Chapter 111
"Grah!"
"Argh!"
Groans of pain burst from the bandits scattered about.
"Don't try to force yourself to move. Pain follows."
The gazes of the kneeling bandits focused on me.
"Did you do this!"
"I did."
Don't mistake me for someone else.
After personally admitting as much, I turned to Ropus.
"Ropus."
"...Y-Yeah, what is it?"
"You're on our side. Why are you looking at me like that's strange?"
"Right... But I don't even know your name. Why had I decided to be on your side?"
"My name is Dekal.
Help wipe out the bandit group. Then I'll let you go."
"Got it. I'm a collaborator of the hero candidate. I'll help with anything."
That settles it, then.
I looked over the village chief and the young women trembling in fear, then spoke.
"Go back home.
Lock the door and don't come outside."
"Sir Dekal! Please stay safe."
The village chief bowed deeply as he spoke.
"Nothing will go wrong. Let's go. Ropus."
"Sure."
"You son of a bitch!"
"Ropus, you traitorous bastard!"
"Where are you going after doing this to us?"
"Damn it! My body won't move!"
Ropus and I passed through the shouting bandits and left the village.
Outside, a forest thick with overgrowth came into view.
The other three, excluding Aba, were already gathered.
"How did it go?"
"I knew you'd be okay, Brother...!"
Karen said in a bright voice.
"I can't believe it even though I saw it."
"Is something like this even possible? There were eight of them, yet you subdued them all in such a short time."
Wonder filled Stia, while a fierce curiosity blazed in Diana's eyes.
"What on earth did you do?"
"Already interrogating me?
Let's finish this properly first. There's no turning back now."
"Who's the guy beside you?"
"A collaborator.
No need to be so wary. He betrayed them for our sake. It's already impossible for him to get along with the bandits again."
"Exactly.
My name is Ropus. In exchange for helping you annihilate the bandits, I've been guaranteed my life."
Everyone regarded Ropus with displeased expressions.
They weren't close enough to hear what was being said, but since he had been gleefully tormenting the villagers until just moments ago only to suddenly turn serious and switch sides,
it was only natural to think it strange.
However, no one pressed the matter.
The situation had already passed the stage for that.
All that remained was resolving the problem. Everyone must have been tense solely because of that.
"Dekal! Are you okay?"
Aba, who had been in charge of communications, came running up belatedly.
Since we had agreed that Aba would signal if anything happened to me, she had hidden separately.
But nothing had happened.
Hypnosis was frighteningly effective. It was a moment that proved that fact once again.
"Ropus. Tell me. How many are there in the bandit group?"
"There are a little over ten. I don't remember all their faces either."
Diana furrowed her brow.
"Can we really trust what this bastard says?"
"We'll find out soon."
I calmly interrogated Ropus in front of everyone.
Where the hideout was located, how to get there, how many lookouts were posted along the way, what their armament status was, where the traps were, what kinds they were, and how to deal with them.
I spoke whatever came to mind as if inputting it into a machine, and without even a moment's hesitation over whether he should reveal such information, Ropus spilled everything to us.
Diana, who had been watching with suspicion, gradually began to look convinced as the amount of information increased.
"It might not all be true, but there's information that'll help.
And it's unlikely he made up this many lies."
"So, it's not a lie. I'm a collaborator of the hero candidate. It's all true."
Ropus instead lashed out at Diana, who was doubting him.
"Shut up! I'll be the judge of that. You should be grateful I'm even bothering to listen to trash like you."
"What's this? Which family's young lady is she? Tch, what a nasty temper. You must have a hard time too, Mister Dekal."
"Y-You! Do you want to die?"
Surprised, Ropus raised his hands.
"Whoa, whoa. Calm down. That'd be a breach of contract, wouldn't it?"
"If it's Diana, she'd do it and then some."
When I cautioned him from the side, Ropus hunched his shoulders.
"The info's real."
"...Hmm."
Stia, who had been lost in thought, opened her mouth.
"While Dekal was bringing Ropus, I didn't see anyone approaching the forest entrance.
The enemy still doesn't know what happened. The ambush is still viable. If the man's information is correct, it's decisive."
"There's a side trail we use among ourselves, like I said.
If we go that way, there are no annoying traps, and we can hit the guards from behind. Killing two birds with one stone."
Everyone looked at the shameless Ropus, flabbergasted.
Was the hypnosis too strong...?
I might not have needed to go as far as [If necessary, I will devote my body to protecting the hero candidate].
Since [If necessary] also relies on personal judgment.
In this case, it was effective against bandits.
Ropus had become a complete collaborator, as if he had forgotten what he had been doing just moments ago.
He held no wariness toward us.
At this rate, Diana might suspect the existence of hypnosis.
But if it was only at the level of speculation, it didn't matter.
There was scant evidence that I had manipulated him into becoming like this.
It was more likely that they would believe Ropus was simply a despicable human being.
"Ropus. One last question.
How many in your bandit group are in bad condition?
I'm talking about humans who have absorbed the [Red Soul Stone]."
"...Red Soul Stone?"
For the first time, Ropus hesitated.
As if he had never heard of the Red Soul Stone before.
"I'm not sure about that.
There were some strange ones, sure. We don't act friendly with each other, so I didn't ask any questions and just left them alone."
"How many were there?"
"Two. They kept acting like halfwits so I thought about kicking them out, but they fought incredibly well in battle.
They also seemed to know no fatigue when raping women. The boss took quite a liking to them and decided to keep them close."
"Do you have any idea when they started acting strange?"
"Well. Like I said, we're only close with those we're close to. I don't associate with those kinds of guys.
We don't ask about their origins either. What do you expect from a bandit group?"
"..."
Two of them.
Would hypnosis work on humans who had absorbed the Red Soul Stone?
The odds were high that it wouldn't. Those two would have to be dealt with through combat somehow.
I had extracted all the information I could.
I looked over everyone.
There was no one who looked like they wanted to turn back.
"Let's take the side path."
I said calmly.
"Ropus. Lead the way."
"Got it."
We put Ropus in front and entered the side path he had mentioned.
I took out the prepared lanterns, handed one to Aba, and held one myself.
"Stia. You said humans who have absorbed the Red Soul Stone can't be stopped by ordinary means, right?"
"It seems they forget pain."
Like a criminal on drugs?
"Though it's probably not just that in reality... they definitely become much more resilient."
It would be a bit harder than that.
If I think about how you need to put several bullets into a criminal high on drugs who has forgotten pain to subdue them at once, our swordsmen might be under quite a bit of pressure.
"There's no point in overthinking things during battle, so let's keep it simple.
If a [monster] that has absorbed the Red Soul Stone appears, Aba, Stia, and Karen will buy time."
"Like when we fought together in the Black Forest before?"
"Yeah. Just like when we hunted the Hob Goblins."
"Leave it to me. I'll protect you, Brother."
Karen was reliable.
Was it because we had fought together so many times?
Come to think of it, it seemed we had been fighting together continuously since I met her.
It was a party that had started from hypnosis, but...
This wasn't the time for such thoughts. I sharpened my nerves and focused.
So I wouldn't panic no matter what happened.
"We'll arrive soon."
Ropus said.
Aba lowered the lantern she was holding.
"Should I put out the light?"
"No. It's fine. Let's keep going like this. If this is a path the bandits use, putting out the light would be more suspicious."
"Just like Mister Dekal says."
With Ropus's agreement as well, my assertion carried more weight.
We were able to smoothly enter the bandits' hideout.
It was merely an abandoned building surrounded by a makeshift fence, all things considered.
Perhaps it had once been a villa owned by a wealthy man who lived here, for it was a luxurious place for bandits to hide away in.
"From here on, let's approach with the lights out."
"Okay."
I stowed the lantern into my personal storage.
"Now, the patrol should be here shortly."
Ropus crouched low and chattered away confidently.
"..."
Now, all that remained was to verify with our own two eyes whether the information Ropus had divulged was correct.
I wasn't particularly doubtful, but the very process of everyone confirming together was important.
Then we would raid the hideout without hesitation and wipe them out.
We could go back in good spirits.
But then…….
Something unexpected happened even for me.
We sat there until our legs went numb, but no one came.
"Huh? That's strange……."
"……."
At that moment, Stia fixed Ropus with a sharp glare and leveled her blade at him.
"What are you playing at?"
"N-no! There's no way they'd leave their post at this hour.
That would mean they disobeyed the boss's orders, and if they got caught, they'd be beaten to death on the spot."
"……."
"Stia. Lower your sword."
I spoke quietly.
"We can't sit here making noise. We'll have to check for ourselves."
At this point, there was no choice but to confirm it directly.
"Karen. Come with me."
"Okay!"
"The rest of you wait here. We'll go check the patrol group's movements and come back."
"……All right."
Stia sheathed her sword.
Diana was glaring holes into the back of Ropus's head.
"Dekal. If this guy tries anything suspicious, I'll kill him."
"Magic is too loud, so if it comes to that, leave it to Stia or Ava."
With Karen, I hid myself behind the screen and slipped out onto the bandits' patrol route.
We walked along the path around the outskirts of the hideout.
"Ugh……."
Karen hunched her shoulders as if goosebumps had risen all over her.
I was just as startled and swallowed my breath.
There was something on the patrol route that should not have been there.
A corpse.
The mutilated body of a bandit, torn to shreds, lay abandoned in the middle of the forest path.
A bandit being dead was not strange in itself.
After all, we had come here to kill the bandits ourselves.
But if someone had killed them before we did, that was strange.
What happened?
I barely forced down the nausea rising in my throat.
"Let's go closer and take a look."
"……Okay."
I was glad there was someone beside me.
I thought that from the bottom of my heart.
I took Karen's hand. Karen gripped mine tightly as well.
I didn't care if anyone called me a coward. My body was trembling on its own, and Karen was the same.
"……."
I calmly took a deep breath and approached the corpse.
It was horrible.
Just truly horrible.
Whoever had done this, I felt like I could never have anything to do with the bastard.
Even if the victim had been a criminal who deserved to die.
I had heard the patrols moved in pairs.
I looked around.
Afraid that whoever had done this to the corpse might notice us, neither of us said a word.
There was another corpse nearby.
It had been brutally murdered.
If the bandit lying on the path looked as though he had been struck down before he even knew what was happening, this one, lying facedown with his back exposed…….
Looked like he had died while trying to flee.
I didn't even know if the culprit was human……. But there was no mercy.
Even someone who had shown their back in an attempt to escape had been torn to pieces.
"……."
Karen's breathing grew ragged.
Holding Karen's hand, I moved away from the place where the corpses lay scattered.
"Hoo……."
We kept taking deep breaths in silence.
"What do you think that was?"
"I don't know. ……It doesn't seem like something a person could do."
"Yeah……."
Maybe a bear, but.
There was no way a human's strength could have done that.
And yet, when I first saw it, I had felt a strong certainty that a person had done it.
Because the corpse looked as if it had been abused.
"Let's go back to where everyone is."
"Okay."
I returned with Karen.
"……You two.
Did something happen? You don't look well."
Even in the darkness, Stia seemed to have noticed and asked with concern.
"The patrol group is dead. They'd been killed by something."
Stia's eyes sharpened.
"What was the state of the bodies…… like?"
"Terrible. They were so brutally crushed and mangled it's hard to even talk about."
"The Soul Stone's rampage has begun."
"……."
I thought I had led the party well up until now.
Make active use of hypnosis, reduce the danger, and maximize the gains.
That was how I had been acting, and so far it had been effective.
But when a real crisis arrived, I had nothing.
No courage to get through moments like this, no guts either.
"Ropus. Did you see the patrol group before you left?"
Ropus nodded.
"Before I came out here, we exchanged some pointless chatter.
……They were alive until then."
"Then……."
What was happening inside right now?
The moment my thoughts reached that point, a desperate scream rang out.
I froze completely.
I couldn't say we should run, nor could I say we shouldn't.
Everyone was terrified.
There was one exception.
"……Let's go."
Stia gripped her sword and spoke in a low voice.
We followed Stia, who was the first to move, and slipped into the bandit hideout.