“Better to rob bigger groups rather than too-small ones. When you’re dealing with bigger groups of people, often they have their loved ones to worry about, which would make them more liable to cough up the money rather than fight back. On the other hand, small groups tend to be more dangerous for the same reason. They often only had themselves to worry about, and nothing to lose but their lives.

Also, more often than not, people that dared to travel the less-traveled roads in groups of less than five tend to either be desperate, or skilled, so there’s that too.” - Yitun Miralvad, former bandit, a day before he perished in a mining accident on the coal mine he was sentenced to work on for the rest of his life.

When the group of eleven bandits – a pretty mixed bunch, mostly therians and humans, with one orc – saw the three women walking through the road with no other companions in sight, they likely thought that some easy prey had just fallen into their lap. None of the women even carried any visible weapons other than the walking staves in their hands, so it was likely going to be a breeze.

Their misconception was understandable. After all, storage artifacts large enough to store most larger one-handed weapons are relatively rare outside of wealthier soldiers and adventurers, much less ones that could accommodate two-handed weapons. People often carried their weapons visibly for that reason, which also served as a deterrent.

None of Aideen, Celia, or Kino looked like soldier or adventurer types, much less wealthy ones given how simply they dressed. The bandits also failed to recognize the black staff Aideen carried as a weapon, as they mistook it as a walking staff instead, which was very common for travelers to carry.

Which was one reason why they reacted far too late when Aideen suddenly swung the staff towards the large wolf-like therian man who led the small band of bandits. By the time any of them even managed to yell out a warning, the tip of Aideen’s staff already landed on the side of the bandit leader’s skull and caused a small divot to form on the side of his head.

Baffled, the rest of the bandits could only watch as their leader leaked blood and brain matter out of every orifice on his head and toppled to the ground like a felled tree, dead long before he landed.

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Then Aideen charged towards the remaining five bandits that blocked the road before them. The second bandit she engaged, a burly human man, only reacted when he saw the dead body of his leader fall to the ground, and raised the wooden cudgel in his hand to block her strike as it was far too late for him to attempt dodging by then.

He felt an unexpected force – next to none of Aideen’s opponents expected the weight of her staff, as it had the dimensions of a normal one, just made out of far denser and heavier Adamant – strike his weapon. His eyes nearly bulged out as he saw how the wooden cudgel as thick as his arm shattered and rained bits of wood to his face, but never had the chance to voice out his incredulity.

Because the next moment Aideen’s staff struck his forehead and shattered his skull with as much ease as it had shattered his cudgel, splattering blood, brain matter, and bits of bone over the vicinity.

The other four bandits left on that side looked at the previously harmless-looking Aideen with Horror as she leapt towards them next with her bloody staff in tow.

On the other side, the other five bandits also saw what happened with widened eyes and looks of disbelief. None of them had expected that the supposed easy prey turned out to be a tough bone to chew instead. Before they could even get their minds together, Celia sprung into action and brought her oversized sword-staff out from her storage artifact.

She brandished the weapon swiftly towards the nearest bandit on that side, the force of the blow easily bullying its way through the bandit’s desperate attempt to block it with his axe. While the blade of the sword-staff wasn’t particularly sharp, the weight and force behind the swing made it a lethal weapon either way. The blade cleaved through the bandit’s torso from the shoulder until it stopped around the middle of the belly, the man’s upper body nearly split into two by the brutal blow.

Blood and entrails from the dead bandit poured out as Celia withdrew her weapon and brought it around for another strike, which made two of the remaining four bandits back away in fear. The other two bandits were further off to the other side of the road so Celia’s swing wouldn’t have reached them in the first place, so she ignored them.

By then thoroughly intimidated, those two bandits tried to think of a way to escape their predicament, when they laid eyes on Kino, who was looking at the fighting and carnage around her with timid, fearful eyes. Almost immediately the two shared the same idea, namely to take the clearly scared girl as a hostage to get the other two to stop and surrender.

Neither of the two bandits had any idea that as they rushed towards Kino with fierce expressions and bared weapons, they practically caused the girl to panic. Kino had never fought before, and neither had Aideen nor Celia taught her about it. They had planned to stave that off until later, but it did not mean that the girl was harmless in any way.

Kino was a Void mage after all, while being one of the best natural talents Aideen had ever seen when it comes to handling her magic. Where most mages needed to concentrate and put their thoughts into their magical workings, Kino literally wielded her magic like it was part of her body. As such, when two fearsome looking bandits charged her like that, she reacted on instinct and reflexes, without any thought behind it.

She called upon her magic.