The next morning, we left Koru Thread. After a while, when Koru Thread became invisible, Chris informed us of an unusual incident.

“We are being followed. They are probably a bandit group.”

“Well, we look like an ordinary group of two women and three children from outside, after all. We are probably seen as sitting ducks from the perspectives of the bandits. It is possible that we were marked while coming to Koru Thread and they set up an ambush for us. Then Mother, what should we do?”

I inquired Chris.

“Well, at the vanguard will be me and behind me will be Tanya, at the center will be Medea and behind her will be Larcus and at the rear will be Kite. We will move in this formation. Tanya, you will never leave the side of Medea. Kite, you will protect Larcus from the attacks from behind. Medea, you can give aid with magic when you have the opportunity.”

We each all acknowledged the instructions of Chris and carefully started to move in that formation.

After we walked for a while, we saw 6 men, whom you could recognise as bandits from their appearances, lying in wait.

We stopped there and I cast “Arrow Protection” spell which can be cast when your Wind attributed magic is Level 2. However it didn’t seem like they had bows.

“It doesn’t seem like they would attack us with bows. Why?”

Tanya answered my question.

“Well, Larcus-san. That’s because when there are young girls, it is better to catch them unharmed and sell them as slaves. They sell them at a higher price that way.”

“I see. So their guards are lowered.”

Currently Tanya was 44 and Chris was 36 years old. However I wouldn’t act boorishly and tease her with her age.

Furthermore, nowadays she stopped calling me “Young Master” and started to call me with my name adding “-san” at the end.

“Then, let’s keep walking. I will prepare to cast a magic while walking so after I invoked my magic, you should move forward as well, Nii-san. Only after we crushed everyone at the front, we should deal with the ones at our backs.”

Using magic while walking was quite hard but after my [Magic Manipulation] skill reached Level 2, I became capable of invoking the spells of the four attributed magics while walking.

Chris looked back and checked the bandits’ states but there were n.o.body in sight.

“It seems like we can make it in time. Let’s do it that way.”

Thus our dealing strategy was formed.

“Wait a minute, you Aunty the-”

When we reached the distance of 10 Li(Approximately 18 meters), the Leader-like man amongst the bandits tried to say something but just at that moment, I invoked my Wind attributed Level 2 spell. The explosion of the spell annihilated three of them by tearing them to pieces. The remaining three lost their balances due to the strong wind and taking advantage of it, Chris, who had an angry demon-like face, and Kite attacked. I, too, tried to partic.i.p.ate in the attack but two of them were easily cut down by Chris and the remaining one was also defeated by Kite.

(This was my first murder. If I had used a sword to kill them directly, it might have been different but this current feeling is…)

“Oh my, Tanya. This guy called you Aunty.”

“That is really strange, Madame. From this guy’s position, it was impossible to see me since you were standing in front of me. I wonder who he called Aunty?”

“Ufufufu”

“Ufufu” (TL Note: Sounds of chucklings.)

When I saw those two starting a sour quarrel with smiles on their faces, it felt absurd to think about the matters seriously. This was the common sense in this world? There was no point in being troubled about it. I had no choice but to get used to it. Kite also had a serious expression just now but it had changed into a stunned one.

“I couldn’t see the faces of those two because of the light s.h.i.+ning from their backs. Probably this guy also tried to say something. Anyway, the bandits behind us probably didn’t notice this. We should set up an ambush for them. Let’s hide ourselves quickly.”

Two of them quickly nodded with unpleasant expressions and we hid behind the trees.

The remaining bandits were 5 people. They noticed the 6 corpses and rushed over beside them.

“What the h.e.l.l is this? Boss is…”

This time we had prepared our spells before hand and been waiting in ambush to cast them thus before the bandit man could finish his words, they were all instantly annihilated by the spells of mine, Chris and Medea.

According to their plan, we would have retreated back to Koru Thread once we discovered the bandits in front of us, thus they distributed their war potentials so that they could crush us from every direction. That was probably how the bandits planned it. If they were to directly attack head on, they would still possess no threat to Chris but Tanya and Medea, who had low battle abilities, might have been in danger.

We searched the handbags of the bandits and collected the valuable things, weapons and protectors.

“They don’t have many valuable things.”

Tanya murmured.

“If they had many valuable things, there wouldn’t be any need for them to rob others.”

Kite murmured back to Tanya as a reply with a disgusted expression.

“Well then, let’s go.”

Chris suggested to leave with a natural expression as if nothing unusual happened just now.

“However, you are quite nasty as well. You invoked your magic before letting the enemy finish his words.”

Kite said something which were off the point.

“What are you talking about, Nii-san? Magic Users are weak at the close combat thus making the first move for a certain victory is the fundamental for them. Gaining victory is the most important thing so the ones who lower their guards are at fault. Besides even if I didn’t hear the words of the bandit, I can still generally guess it. He would probably say something like ‘If you don’t want to die, leave your valuables behind and go.’ That is all.”

“That’s right, Kite. Even against the monsters, the difficulty of the fight changes greatly depending on who made the first move. Currently you are probably fighting inside the forest thus you should definitely acquire [Presence Perception] and [Spy] skills.”

“I understand, Mother.”

When Chris said that, Kite nodded.

Afterwards, we could return to the Collet Village without encountering any peculiar trouble.

I made a Status Check during the trip and I noticed that my experience points increased to 179 from 10. I guess it was due to defeating the bandits but I was surprised to find out that even humans would provide experience points.