The seven bandits sat in their simple hideout, drinking the alcohol that they’d stolen from their victims today.
「Today’s haul was pretty good, wasn’t it?」
「Yeah, if we take it to the village everyone else will be happy as well.」
They talked as if they were farmers sharing a drink after finishing their work in the fields, but they were definitely bandits.
The proof of that was the fact that the wine that they were drinking was taken from merchants who had been too stingy to hire adventurers to escort them, along with their lives.
Their equipment was old; their leather armor had numerous patches where they had been previously repaired and their weapons consisted of handmade spears, woodcutting hatchets, bows and arrows – they were incredibly poorly equipped. They hadn’t received any formal training, either. If you looked at it one way, their method of fighting came from experience in real battle and brawls. If you looked at it another way, they were just a group of people who swung their weapons around with no technique.
In fact, most of their jobs were Farmer, so they hadn’t received training for battle. The reason that they were bandits was their poverty.
The young men from a village that had become poor for various reasons had left the village to commit crimes. Such cases were not rare in Lambda.
「Well then, I suppose someone should stand watch so we can sleep.」
The bandits’ base simply consisted of several tents put up in a meadow with long grass, in a spot where they had cleared some of the grass away. They did have a lookout tower, but they didn’t seem to have any intentions of using it.
In fact, there was nothing in this meadow but wild deer, so they were safe as long as they kept a fire lit. The reason they still kept watch is because sometimes a stray Goblin came to attack.
But even such a Goblin would scream loudly as it approached them, so they had little motivation to stand guard.
That was why they had no way of knowing if any enemy were to approach them quietly, concealing the sound of their footsteps.
「Hic, I’ve drank a little too much – UOH?」
The bandit on watch who had apparently drank too much wine was snatched up by Bone Bear’s paw that had risen up from the wall of grass and disappeared.
Muffled sounds came from inside the tents, but nobody came out. Instead, Bone Man, Bone Monkey and Bone Wolf with Bone Bird on his back emerged from the long grass.
And behind them was Vandalieu.
「There are six left. Finish them quickly.」
The air was filled with the sound of rattling bones.
The bandits never returned to their village.
For Vandalieu, finding the hiding place of bandits was easier the more atrocious their crimes were, as he could use the spirits of their dead victims as sources of information.
The victims who were attacked by their bandits and had not only their belongings taken, but also their lives. Their regret and hatred towards their assailants was fierce, and having bugs find the spirits was a simple task.
Even if the spirits were far away, he could use the【Spirit Communication】technique to summon them to hear what they had to say.
And then he would send out the Undead using the information he got from the spirits, and the hideouts would be found within a few days.
With this method, Vandalieu had already found four groups of bandits operating in the area around Baronet Bestero’s territory.
After finding them, he continued to gather information such as how many of them there were and how they were armed. The villager bandits that he had attacked today were the smallest, most poorly equipped group out of the four.
「Nice, the training’s successful. Good work, everyone.」
Vandalieu was emotionless as he confirmed that the bandit group had been exterminated, but he was in a good mood as he praised the Undead.
Of course, the Undead, being made of only bones, were unable to smile, but the blue glow in their sockets seemed to flicker in happiness. Their MVP was Bone Bear, who had killed the one on lookout duty with a bear hug and then buried another bandit with his claws.
Bone Man had stabbed two of them to death with his dagger, and Bone Monkey and Bone Wolf had taken one each, strangling and biting them to death.
「Err, it’ll be fine. You’ll be able to fly soon!」
Bone Bird was the only one to be depressed. Vandalieu had made a Golem of the earth and buried one of the bandits from the neck down, and Bone Bird had defeated this bandit by diligently stabbing him with its beak repeatedly.
With only one wing, it was just a burden, but there was no helping it. Bone Bird couldn’t fly.
It was obvious that wings made of only bones and no feathers would not be able to fly.
「If you keep gathering experience and rank up again, you’ll definitely be able to fly. Believe in yourself!」
As Vandalieu encouraged Bone Bird, it flapped its wings with a rattle to express its happiness, as if to say that it would try its best.
After looking at Bone Bird happily and giving it a pat on its skull, Vandalieu examined the treasure that the bandits had gathered.
The first thing that caught his eye was the wagon with three barrels of wine still left in it. They were the leftovers of what the bandits had been drinking.
Evbejia prided itself on its wine, so it was probably of reasonably high quality.
「… I wonder if there’s anything else.」
But to a one-year-old, it held less value than water. He had no way of selling it for money and his companions were all made of bones, so it was completely useless. At best, he could perhaps use it for cooking.
No, it was probably possible for him to drink it. Even as a one-year-old, Vandalieu possessed the Status Effect Resistance skill at level 3, so he would likely not become drunk unless he consumed a very large quantity of it.
『No~♪ You can’t drink alcohol at the age of one. What if you become a drunkard later in life?』
However, his guardian would not allow it, so he decided not to drink it.
「Well, I might as well take at least one barrel back. There’s even a wagon for it. And next is -」
Vandalieu searched around the wagon and inside the tents, but concluded that they were「completely broke」compared to normal adventurers or soldiers. They had apparently stolen cloth purses from the merchants who had normally stored copper and silver coins in them, but there was a whole pile of pouches filled with only seeds and oats that would normally be fed to pets and livestock on Earth. There were some dried river fish. The rest were items for the bandits’ daily necessities.
The special feature was perhaps the vase filled with about five kilograms of salt.
It was a considerably meagre treasure, but perhaps that was to be expected. They were merely seven men that were normally farmers.
They would have been unable to aim for targets with a larger payout – the kind that would hire adventurers as escorts.
But for Vandalieu, it was a decent harvest in its own way.
「This is a great result. I was getting sick of eating only meat and blood, and the salt that Mom had ran out ages ago. And I’m glad I got my hands on some cloth.」
Vandalieu’s lifestyle up until now had been sustained through hunting the deer in the forest. Darcia’s emergency stores of wheat, cheese, vegetables and salt had been used up relatively quickly after her death. In the first place, it was only one person’s worth and it was for the journey that she had been planning, so it was only an amount that she would have been able to carry.
And as Vandalieu developed, the amount that he ate also increased.
It would be problematic to use blood for all of his dietary needs, and if he became too much like a vampire, he would become weak to the sun so that would be problematic. That was why he wanted to eat normal food as well. But meat that was simply cooked after having its blood extracted was dull as well and there were times when he could only get his hands on the meat of raccoons and foxes and such, whose meat was not tasty. Though it was much better than the times he only had Goblin meat available.
The clothes he was wearing were not really clothes, but furs that he had wrapped around himself.
He was like a barbarian child.
「If I use the bandits’ spare clothes, I might be able to make proper clothes for myself. There’s also money, but… well, will I get a chance to use it?」
The Amid was the currency of the Amid Empire and its countries. One Amid was worth about a hundred yen on Earth. There was a half-Amid copper coin, a one-Amid copper coin, a ten-amid copper coin, a 100-Amid silver coin, a 1,000-Amid gold coin and a 10,000-Amid platinum coin.
TLN: 1 Amid = $0.87USD
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