Dear readers, Refulgent here, if you're reading this on an aggregator site, this chapter may contain errors or broken reference links. Please visit FourSlimes dot com to read the properly edited version and show the translator your support.

… … Next chapter

Chapter 2 – 3 (part 2)

Beating Them at Their Own Game

“Aruuuuuuuuuuun!”

At the same time the head was thrown, a loud howl echoed out. The thieves cringed in fear when they heard the howl, overly concerned with it, distracted from the three catgirls.

The girls didn't use that gap to escape, but instead to cooperate with the golems and attack. When the thieves turned to face the trio, s.h.i.+romaru jumped out from behind. They were caught between tigers (cats) in the front, and a wolf in the back.

After that, it was easy to join up with the remaining golems. s.h.i.+romaru, the four golems and now Lilly and her sisters too, all together took down the remaining couple dozens of thieves without too much trouble.

―~――~―――~―――~――~― This chapter was translated by Refulgent for [ FourSlimes . com ] ―~――~―――~―――~――~―

Rewinding time to a little while ago…

s.h.i.+romaru leaped from Tenma's Bag and with his keen sense of smell found exactly where the enemy was. He silently crept up on them from behind.

“Hey, something's off here! The guys we sent in have been captured!”

“If we raise our voices like that, they're gonna catch us too!”

They didn't have the slightest clue that s.h.i.+romaru was sneaking up on them from behind, as they were staring intently at the trench.

The very next moment, the 15 people in that area lost their heads without a sound. The last thing those 15 people felt before departing from this world was a gust of wind that pa.s.sed through them.

s.h.i.+romaru surveyed the area, and to make sure there were no remaining survivors, crept up on another group hidden away, annihilating them in much the same way.

Meanwhile, Tenma was in the sky above Banza's house, investigating what was going on inside.

With Banza included, there were 29 people all together in the house. Another 9 people were in a house a short distance away. He landed gently beside the house and peeked inside.

“Boss, everything seems to have gone well. I don't care what happens to the boy, but those girls will sell for a high price!”

“All three of them are quite the lookers, too. If they turn out to be a big hit with those perverted n.o.bles, they'll want them so much they'll pay tons of money to get their hands on them!”

Banza's followers were speaking with him. Banza himself had a disgusting smile on his face and seemed to be in a particularly good mood.

“Just as I predicted, my plan was flawless! Even from the beginning I could tell those three cats were high quality goods!”

Banza laughed loudly with a giant “GAHAAHAA!”

I was getting more and more angry.

“And this village really is great. There's not many people in the first place, and adventurers and knights rarely show up around here. Thanks to that, it was real simple to take over. The occasional traveler that stumbles in gets sleeping medicine, and then it's simple to capture them, too.”

Banza said proudly, totally oblivious to me peeking in.

―~――~―――~―――~――~― This chapter was translated by Refulgent for [ FourSlimes . com ] ―~――~―――~―――~――~―

“Killing off all those useless villagers, especially the old geezers and hags was the best!”

Hearing that, I finally lost all patience.

I used strengthening magic on all the house's walls, save for the part directly in front of me, making it hard for the walls to be destroyed. I put my left palm up to the wall, and unleashed『Explosion』magic. The wall was blown apart as if a claymore mine blast had hit it, taking some of the thieves along with it.

Naturally, those near the wall had been hit. Of the 29 people inside the house, 10 died instantly, while 9 more were at death's door. With Banza included, that left 10 people unharmed, as their comrades had acted as a sort of s.h.i.+eld for them. They jumped to attention without really processing what had happened yet.

I took out my beloved blade, “Kogarasu Maru”, rested it on my shoulder and stepped forward. Banza noticed me and started to shout.

“Why are you here!? No, wait, it was you who did that just now!?”

“What are you going to do about it?” I replied calmly.

“You think I'd just let you walk in here and do as you please?! You guys, it's just one little kid so there's no way you can lose! GET HIM!”

Banza ordered his 9 uninjured followers.

I just watched without saying a word and laughed.

“What the h.e.l.l are you laughing at? You d.a.m.n brat!”  He screamed.

His men were slowly approaching holding either weapons or things like chairs they intended to use as weapons.

While watching them I said,

“I was the one who put you into this situation. You're up against just one kid, yeah, but a kid who just made casualties out of 19 of your comrades. You do realize that, right?”

After hearing that, the men who had been approaching faltered and slowly started to step backwards.

Banza took out his sword and pressed it against the back of one of his men, as if he was ordering (threatening) him to kill me.

―~――~―――~―――~――~― This chapter was translated by Refulgent for [ FourSlimes . com ] ―~――~―――~―――~――~―

The man with the sword to his back lunged at me in a frantic state.

“You're in the way.”

The man raised his sword overhead and swung downwards to attack, but I took a single step back to dodge. I swung my sword from the shoulder diagonally downward.

Although it was an attack that didn't seem to take much effort, the man's body had been split diagonally. His guts scattered out, leaving him dead.

The other followers saw this and rushed toward the door opposite of me, unable to hear Banza's voice telling them to stop.

“It, it won't open!”

“W-why won't it open!?”

“The window! Break the window and get out!”

“The window won't break! What's going on!?”

They broke into a panic.

It was to be expected. I realized that aside from the wall that I had blasted, the doors and windows were now essentially part of the walls. Because I had applied strengthening magic, only a force stronger than my magic could do something like open or break through.

Basically, they were trapped in a U-shaped room with no escape, reduced to being powerless prey.

They were left with three options: to break through the roof, to somehow lure me away from my side and escape, or otherwise be hunted down like the last guy.

“What's wrong, you can't run away?”

Even though I was provoking them, they shook their heads and started to beg for their lives.

“We didn't do anything, right?”

“Y-yeah. The boss threatened us, so we had no choice.”

“The bad one here is the boss, we don't want to fight you!”

All they said was bulls.h.i.+t. Just when Banza opened his mouth to yell at them,

“Shut up, sc.u.mbags.”

Even I was surprised at what came from my mouth. A voice filled with magic power and anger came out. The thieves that heard my voice turned pale and began to tremble. Some of them were leaking.

Hi, Refulgent here, if you like my translations, you can show your support by leaving a comment / constructive feedback at [ FourSlimes . com ]

“What about the people who lived here before, huh? What did you do to them? Did you help them, when they were begging for their lives? Did you ever think that one day, you could end up in their position?”

The thieves had been cornered by my words, when suddenly,

“He's not going to let you get away! Your only hope is to kill him! Everyone as one, now go!”

Banza once again spurred them on, and they picked up their preferred weapons in a half-crazed state.

While hardly moving otherwise, I attacked in succession:

a slash diagonally down from the shoulder, then back up diagonally,

a horizontal slash from the left to their torso, then again from the right,

a vertical slash from overhead down, then another going back up,

a slash diagonally down from the shoulder then another horizontally from the right,

cutting them down with single strokes as I advanced. 1

All of his followers died after being divided in two.

The only one left was Banza.

“Hey, chief. You order your minions around, but only spectate yourself? You make me sick.”

I asked this “chief”, who couldn't hide his shock at me cutting down his followers so easily.

A smile suddenly appeared on Banza's face.

“No~, I'm not the one who does those things. How about this, you join up with me instead of those guys, hmm? Of course, you'd be the boss. I'd be second in command… no, even fifth would be fine. We'd split it 70 for you, 30 for me. How's that sound? Hm?”

He rubbed his hands together and approached.

When he had gotten within 2 meters of me,

“YOU FOOL!” he screamed.

“You're the fool.”

He pulled out a knife from his s.h.i.+rt pocket and sprung up to attack. I had expected such an obvious trick from a guy like that.

I noticed which side he gripped the knife in, and with one swing of my sword, sliced off his hand.

His hand fell off his wrist with a sizzling noise, and a burnt smell filled the air.

“GIIYAAAA! MY HAAAND!”

I had endowed Kogarasu Maru with fire magic before I slashed, its normally dark blade was tinged slightly red.

Banza screamed as he held his cauterized right arm. Ignoring his screams, I cut off his remaining hand.

He let out an even bigger scream, but in the end, due to the pain he became quiet, and soiled himself.

For the time being he wouldn't die of blood loss, as his wounds had been seared shut by the burning blade. Just to be sure he wouldn't be able to bite his own tongue, I ripped some clothes sc.r.a.ps from the previously cut down men and stuffed them into Banza's mouth.

I was a little worried, the 9 people in the house a short distance away hadn't shown up yet. I used Investigation and they still hadn't moved from that house. In fact, they hadn't changed their location at all.

I thought of one possible explanation for it, and keeping my guard up, I went toward the house.

When I quietly opened the door and went in, I heard something moving with a scuffling noise. I carefully moved toward the direction of the sound. The noise was coming from inside a room way in the back.

I gathered my courage and opened the door, and using light magic to illuminate the room, looked inside.

“Is anyone there?”

What I saw there was just as I had suspected, it was a group of 9 women. They all had their hands and feet bound and were gagged.

The women all became scared when they noticed me and started to cry when I tried to approach them.

I wondered what I should do.

“Tenma~, where are you~?”

“Kuu~n”

“What's wrong, s.h.i.+romaru?”

“Is Tenma over that way?”

“Woof!"

I thought I had heard their voices, so I left the house for a moment, then waved to the three catgirls and a familiar wolf.

“He~y, over here everyone! Are you guys okay?”

After I called out, Lilly and the sisters, who had been in front of Banza's house, rushed over.

“We don't have any major injuries!”

“Tenma, are you hurt?”

“What were you doing over there?”

They crowded around me as they all told me they were fine.

“In fact, something I hadn't expected happened…”

I said as I filled them in about all that had happened before.

I explained everything in order: defeating Banza and his minions, how I had sensed that 9 more people were around, and how the captured women had been terrified of me, as I was male.

The catgirls explained that it would be better if they themselves could untie the women and then try to explain the situation to them, then went inside the house to try and do so.

While I waited, I took out a large pot and started to boil a large amount of water. I transferred some of the hot water to another pot and made a simple soup.

About 15 minutes later, the trio came back out of the house.

As several of the women were still way too shaken up, they had decided it was still too early for them to be around a man. I gave the trio the pot filled with soup along with the pot of boiling water and decided to leave the area.

I told the three girls I was going toward Banza's house. They told me that back in the area with the fields, around 20 of the thieves had been captured, with the golems standing guard over them, and asked me to bring them back.

I went to the field to find blood and corpses scattered about. There were 23 thieves near the center of the field, tied up and guarded by 4 golems.

When the thieves noticed me, they all started shouting angrily. They were far too noisy, so I used 『Stun』 magic to quiet them down.

I took the cores for 30 small size golems out of my bag, scattering them over the field, and had the golems gather all the dead bodies into one place. I used ice magic to freeze the collected bodies and stored them away in my bag. After that, I had the golems put gags on the captured thieves and told them to transport them to Banza's house. I recovered the carriage and flew ahead of them to the house.

Hi, Refulgent here, if you like my translations, you can show your support by leaving a comment / constructive feedback at [ FourSlimes . com ]

… … Next chapter

Translator's NotesIf you're confused, he basically did this: (↘↖→←↓↑↘←)