After scouting the area around the bandits’ base, finally, Soma decided to attack them head-on through the front entrance. Soma unsheathed his sword and held it to the side in a relaxed manner. Next to him, Marina put on her White Gauntlets and stood further away from Soma, and then looked at him with a smile. Soma nodded at Marina and they both started walking towards the entrance of the bandits’ base with the students walking between them but a few steps behind. They walked out from behind the trees and headed towards the base slowly but steadily.

Standing by the entrance's sides two bandits were on the lookout for anyone or anything that might come their way. The two bandits noticed Soma, Marina, and the students right away, and one of them started hitting two metallic pipes on each other to alarm his friends on the inside. After alarming their friends inside the base, both bandits brandished their spears and started walking towards the intruders.

“Who are you?! And state your business here!”

“Stop right there and answer the questions!”

Soma and Marina ignored them and kept walking towards the bandits and the students followed behind them while trying to concentrate on everything happening around them. Soma had told them that they don’t need to fight and the purpose of them being here is to gain experience and that’s what they will be doing with everything they had.

“Tch… didn’t you hear me or what?! If you walk even one more step forward we will consider you an enemy and eliminate you!.... Fine! Have it your way!”

“Prepare to die!!”

Seeing that the intruders had no interest in answering them, One of the bandits started running towards Soma and the other one towards Marina. Soma faced the bandit running towards him with a spear in hand, and once the bandit stabbed at Soma with his spear, Soma’s sword flashed with blue electricity as he swung it upwards cutting the spear in half. The electricity traveled through the shaft of the spear and shocked the bandit holding it causing him to drop it down, and just then Soma’s sword flashed one more time as it came down at the bandit cutting him in half starting from his shoulder down. Soma’s sword kept crackling for a couple of seconds until all traces of blood disappeared from the blade.

On the other side, Marina kept walking towards the bandit running at her spear in hand without readying herself to attack or anything. Seeing as the woman in front of him had no intention to defend herself, the bandit stabbed his spear at her chest, and that’s what actually happened as his spear impaled Marina and came out of her back. At that moment a chill ran through the bandit’s body as he saw the smile on Marina’s face become wider, and before he could react to it, Marina’s body started to melt into its surroundings as if it was mist. Before the bandit could process what happened in front of him, Marina suddenly appeared right in front of him her posture dropped and her right fist pulled back. Her right gauntlet started giving off black smoke and glowed red-hot, and right at that moment Marina unleashed her gauntlet at the bandit’s stomach in a straight punch, and right as her gauntlet connected with the bandit’s stomach it exploded plowing his lower half into smithereens. All of the explosion was transmitted to the bandit’s lower half and so his upper half just fell to the ground without being blown away. Marina had made sure to only blow up his lower half only by directing her punch slightly downwards and by controlling the explosion with perfect precision.

Seeing their comrades killed in such a brutal way enraged the bandits who were watching from behind the entrance, and they all flooded outside of their base and came attacking Soma and Marina with their swords, daggers, spears, and bows.

“Kill them!!”

“Leave not a single one of them alive!!”

“Show them their place!!”

“I’ll skewer the lot of you with my spear, you pieces of shite!!”

Marina was the first to move. Both of her gauntlets became covered in smoke, but this time it was different from when she exploded the first bandit. The smoke covering Marina’s gauntlets was moving downwards instead of going up…. It was as if the smoke was some kind of liquid dripping on the ground. Marina slammed both of her fists on the ground and all of that smoke moved from her gauntlets to the ground, and from there it rushed towards the bandits at great speed that surprised all of them. To all of the bandit’s surprise, the unknown black thing passed between most of the bandit’s legs without harming any of them. The black thing went straight towards the bandits who were holding bows in their hands, it divided itself and melted in all of their shadows, an instant later, black jaws appeared from the ground with the bandits’ archers inside them, and with a chomp ate most of their bodies leaving only the area from their chests and upwards intact.

All of the bandits were very surprised and confused by the strange way their comrades died, but soon enough, they were brought back to reality when they noticed that other than the archers, they have lost more than half of their comrades to Soma’s sword who kept killing them as they were surprised by what Marina did. It only then did they feel fear towards those unknown intruders. After killing all the bandits outside the base Soma, Marina, and the students finally entered the base of the bandits and started killing their way through every bandit they encountered.

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“Boss!! This is bad! We are under attack!!”

“…Under attack? Then just deal with it! You don’t need to come down here and report every last small thing to me! Even after all of this time, you are still unable to deal with some weak-ass Zombies!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“…N-No.. this is different!! We are not attacked by some Zombies or Ghouls! T-They are people!! We are under attack by some unknown group of people!”

“What do you mean by people?! How did they even find our base inside this damn forest and with all the Undeads inhabiting it?!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“How should I know?! Anyways they have already entered the base and are killing their way through all of our comrades as if they are nothing but insects!!”

“…Then go up there and do something about it!! Use your heads! Don’t fight them head-on! Do whatever you need to stop them for long enough for us down here to come up with a plan to deal with them!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“…Y-Yes!”

The Bandits’ Boss, or more accurately, the Beastwoman from the Wolfmen tripe who is in charge of this bandits’ band sat down in the middle of her room and started thinking. Inside the room, there were four other women other than herself, all of them from the same race as the Boss.

“…Do you think they are some other bandits’ band that came to take over our base?”(Wolfwoman 1)

“I don’t think that’s the case…”(Wolfwoman 2)

“…Yeah, there are no bandits’ bands who would dare to stand in the way of our organization! These attackers must be from the other face of the kingdom!”(Wolfwoman 3)

“…You mean Knights from the First Knight’s Order?”(Wolfwoman 4)

“…No, I don’t think that they are something like Knights. Knights would never come straight to us and leave all of those Undeads this close to Akud. I think they are Mercenaries, there were many times when Mercenaries took requests to investigate the area or to eliminate the bandits found along the road to Elm”(Bandits’ Boss)

“….You are saying that this time such a Mercenary made it all the way here?”(Wolfwoman 2)

“Yeah-!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Well Well! It seems that Mister Boss here is smart enough to figure things out”(????)

The four Wolfwomen all sprung towards the corners of the room and the Boss retreated towards the wall behind her making some distance between them and the entrance of the room where the strange voice came from. Each one of the four Wolfwomen took out throwing knives and readied themselves to throw them at the intruder once he entered the room. In the meantime, the Bandits’ Boss took out two daggers and readied herself, and faced the white-haired guy standing by the entrance and the Dogwoman standing next to him and the group of guys and girls whose ages and race were all over the place.

“Don’t you know that entering a woman’s bedroom without permission is rude?”(Bandits’ Boss)

“That certainly was rude of me. Let me introduce myself first, My name is Soma and I work as a teacher in Akud, and I’m a traveling Mercenary. This here is my companion Marina, and those behind us are my students”(Soma)

“How polite of you! For someone who came here and started killing my underlings like that!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“If it’s underlings, then you surely can get all the replacements you want from the organization, can’t you”(Soma)

“…What are you talking about?”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Playing dumb I see. I’m talking about your stupid organization Grim Peace, you know what I mean don’t you, Black Fang”(Soma)

Soma entered the room as he was talking to the Bandits’ Boss, and once he said the name of the organization they are from and the codename of the Boss, the four Wolfwomen standing with their backs facing the four corners of the room threw their knives at him with everything they got. But suddenly all of the knives got deflected towards the ceiling and stuck there. At that same moment, four chains started to shift into existence while moving as if they were snakes, following the chains with their eyes, all the bandits and students were surprised by them. looking closely, all of them could see that those chains were connected to Soma’s clenched left fist and at their ends, each one of the chains had a small blade. The four blades were all swimming through the air as if they were snakes’ heads. As everyone was looking at the small blades, they all shot towards the four corners of the room towards the four Wolfwomen. The four Wolfwomen all tried to dodge the blades, but they followed after them stabbing all four of them through their throats and came out of the back of their necks. The chains raised the four Wolfwomen as they struggled and thrashed around, but the blades moved once more and stabbed the four Wolfwomen in the back through their hearts and out of their chests silencing them forever. Once the four Wolfwomen died, the chains shifted out of existence leaving the four corpses to fall towards the ground.

“H-How dare you?!!”(Bandits’ Boss)

The Bandits’ Boss dashed at Soma in rage but as soon as she did that, a chain shifted into existence and coiled itself around her whole body leaving only her head visible. The Bandits’ Boss struggled to free herself, but she was unable to do anything against the metallic chain.

“You think that you can get away with this?!! This place is full of my men they will sure-!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Ah, you are the last one alive in this base, I made sure to hunt every single bandit before coming to this room, and as for the other branches of your organization, I’ll make sure to hunt them all in the near future”(Soma)

“…Then why don’t you kill me? Are you going to use me as a bargaining chip with the organization?”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Nah, it’s just that I’m the Actual Combat teacher at the Academy, and I’m here with my students to show them how low can people fall, and show them what it means to kill a person and for that end, there is more they need to see”(Soma)

“How dare you?! You are saying that you went and killed all of my men and companions for some stupid lecture?!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“You are the last one I want to hear that from! You are the one leading a bandits’ band that kills and plunders those traveling between Akud and Elm! Do you even remember how many have you killed? Do you even know how many had lost their livelihood because of you guys? and this is only the tip of the iceberg when talking about everything you have done, and you know what I mean!”(Soma)

Soma walked out of the base with Marina and the students behind him, while the chain dragged the Bandits’ Boss after them. They walked into the forest for some time till they spotted a Zombie staggering towards them. Seeing the Zombie, Soma faced his students and addressed them with a serious tone.

“It might have been your first time seeing Zombies and Ghouls, but all the Zombies and Ghouls we found in this forest are strange, there is something very strange about their appearance, does any of you know what I mean?”(Soma)

“…Their clothes”(Rimi)

“…Yes, they are completely naked… all of them”(Alice)

“Correct, you two seem to know I am hinting at”(Soma)

“Due to our line of work, we have encountered something similar in the past…”(Rimi)

“As you said, these Undead are all naked which is not normal. Normally Zombies and Ghouls are reanimated corpses of people who died to monster attacks in dark areas. That means they shouldn’t lose all of their clothing, even their footwear and armor. And like I said while walking through the forest, the bandits were here since before the Zombies and Ghouls appeared, and the forest is this foggy and dark is due to Undead Monsters inhabiting it. In other words, those Zombies and Ghouls were originally people that those bandits stripped of everything they had on them before killing them and leaving their corpses in the forest for them to turn into Undead. And once they had turned a substantial number of people into Zombies and Ghouls, they stopped killing the people themselves and just threw them to the Zombies and Ghouls after stripping them naked and watched as they were killed and then turned into more Zombies and Ghouls! Moreover, look at the neck of that Zombie over there!”(Soma)

All the students looked at the Zombie that was still staggering towards them. They did as Soma told them and looked at the Zombie’s neck. They could clearly see some kind of a mark around the Zombie’s neck that indicates that this Zombie was wearing something like a collar around his neck when he was alive.

“Along our way through the forest we have encountered many Zombies and Ghouls that had this same marking. A lot of those Undeads were slaves when they were alive! Now Mister Boss could you elaborate on where did you get those slaves?”(Soma)

“…There is no reason for me to tell anything! You went and killed all of my underlings and comrades! And you not finding the answer to that question of yours will be my revenge on you! Hahahahahahaha!!”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Fine, you have brought this upon yourself. Once I’m done with you, you’ll regret not answering me… {Mind Reading: Rip Apart}”(Soma)

“…What are you….. GYAAAAAAAAA!!”(Bandits’ Boss)

Soma pulled out his Book and chanted a Dark Magic spell as he pointed his sword at the Bandits’ Boss. Right away, she started screaming and twitching in pain as a dark aura started taking over her whole head. Once the dark aura covered her whole head, she started talking about where she got the slaves and how she learned to separate the base from the Miasma of the forest and answered all of Soma’s questions.

“…So the slaves were bought from some nobles from Akud that are specialized in dealing with slaves. The slaves are delivered all the way here by merchants that give you the slaves and in return, you leave them alone. And Once the slaves breakdown from being used as playthings by you guys, you throw them to the Zombies and Ghouls of the forest to kill them”(Soma)

“Yes”(Bandits’ Boss)

“Who were those nobles?”(Soma)

“I don’t know. They never agreed to tell me who they were. All I know is that they were from Akud”(Bandits’ Boss)

“And the things you know about Miasma and Mana was taught to you by the Organization: Grim Peace that you are part of”(Soma)

“Yes”(Bandits’ Boss)

Having all of his questions answered, Soma swung his sword at the Bandits’ Boss and cut her head off. After that, he turned to the students and informed them of their next course of action now that all the bandits were dealt with by the time of the sunset of the first day of their three days trip.

“Today we will collect all the heads of the bandits we killed here as evidence for the Guild before going to the campsite for the night. And starting tomorrow morning we are going to hunt all the Zombies and Ghouls in this forest! We will keep purifying them until all the fog disappears completely!”(Soma)

“…”

Everyone just nodded their heads silently and followed after him back to the base of the bandits. By the way, the Zombie that was staggering towards them was dealt with by Marina once it got close enough to the group.