"My ears… you son of a— I can't hear a damn thing!"
Grit, the caravan's leader, rolled on the sand, half his body still burning. The fire licked at his grimy leather, and the stench of his own charred flesh filled his nostrils.
It was bad enough that one of their scouts, a seasoned man named Finch, had died because of him, but now this lunatic was picking off the rest of his men with his bare fists.
After all this bastard had Finch's boots, thus he was the one who killed him.
This fucker… how did he know we were going to attack him all of a sudden? Even the border knights weren't this vigilant! he thought.
Somehow he forced himself to stand, defiant despite the fire eating at him.
Hiroki cracked his bloody knuckles. The other bandits were already sprawled across the dirt, their bodies broken by his fists.
Only Grit had remained.
"It was nice meeting you, you know!" Hiroki said with a bloody grin, stepping closer.
He blurred into motion. Grit tried to shield himself, but the left hook was a feint. Instead, Hiroki delivered a sharp, brutal kick to Grit's ribs.
The blow made a sickening crunch, and Grit fell on his back, gasping for air. Hiroki grabbed both his arms and started into his eyes.
"Regret's about to taste real bitter." Hiroki exclaimed.
"Let go of me, you maniac!" Grit gurgled.
And suddenly, Hiroki heard hoofbeats from the road behind them.
Both men turned their necks to the side to see another carriage, but this one with a single mount and a large object covered by a canvas.
It was the same design as the one they rode, which meant this was a specialized carriage—'maybe for surveillance, so it might have more bandits inside' Hiroki thought, before the cloth was unveiled.
The cloth unveiled, revealing a cannon with a man in the same attire as Grit.
In that split second, the man loaded an attack, but it was already too late for both Hiroki and Grit.
Blast!
Hiroki and Grit froze as the cannon fired, a streak of blue energy hurtling toward them.
It was too fast… too fast to dodge on this muddy-sand ground, Hiroki thought, his heart pounding. He closed his eyes and took his stance, covering his head with his arms curled over.
In an instant, his skin was covered in a layer of steel-hard scales, forming a protective shield.
Grit screamed, "Shitheads! what has gone wrong now!!!"
Suddenly, from his feet, beams of light emerged and coalesced into a shimmering energy shield.
It stood tall before them and propelled the attack to the left, smashing into the earth with the force of a laser beam.
BOOM!!!
His eardrums blasted from the sheer force, and he slowly uncurled, opening his eyes to a world of chaos.
His ears were ringing with the sound of metal clanking as more than five armored soldiers sprinted toward them with impossible speed, carving through the mud.
They immediately began cutting off the attackers' arms.
As the soldiers got closer, screams of pain from the now-armless bandits filled the air.
Hiroki, terrified, looked to his left to see Grit's face filled with the same terror he was experiencing, maybe more.
'Shit,' Hiroki thought. 'This just got infinitely more complicated in less than 10 seconds.'
'Let me get this straight. A knight squad with prior knowledge of this specific group is here, and they're chopping off their arms instead of using other methods, which inhibits them from killing themselves using the necklace on their necks. The fact that they used a shield to protect us can mean many things.'
1. They might want Grit alive since he is possibly the leader, despite the cannon fire implying otherwise.
2. They might know I am innocent and are trying to save me as they can infer that I was fighting them as well when they arrived.
3. Or I can still be regarded as a rival member of some sort, and I have to prove my innocence, which I cannot since I can't identify myself.
"I have no solutions to this at all!"
Fear washed over Grit as he glanced at their armory and the fact that his men had attacked him.
He grabbed his own necklace, and moments before snapping it, Hiroki sliced one of his arms, rendering him unable.
A shout of pain from Grit filled the air.
'With this,' Hiroki thought, 'I have more evidence to show that I am not a threat. It would be enough for them not to kill me right now, at the very least'
Buuhha— Hiroki instantly doubled over and vomited. Shit, I puked, he thought, wiping his mouth with a shaking hand. 'What the heck did I do? I just cut his arm?!'
He became utterly disgusted with himself as his hands started to shake.
Then suddenly:
A beam of light suddenly washed over Hiroki from his feet to his head, then vanished.
"What the hell is tha—"
A knight sprinted forward, appearing in front of him with terrifying speed.
The knight was a blonde woman.
Her boots carved shallow trenches into the mud.
The knight grabbed Hiroki by the collar. He was caught off guard but controlled himself from impulsively attacking.
"Identify yourself!" she demanded, her eyes filled with authority as she held him up from the ground.
'Shit, this is their first question, eh? I have nothing to identify myself with. Maybe I could lie like I did for the bandits,... let me just use my awesome skill from my previous life.'
Tears started to fall from his eyes as he hung in the air.
"I don't know who I am!" he sobbed.
"I can't remember anything that happened before waking up in the lake, and... I... I just stumbled into a carriage, and they mistook me for whomever while giving me a ride, so I just accepted. Then they revealed themselves to be bandits, and this happened. I just don't know!"
He began to cry, but he was so bad at acting that even Grit had secondhand embarrassment.
The other knights, already in control of the situation, stopped their work for a second and stared at the scene, their expressions a mix of confusion and mild disgust.
The blonde woman didn't buy it either, and thus, he was in an even more dangerous situation than the bandits, as he had no identification.
The blonde knight called out, looking at a knight with an ornament on his hand.
"Sir Theodore, check his identification again."
She looked back at Hiroki, her eyes turning cold and dangerous, a look of pure murder in them.
"If that fails, your hand is next."
A beam of light covered Hiroki again, the same as before, and Theodore said, "There is nothing, ma'am. He has no ID at all."
'Well, shit, I guess this is where my path ends!'
Here goes nothing!
He grabbed her left arm, which was holding him up, with his right hand and aimed his left at her face.
Shock!
Electric power drifted from his right palm and electrocuted her.
She stiffened, a grunt of surprise and pain escaping her lips, and her grip on him loosened just enough for him to roll to the side.
Just before he could hit the ground, she thrust her sword, but he rolled backward, using his fire blast in his left palm to propel himself as he started running as fast as he could.
'If these knights can summon shields like that… then they've got entrapment magic too. And even if not, they can just kill me outright. Not like the bandits—they cut their arms off to keep them alive.'
The armored figures closed in, fast, closing the gap with terrifying efficiency.
Hiroki sprinted, leapt over the wreckage of the first caravan—
"Ping! Identification acquired. Welcome, Alvar Walter."
He froze mid-air.
'What? From who?!'
Light flickered from one of the corpses below.
[Go. Catch it, before it's too late.]
He landed hard, rolled, and charged toward the glow.
An arrow whistled past, almost splitting his skull.
He dropped to his knees beside the corpse, hands fumbling until they seized a golden card.
He raised it overhead, and shouted:
"I am Alvar Walter, god damn it!"
The ornament with Theodore flickered, just moments away from his throat being cut down by the blonde knight.
"His name is Alvar Walter from Sunshine Town!" shouted Theodore.
Hiroki, his face slick with sweat, collapsed onto the ground and turned his gaze to the star-pricked night sky.
Tears spilled—real ones this time.
How many times has my life been on the line in just two days?
His lips trembled as he whispered, voice cracking.
I don't care what this world has… I don't care. I just want to go home.
The blonde knight's fierce expression faltered.
For a moment, confusion flickered in her eyes, softening the hard edge of her authority.
Theodore approached, the glowing ornament clasped in his hand.
He leaned close and murmured into her ear.
"He has no criminal charges, ma'am. Records say he was a F-rank adventurer—before disappearing completely a while back"
A shadow of guilt passed across her face.
Her grip on her weapon loosened, and without another word, she turned her attention toward the bound bandits, leaving Hiroki's crying form in the dirt.