Absolutely Do Not Touch ELdmia Egga – Chapter 136

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Yuziro
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The world was a harsh place.

It wasn’t a fantasy world of dreams and romance, but a reality fantasy, filled with monsters, madmen, and many who struggled to survive under their oppression.

Considering how many people died young without ever having the chance to even hold a sword, it was perhaps more common than one might think for people to turn to thievery or banditry when faced with a combination of harsh circumstances.

Still.

Even so.

If you gritted your teeth and searched, you could find a way to make a living.

After all, a place where people lived was still just that.

These guys had simply chosen to capture and sell other humans who, unlike them, were living decent lives or trying to do so, out of all the countless ways to survive.

They were the kind of people who deserved no leniency.

“And I’ve decided to kill every last one of them!”

In a world where everything but my salary was rising, being forced into a life of slavery where human rights didn’t exist, after already being a tired and worn-out corporate slave, was just too much.

If only the slave trade was legal in Itsiel and these guys were operating within the bounds of the law, I might have left them alone, but this was unforgivable.

“Where the hell did that madman come from?!”

“Crossbow! Get the crossbow… Ugh!”

In the distance, I saw one of the bandits, who had turned around shouting for a crossbow, fall in one shot, following his boss, after being struck by an arrow Asirye had fired from the tower.

The other bandits began to move frantically.

“Damn it, he’s not alone! An arrow came from the tower!”

“Wait, then the boss…”

I understood their urgency, but they shouldn’t have been letting their guard down, even if I was a bit far away.

I didn’t know what kind of confidence they had, when they were dying one by one with every swing of my sword.

“He’s already dead! He’s probably looking for a place for you to lie down in the afterlife, so hurry up and go help him!”

“Aaaah!”

They had no system, no purpose.

Those who had been selling others to save their own lives acted according to their nature as soon as their boss disappeared in the sudden attack.

Whether there were thirty or forty of them, they were just annoying, not a threat.

As I was harvesting the heads of the bandits like a farmer reaping rice, five of them gathered together and began to form a battle formation against me.

The problem was that what they were holding weren’t shields, but just boards that barely resembled them.

The only real shield was the one in the middle.

“Oh? Did we have some deserters here? You guys managed to form something that looks like a battle formation?”

“Who are you! Who are you to suddenly appear and do this?!”

Scratch that, they weren’t putting up a fight.

It seemed like they were just struggling to survive.

Was it important who I was here?

If it was really important, they should have captured me, cut off a few limbs, and then asked.

Even the actions of the guy in the middle, who was holding the most shield-like shield and speaking, seemed like nothing more than an attempt to escape reality.

“I don’t introduce myself when I’m about to kill everyone. It’s pointless, isn’t it?”

“After suddenly committing a massacre!! You dare say such a thing!! Do you know who we are?! Do you think you’ll be safe after killing us all?! The bandits around here are a union! As soon as the news spreads that we’ve been attacked, dozens of bandits will come after you with fire in their eyes! And the noble who backs us will try to kill you too!”

Huh.

A union, huh?

These bandits were really something.

Still, I decided to answer one of his questions, since he had voluntarily given me information that wasn’t in the documents.

“You’re a friend with a poor learning ability!”

“What…?”

“Did you not learn anything from seeing me kill your boss as soon as I got here?”

The other bandits, except for the one who was talking, just stared at me with questioning expressions, as if they didn’t understand either.

Seeing that, I suddenly became curious if I could instill fear in them, so I put on the most evil smile I could muster and answered.

“I always take out the head first when dealing with trash. So, before I deal with you trash as a group, who do you think I killed first?”

“…U, uh. N-no way…”

“Of course, it’s possible!”

The guy, who was smart enough to take the lead and had the sense to try and talk his way out of this after seeing my skills, began to turn pale.

“Your patron, the slave trading group, is all dead. Not only the group, but the noble who backed them is also on the verge of political death. Now that your curiosity is satisfied, let’s go!”

“W-where to?”

“To hell, of course!”

There was no way that the flimsy battle formation of untrained bandits could stand against me, who could kick down a steel door.

Wham!

“Ugh!”

I channeled my mana and kicked the guy in the middle of the formation, sending him flying about two meters.

In the meantime, I swung my fists to prepare for the guys on either side of him, but there was no counterattack, as if I had overestimated them.

Seeing the two guys I had punched die uselessly, the remaining two threw down their boards and began to run away.

“M-monster!”

“Aaaah!”

As always, Asirye’s arrows flew accurately, targeting their vital points, and mercilessly took their lives.

“Huh. Is that it?”

I looked around and saw nothing but corpses.

While I was looking around to see if there was anything else in my line of sight, Asirye, who had come down from the tower, approached me.

“What are you looking for?”

“No, I was just wondering if they were all dead already.”

“They’re either dead or they ran away. Didn’t you see the guys who were on guard when we came running away without looking back?”

“Haaah… Their ability to assess the situation is amazing.”

I walked over to the bandit I had kicked, who was lying a short distance away, and saw that he was staring at me with wide eyes, still breathing heavily while holding his shield with both hands.

Looking closer, it wasn’t that he hadn’t dropped the shield, but that his arm was broken and his ribs were shattered, so he was unable to move and was being held down by the shield.

“Hey. I think about five guys ran away. Do you think they’ll try to get help from the bandit union you were talking about, or will they just run away without looking back?”

“Damn you… Go to hell…!”

“Really? I was going to give you a potion to fix your broken arm and ribs if you answered. If you don’t want it, then never mind.”

“W-what?! W-wait…!”

Since there was no need to be so extreme as to torture a guy who didn’t want to talk, I didn’t hesitate to cut off his head.

It seemed like there were no more enemies around, so while I was wiping my sword and putting it back in its sheath, Asirye, who had been quietly watching me, tilted her head and said,

“It might not have been a bad idea to keep him alive to get some information.”

“I figured I could just ask the spirits and get a rough idea of where the bandits in the forest are, so I just killed him. It’s unsettling to think that I might have left him alive and he might be selling people somewhere else.”

Low-level adventurers, like the village thugs, still had a chance at redemption, but those who captured and sold people were not up for negotiation in my book.

“And you were going to give him a potion if he answered?”

“I said I’d give him a potion, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t kill him. I was going to heal him and then kill him.”

“That’s… a fitting torture for those who capture and sell people.”

“Of course.”

Still, since we had destroyed one base, we decided to quickly loot the pockets of the dead and the tower where the boss had been.

Honestly, their equipment was in better condition than I had imagined, so I had been worried that they had invested most of the money they had earned from the slave traders into equipment.

But contrary to my worries, there was a considerable amount of silver coins in the chest I found under the boss’s bed.

“It’s probably about one gold coin’s worth? It’s not that high quality, but there are also three potions.”

“Considering the scale… they might have been quite big shots among the bandits.”

“It’s a relief that we were able to get rid of them and their roots.”

There were also some decent pieces of equipment, but we decided to give up on taking them.

It would have been great if there was something like an inventory like in games, but bags with storage magic were so ridiculously expensive that we didn’t have any.

It was really tempting to have a full set of equipment fit into a pouch the size of my fist, but the price of 20 gold coins was just too much.

“Ah. I wish a bag with storage magic would just fall from the sky.”

“Pfft.”

“What’s so funny about my pure wish, huh? Teacher?”

“No. It just reminded me of something from the past.”

“Something from the past?”

I wondered if there was some funny story about someone trying to find a bag with storage magic, but what Asirye said was surprisingly a memory we shared.

“The day Eldi and I first met. The bandits were making a fuss about that ordinary sword, calling it a magic sword.”

“Ah, that time. Right, that happened.”

“Back then, when I saw the bandits making a fuss about a magic sword, I couldn’t help but think, ‘What kind of idiot drops a magic sword?'”

“Hehe. Honestly, I thought the same thing.”

Even that tense moment was a funny memory when I looked back on it.

It was amazing that the day had come when I could feel that way.

It made me feel proud of my growth and how hard I had been working.

Then, Asirye, suppressing a laugh, said something that completely shattered my pride.

“But now that Eldi suddenly said that, it reminded me of them.”

“……”

It was such a stupid thing to say that I couldn’t even argue, so the smile that had been spreading across my face, fueled by the pride I had gained from reminiscing, disappeared.

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[Feels sad bro….]