Through the chaos, a girl's voice—trembling but laced with fury, not a plea—cut through the surrounding area. Her hand clenched the carriage doorframe before a bandit ripped her out of it, his grip like a vice.
???: ["You filthy dogs! My father will have you flayed like fish!"]
She was a teenager with a defiant blaze in her dark eyes, a wild contrast to the cascade of her bright pink hair. She fought like a cornered animal, kicking and clawing at the bandit's back.
Bandit: ["Grh, stop movin' around so much, you damn little bitch—!"]
The Strong devour the Weak.
Bandit Leader: ["God fucking dammit, it's one little girl! We can't hit her, so just get over it and come on, you imbecile!"]
The Strong devour the Weak...
The Strong devour the Weak?
Was that truly the law of this world? And even if it was, why should he be bound by it? He would carve his own path, whether it followed that law or not.
And so, he stepped forward. His slight frame was all it took to halt their escape.
The men froze, a primal instinct screaming that something was fundamentally wrong.
His voice, when it came, was unnervingly calm.
Lacerta: ["Let the girl go. You and your friends in the shadows can leave with your lives if you do that."]
His eyes flicked upward, a barely perceptible glance that caught them all. Two on the rooftops, arrows nocked and aimed at his heart. Five on the ground. Seven total.
He glanced at the girl. Her struggle had ceased, her wild defiance replaced by stunned confusion as she stared at him.
One of the bandits snarled, ripping a short-sword from its sheath.
Bandit: ["Get out of the way, you little shit!"]
Lacerta merely tilted his head, his expression a placid mask of indifference. He had faced a colossal, serpentine witchbeast that could have swallowed him whole. Compared to that…
These men were nothing.
Lacerta: ["One more chance."]
The bandit leader remained silent close by, his eyes narrowed. He saw the weapon at the boy's hip, the utter lack of fear in his eyes, and felt a cold sliver of doubt. But that doubt was his alone. His comrades felt only rage and desperation to flee the scene.
Bandit: ["Kids these days… Fine then—"]
The bandit lunged, short-sword raised high for a killing blow.
Bandit: ["I'll just take your head!"]
Did he truly seem so weak in the eyes of these people, that his warning was just ignored? He'd definitely have to work on that. It was vexing too, the thought of having to dirty his brand new blade right after getting it.
Bandit Leader: ["...No, wait—!"]
Lacerta: ["Suit yourself."]
He had made his peace with it long ago. He would kill to survive. But Glenn had also warned him about restraint. A full-power swing could tear a yawning fissure in the earth, obliterating them all—the girl included.
So therefore...
This… this would be restraint.
A whisper of steel, too fast for the eye to follow.
The bandit's lunge faltered mid-swing, his entire body seizing as if his strings had been cut. Lacerta hadn't moved from his spot.
A crimson fountain erupted from the bandit's neck. His head slid from his shoulders, thudding to the cobblestones a moment before the rest of his body collapsed in a heap.
Not as strong or fast as Glenn...
Lacerta's voice was a low murmur, confirming a simple, bloody truth.
Lacerta: ["So they are fodder."]
Fear coiled in the bandit leader's gut, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he staggered a step back, as if questioning the sight before him. Thus, in the space of a heartbeat, the man—had torn the pink-haired girl from a subordinate's grasp. The bandit leader's voice, raw with panic, ripped through the tense air.
Bandit Leader: ["Fuck it all! Just kill the kid! We'll regroup after elsewhere!"]
Lacerta watched, a strange mix of disinterest and confusion touching his expression as the leader began his cowardly retreat with the hostage girl. The escape was an inconvenience.
These men, these pebbles in his path, would have to be cleared to retrieve her.
In short this meant...
—They all had to die.
The thrum of a bowstring twitched in his ear and without conscious thought, his head tilted, his feet sliding on the cobblestone as an arrow hissed past his cheek and slammed into a stone wall to the side.
Before the echo faded, the nearest bandit lunged, The attack was a cascade the steel of his blade a hungry blur aimed to sever Lacerta's head from shoulders.
Lacerta hasn't fought many battles, at least not physically. But his mind was a weapon, honed by countless imagined battles, every possible angle and strike already lived a thousand times over.
That as well as the fact that these men who were so achingly, so pitifully…
Lacerta: ["…Slow."]
—Only added on to Lacerta's advantage.
His eyes tracked the enemy's blade as if it were moving in slow-motion before he decided to move.
With an effortless flick of the wrist, his katana rose. The clang of singing steel was the only warning before the parry became the attack. In one fluid, unbroken motion, his own blade continued its upward journey, cleaving through leather and flesh to open the man's chest in a brutal display of gore.
The warm body had not yet struck the floor when Lacerta was already moving again, a predator flowing around the dead. To the third bandit, he was not a child but a visceral nightmare given flesh, and his despair was absolute—
Lacerta: ["——!"]
But in his forward rush, a critical detail—a product of his lack of experience—had been forgotten. A hiss from above, the sound of air being torn apart, was his only warning before death would hit him.
In a sudden, instinctual act, Lacerta's foot stomped into the cobblestone, converting his lunge into a blindingly fast spin. His katana unwound with the motion, a silver arc of death that claimed the bandit's head just as the arrow shattered against the wall behind him, missing by a hair's breadth.
A savage impulse coiled in Lacerta's muscles—the urge to unwind and swing with everything he had. But he held back, remembering Glenn's words and inwardly questioning if the katana, despite its proclaimed impressive level of durability, could truly handle such power.
The blade arced from his opposing hip in a whisper of steel through the air. It was a fluid, iaijutsu-style arc that met the fourth bandit's armpit, cleaving it from his body. The man howled in pain, staggering backward as blood gushed onto the ground.
Bandit: ["Fuck—FUCK!! You little shit, I'll fucking g—!?"]
His words were cut short in an instant and his head was severed next.
A fresh splat of blood landed on Lacerta's cheek as he dashed beneath the rain of blood, a flicker of motion closing in on the panicking fifth bandit. The man instantly dropped his weapon and stumbled back, raising both hands in surrender.
He would rather face the law than summary execution by this monster—
Bandit: ["No, wait, please! I surren—!"]
—But a summary execution was all the man would get.
It was all he deserved.
Lacerta exhaled as the body fell. He wiped at his face, smudging the blot of blood on his cheek as his eyes scanned the nearby rooftops. They were empty.
Lacerta: ["Huh... Did they run?"]
——————————————————————————————————
Absolutely fucking not!
The words formed in his mind with the cold clarity of a death sentence. That thing—that monstrosity parading in the skin of a child—was so far beyond his pay grade it wasn't even remotely funny! The second he escapes its clutches, he was going to march right up to the boss and—
???: ["Let me go! Damn it, let me go!"]
The pink-haired girl renewed her struggles, her thrashing nearly throwing him off balance. He tightened his grip, plunging deeper into the suffocating maw of the alleyway. The shadows clung to them like damp shrouds, swallowing the distant city light.
Bandit Leader: ["Stop it! Stop! Are you trying to get me killed or something?!"]
The bandit leader whispered through clenched teeth in a thorough display of intelligence, or rather, a lack of.
???: ["Well, obviously. Are you stupid?"]
Bandit Leader: ["....You're a real lucky girl, you know that?!"]
He snarled as he progressed further into the alleyway, risking a glance over his shoulder. He could still see the sliver of light marking the street—the street where the screams of his comrades had been so abruptly silenced.
Bandit Leader: ["—Lucky I can't just smack that pretty face of yours. Lucky the big man is so damn thorough I can't just dump you and run... lucky that—"]
His rambling tirade choked in his throat. He had turned back to face the alley's dead end, but it was no longer empty. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, and his heart hammered against his ribs.
Bandit Leader: ["Oh, fuck."]
From the deepest shadows no more than a meter before him, a pair of dark purple eyes stared back, glowing with an ominous, internal light. They belonged to the child, whose expression held a chilling void of indifference where fear or rage should have been.
Lacerta: ["...Did you say 'big man'?"]
The question was delivered with a slight tilt of the head, a gesture of pure, disarming innocence that was utterly at war with the carnage he had just unleashed.
Bandit Leader: ["Wh-what? Yeah! The big man... he's basically the one in charge. You want info? I'll tell you everything that I know, just... just let me go after, yeah?"]
Lacerta's silence was a physical weight, pressing down on the bandit until his knees trembled.
Bandit Leader: ["Fuck it all, take the girl! I'll give you the girl, too!"]
He yelled in desperation, gesturing wildly with his head toward the captive on his shoulder.
???: ["...Suddenly, I feel sooo valued."]
Lacerta: ["—Do you know a man named Glenn?"]
The bandit's brow furrowed, a flicker of genuine confusion in his terror.
Bandit Leader: ["Glenn? No... No, I don't know any Glenn."]
Lacerta: ["I see.... and no, I don't need you to give me information. I'll be taking it from him myself."]
Before a protest could even form on the bandit's lips, there was a blur of motion. The lacquered pommel of Lacerta's katana cracked against the man's forehead with a loud thud. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the grimy pavement like a puppet with its strings cut. The girl tumbled with him, landing with a pained grunt.
With a fluid shing, Lacerta sheathed his blade. He spared her only a momentary glance before reaching down and grabbing the unconscious bandit by the collar.
???: ["Ouch.... Hey!"]
The girl protested from the ground, pushing her pink hair out of her face.
???: ["You're just going to leave the damsel-in-distress on the ground and drag away the unconscious creep?"]
Lacerta paused, looking back at her with genuine confusion.
Lacerta: ["But you can get up by yourself though...."]