many of the race that Zadiris and her group belonged to did not place a high priority on passing on their knowledge, but she knew the importance of teaching the younger generation these things and often talked about it to the people around her, so the people of her village were likely aware as well.
The reason she was only bringing girls with her was the great difference in appearance and characteristics between the two sexes in her race. Males were well-suited to fighting and manual labor, while women did work that required thinking. Though this was a general rule, she had already taught the smarter men in the village enough, so she didn’t bring them with her today.
Of course, just because monsters weren’t attacking didn’t mean that she let her guard down. Zadiris herself was confident in her strength and magic, and their study meeting was happening just at the edge of the forest. Strong monsters wouldn’t appear, and at this time of year, adventurers shouldn’t come this way either.
「She went that way!」
「Shit, she’s fast! Don’t let her get away!」
However, the reason things had turned out like this was because she had let her guard down after all.
They were found by a group of five adventurers.
「Be careful, she’s a Mage, a high-class one! Don’t let your guard down!」
「I know! We let all of the others escape; if we don’t catch this one we won’t make it through the winter!」
Zadiris had succeeded in using her magic to confuse the adventurers and allow the other girls to escape. However, she had expended too much Mana in doing so – to the point that it would be difficult to defeat the adventurers if she fought them now.
With that being, the case, her only option was to run, but –
「Haah, haah, haah.」
Her breathing became quick, like that of a dog or a wild animal. Her heart was pounding painfully, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
『To think that I’ve run out of breath already! I guess I can’t win against time.』
As Zadiris lamented her old age, an arrow flew across just to her side. As the adventurers took aim at her, she reflexively spun her body to the right.
「AH!」
Three seconds later, her feet were standing on empty air. She was at the edge of a cliff. It was a small cliff on the boundary of the forest. It was a cliff of a height such that one wouldn’t die by jumping off it, and one would normally be able to make a safe landing in the forest.
However, this time it was fatal.
Zadiris, losing her balance, hit the cliff’s slope like a ball and began rolling down.
「Ugh…」
She crashed into the ground and landed face-down. She tried to stand up, but she couldn’t put any strength into her legs and arms. Despite the fact that her life was in danger, they demanded rest and refused to obey her commands.
She was already winded, but this was the effect of leaving the Devil’s Nest. She was really feeling her age taking its toll on her.
『Well, this is fine. The clan will not perish just because I am gone.』
Her successor had already been nominated. There were reliable men. She had managed to let the young ones with the future on their shoulders escape.
Considering that she had only ten years or so remaining in her life, hadn’t she done pretty well? It was probably better for her to die already, before she became any more senile than she already was.
Several laughing voices and sets of footsteps came closer. It was the adventurers. From here, they would certainly finish her off and collect the Magic Stone and her body parts that would become raw materials.
She didn’t really care about this; she had done the same thing countless times herself. She hadn’t gone out of her way to do so, but she had even killed adventurers in the past.
She harbored no grudge against them. They should finish her quickly.
Zadiris quietly stayed face-down and closed her eyes, but the adventurers grabbed her legs and turned her face-up.
If they wanted to kill her, they could have stabbed her in the back, so why? As Zadiris thought this, she opened her eyes to see the adventurers looking down at her with vulgar smiles on their faces.
「Heh, I thought this while we were chasing her, but isn’t she quite the pretty woman?」
「You think so? I like mine a little more grown-up.」
「Nobody asked about what you like. What’s important is whether we’ll be able to sell her at a high price.」
Zadiris had thought that they were perhaps inspecting the materials that they would be harvesting before they killed her, but upon hearing the word “sell”, she realized that this was not the case.
「The females of these creatures can be sold to underground slave traders for quite a lot. Thanks to that, we’ll be able to take it easy during this year’s winter.」
The adventurers hadn’t been chasing her around to kill her and harvest raw materials from her, but to capture her alive and sell her to a slave trader.
Zadiris opened her eyes wide. Being defeated and killed was one thing, but she wouldn’t allow herself to become a sex slave and treated as a plaything until she died.
「You bastards!」
「Oh, she understands language. I suppose that’s to be expected of Mages; this one should sell for even more than the market price.」
Zadiris bared her fangs and glared at them, but the smiles of the adventurers looking down on her only widened. She mustered what was left of her strength and tried to take at least one of them down, but one of the adventurers stabbed her with a knife.
「Guh! Ah, AAAAAAAAAGH!」
Violent pain flooded through Zadiris’s body.
Her vision turned pure white, and she couldn’t help but let out a girlish scream.
「It hurts, huh? You guys are pretty tough when it comes to dealing with pain, but this knife is a Magic Item with the Pain Up enchantment; being cut by this knife will hurt three times more than usual.」
「A little while ago, we caught a bandit and all we had to do was give him a light cut with this knife for him to spit out where his base was.」
「Guh… Haah… Haah…」
By the time Zadiris had recovered a little from the violent pain, her willpower fell along with the tears from her eyes.
「Heheh, I bet you’ve done it plenty, right? With that being the case, isn’t it alright to have a taste of the goods before we sell you off?」
「Hey, if you’re not careful, you’re going to get scratched.」
「It’s fine, but don’t go overboard. And be quick about it, it’ll be a pain if other monsters were to come.」
One of the adventurers lowered himself onto Zadiris to straddle her and began taking off her clothes. He exposed her grey-brown breasts and grabbed hold of them, but she didn’t give the response that the man desired.
「Tch.」
Dissatisfied, the man reached for the knife that was still stuck inside Zadiris.
「Hyii!」
Thinking that she would experience that intense pain again, Zadiris tried to scream, but –
「Gyah!」
The Thief that had been watching to make sure that no monsters came out of the forest gave a hoarse grunt.
There was an arrow protruding from the Thief’s back. Zadiris immediately thought that her allies from the village had come to save her. It seemed the adventurers thought the same.
「They’ve come to save her?!」
Including the man that was straddling Zadiris, the Warriors among the adventurers pulled out their weapons and faced the forest. However, the robed Mage gave a shout as he pulled the arrow out from the Thief.
「You morons! It didn’t come from the forest, it’s from behind us!」
Before the Mage’s eyes was a carriage moving at incredible speed while making very little sound, and a group of beasts made of bones.
「U-Undead monsters?! Why are they coming from the plain and not from the Devil’s Nest?!」
「Who cares! More importantly, there’s one of them with a bow and arrows, hurry up and get in front of me!」
Shouting at his flustered shield-holding companion, the Thief who had managed to avoid a fatal wound thanks to his leather armor put a Potion to his mouth.
And as the adventurers prepared to have him recover from his injury, Vandalieu’s army attacked. Bone Man nocked another arrow into his bow and fired a second shot, but the Thief managed to dodge it. It couldn’t be helped, as Bone Man’s skill with the bow was level 1.
Vandalieu’s options for long-ranged attacks were too limited. Perhaps he should have had Saria and Rita learn archery as well.
As this thought ran through his mind, he released his spell towards the Mage who seemed to be chanting an incantation.
「…【Magic Absorption Barrier.】」
A black mass of Mana flew towards the Mage. He immediately tried to block it with some kind of defensive spell, but the black mass absorbed and nullified it completely.
「U-uwah! That Ghost Carriage used some kind of strange magic! What the hell is this?!」
The black mass covered the Mage like a dome, but for now, it seemed that it wasn’t doing him any damage.
「Don’t worry about that, hurry up and chant your spell!」
The ones at the front holding swords, spears, axes and shields stepped forward to meet the enemy, but in the next moment, their well-prepared front-line crumbled.
『Haah! If you will not fall back, then I shall trample you!』
Sam, sitting in the driver’s seat of the Ghost Carriage, gave a shout as he ordered an increase in speed. The faint, white horses gave a neigh as the carriage closed in on them at incredible speed.
『CHAAAARGE!』
「R-RUUUUN!」
As the man with the shield gave a shout, the adventurers all jumped out of the way of Sam’s path. No matter how powerful their defense was, even if they possessed shielding techniques such as【Stone Shield】and【Stone Wall】, they wouldn’t be able to stop the 【High-Speed Travel】+【Charge】combo of Sam, a three-horse carriage.
Because they reacted quickly, they succeeded in avoiding Sam in time, and Sam performed a magnificent drift turn just two meters away from Zadiris’s feet. This was something that he was only able to do because the spirit horses were a part of him.
The carriage should have been shaking violently, but thanks to the【Impact Resistance】skill, everyone inside was able to remain standing with the exception of Vandalieu.
「Gaaaah!」
「Guoooh!」
And as the adventurers’ formation collapsed, Bone Wolf, Bone Bear and Bone Monkey attacked. The adventurers seemed quite skilled; each of them managed to avoid the first attack and retake their stances with their weapons ready.
「Geeeeh!」
「Ooooooh.」
With Bone Bird’s Talon attacks coming from above and Bone Man joining the fray after leaping out of the carriage, things weren’t just looking bad for them; it was downright disastrous.
「W-what are Rank 3 monsters doing outside the Devil’s Nest?!」
「How the hell should I know?! 「【Single Flash!】」
「Oi, how long is that support magic going to take?!」
One of the men somehow managed to block a swing of Bone Bear’s front paw that was powerful enough to break his shield, another had his basic swordsmanship skill【Single Brandish】avoided by Bone Monkey, and the last was shouting at the Mage that seemed to be taking forever to cast his support magic without turning back to look at him.
「O flames, gather forth in my hand… It’s no good! My magic, my Mana is being absorbed so I can’t use magic!」
The Mage was clearly chanting a spell, but every time he drew his Mana forth from inside his body, it was taken away from him. That was the effect of Vandalieu’s【Magic Absorption Barrier.】If one attempted to use magic within the barrier, the Mana was stolen away before the spell could be completed.
To overcome the effects of such a barrier, one must release a sheer amount of Mana that the barrier simply couldn’t absorb, use an anti-barrier spell or simply move at a speed at which the barrier cannot follow him. But only a master Mage would be able to overcome the Barrier that Vandalieu had poured an overwhelming amount of Mana into.
Of course, it was impossible for this Mage with his current mana pool and magic.
「D-damn it! What’s with this guy?! Where am I supposed to attack?!」
On one side, the Thief was fighting against Saria and Rita. Normally, the Thief with inferior pure fighting ability would be at a disadvantage fighting against two monsters head-on.
However, Saria and Rita were barely able to swing their weapons, and it was not difficult for the agile Thief to avoid their attacks.
But it was difficult for the Thief to attack them with his dagger. If they were normal Living Armors, defeating them would be simple. By inserting the dagger into the gaps between the armor pieces and destroying the joint between the helmet and the torso, he would be able to separate them into pieces.
Unfortunately for him, neither Saria nor Rita possessed a helmet portion. In Rita’s case, the torso proportion of the armor was already separated into two pieces.
Trying to separate the armors into pieces would be impossible, as the Living High-Leg Armor and Living Bikini Armor were already in pieces.
「Where’s the head, where are the vital points, goddamn it! Gyah!」
He tried to stay calm, but his companions at the front were at a disadvantage already. Their Mage had been made useless. And then the bewildered Thief let out a scream that sounded like a dog as Sam sent him flying like a rubber ball.
The adventurers, given no chance to turn the battle back around, lay on the ground as corpses.
The only casualties for Vandalieu’s party were several broken bones on Bone Wolf and Bone Bear, and Vandalieu’s own injury that he sustained while rolling around in the carriage.
『I-I am terribly sorry, Bocchan.』
「… I said it’s fine. It’ll heal soon anyway.」
There was a deep, bleeding gash on Vandalieu’s forehead, but as he possessed the【Rapid Healing】skill, it would heal within a few days.
As for the broken bones, they were easily repaired as Vandalieu had recently discovered that he can use death-attribute magic to restore them.
In the end, their losses were basically non-existent.
「Fuh, looks like I need to reflect upon my actions.」
However, Vandalieu was reflecting on his rash decision to attack these adventurers.
The reason he won this battle easily was because his surprise attack had gone well, he had used death-attribute magic that they had never seen before and because they weren’t all that skilled.
He had checked the Guild Cards that were the identification documents issued by the Adventurers’ Guild, and according to those, these adventurers were D-class. If they had been C-class or higher, it was likely that he would have had the tables turned on him.
Attacking adventurers whose strength he couldn’t judge at a glance was a dangerous move.
However, the option of leaving a girl to be attacked by these thugs was out of the question.
「Next time, we’ll do our surprise attack better.」
End of self-reflection.
Leaving the tasks of stripping the adventurers of their belongings, taking care of their corpses and gathering information from their spirits until later, the first thing to do was to help the girl who had been attacked.
When he had used his【Sense Life】earlier, she had not been in a state where she might die soon, but she had been greatly weakened. This was where the Potions that he had acquired in the Dungeon that he had kept just in case came in handy.
「Ugh…」
Zadiris was fully prepared to be killed at this point. It was not her allies who had killed the adventurers, but Undead. So she thought that the Undead would kill her next.
「Are you alright?」
So she had thought, but time passed and the Undead didn’t attack her. Not only that, but an infant with blood dripping from his forehead was speaking to her.
She was astonished, bewildered and fearful that this infant might be some kind of dead person’s ghost. And because of the strong, stinging pain from the wound in which the knife was still inserted, she was unable to answer his question.
As Vandalieu looked down at Zadiris, he thought,「Her skin color is unusual, but she is a cute girl, huh.」
She seemed to be in her mid or late teenage years. Her lovely features and wet eyes made Vandalieu want to protect her. Her physical appearance was such that she would have easily been able to make a debut as an idol on Earth.
Her grey-brown skin was unusual, but this was another world, after all. It might not even be considered unusual here.
Even her exposed breasts –
『Ah, I shouldn’t look at any more than that.』
Vandalieu quickly averted his eyes away from the girl’s chest. Leaving his mental age aside, his physical body was that of an infant, so fortunately he had not yet experienced sexual desire, though it would have been fine as long as his gaze didn’t become a lewd one.
Well, his eyes were as lifeless as those of the Undead, and his gaze instilled fear more than embarrassment and disgust.
Not realizing this, Vandalieu thought that the treatment of her wound came first, and reached out for the handle of the knife.
「Wait, stop…!」
But this knife was a Magic Item that increased the pain it inflicted. Knowing that pulling it out would cause that violent pain once more, Zadiris tried to stop Vandalieu’s hand.
「…【Painlessness.】」
Knowing that she was in pain, Vandalieu used death-attribute magic to erase the pain that she experienced.
「?!」
As Zadiris was bewildered by the sudden disappearance of the pain, Vandalieu pulled the knife from her abdomen in one movement. And then he poured the 3rd-class Potion on the wound.
Comments