Roderic thought about it, then grabbed the knife slowly, letting them see his strange-looking knife. He showed the string of the knife, letting them know that he needed to unclip it first. He then took his hand down into his pocket, unclipping the knife's string, before calmly throwing the knife onto the ground where the presumed bandit leader wanted the weapons to land.
At the same time, Lucian threw his sword with its scabbard down onto the same spot where Roderic threw his knife. They then proceeded to dismount slowly from their horses, raising their arms into the air, letting the bandits know they didn't have any ill intentions.
The presumed bandit leader pointed forward at the both of them, letting the bandits know that they must be searched. His expression not fluctuating in the slightest. His cold gaze shifted down towards the weapons their targets threw, grabbing them then inspecting them, before concluding their value was decent, but nothing too special. Maybe the knife might catch the gaze of a few collectors with its strange eye placed on the handle as well as the blade being an icy-blue tint.
Suddenly, while in thought, one of the bandits grabbed Roderic's flint and steel tied to his black fur coat and asked the leader if this should be removed. The bandit leader agreed to it. The bandit then unclipped it. Roderic responded back with a tsk before his expression turned calm again.
The bandits searching the both of them said to the leader that they found nothing of danger and the time for robbery was now. The bandit leader with his cold gaze moved up to Roderic, extending his arm. "Well, if you want it to go peacefully, the way you both are doing it now is definitely the correct way of approaching it," nodding before forcing the fur-coated man to give him a handshake. Roderic extended his arm as well, showing that he agreed to it.
They then shook hands. The bandit leader still gripping on, said "I must say, those black-steel gloves you have on look quite valuable. You wouldn't mind me taking them, right?" Roderic nodded before his calm expression turned into a sinister grin. The bandit leader, immediately picking up on it, tried to forcibly pull his hand away. But to no avail.
The fur-coated man in front of him didn't budge, not even slightly. Almost like an unmovable boulder. The bandit leader immediately signaled the archers and the bandits with close-quarter weapons to attack the both of them, still attempting to let his hand leave the man's grasp, but still to no avail.
Suddenly the bandit leader felt an icy sensation spreading through the inside of his arm, going from prickling to intense burning. The pain was unbearable. He felt his arm locking up, almost like his arm was paralyzed, then the burning sensation stopped.
Suddenly, the burning sensation appeared again, but this time slithering downwards into his chest. Suddenly the fur-coated man stopped holding his hand, letting the bandit leader suffer in silence, as the bandit leader collapsed.
The bandit leader felt a cold sweat appear on his forehead as he attempted his best to breathe, slowly feeling his body shutting down. A calm sensation that arrives from death flushed over him, but the still burning sensation kept him awake, chaotically smearing pain through his entire being.
Suddenly a man wielding a sword appeared over him, a sun emblazoned on his chest. The man then steered himself to the side, letting his blade smoothly line up well with the bandit leader's neck, before quickly swiping his blade downwards, cutting the man's head clean off.
"Roderic, if we are to continue working together, I want you to avoid causing unnecessary suffering. If killing is necessary, I want you to kill them in one fell swoop." Lucian's expression turned serious, his brows frowning slightly. He then pointed at both sides under his ear. "If you cut a deep gash underneath either side under a person's ear, it will cause almost instant death, most likely painless. So one way to do it is to use that strange ability you just used, then grab the knife and slice a deep gash under either ear."
"Whatever you say, but I feel that's so unnecessary and takes too much effort. It's not like bandits deserve to live anyway. Robbing, killing, slave trading, and pillaging are all common among evildoers like these. Remorse is not needed." Roderic retorted, his face still calm, even slightly smirking, not really taking it too seriously.
"I agree to some degree some humans are not redeemable, but causing unnecessary pain and suffering yourself just turns you into the same thing they are. An unredeemable monster!" Lucian became slightly irritated, his brow now twitching, as Roderic wasn't taking his agreement seriously at all.
"Well, that takes too lon—" Suddenly an arrow struck the back of Roderic's neck, as multiple more fell down, turning him into a pincushion. Suddenly multiple bandits struck him with slash after slash, some stabbing, others dragging their blades upwards to cause more damage. But to their shock, no blood sprouted out. Roderic then quickly started explaining again. "As I was saying, using all that time to prepare my knife and then cutting their necks in a specific way is just too much effort for insects like these." His expression not changing for an instance throughout the entire segment where he was attacked.
Suddenly the bandits realized that their blades and arrows never even made contact with the fur-coated man's body. They were stabbing into a thick ice layer that lay over the fur-coated man.
The fur-coated man suddenly grabbed one of the bandits' heads, without even looking at him for a second.
POP!
The bandit's head popped, spraying blood everywhere, brain matter falling on the thick layer of ice on Roderic's arm. The two eyeballs flew into a nearby bush, and the bandit's skull turned into dust and shrapnel, hitting the bandits around and causing serious wounds to appear on the bodies of the bandits. "I can do this if you prefer? It is instant death, you know." Roderic smirked, tilting his head a little upwards. "Best part is that I avoid using my echo. I don't want to turn into a rend, you know. Best of both worlds, right?" His smirk turned into an innocent smile. Roderic then whipped his arm to get rid of the blood and brain matter laying on top of the ice layer.
Lucian looked in shock, his gaze tilting on the now headless bandit, before tilting his gaze over the countless bandits writhing in pain. "You don't take me seriously at all, do you?" Lucian's expression turned quite sour.
Roderic's smile weakened down back into a prideful grin. He then said, "Perhaps."
Lucian calmed himself, taking a deep breath before giving it some thought, then saying, "I'll let you be a little brutal for now, but if you don't change over our adventures, I'll drop you and go my own way," before shifting his gaze down on one of the bandits in pain, lopping his head straight off his body before the bandit could even react.
Roderic then smiled and said, "For someone who doesn't like suffering and pain, you sure don't have an issue with killing. Almost like you are trying to redeem yourself in your own twisted way."
Lucian's gaze landed on Roderic, frowning slightly before lopping off the next bandit's head. Roderic laughed, then turned around to where the archers shot at him. Roderic wasn't too surprised to find them long gone, but to their unfortunate luck, Roderic had a great sense of smell, hearing, and vision, basically becoming a perfect predator for the poor fools running for their lives.
Roderic suddenly went into a sprint, immediately becoming faster than a horse at top speed. One of the poor bandits suddenly felt something was off, turning his head. He saw a hand immediately block his vision before everything turned black.
Roderic repeated this, crushing multiple bandit heads in quick succession, not a single one managing to notice Roderic's presence before it was too late.
Roderic suddenly stopped, his senses telling him that there was no one left.
As he relaxed down, a sly thought flashed through his brain. "Heh, this is what you wanted, right, Lucian?" Roderic then shifted his gaze, searching for a place to clean off all the bodily fluids that covered him, now freezing on top of the ice layer.
To Roderic's luck, there was a river nearby as he ran over, washing off all the blood and other foul materials that had landed on him. He then strolled back to where Lucian was, feeling no rush as all the bandits that were there were heavily injured from the bone fragments, none of them being armored at all. He then tilted Lucian's kettle helmet into a more comfortable position.
After strolling back through the woods, his gaze landed back on Lucian. He was still slicing off the poor bandits' heads. Roderic laughed, thinking to himself how much of a hypocrite Lucian was. Then suddenly noticing one of the bandits had acted like he was more injured than he really was, the bandit finally noticed a time frame where he could backstab the Solarin knight. His stern frown turned into a cold-blooded grin before lunging his dagger into one of the weak points in the knight's armor, as the knight was not fully geared up, not even having a helmet on.
Roderic's thoughts churned, realizing that he had no proper way of instantly closing the distance to help Lucian. But as Roderic was rapidly churning thoughts on how to save Lucian...
Lucian sidestepped, clearly sensing and hearing the attack coming. The bandit who lunged his knife towards the Solarin knight instantly frowned, his eyes turning from hope to despair.
Before the bandit could plead, Lucian struck his blade down, quickly lopping the man's head off, blood splattering on Lucian's already bloody boots and pants.
Roderic snapped out of his thoughts, realizing that the knight was quite skilled, almost impressively skilled. Sensing an attack like that, he might just have some amazing potential as a mage. His senses will then grow even stronger, once the ritual is completed. Of course only if the Shifting Sanctum allows a knight from the Solarin capital to become a mage, which Roderic slightly doubted.
Moving slowly, Roderic avoided the now dark, sticky moss, the crimson mixing with the soil, the blood splattered on rocks and grass. The scene was visceral. If Roderic and Lucian were normal people, they might have puked on the spot and gotten deeply traumatized.
But to Roderic, the worst of it was the smell. The metallic scent of blood, the weirdly bloody-sweet smell from the brain matter, the urine of some of the bandits who pissed themselves. Roderic felt an urgency to leave as his nose was getting barraged by the horrid smells.
Roderic, now smiling ear to ear at seeing the potential of his new teammate, commented, "Hey Lucian, nice work! You're stronger than I expected. Even if they were already hurt. That's a lot of people to take on for just one man!"
"Thanks, but even if they were hurt, I would have won either way. When they all attacked you, their strategy and teamwork fell apart pretty quickly, so it would have been really easy to take advantage of." Lucian replied nonchalantly. Killing bandits wasn't all that special for a knight. The real challenge had been the archers and their coordinated attack at the start.
Roderic crouched down to look through one of the bandits' pockets, seeing what loot these bandits had. As they were quite smart for bandits, they would most likely have some nice loot on themselves.
Lucian, seeing this, snarled, "What are you doing!? If you are trying to steal their loot, you might as well be a bandit yourself!"
Roderic nonchalantly retorted, "Well, I'm not going to go out of my way to find every person who got robbed. Also, I bet that most who got robbed were already rich merchants traveling through, as this path, if taken left, will lead out to a nearby city. Also, I don't have any money on me anyway. I bet you don't either, and if you do, it's definitely a small amount."
"Well... Perhaps a merchant will go through here, see the massacre, and report it to the guards in the nearby city. Then the guards will send out some of the knights stationed and let them search through. Then they will take the loot and return it." Lucian said, trying to reason so as to avoid taking the spoils from regular citizens of the kingdom.
Roderic listened, then scoffed. "You really believe they will go through that much effort to return the loot? You're delusional." Then he pointed towards one of the other bodies. "Take that one, okay? We don't really have time for your morals right now. We need money, food, and other supplies, as scavenging and hunting all the time gets annoying and stops me from spending my time on the real important task: getting back to the Shifting Sanctum!"
Lucian felt Roderic definitely had some points. Surviving with his moral compass would definitely be a struggle later down the line, so softening it would definitely help him when the crimes he committed would be worse, if it ever led to that.
Lucian's expression then twisted before he turned to the body Roderic pointed towards. His very being felt the hesitation that he had built through being a noble knight for Solarin's capital—he had never committed a crime before. He was quite proud of it, and similarly, this was the very same pride which kept him from returning.
Lucian walked over to the body, cold sweat running down the side of his face, before he crouched down, first picking his hands into the bandit's pouch.
The first thing he felt was coin-shaped. Taking it out, it was a twenty Rin coin. Pretty decent but nothing really too much. At most, capable of buying a loaf of bread. Scavenging the pouch further, he found a small amount of scrap which wasn't really needed, as well as two hundred and forty Rin worth of coins.
Lucian felt a horrible putrid feeling twist and spread in his mind. His first crime was nothing too special, gaining only two hundred and sixty Rin.
He took the coins, putting them back into the pouch after he emptied out the scrap, taking the belt the bandit originally kept and wrapped it around his own torso, then attached the pouch back on.
Suddenly Roderic shouted "Done!" Lucian's shivering gaze shifted over to see Roderic throwing a bunch of loot into the tack on Roderic's horse's left side. He was already done. While Lucian struggled with one, Roderic had swiftly taken every item of value off the bandits.
Then Roderic looked over at Lucian. "You know, walking into the city with that suit of armor will not go all too well, right? For now when entering it might not be too bad, but might cause suspicion later down the line, when info leaks out that a random Solarin knight is wandering with some mysterious guy. So, if possible, take off the armor you keep on you, as that sun emblem is quite eye-catching." Shifting back onto the stolen loot, Roderic gave Lucian a rough estimate of the loot he'd gotten from the bandits. "Seven thousand five hundred Rin, five water pouches, and a decent amount of traveling rations which included some spices, fruit, salted meat and some few more food products the merchants were most likely robbed of. Other than that, I don't think we need to grab anything, as we can buy it when we arrive at the city, as it has a pretty bustling market, at least that's what I've heard…"
"Not horrible, but yeah the armor is slightly flashy…" Lucian replied back, a little dazed still, before getting Roderic to help him take off the armor.