The area was completely silent, save for some snoring coming out of the wagons and light footsteps of the patrolling guards.

Suddenly, a gale struck the rear end of the caravan’s protective formation, knocking several of the wagons over and a few of the guards into the air.

Everyone woke up with a start from the sound of people screaming and wagons collapsing to the ground.

“Bandits! We’re under attack! Bandits!” shouted a voice from the front of the formation.

Bandits flooded toward the caravan from nary a few hundred feet away as the passengers rushed out of the wagons to hide in the center of the encampment. The mercenaries that remained charged forward to confront the intruders.

Gust and Wesley had been in the last wagon, so when the “C” formation had been created, their wagon had walled off part of the opening, so they weren’t affected by the earlier gale. However, they were in great danger from bandits attacking from the front.

Gust and Alex picked up their weapons and rushed to defend the opening while Jen grabbed Wesley and ran toward the center of the campsite with Kyle following closely behind.

Just a few seconds later, the bandits had charged into the encampment, and the melee began, the sounds of metal clashing, yells, and screams filled the air.

Behind the wall of bandits stood a mage, hurtling a wave of fallen weapons and broken tree branches into the crowd of mercenaries with a single wave of his hand. With one small breath, a gust of wind swept over them, sending them onto their backs and allowing the bandits to charge forward and kill them.

Jen and the others, who had rushed to the center of the camp, looked on in horror.

Wesley, however, merely turned and looked toward Jen. “Hey, big sis, what’s the situation like?”

Jen wasn’t sure what to say. Should she lie, and hope that the end was quick for the unfortunate, blind boy?

Or should she tell the truth?

“Um, it looks like we’re winning! The bandits are being pushed back!”

A calm voice, unfitting for a child, responded. “Don’t lie to me, big sis.”

Jen spun around to stare at Wesley. Even though they were surrounded by murderers, it was Wesley’s childish voice that had brought her the most fear tonight. Was this cold, calm voice something a child should have?

“I may not be able to see, but I still have my other senses, you know. I can hear that the fighting has gotten closer to us since the start, and I can feel that someone has been using magic somewhere beyond the encampment. As I haven’t felt anyone closer to us use magic, I can only assume that we don’t have a mage on our side. Obviously, that puts us at a great disadvantage.

“This…what?” Jen could only gape at him in shock.

Even Wesley himself was surprised. How did he make all of those conclusions? More importantly, why was he so calm?

Although he was confused, he still knew what had to be done. He raised his voice to address the people around him.

“Big sis, everyone, please surround me for a bit so that the bandits can’t see me. I need some time to prepare.”

With that, he raised his right hand, and paused. Although he’d never done it before, he instinctively knew how to condense and write on air, like Professor Clayde had mentioned just a few days ago.

With his right hand raised, he held his breath, then pushed. A transparent plane formed in front of him. Then, with his right index finger, he began to write.

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Meanwhile, Kyle and Jen, although confused, followed along and organized those who had run to the center of the camp to huddle around Wesley.

Outside of the encampment, among the trees, a lone figure stood, performing the same actions as Wesley.

It was a mage from the Whitewind family. Just a century ago, the Whitewind family had been a merchant family prestigious enough to send their children to magical academies usually reserved for nobles.

However, during combat practice, one of their youths attending an intermediate institute of magic had accidentally killed a child from a noble family. Enraged, the noble family chased the Whitewind family out of the city. Afraid to incur the wrath of the nobles, all financial partners ceased trade with the Whitewind family, and some even took it upon themselves to “repurpose” the Whitewinds’ assets that remained in the city.

Unable to sustain themselves off of legitimate means, the Whitewind family quickly turned towards banditry. As one of the few bandit groups in the Kingdom who had mages at their disposal, they quickly grew into a sizeable force.

One member of the core family, a mage, usually led each team from afar. It was this lone figure that observed and loomed from the forest, far from the battlefield, that held that responsibility.

Wesley, still hidden in the middle of the encampment, had finally finished writing his spell. “Everyone, get down! The spell is ready to cast!”

Everyone broke away from Wesley as he swiped his finger across the words he had just written.

“Cast!”

The written words glowed, and from the plane on which he’d written the spell on, a large icicle flew out towards the forest.

After a few seconds, Jen looked toward Wesley in awe. “D-did you hit them?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.” Wesley waved his hand in front of his face. “If no more spells come out, I guess I got him.

“Quick, tell me where we’re having the most trouble. I can try to help out.”

“Uh…”

While the two started to work together, Gust was having the time of his life.

At the start of the battle, he’d crossed swords with a bandit, and had lost quite quickly – he lost his sword in the first bout and had to turn tail and run away. Afterwards, instead of fighting like everyone else, he’d jumped atop one of the covered wagons and rummaged through the boxes, planning to hide in one and make his escape afterwards.

However, the cover for one of the boxes didn’t open on first try. Curiosity getting the better of him, Gust picked up an expensive looking flask from one of the other boxes and used it to bash the cover of the box until it broke inwards. At the same time, a bandit jumped into the wagon. Without a weapon to fight with, Gust wrestled the lid off the box and looked into it.

There were only some jewels.

“Ah, shit. Wasn’t this where I’m supposed to get a legendary weapon?”

Without anything better to do, Gust threw the flask at the bandit, then grabbed a handful of the crystals, and threw them at the bandit as well.

“Boom!”

Some of the crystals hit the bandit, and, to both Gust and the bandit’s shock, exploded.

To be fair, it wasn’t a huge explosion, but the explosions did rip the bandit’s body apart, and he was most definitely dead.

“Whaaaat??” Gust looked at the box of crystals, then grinned. “This is going to be fun”

Then, he frowned. ‘But what is Mark bringing these to the Kenta Kingdom for? These crystals should be counted as military supplies. Transporting them outside of the Kingdom is incredibly illegal!

‘More importantly, what if the crystals exploded during the trip?? I could’ve died!’

Gust didn’t see, but although the crystals would explode on impact, there were seals drawn in the inside of the box to prevent the crystals from exploding while inside.

Which brings us to now. Gust stood on the edge of a fallen wagon, crystals in hand, throwing them willy-nilly toward any bandit he saw, littering the area with explosions.

Before they even realized it, tens of the bandits had died to the exploding crystals. Meanwhile, the bandits noticed that their mage didn’t seem to be casting spells anymore, but instead shards of ice flew out from inside the encampment.

However, these ice shards were rather inaccurate, as they were aimed by Jen grabbing Wesley’s head and arm, pointing them in a direction and saying, “Right about there.”

Once the bandits saw that the fight was going south, they quickly fell back and fled back into the forest, leaving the survivors to clean up the remains of the caravan and take count of the fallen.

Mark, the leader of the caravan, had been mysteriously absent during the fighting, but once the bandits had run off, he poked his head out from one of the covered wagons, jumped down, and shamelessly began to order everyone around as if he’d been there the whole time.

“Great job everyone! Well done! Now, let’s see how many of the wagons are still in working condition, and how many can be repaired! Otherwise, we’ll have to decide what we can bring and what we’ll have to leave behind. Now, hop to it!”