Chapter Thirteen: Take Everything but Life
“Oh wow… To think that I’m riding in a carriage pulled by a bird-god! What a treat!”
“Bird-god?”
A passing merchant had asked for a ride to the next town down the road, so we had given him a ride.
“Haven’t you heard of it? Hm, well… Hey, aren’t you the owner of this carriage? Even if you hide, I can tell.”
He had been chatting with Raphtalia, but now he pointed his finger at me.
We’d been pretending that Raphtalia was in charge, and I stayed in the back making medicines.
“That’s true…”
“You are famous around town. They say there’s a cart pulled by a bird-god that showers people with miracles everywhere it goes.”
The carriage was rattling down the road. I turned to look at Filo.
So people thought she was a god! In truth she was a hungry little pig, spoiled everywhere she went.
But what was this miracle the guy was talking about?
Hm?
“Gwehhhhh!”
Filo looked suddenly startled, and she took off running.
“Woah!”
The merchant, Raphtalia, and I all flew out of our seats and had to throw our arms out to stabilize ourselves.
“Ahhhh!”
“Yasuuuuuu!”
RATTLE, RATTLE!
The carriage was rattling so loudly that we couldn’t hear what was happening outside. Sometimes Filo would just run off like that for no real reason. This was probably the fourth time since we’d started this traveling gig. She kind of just did whatever she wanted.
“I’m not the only passenger here. Take it easy Filo!”
“Okay! But that’s not it… Gweh!”
We whispered to each other so as not to be overheard by the merchant. We didn’t want to attract more attention than necessary, as that would only spell trouble. But I felt like people were paying attention to us anyway.
The merchant was already staring at me with a shocked expression on his face.
“I’d heard she could understand language. That’s amazing!”
“I think so too.”
Think about it, if people were so surprised that she could understand language, what would they think about her being able to speak? Her specs must have been really high.
I should think about it as a potential that monsters have… when you look at it that way, she must have been very rare indeed.
“Even still, we’re just normal traveling merchants, we give people rides now and then, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“People are saying that a holy man arrives in a carriage and blesses the sick with special medicine. They are saying you cure people.”
“Really?”
Sure, it was pretty good medicine, but if you saved up a little anyone could have bought it. But I’d discovered that you could tweak the recipe specifically for the needs of the patient as well. The original recipe worked on everything, but not particularly well. I’d been adding different herbs to the recipe to help it treat more ailments.
I’d made it to work on fevers, lung infections, and skin infections. Still, it was just one medicine.
The method had been written out explicitly in the intermediate recipe book. The recipes I’d gotten from the shield had also suggested a few recipe tweaks.
“It’s just normal medicine though.”
I opened a box and took out the medicine to show him.
“This is the miracle medicine?”
He lifted the lid from the jar and sniffed at it.
“Well, it does smell like normal medicine, that’s for sure.”
“You can tell?”
Was he an apothecary? I was curious, so I asked him. But he shook his head.
“No, I can just kind of tell.”
Sure he could.
“So what sort of merchant are you?”
“I’m a jeweler.”
Right, a jeweler… I guess they existed in this world too.
I guess that he normally sold necklaces and stuff to rich people.
“Jewels, eh? So I guess you tend to work with wealthy people.”
If he was carrying around expensive jewels and looking for customers, he would probably need some powerful protection. So it was odd that he was traveling alone.
“You hit where it hurts.”
He gave a light chuckle and then went on.
“Oh, I sell everything there is, from small to large. You could call me an accessories dealer.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Care to take a look at my products?”
He took out a large bag of accessories for my inspection.
I looked inside. It was filled with broaches and necklaces. And bracelets.
But it looked like most of them were made from iron or bronze. And there were jewels imbedded… technically. They weren’t so nice. The word jewel seemed too grandiose to describe them.
“I mostly just sell cheap stuff.”
“Huh… Did you run into some kind of trouble?”
“Not exactly… my current product line was from a rather poor adventurer.”
“Huh.”
According to the accessories dealer, different accessories could be imbued with magic to give different effects to their wearer.
“And how much does one of those things sell for?”
“Right… right… Well, this iron bracelet will raise the wearer’s attack power, and it goes for about 30 pieces of silver.
That was pretty expensive. I couldn’t sell any of my medicines for near that much.
“If we were to apply magic to it we could sell it for near 100 pieces of silver.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
Heh.. That might be worth thinking about.
I had pretty much reached the ceiling of what I could accomplish by selling medicines. We were close to selling out, and that was making us some money, but not a lot. I was also thinking about selling some to different apothecaries—and that wasn’t good for much profit. If I started collecting materials to make more, I would run out of time.
I could have started before I’d moved on to selling things, but if you make things and collect things at the same time, your efficiency starts to go down.
“You a craftsman?”
“I suppose… It’s easy enough to just make the pieces… but once I go ahead and add the magic power to them, yeah, I guess I’m a craftsman of sorts.”
That made sense. He’d make the pieces, and once they had magic put into them they would give their wearer certain powers.
But how do you imbue something with magic? That was the trick…
I didn’t like the sound of it. “Imbue with magic.” That had been all over my medicine recipes, and I’d seen it pop up in the recipe for magic water too.
It meant that if you couldn’t use magic, you couldn’t make any of those medicines or objects.
“Master! Something is coming!”
Filo sounded tense, and after calling out to me, she stopped in place.
Raphtalia and I quickly jumped from the carriage to see what was going on.
We saw someone walking out of the deep forest.
There was a crowd, and they all had weapons in hand. They didn’t look friendly, and they were coming straight for us.
They were all dressed differently, but they all had armor on. They were bandits, probably coming down from the mountains.
“Bandits!”
The accessory dealer let out a shrill shout.
“Ehhehe… leave the valuables behind and just be on your way.”
Hah… what a cliché.
I’d heard of this kind of thing before… Why didn’t they just sneak up and attack?
But Filo had seen them first, so they must have just decided to give up on the surprise and come right at us. They must have thought they could win.
They looked haughty. Either that, or they had another plan. That reminds me, when we were in the last village I’d heard about some cruel faction of bandits forming out in the wilderness. “We know all about you! And we know that you’ve got a jeweler in there too.” The bandits were gathered in a crowd, and they were all shouting at us. I
looked at the accessory merchant in the back of the carriage. “Didn’t you say that you weren’t carrying anything of much value?” “Yes… nothing like that at the moment.” He slowly slipped his hand into his pocket, and seemed to be fingering
something there. “Though I do have a rather valuable accessory I’m holding for someone
else.” “I see. So that’s what they’re after.” I’d picked up a troublesome customer. “I thought that if I pretended that I didn’t have anything of value, then I
could cut costs by getting out of needing a body guard.” “You idiot! I’ll bill you for this later.” “All right.” He looked troubled for a minute, and then nodded. “Raphtalia, Filo. We’ve got trouble.” “Okay!” “Right.”
At my signal, Raphtalia jumped down from the carriage and readied herself for battle.
I pulled the accessory dealer with me and followed her out.
“You stay next to me. Got it?”
“Yes, yes!”
I switched from the shield I’d had on to unlock its ability to one that was better for combat.
“What… What’s with your shield?”
“Oh…”
When the accessory dealer realized that the owner of his bird-god, miracle cart was none other than the criminal Shield Hero, he looked visibly shaken.
“What’s this, you’re gonna fight us?”
“Sure. I didn’t think it would be right to rain fire down on you from back here.”
I glared the bandits down as I threatened them.
The most important thing about the fight would be preventing the enemy from getting what they were after. Basically, I couldn’t let them get away with whatever the accessory dealer was carrying.
“Raphtalia, Filo, are you ready?”
“Yes. I’m ready when you are.”
“Yes, I was just getting bored.”
“Great. Let’s do this!”
When I shouted my signal, the bandits also readied themselves and ran at us with their weapons out.
I quickly looked them over, and there seemed to be about fifteen of them. That was kind of a lot.
“Air Strike Shield!”
I aimed for one of them running at us, and the shield appeared in mid air to halt his advance. I prepared for my next skill.
“Change Shield!”
Change Shield was a skill that would let me change into any shield I needed instantly. I chose the Bee Needle Shield. The Bee Needle Shield had a special effect of Needle Shield (small), Bee Poison (paralysis).
“The Shield! Watch out! Ugh!”
One of the running bandits collided with the shield and fell to the ground, dazed and apparently paralyzed. The skill had worked well.
“Shield Prison!”
“What?!”
The cage expanded to enclose one of the bandits.
That had a time limit on it though.
The Change Shield skill took thirty seconds to charge back up, so you couldn’t use it a few times in a row. Having said that, while it did take time to recharge, it was all the more effective because of that. So it wasn’t all that bad.
Suddenly three of them were right in front of me. They probably thought I looked the fool, standing there with only the shield at the ready.
I jumped in front of the merchant and covered him from an attack.
Fireworks fell away from my shield, repelled with a metallic clash. Apparently their attacks weren’t strong enough to get through my defenses.
Now I had the Chimera Viper Shield out.
Its special effects were Poison Fang (medium) and Hook.
The snake engraved into the front of the shield came to life, and bit at the bandits attacking me. It counter-attacked anyone that came at me, and poisoned them in the process.
“Gaaahhh!”
“Dammit… That’s it?! Ugh!!”
“I don’t feel well…”
The Viper Shield had poisoned someone. If they’d had a resistance to poison it wouldn’t have done much.
I hadn’t tried it on a person yet… though it seemed to be pretty powerful —not that it would take anyone down on its own.
I chose Hook next. The snake flew out from the shield and wrapped itself around someone.
It had a range of two meters, and it was useful for wrapping up an enemy (though it didn’t deal any damage), pulling things closer, or climbing up cliffs or walls. I watched the bandits, and now some of them seemed so sick and unstable that they were falling over.
“This guy… He’s the Shield Hero!”
The group of bandits suddenly appeared intimidated.
They must have just realized they’d run into me and were now starting to think back over all the various gossip they were sure to have heard. A shudder of fear rippled through the crowd, and you could see the realization cross their faces.
“Arghhhh!”
“Hiyaaaa!”
Raphtalia had her sword out, and whenever a bandit showed a weak point she lunged at him. I had managed to fend off their attacks up until then, but they were shocked at Raphtalia’s strength. One of them flew back and hit his head as he fell to the ground.
Filo was running quickly through the group and kicking at them any time she got a chance. Just like Motoyasu, they flew through the air at her kicks, five… no, twenty meters!
That must have killed them
Their numbers were thinning, and it seemed like there were only six or them left that were capable of standing.
Still, they were acting pompous and confident. Like they didn’t understand the situation they were in. That they didn’t retreat yet meant something… I was sure of it.
“Come at us already!”
“Ahhhh!”
Reinforcements rushed in. There were fifteen of them.
What a pain in the ass. They were all weak, but there were a lot of them.
And while the original group hadn’t tried to surprise us, the reinforcements had.
“Heee!”
The accessory merchant let out a shrill cry, and I threw my cape open to protect him and block the arrows that had been shot at us.
Luckily, none of them were powerful enough to overcome my own high defense rating.
“There’s more!”
I looked around to see a new crowd of bandits flooding from the woods towards Raphtalia.
Dammit! Where were they all coming from?
I wasn’t sure anymore if we would be able to take them all down. In the worst case scenario, we could always get back in the carriage and have Filo get us out of there… couldn’t we?
“Ugh…!”
There was a loud clang, and one of the bandits had taken the full brunt of Raphtalia’s sword attack… only to laugh it off.
What did that mean? He was a bandit, but seemed much more composed than the others. He brandished the same sword as the others, but his seemed to be made from a different material.
He looked older than the others too, like a guy in his late thirties. Had he been Japanese, I’d have said that he looked like a wandering samurai. Anyway, he was wearing full, western armor, so he wasn’t a samurai, but still, he looked strong.
“That’s the one.”
“Ha, looks like you’ve got the Shield Hero for a bodyguard. But I can still take him.”
“Yeah.”
I turned to the accessory dealer, but he quickly looked away.
“I believe that this man may have been hired to kill me.”
“Heheheh… that one’s after a class up! I don’t care if the Shield Hero is watching over him, I can still win.”
Class up? There’s another thing I didn’t understand.
It must have been some kind of powerful power-up, one that ordinary people couldn’t use.
“We won’t lose to you!”
“Raphtalia, hold off!”
“That all you got?!”
The bodyguard’s sword glanced off of Raphtalia’s.
Damn… He really was strong.
Lately Raphtalia was growing reckless. I needed to find some way to control her.
“Ah…”
The bodyguard grabbed Raphtalia by the chest and threatened her with his sword.
“Ok Shield Hero, here we go. You give me that merchant, or I’ll kill this girl of yours.”
He was going to kill her anyway. I don’t know why he had to make up this deal.
But what should I do? If he held her hostage, I couldn’t even move, much less fight.
“You let her go!”
It happened in the blink of an eye. Filo ran up from behind, at full speed, and slammed into him.
“Wha…”
He wasn’t able to get out of the way in time, but he had managed to brace himself for the impact.
When he turned his attention to Filo, he had to release Raphtalia.
But the force of Filo’s impact had knocked the sword from her hand, and it clattered away. She ran to retrieve it, but in her sudden absence the bandits all turned their gaze to me.
“Die!”
“Take this!”
Clang! The shield repelled their attacks with a metallic sound.
All the attacks bounced off, except for the bodyguard. His attack had hurt.
“Hiii!”
“Don’t you move!”
I was holding the accessory dealer against my side while I blocked the incoming attacks. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be able to hold out.
The guy was brushing off Raphtalia’s attacks, and had managed to keep his footing when Filo slammed him. How were we going to win?
I could use Shield Prison to hold him, but the skill’s time limit would be a problem.
The rest of the bandits were little weaklings, so we could pick them off one by one, but what should we do about that bodyguard?
Did it make sense to enclose him in the Shield Prison while we took care of the others? If we did, there was a chance he’d get away.
I was thinking it over when Raphtalia retrieved her sword. She was concerned about something.
What was it? Her tail was huge and bushy.
“I am the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them. Form a mirage and hide us!”
“Hide Mirage!”
Raphtalia shimmered, wavered, and then disappeared.
“She… She’s gone!”
The bandits that had been running in her direction stopped in their tracks and appeared to be at a loss.
“Don’t be a fool! She’s just used magic to conceal herself.”
Raphtalia’s magic had improved to the point where she could use it in the middle of battle!
Damn… I couldn’t use mine at all yet. I felt so behind!
“What the… Filo too?!”
Wha? Filo had crossed her arms and seemed to be concentrating.
“I am the source of all power. Hear my words and understand them. Blow them away!”
“Fast Tornado!”
A huge tornado suddenly appeared around Filo, and the nearby bandits were blown through the air.
“What?”
Even the bodyguard was surprised by all this magic, and he backed away from us to get some distance.
But he was out of luck.
Raphtalia readied her sword and approached him from behind.
“Ugh…”
“You were very strong, but that’s why I have to do what I can to win.”
She finished speaking, and the sword sliced through the back of his neck. He fell.
So we had managed to fight them off. I couldn’t believe that the both of them had been able to use magic. I mean, I didn’t even know that Filo COULD use magic. She should have said something. She was a monster though. Maybe it had just been instinct.
“Damn! Retreat!”
After seeing the bodyguard fall, one of the others assumed leadership and called for retreat.
“Yeah right!”
I captured that leader in a Shield Prison, and Raphtalia jumped on Filo’s back to chase down the fleeing bandits.
“All right…”
We tied them up and looked them over.
“If we drop these guys off with the police somewhere, you think we could get an award?”
“With how things are these days, I don’t know if there is money…”
Raphtalia looked concerned.
“What about you, what do you know?”
I asked the accessory dealer, but he shook his head.
“But you should still probably drop them off with the police.”
“Yeah… I guess…”
The new leader was looking at me and laughing.
I could picture what he was thinking.
“‘We were just peaceful adventurers when the Shield Hero attacked us.’ Is that what you are thinking?”
He quickly stopped laughing.
“Exactly. The police would rather believe what I say then listen to you. Think of your reputation!”
“Well, you may have a point there.”
Why did my reputation precede me this way? The more I thought about it the angrier I got.
That Trash and his Bitch princess had really made me look bad, and everyone believed them.
Sigh…
“Fine then. We’ll just have to kill you.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, just said it. But the bandits had a visceral reaction. Their faces paled, and some of them began desperately working at their ropes to get free. Filo ran over and kicked them, and they fainted.
“Yeah, I’ve got this dangerous monster here. Might as well teach her
what human tastes like.”
I grit my teeth and snarled quietly and forcefully at them.
“Food?”
Filo was drooling as she looked from one bandit to the next.
“Hiiiiii?!”
“Hm… What to do?”
“But you’re the miracle working merchant with the bird-god carriage! You wouldn’t kill someone!”
“I don’t ever remember being called that. We are all responsible for our own fates. Now you all have lived by sucking off of others. Now it is your turn to pay up. Do me a favor and just accept it.”
“Please! Spare our lives!”
“Fine. Give us all your valuables and equipment, and tell us where your hideout is. Go ahead and lie if you want. But I get murderous when people lie to me. And my bird-god here will tear you limb from limb. She will tear you to shreds. All I have to do is give the signal.”
The bandits were shaking, and they spoke slowly, and their voices were filled with fear. My reputation was doing me some good.
“Okay! Okay”! Out hideout is…”
I unrolled a map and checked where they had indicated.
It was close by.
“All right. Let’s negotiate.”
I lowered my hand and Filo charged up a kick strong enough to knock them out. And then she delivered it.
“Take their valuables. And look how nice their equipment is! Raphtalia, that will be yours.”
We had already stripped the bodyguard of his possessions. His equipment was quite good. We’d take it as payment for our troubles.
“If we steal from them, we’re no better than they are.”
Raphtalia protested but still followed my orders and briskly relieved the bandits of their equipment.
“All right. Now give antidote to anyone who is poisoned and load them into the carriage. Better make it quick, we still have to swing by their hideout.”
“Okay!”
We went to the hideout to confirm that it really was where they had said and found someone there on watch. We tied him up and stripped him of his valuables and equipment. Then we went inside and took all the treasure and jewels they had stored and loaded them into the carriage. Finally we unloaded the tied up bandits and left them at their hideout.
We’d gotten our hands on a large variety of treasures.
Like money, food, alcohol, weapons and armor, gold and silver, healing medicines, and other cheap stuff.
They’d had way more than I had been expecting, so it turned out to be more compensation than I had thought.
“That was very… smart.”
The accessory dealer was reflecting on the event of the day and looking me over.
“Yeah… anyway, how much do you think our troubles on your behalf were worth?”
The merchant suddenly snapped back to reality, remembering where he was.
“Those bandits even had a bodyguard to protect them, and we defeated them all to save you. That’s worth more than a few bits of silver, you know.”
I gave him a little threat.
This was all his fault. I wasn’t going to let him off so easily.
We agreed that I would receive one of the accessories he was selling. He said it was worth at least 20 pieces of silver.
“To be faced with such adversity and yet meet it head on! Yes, you’ve impressed me, Hero.”
He did seem moved. He was looking at me again, more carefully than before.
I didn’t think he was lying.
“Well enough. I’ll give you this artifact, and imbue it with magic. I will also share my business routes with you.”
“That’s a little much, isn’t it?”
That was far more compensation then we needed, which seemed suspicious.
He might have been trying to punish us for taking one of his accessories.
“No, there aren’t many merchants left like you—the kind that will demand profit even in the face of a horde of bandits.”
“There must be plenty of greedy folks out there.”
“That’s not what I mean. Most people will wring money out of someone and then toss them aside, but not you. You know how to keep them alive so that you can continue to profit from them.”
“Keep them alive for profit…”
I looked over at the tied up bandits.
They might have been a powerful group of bandits, but here they were tied up. Their clothes and equipment were all very nice, and they had evidently stolen it all from others. If we were to steal all of it back from them, what was wrong with that? Don’t they say that you reap what you sow?
“You mean because of all this?”
“Those men came after us to steal our money and our lives. But you compromised, and took all their possessions but left them their lives. Normally you’d have to kill them. If you think about it, this is the best ending they could hope for.”
I did have a really bad reputation, so there really was a chance that the police would have taken the word of bandits over my own. Then again, they might have believed me.
“They paid for their lives with all their material possessions.”
“You could put that way…”
“And once they build up their loot again and come for revenge, you’ll beat them and take it all again!”
The accessory dealer flashed a wicked smile.
What was with this guy? He was starting to freak me out!
“Anyway, we’ll drop you off at the next town.”
“No thanks. I have so much to tell you. I won’t leave until I’ve shared it all with you.”
He thought I was his apprentice or something!
Something was off-putting about all this. What was he up to?
Anyway, we warmed our pockets and wallets with the bandit’s stash and set out on the road again.
This might not be immediately relevant, but apparently there was a merchant’s guild, and a corrupt member of it had sold the bandits the information that this accessory dealer had gotten a ride in our carriage. That guy was later removed from the guild.
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