After about thirty minutes, a landau was prepared with a horse, and the cowboy had awakened after being cured.

"What is happening?" Roal opened his eyes and closed them again due to the bright sun. Covering it with his hand, he grabbed his gun as he stood up. It took him less than five seconds to understand what was happening. Again, he was smashed by mixed feelings toward Akki. He uncontrollably tittered. A part of it was due to the cheeriness of continued living. More of it was due to his mockery against himself. It was his second time being saved by Akki after surrendering.

After putting on a serious face, Ranith reloaded his revolver and stood near the landau without Akki telling him what to do. He pointed his gun at the bandit leader and beckoned the ronin to come. Slowly moving backward with his blade still against the back of Krux's head, the ronin murmured as he retro-walked past the cowboy, "I don't leave my friend behind."

Akki stopped holding his katana at Krux's back when they went up the three stairs outside the cabin. He opened the door, then dragged the man into the cabin with him.

Roal closed the cabin's door with no expression on his face. However, his eyes were wet. He thought of his past and realized he had not heard a word like this since he was banished. He could not tell if the wetness in his eyes was the result of an abrupt sadness to his prior loneliness or the result of a sudden happiness to his current companionship.

Ranith ambled to the front of the cabin, sat on the coachman's seat, grabbed the rein, and started the landau. The horse wasn't as fast as it could be on proper roads. The troop was following at their back. A few drops of sweat slid off Roal's forehead. He was unsure if Akki had any concerns in mind. Regardless, the possibility of those bandits abandoning their leader existed. They could also encounter a river or an area with trees dense enough to stop their carriage. What would they do then?

After a dozen minutes, Krux asked while continued being under the threat of life, "Who the fuck are you two foreigners?"

Akki, contemplating for a while, answered with pure hatred and revulsion, "We are just travelers who got attacked by you scumbags." He pushed his blade into the man's scalp.

"No! No! No! I'm sorry! I shouldn't ask!"

Akki decreased the amount of force put into his blade and commanded, "Just keep your mouth shut." If the situation allowed him to, he would immediately open the bandit's skull. The ronin had no compassion for these ruthless shitbags. Unlike Roal, who cared about the thoughts and motivations of criminals, Akki loathed them entirely based on what they did. Reasons and causes meant nothing to him when it was about criminals. The thought of killing the man right now entered his mind several times, and all got driven away by his sanity of self-control.

The carriage eventually left the swamp and reentered the sparse forest under the falling sun. Ranith knew that the moon would rise in no more than a few hours, which was certainly not enough for them to arrive at Sacom or exit the forest. He finally made up his mind that they needed a better plan than keeping moving and hoping for the best. Roal stopped the horse and stepped down from the coachman's seat. Although the bandits had kept a dozen meters of distance with the landau, the cowboy saw them pulling their bows, getting ready.

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Ranith tugged out his revolver, scanning the positioning of the troop, then walked on the stairs, opening the door. Akki, kneeling on Krux's back and maintaining his katana firmly in place, frowned and questioned, "What's wrong?" His worst guess was that some factor had stopped the carriage from moving. It would mean they must fight a round two with about twice the people in round one.

"We need a strategic talk," the cowboy closed the door as he stooped and strode into the cabin with only a solemn somberness.

"What is this about—"

Like he had done it uncountable times when he was a detective, Roal knocked Krux's consciousness out of his head with the bottom of his gun grip as he sat on the filthy pillow in the cabin, "We are not making it out of the forest before the sunset. We are two days before reaching Sacom. Too many things may happen, and we eventually will need to eat and rest. Those moments are those bandits' perfect time to strike. There won't be anything we can do if we wait til then. We can't escape this situation with them surrounding us constantly."

"Oh, shit! I should've asked for two horses," Akki struck the cabin wall with the side of his right fist while frowning and forcefully shutting his eyes, "You used all your elixir on me, and I was supposed to—"

"Relax," Roal tenderly put his hand on the ronin's left shoulder, looking straight at his face. When Akki finally opened his eyes again, the two pairs of eyes met in the air; the green pair's anger softened; the blue pair was filled with pity and assertion. Roal Ranith continued, "It is not your fault. You had already done the most you could in that situation. Besides, curing is what I chose. If you disapprove yourself, you are mistrusting my decision."

Wiping his rage away with the reluctance to make Roal feel distrusted, Akki nodded in silence, "Right…"

The cowboy withdrew his hand and raised his revolvers in the air, "I have six shots left and the hex for me to locate our enemies through the cabin. My magic is not yet enough for casting Magic Protection. You?"

"I didn't spend much in that fight in the first place. I can still perform all my hexes: Twirl, High Jump, Hearing Enhancement, Great Blow, Long Shaft, Monster Sickening, and Burst Fire."

"You can't do Hex Negation?"

A bit provoked by the inquiry, Akki responded with another question, "Can you?"

"Fine… Just let me… Detective mode. Lens: Magic density," Ranith glided his finger on his metal plate. He turned his head in different directions several times and squinted, closely examining different units in the slowly approaching troop.

"I've never heard this hex before. It doesn't even sound like a hex."

"I call it a hex, but it is technically an application. The authority in my country hands different types of applications to people with different jobs, mostly government officials."

"Right."

"So, there are three archers, four slingers, and a sorcerer."

"The rest?"

"Seven spearmen, three hatchet dual-wielders, and two swordsmen."

"Exactly twenty," the ronin counted and paused for a second, not reaching any possible plan to break out, before continuing, "Any idea?"

"Can you do Sword Enhancement?"

"No."

"Then, how many spearmen do you think you can take out?"

"All of them if they can't twirl. If they can—" Akki cut off his own sentence after abruptly noticing Krux, who was lying on the ground unconscious.