21 Chapter 6. Training. Part 6.

Sorry for the long absence, I got sick and there were holidays so I couldn't release the chapters.

I want to congratulate all women on this wonderful holiday, I wish you love and kindness.

And I want to remind you that there will be a lot of chapters coming out on Patreon tomorrow, so don't miss it.

For every 300 power stones there will be another chapter

p@treon com/paracetam0l

***

I entered the shop looking like a real hero about to solve everything. Slowly, with measured steps and one hand on my rapier, I walked past the small shelves crammed with all sorts of things and stood in line behind a bandit.

"...I can't sell merchandise with a mark to anyone. I'd get questioned, I told you," the mustachioed man behind the counter was trying to explain to the bandit.

Why did I think he was a bandit? Because, damn it, normal people don't dress like that. A classic "Fantasy Bandit in a Vacuum" specimen. An axe hanging from his belt, a scarred face, missing several teeth, a week's worth of stubble, and all the other typical attributes.

"Just offload it to someone else, don't piss in my ear, I know you!" the bandit said, ignoring me, still arguing with the shopkeeper.

"Ah, you're exactly who I need," I said, drawing attention to myself.

"Get out of here while you're still in one piece," the bandit spat out, "just leave your little toy behind, lest you hurt yourself."

"More clichéd lines?" I raised an eyebrow, approaching this reject, "I'm actually here to deal with the local thugs. And you, I see, fit the bill perfectly."

The bandit just raised his eyebrows and smirked arrogantly, which puzzled me until I realized that in my attempt to look imposing, I hadn't checked what was behind the various shelves.

So, I heard the step the bandit took from behind the shelf, but by then it was too late to do anything. I could have dodged if I had been focused, but I hadn't taken the situation seriously and was relaxed until I heard something behind me. I felt invincible and smart, damn it. And for that, I got hit with something heavy.

***

I came to with a jolt, twitching in place and first hearing screams and crying.

Then I realized my head was throbbing at the back, and I was extremely thirsty. My mouth felt like a desert from the Earth continent, that's how much I wanted water. It was a terrible feeling - only in fairy tales does the hero fall into a normal sleep after a blow to the head. My condition was like a hangover squared.

It felt like my brain was lead, rolling around and painfully hitting my skull with every movement.

I realized my hands were tied when I tried to move them. And my rapier was gone. Obviously, because I had been captured.

But most of all, my heart ached. More precisely, I was ready to bang my head against the wall and then die of shame. I thought I was cooler than anyone. Went around spouting pompous phrases.

Idiot.

But then my thoughts returned to the surrounding sounds, and I slowly began to understand what they were. Women's voices, certain sounds characteristic of a bandit camp.

Barely gathering my strength, I managed to sit up. We were in a bandit camp. A large bonfire, around which various tents and sleeping spots were scattered, some trash lying around, someone drunk asleep, someone else still drinking.

I was near some tree, apparently tossed aside carelessly. My eyes found my rapier; it lay in a pile of weapons next to the bonfire.

And yes, all this time I diligently avoided looking at how a bandit, with his trousers down, was clearly raping someone. And a couple more nearby - they literally set aside a special place for it. One of them finished with a loud moan and stood up, starting to pull up his trousers. Under him, I saw a crying girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old.

From the sight of it, rage boiled in my chest, but I'm no fire bender. And emotions are my enemy, so I diligently filled my head with a breeze.

"Oh, you're awake," the same bandit from the shop noticed me, "say again, what were you saying? Why are you here?"

"I-i... thought there were fewer of you," I stammered. Yeah, I'm not much of an actor, Stanislavski would say he doesn't believe me and so on, but this idiot bought it. I wanted to find out if they were all here or not. At least to make it look like a cunning plan to infiltrate the enemy's camp.

Yeah, get clubbed on the head and wake up tied up.

"Ha, you thought there were just a couple of us?" the guy grimly smiled, "no-no-no, ha-ha-ha..."

"Oh," was all I said, "and I see there's a good thirty of you here, right?"

The wind bending was enough to slice through the ropes with a thin stream of air. Unfortunately, that's all I'm capable of for now. Otherwise, it's all about air blasts rather than cutting with air. But that's beside the point.

The rage returned, and with it, a rush of adrenaline. I no longer needed the breeze in my head, I could manage, and I didn't want to calm what was essentially righteous fury at that moment.

I literally jumped at the bandit who was talking to me, hitting him hard in the stomach. He doubled over, and I, leaping over him, rushed to the pile of weapons, grabbing my rapier.

While the other bandits started to realize what was happening, some trying to pull up their trousers, others reaching for their weapons, I was already delicately, with the very tip, slicing open some of their bellies or necks.

The unpleasant smells of innards, blood, and other such stuff hit me immediately, but I paid no attention. I methodically moved across the battlefield, clenching my jaw so hard my teeth hurt, using all my agility to cut down the bandits.

Even when a good ten of them managed to grab weapons while I was slicing their comrades, it didn't help them much. They were utterly useless with any weapon, running at me swinging and screaming, all I had to do was dodge their attack and cut the bandit during the dodge.

"Please, mercy," one of the bandits, who hadn't even fully fastened his trousers, threw down his weapon and fell to his knees, "I will never return to this, I... I was actually planning to leave."

Honestly? I might have believed him. I might even have let him go, if he hadn't been one of the three who, at the moment of my awakening, were disgustingly squirming on top of girls, by the standards of this world.

You could say he was simply unlucky.

"Nice try," I coldly said, "maybe if I hadn't seen you raping those girls, it might have worked."

The essence of my words reached him precisely a moment before my rapier separated his head from his body.

Quite a fountain of blood, I must say.

The entire camp resembled a slaughterhouse: guts and severed limbs everywhere, not to mention corpses or still-living people trying to stuff their intestines back into their stomachs. Well, they had, literally, minutes left - with such injuries, one does not survive without help here.

Finally, my rage began to subside, and I was able to walk through all the bodies, which unexpectedly started to stink, towards the girls. They were naked, with white-red streaks between their legs, hugging each other and trembling, fearfully looking at me.

I didn't look like a butcher, thanks to my natural agility, I had almost completely avoided getting blood on me. Only my shoes got dirty, and of course, my rapier, which I immediately wiped on the trousers of one of the corpses and sheathed.

And just when I stretched my lips into a smile and planned to calm them down, I started to vomit uncontrollably.

The adrenaline finally wore off, ruining, damn, my image of a hero in the eyes of the girls. Apparently, they were reassured enough by seeing me, currently incapable of anything, and managed to clean themselves up and look for some clothes, occasionally casting wary glances at me.

And I felt utterly terrible, probably also because of that blow to the head, which I had initially offset with adrenaline. In addition to sudden nausea, my ears rang, and the same feeling as when I woke up returned - a migraine. My body felt like cotton, and standing on my feet was quite difficult.

Slowly, I began to realize that I had killed them all.

I was responsible for the fact that that man was now bleeding from the mouth while trying to stuff a loop of intestines back in, I was responsible for the fact that that, still relatively young guy, was now seeing his last moments in life as blood poured out of his throat.

This realization made me vomit again.

Despite everything that happened, I was not from this world. I was raised in a different world, all this was alien to me, sometimes even barbaric. I had managed to deal with it almost all my life, the breeze was the ultimate tool, and my natural indifference helped too, but right now, no pleasant breeze wanted to fill my head, and my stomach spasmed from having nothing left to throw up.

I felt incredibly sorry for these people, whose lives I had personally ended. Now they were just piles of flesh and bones, which the local wild animals would scatter within a few days.

Maybe they should be buried, in theory, but I definitely wasn't going to do it. As much as my pity was choking me now, I didn't have the strength to stay and dig graves and drag all the bodies. And they didn't deserve it.

Perhaps, I needed to get drunk. I understood my master's words, that I would run for sake myself, oh how I understood.

But first, I had to pull myself together and lead the poor girls through the forest, who, unlike me, didn't even vomit while looking at everything around. Probably, I should take them to the river first, let them bathe, and then head to the city.

The girls turned out to be locals and had been long searched for, so I was received very well in the city once everything was clarified. I have suspicions, looking into the honest-to-goodness eyes of the local mayor or city head or whatever he was, that those bandits didn't just randomly stake their claim there, but to delve into that?

I really wasn't up for it. My soul felt not just bad, but downright terrible. Shame mixed with how easily I was captured, nausea from killing people, and a lot of different feelings.

I had essentially taken the law into my own hands, and Master Piandao had warned me about this delicate issue. Technically, the police turn a blind eye to such vigilantes, but from a legal standpoint, I was in the wrong. And I could even face problems. And to get involved in local politics on top of that...

After handing over the girls to their relatives and telling them about the pawnshop seller or whatever that store was called, I hurried away.

The breeze in my head helped keep all thoughts deep down, so I reached Master Piandao's estate quite quickly. Though, as I approached the gates, I vomited once more - the breeze could no longer cope with the surge of emotions, so I entered my teacher's office in a very peculiar state.

However, I was greeted there by a bowl of sake and a beautiful girl offering it to me. It was time to rest.