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–––Bandit’s viewpoint

The moment the clock ticked the time we agreed on, I could feel holy magic being cast over the entire city.

“Bandit.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s finally time.”

Preparing for any unexpected event, we kept watch over one of the busiest parts of the city. Any demon that tried making a move on the king was already accounted for, so I wanted to make sure no demon decided to go on a blind rampage in the city as a last ditch effort seeing their plan had failed. I was praying that would not be the case, but soon I saw my prediction was unfolding. Some of the figures that looked like common pedestrians suddenly began spewing miasma as their cover was blown by the spell.

“So you’re demons, eh? Ya messed with the wrong city! Don’t think ya’ll ever get away alive!”

After I yelled that, the pedestrians looked around in confusion, but then noticed the demons walking amongst them. Screams and cries followed soon as they started running around wildly. They threw their groceries in a hurry, trampling over shop tents and causing some accidents, but at least all the innocent humans quickly emptied the streets.

“…I feel like that caused more panic than necessary to make them run away.”
“Don’t sweat it! At least we got the demons all to ourselves now!”

I ignored my sister’s complaint, and unsheathed my sword to confront the demons. With me in their way, I doubt they would try chasing after the people. And even if they tried, it would only give me an opening to strike from behind.

There were not even ten demons there, but they were still twice as numerous as my group, so they grinned menacingly. They were probably confident they would win…so that was one thing I could fix right away.

“Look at this little adventurer trying to talk big! It’s common knowledge that a human can’t win against a demon fighting one-on-one, or did you never learn to count properly?”
“Heh, you think the guards will help you? Just look around! It’s just you three, and there’s plenty of us to put you in your place!”
“You can curse your stupidity until the end of-”

They kept babbling about who knows what, I ignored them and instead dashed forward to slay the last demon who was still talking.

“Wha-?!”
“H-he’s fast!”
“Y’all just too slow!”

I was not the only one who started moving. My two sisters followed suit, plunging their weapons into the bodies of the nearest demons. They seemed shocked their numbers had decreased so quickly, but I was surprised as well. I constantly heard stories of how brutal demons were, so I had not expected to be able to kill them so quickly. I was almost disappointed by this outcome. Either I had grown far stronger than I expected, or they were much weaker than I thought. Either way, that did not change our goal, we had to kill all of them before they harmed anyone.

“N-no way..!”

They quickly realized who truly had the upper hand and began turning around to flee, but I would not let them. I had come all the way to Strom to kill all of them.

“Hahh!”

With an invigorating shout, I let magic course through my body. Even though I could only manipulate a small amount of it, my body flared up as if I was burning before it all soaked into my muscles. I wanted to keep my mana spending to the minimum necessary, just in case I needed it for a prolonged fight. I had learned many things fighting Behemoth, and I knew that there was no need to go all-out here, instead I needed to restrain myself so I could continue fighting at a consistent level for a long time. My magic did not look too flashy because of that, but it was still enough to strengthen my body. Even if it was just me against all these demons, there was no real threat fighting them now.

“Gyahh!”
“Ughh!”

It did not feel like a real fight, it was more like I was trampling over them. The demons fell one after another, letting out agonizing moans. Unable to match my strength, they all tried to escape and leave their comrades. But my sisters and I just continued mercilessly cutting them down from behind before they got too far. There was no telling what they would do against innocent civilians in revenge if they got away, so we could not afford to feel pity for them.

“I’m done, Bandit.”
“Same here, I got all the demons on my side.”
“Nice work ya two. The guards can clean up all of this, so let’s check if anyone needs help.”

There had been no truly powerful enemies here, but there was still the chance that a stronger demon was lurking in another part of the city. Rather than relishing in our small victory, we quickly left that place.

§　§　§

It was finally time. Me, Bacchus, and some of his men were going to infiltrate the mansion, and I knew they were not the strongest group out there. At first I wanted to get into the mansion alone, but they begged me to let them come along, so in the end I had to accept.

“I know we’ve gone over this before, but only focus on rescuing the hostages. I’ll do all the fighting.”
“I know. I promise we won’t get in your way.”

I did not have to tell them anything to make them realize the difference in power between them and the demon, so it did not seem like they would do something crazy. So that was a load off my mind. At first I thought I would end up having to fight while constantly protecting them, but I was glad to see that was unlikely to happen.

I turned around and looked at the mansion. The holy spell was already active on the entire city, and that included this mansion, but there was an eerie silence in it.

(Did he give up? Or is he too weakened to even attempt to escape..? Or is he so confident he sees no reason to fret over this situation? Whichever the case, I can’t afford to let my guard down.)

Usually I was right when guessing things like this, so I felt like the demon was probably stronger than I had expected.

“…Let’s go.”

Bacchus and his men nodded silently. I swung my halberd to cut open the lock on the outer gates, and before the metallic clang vanished from the air I slammed through and shredded the front door. I turned back to make sure the men were following me, and let them go into the mansion while I used Flight Magic and entered the second floor through a window.