Step by step, I came closer to the commotion.
"She bites!"
The rowdy shouts were filled with child-like joy rather than a cautionary tale.
Those bandits treated the resistance of their victim as nothing more but entertainment, an added spice to the short relief they could find in their otherwise crude and bleak lives.
By the time there were only about twenty steps for me to take, I heard the noise of some sort of material tearing.
"Stop it! Help! Someone, help!"
'This voice…'
Still not really comfortable with the memories of my body's old self, I couldn't really put a finger on who it reminded me. And in all honesty, it couldn't matter less.
Fifteen steps.
"Stay still, you wench!"
By now, I could see a part of the commotion, the four bandits that I could see from beyond the corner of the last carriage in the caravan line. Just like add-ons in porno, they simply stood around, grinning at the sight of the desperately fighting woman.
From what I could see, one of them actually held her hands, pulling them as far above her head as her frame would allow.
'They are not even looking…'
A hint of sympathy grew in my soul, only to vanish when I took the very next step.
They lost their right to complain about what was coming the moment they picked their way of life.
Ten steps.
"Fuck it! Someone, hold her legs too!"
Done playing around, the bandits were now moving for the main course.
Five steps.
Four.
Three.
I approached as if I had every right and reason to be among the bandits, swinging my hand as if I were chasing away a fly that encroached upon one of my mate's shoulders.
Instead of a fly swatter, though, I swung my hatchet, burying its solid blade into the corner between the man's head and his shoulder.
The blade bit into the man's skin and flesh, cleaving him nearly in half, all the way to where it severed the man's spine, killing him before he could make even the tiniest noise.
His lungs still decompressed, baiting the next two bandits to look over.
I didn't waste time trying to recover the blade buried deep into the man's flesh and bones, grabbing the knife from behind his belt instead.
This action cost me just enough time for the nearest of bandits to properly look over… but not yet register what effectively took place just now.
Following my forward momentum, I leaned ahead only to stumble… And drive the dagger right into the bandit's throat, properly severing his airways.
The third of the bandits jumped, finally processing the events before his eyes. As he jumped up, though, I repeated my stunt from before and grabbed for the bandit's own weapon…
'Shit.'
Rather than a knife I could pull effortlessly, it turned out to be some kind of saber. This delay allowed the last of the three bandits to reach for his own weapon and open his mouth.
"Intru—!"
I ignored the noise of the man's severed shout and the noise of cleaving my newly obtained saber right across his chest.
'Four.'
"Intruder!"
"Intr-duh!"
"Intruder!"
Three more bandits jumped to their feet while screaming, one of which I managed to cut by rebounding my chest slash from before and redirecting it toward the man's neck.
It wasn't deep enough to quell the bandit's voice… but there was no longer any need for me to do so. Cutting deep enough for him to fall down to his knees and grab at his opened throat in a futile attempt at stopping the bleeding…
Yes, that was enough.
'Five, six to go.'
Finally, the bandits shook their shock off and prepared to ward my attack off… All the while my greatest challenge was to ignore the notifications that rang out in my ears.
"Kill!"
Even with the two of them having their pants down, all of the remaining bandits jumped up and rushed at me all in one moment.
The first of them lunged forth, clearly forgetting he picked up a club over a long rapier attached to his other hip.
I knocked his club away nonetheless, having no interest in having it implanted into my guts. Before I could reposition my saber, though, a spear stab came from the left while an axe's swing closed my escape to the right.
'Okay.'
Dragging the saber back would take too much time. So, rather than condemning myself for the sake of keeping a hold on a weapon, I simply relaxed my grip and allowed the handle to slip out of my grasp while stepping back, effectively escaping the range of the attack.
'Should I ramp it up a notch?'
The bandits didn't waste even a second, following with another charge, all the more enthusiastic given my lack of weapon.
For them, a weapon was something perfectly well-defined. An axe, a spear, a club, maybe a sword… As the people of their peculiar trade, they had to learn to recognize what one's weapon said about them, a trait imperative for them to pick the right targets to attack.
That's likely why their eyes flared up with excitement when I voluntarily deprived myself of what they considered a weapon and even took a step back, to where I couldn't find another one. And with this excitement clouding their judgment, they all happily lowered their guards and rushed forward even faster.
'There it is.'
I took another step to the back, only to then vigorously kick a small stone I took notice of when approaching the bandits. A piece of rock no one would pay any excessive attention… and also a perfectly sized, shaped, and weighed projectile for me to kick.
Thud!
The dull sound followed as the stone tore through the clothes of a bandit, way too fast for him to even attempt dodging it.
The rest merely wavered before reigniting their spirits and continuing with their charge.
All of their delays, though, continued to add up, giving me just enough time to pull on a loose cloth left behind in the broken carriage, creating a momentary wall as I hid behind the cloth.
A second later, before this random piece of fabric could fall prey to gravity, two bandits smashed right into it… Only for one to eat my fist right into their guts while the other tripped on my leg.
I retreated again, escaping from the cloth before two spears tore through the fabric, threatening to skewer me through if I was just a little slower with my dodge.
Still, with one of the bandits wrapping his hands around his stomach as he fell down to the ground and the other planting his face directly into the ground…
I didn't hesitate and slammed my fist against the exposed neck of the second one before jumping off my other leg only to turn the stomp of my right foot into a round-house kick delivered straight into the temple of the kneeling one.
'Eight done, three to go.'
This new body of mine was nowhere athletic enough for me to kick as high as the head of a standing man. That's why, I first made sure he would fall down to his knees before executing the powerful strike.
"He killed them…!"
I turned my eyes to the first bandit to freak out.
Maybe it was because of their adrenaline or maybe because I low-key baited them into an adrenaline-inducing charge, but their spirits breaking happened actually quite a bit later than I expected it to.
Not that I had any plans to let any of them escape, of course.
I held myself back from taunting the bandits as, at this point, it would only serve to scare them off. I've just dispatched a great majority of their group with seemingly no effort. If someone like that were to now face only three enemies and still have the peace of mind to taunt them…
"Kill them!"
From behind, the bandits' victim cried out.
It was a relatively young girl, somewhere around the age of my new body. She was supporting herself with one of her hands while using the other to hold whatever there was left of her clothes to hide her most precious part.
She didn't seem to mind her neglige, though, too focused on giving the bandits a vicious, vindicative stare.
'So that's how it is…' I thought when a series of flashbacks fired up in my brain.
The voice that I felt familiar with yet couldn't recognize certainly belonged to this girl. The daughter of the richest serf in the village, one who considered herself to be a town lady rather than a peasant like everyone else.
It was her decision to skimp on the security detail, going with a band of newbie adventures as opposed to a group of seasoned mercenaries making up a well-balanced and experienced party. And that was just the most recent of the transgressions that she never had to pay the price of, always protected by her daddy's money.
'Even though I knew bullies are aplenty in every possible world…'
Even with all of my experience, when the details of some of her more devious exploits flashed in my mind, I just couldn't help but feel a sense of… relief.
If the lone survivor of the caravan turned out to be some sort of an angel-hearted person who did nothing their entire life but take care and help others… I would have a tough call to make in just a moment. But with this bitch of a person…
"That's a relief," I muttered, minding not the false hope those words were likely to ignite in the girl's soul… assuming she cared enough to pay enough attention to actually hear them.
Still, the topic of this piece of shit was something for the near future, not the present. Currently, it was the two spears and a huge mallet dragged by the biggest out of all the bandits that had me quite preoccupied.
But my seemingly panicked retreat also came to an end, bringing me to the very point where I started the skirmish and with enough distance between me and the closest bandit for me to… reach out and dislodge the hatchet that I initially buried in the bandit's spine.
'Hmm?' I distracted myself for but a second as a strange sense of slight power filled my veins the very moment my fingers grasped the hatchet's handle. 'I guess that's something to think about later,' I registered, swinging my regained weapon and cutting off the blade of one of the spears before using the butt of its handle to knock the mallet's weight just hard enough to push it just far away from me to get out of the harm's way.
The second spear… I allowed it to graze over my side, partially out of respect for a perfectly executed lunge. Partially, for while the bandit just managed to draw the first bit of my blood in the entire fight, his lunge left him in just the right spot for me to bring my hatchet down…
A moment later, the fight came to an end.
With just two bandits left, one of whom ended up breaking their wrist when I redirected their heavy weapon away, it took me a total of three swings to bring a proper end to the fight.
"Thank God…" the bitch fell down on her ass and supported her on her hands from behind, staring at the bloody markings of the recent battle. "I never knew you could fight so well!" she called out while almost forgetting to keep the scraps of her clothes over her chest and crotch. "You will be greatly rewarded for saving me, I will see to…"
I relaxed my grip on the hatched for the second time. This time, however, rather than giving up on the attempt to recover it, I actually threw it.
The simple weapon made a circle in the air and then the other… before its blade sank straight into the girl's face.
'That takes care of all the potential witnesses of what happened,' I thought, finally taking my time to stretch my arms to the back and yawn a little.
All of this exercise made me slightly sleepy, eager to recover the energy I expended by getting some proper rest.
But that wasn't going to happen. I still had to gather all that would be of use from this place, get some food, dress my wound… And there was still the topic of chasing after those bastard adventurers who ran from the fighting, condemning this body's biological mother to her cruel fate!
I moved over to the still-twitching corpse of the entitled bitch of a woman before grabbing the hatchet's handle and tearing it out of her face, not sparing even a single glance at her now-exposed charms.
'So much to do, so much to think about…' I thought, raising my eyes up the path located right on the border of a huge plain and a massive forest. 'And the time is ticking, isn't it?'