The leader obviously holds the advantage, and he also has the aid of the remaining bandits. Even if my strength is on par with him, and defense even stronger, he is much faster than me and the most important thing is he is a lot more skillful at fighting.

I glance around me keeping my eyesight at the leader. The bandits already have me surrounded. I am able to break the encirclement and run away, try to bait him and fight somewhere else, but he is faster than me too.

I kept dodging his attacks and trying to think up a tactic, a way to win here. Whatever the reason Spirit won't be helping me too much here. Occasionally some bandits tried to hit me too, but mostly they didn't do any damage, and only tried to push me into a vulnerable position, so their leader can hit me. I was bad at seeing the whole situation from all sides, so Spirit helped me couple of times to dodge those kind of attacks, and most of the time they were hit by my body and blocked without much effort.

The only solution I see is to fight head on, and prey that I will be able to land a lucky hit faster than my defense will be shattered. I made my decision, and gripping my sword, rushed at him right when he swung his hammer at me from overhead. I tried to sidestep and slashed with my sword towards his leg, at the same time his hammer, that was aimed at my head, slammed into my shoulder. I felt a huge pressure on my shoulder, my legs nearly gave in, but pressure dissipated a moment ago through my whole body.

I think I heard a small cracking sounds on my shoulder, but my arm is still working perfectly fine. It's dangerous to take such attacks head on. His leg wasn't in much better shape too, although my skills with swords were practically non-existent, but with such a huge force backing it up how could he get away lightly. I'm sure if our defenses were equal, I'd lose in first exchange, but his body strengthening wasn't as good and the fact that he had flash and blood didn't help at all.

So the bandit leader had his leg cut until the bone. Not as good as I hoped for, but it will still affect his agility greatly, and give me higher chances if he can't lean on both his legs to hit me with his huge hammer. His left side, where is now wounded leg is will be a lot safer for me now because of that reason. Blood started flowing in slow but steady stream from his wound, when I pulled the sword back.

He was gritting his teeth and showing a great deal of self control not yelling, or maybe he is too accustomed to injuries, or maybe it's adrenalin. Without thinking much about that, I kept to my tactic, circling him in a way, that he couldn't use all of his strength, because of injured leg, and I was more agile now. Really easy tactic, use your speed to dominate the enemy without letting them hit you, and if enemy has higher speed, make him slower. It's the fighting tactic that I always admired watching movies or reading novels - Hit without being hit.

At this time he have already forgotten about the corrupter that he imagined himself and is only focused on me. The fact that his attack wasn't able to shatter me completely has clearly cut his arrogance. There were occasional bandit attacks here and there and sometimes I tried to find opportunities to deal with them first, but it proved to be stupid decision when the bandit leader gave a savage shout and leapt onto me with the hammer in his hands. I dodge the attack not so successful again this time, and it hit me, once again making me feel the huge impact on my bones.

He was ready to sacrifice his subordinates to kill me with them if he could. Because the bandit I tried to attack before his savage rush was hit in the hand by his massive hammer and had his hand bent in a wrong way after bouncing on a ground a couple of times. I'm sure his bones were shattered completely. His shouts made other bandits feel more fear, so whenever I was advancing to their side while dodging their leader's attacks (or being thrown by the impact) they tried to frantically dodge and weren't trying to attack me anymore.

Leader's breathing were more and more haggard, it looks like he doesn't have much endurance, how can he compare to an undead anyway? And his bleeding leg is making his situation worse. After a ten or so minutes of angrily chasing me and throwing me from side to side by the impacts of our weapons he was a lot more careful now when attacking, not showing me any openings even for my kamikaze-style, but his anger was rising more and more. His leg wasn't bleeding anymore, but he was already exhausted after swinging such a huge hammer all this time.

When he attacked once more, his leg shook a little from the weight of the swing and he made the result of his swing was awkward, missing me and losing his balance. I of course didn't lose the chance, and circled him through his left side cutting into his other leg, but this time I cut near his thighs. Last time he would manage to block a cut so close to his hammer's handle, but now that he lost the balance and the hammer was impaled on the ground after missing me, I didn't have much problem cutting deep.

This time a grunt escaped his lips, and some of the bandits still tried to launch at me, to bring on ground and restrain under their weight, but I simply punched them with my boney hands. Other bandits tried to help their leader to escape, but even if I was distracted for couple of seconds, how far could a man wounded in both legs run to?

I caught up to him and when he noticed me, he pushed the bandit that was helping him towards me, and used the hammer he was leaning in to make his last desperate attack. The bandit unconsciously grabbed at my robe, when he was pushed towards me, and I couldn't dodge the hammer either.

The hammer fell on both of us and I flew through the air, landing a 5 meters away. The bandit although didn't take the main damage, because the leader was aiming at me, still took some of it and was lying near me.

I got up and approached now kneeling bandit leader. His face was twisted in pain and he was clutching the wound on his foot. His body strengthening was already down, maybe because of the pain and loss of the concentration, maybe because of the exhaustion, or maybe the both.

He looked at me and didn't say anything, I really expected that he would beg to spare his life like any bandit in his situation do. Did he still believe that I'm mindless undead? Wasn't it obvious from the battle? Does he have any other reason.

I didn't keep him waiting too long, and with a heavy hit of the sword's hilt he lost his consciousness. I asked the Spirit to make the crowd of people near to us tie and disarm those bandits and their leader. Some of the bandits ran away, and I'm sure there will be reinforcements soon. I have to thin out their numbers as much as I can until the animals are still distracting them.

Our fight was long, and I was afraid that they would get reinforcements before I'll be able to defeat the leader. Some villagers were tailing me without saying anything, I just kept ignoring them while I was following Spirit's directions for other bandits.

While they were distracted fighting the animals, I didn't have much problem knocking them out, it was even a little boring. At first I was vigilante towards the animals, but they kept retreating right after I took care of the bandit groups. Like this I managed to knock out 3 groups of 7-8 C ranks, before animals retreated completely. With the scouts and the group that came with their leader, it made around 40 people already. I don't think they have a lot of people left, but they should still have a B rank left, which is concerning.

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