By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 34

Chapter 4 Episode 34: The Work of the Familiars

These people were probably bandits. I couldn’t be too sure from their appearance alone, but I had seen bandits in the Forest of Gana a fair number of times. From what I could see through the eyes of the limour birds, they all had long hair and beards. It didn’t look like they had bathed in days, either. This wasn’t the sort of place where the average citizen would go, and even if they were lumberjacks or some laborer of that nature, they would presumably keep up their appearances a little better. These people were definitely suspicious.

I saw five men, all of whom seemed like underlings. It looked like they didn’t even have enough armor for three people between them. Someone who’s played a lot of RPGs might think that equipment is just lying around anywhere, but mountain bandits often didn’t have access to enough equipment. Their leaders got all the good equipment, while the rest only got the leftovers.

These people looked like typical underlings in an ill-equipped band of bandits, but they did all have swords that looked brand new. This was clearly strange. Nothing about these men made them look skilled enough to be worth giving good weapons. They were all covered in wounds and seemed easily distracted. They paid little attention to their surroundings and didn’t even notice the limour birds watching them. They weren’t speaking to each other either, and they seemed puzzled about something. Compared to the rest of their meager equipment, the brand new swords were out of place. And Pedro’s delivery contained swords forged by my client.

Maybe it was too late to help him now. There was a pretty high chance that these men knew something, but at the same time, I could imagine the worst possible outcome already. In any case, I wanted information. And for that, I would need to capture these men alive.

I prepared for battle. And on the off chance that these weren’t bandits after all, I prepared to apologize and pay them compensation too. Once I was ready, I canceled my stay at the inn.

■ ■ ■

Using my slimes and my special rope, I relied on my stamina to charge straight through the forest for about an hour. It took some time because there was no road, but I had gotten close to where my limour birds were keeping watch. I took a break as I decided to look through their eyes again, and the bandits seemed to be asleep aside from two who were standing guard. They still had no idea about me or the limour birds. The trees were too tightly packed together for me to use a bow, though, so I couldn’t use the paralyzing arrows I normally would. There was no great place for me to stand either. I would have to depend on my familiars this time.

■ ■ ■

“Caw! Caw, caw!”

“Wha?! Aaaaaaah!”

“My head, my head!”

“Knock it off! Get lost!”

I used it so seldom that I had almost forgotten, but Eins, the nightmare limour bird, could use a dark magic spell with a large effective radius that attacked the minds of its targets. He caused a lot of chaos that way before I formed a contract with him, so I trusted him to help suppress these bandits. Not only did he help, but he knocked them all out.

Next, I had my katana and scabbard split up into nine iron slimes and nine metal slimes. They split into groups of three and wrapped around the men’s limbs and necks, serving as metal bindings. Once I confirmed that the men were completely restricted, I used the slimes’ appetites as a metal detector of sorts and disarmed the men, then set their equipment against a random tree.

Three of the men regained consciousness. “What?! What’s going on here?! Hey! A kid?” one said. They didn’t know what was happening at first, but when they noticed they had been restrained, they were quick to figure it out.

“Hey! Did you do this?! Lemme go!”

“You know we’re from the Poison Spider Gang, don’t you?!”

“Poison Spider Gang?” I asked. “Aren’t you the bandits who got exterminated recently?”

The men didn’t answer, and they seemed to regret saying anything. It looked like I was right, thankfully. Now I wouldn’t have to apologize.

“And you over there, I know you’re awake.”

The other man uncomfortably laughed. Of the five men, the two furthest to the right shouted at me. The man furthest to the left was awakened by their shouts, but pretended to be asleep the entire time, although not very convincingly. He didn’t yell at me or try to run, he just awkwardly laughed.

“Hey! Say something!” one of the others complained.

“You were gonna try and escape by yourself, weren’t you?!”

Now the group was starting to fall apart. They woke up yet another of the men, who joined the argument. I wasn’t getting anywhere with them and they were wasting my time. I cast Earth Fence on the three who were arguing, creating a wide fence made of stone around them. This spell was created for offensive purposes and the stakes had sharp tips that the trapped men couldn’t help but stare at.

“Save the arguments for later,” I said. “I have some questions for you. Who’s your leader?”

“Me!” three of them said.

“Who?”

“Me, I said!”

“Like hell you are! Who’d work for you?!”

“Hmph! You people, leaders? Don’t make me laugh.”

“My good man, you oughta know that our boss was exterminated,” the man furthest to the left said with an uncomfortable laugh. It sounded like he was trying to curry favor with me, and his voice was sickening. But he seemed like the easiest to talk to.

“I have some questions for you.”

“What?!”

“You won’t get away with this!”

“You can still save yourself if you let me go right now, you little snot!”

“I’ll tell you anything!”

Only one of them was playing along. I suspected that he was planning something, though.

“Are you kidding me?!”

“You dimwit! At times like these, you’re supposed to try and negotiate!”

“Don’t fall for it!”

Naturally, his allies started to shout him down.

“Shut up! We’ve already been captured! Too late to say anything now! I’ll tell you anything, young man, just spare my life! I don’t care what happens to the rest of these guys! Just spare me!”

Now he was so desperate that he was selling out his allies.

“Screw you, you piece of crap!” the others cried. His declaration only sowed the seeds of division even more. It was hard to tolerate listening to them shouting at each other, so I asked Eins for a favor. A single cry from him was enough to shut them up.

Now that it was quiet again, I moved on. “I’m going to ask questions, and I want answers. Just so you know, you’re being restrained by my familiars. You won’t find any keyholes on those bindings, so they’ll only come off when I command them to.”

For the purpose of hunting bandits, I came up with this new use for my metallic slimes. Even if they ran away from me like this, I could track them down using my familiar contracts as long as the slimes were still on them. Pursuing them would be simple. Not only that, but these slimes were resistant to physical attacks, so they were quite durable. Even I would have trouble prying them off.

“You think you’ve got guts, kid? I don’t know about familiars or whatever, but you’re not so tough if you’re using junk like this! You probably don’t have the guts to kill us, am I right?”

“I wouldn’t kill without good reason, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

“As if! You’re not planning on it, I can tell.”

“You’re not scaring anyone, punk.”

The men seemed convinced that they wouldn’t be killed, so they started to get full of themselves. I had no idea what happened to my Intimidate skill, but that sure would have been handy.

“Hey, I’ll tell you one more time. Let us go right now, and we’ll let you off easy.”

“Do you understand the position you’re in?” I asked. These bandits didn’t seem to be hiding their true strength, and I couldn’t see any secret plan they might have had either. My limour birds were watching the surrounding area, and they didn’t have any other men waiting to ambush me that I could see. I didn’t understand why they were so confident. “What will you do if I let you go in the first place? Turn yourselves in? Have a change of heart and get a real job, maybe?”

I snapped at the men, shutting them up. If they actually did express some level of remorse, I still wouldn’t have any reason to trust them. If I let them go, they would likely just continue their lives as bandits. That’s how it seemed to me, at least, so I operated off that assumption.

“If I let you go, you might just hurt more people,” I said. “I don’t want to kill you needlessly, no, but I’m not irresponsible enough to just let you go free.”

Now that I captured them, I was going to turn them in to the guards in some town. I couldn’t let them hurt any more people. If they tried to resist, then they would get what’s coming to them.

“Ha! You’re just trying to act cool.”

“Don’t get cocky, kid. Now that I really look, you’ve got some nice clothes, weapons, and armor. Familiars and magic too, I bet you’ve got a lot of money. If we sold all your stuff, I imagine we’d make some decent cash.”

“Rich kid, huh? I hate rich kids. You can get food and have fun without a care in the world, you look down on the poor, you think you’re better than us!” the man grumbled and grabbed the collar around his neck. That was a bad idea. ”Ugh, wh-what’s with this collar?”

“Hey! What’s wrong?!”

“It’s t-tight...”

“I forgot to mention, I ordered the familiars around your necks to stay right up against your skin,” I explained. It was easy enough to yank on the collars with enough force, but then the slimes would morph to make sure they didn’t leave contact with the skin. It would only cause the collars to tighten around their necks. “And if you try to violently break free, get a certain distance away from me without permission, or attempt to attack me, the collars will choke you. And of course, I could order them to strangle you at any time if I wanted.”

All the slimes would have to do was put pressure on the carotid artery for a certain amount of time to kill a person. They were like the slave collars that were standard in fantasy light novels. Except the strangling would be entirely on them in this case.

“I don’t need your explanations!”

“Make it stop already!”

His neck was strangled and the pain got worse. He pulled it away from his neck some more to escape the pain, which only made it even tighter. The man did this repeatedly until he couldn’t even speak anymore. But it wasn’t quite enough pressure to make him pass out.

“What are you just watching for?!”

“He’s gonna die!”

They finally seemed to feel like their lives were in danger, a look of panic on their faces. They emotionally and selfishly cried out, reminding me of my boss in my past life.

“So what?” I replied.