"Non-combatants back into cover, quickly!"
I head over to join the formation against our approaching visitors. We instinctively form into the most basic formation, with our frontline melee fighters in the front and the ranged fighters in the back. Naturally, I'm near the front, positioning myself just behind the two heavily armored strength enhancers from the Relentless Waves.
This time there are only the people from the Relentless Waves and my own party, all the nature mages listened to my earlier advice and are taking cover in the vehicles. I'm glad Sera too, decide to stay out of the fights though I'm not sure if it will last.
The nine of us stay in our formation and slowly wait for the approaching six figures to draw closer.
Noticing our cautiousness, the leading member of the approaching group waves at us with both hands, signaling that they haven't come to fight.
The distance between us and the new group continues to shorten as we are finally able to make out their identities.
Yep, that guy behind the waving woman is Keith all right. Why in the world did he decide to come back to us? At least it saves us the trouble from having to deal with them later I guess...
"ARE YOU GUYS ALRIGHT?" The leading figure who turns out to be a woman yells out in a worried tone as they enter the hearing range.
The scene of the unarmed woman with short brown hair running at us should've lowered the tension in the air but I start to feel the mood tense up instead as the people from the Relentless Waves stare on in continual hostility, moving ahead to surround Keith's party.
Finding it troubling to draw any closer to the people with weapons drawn at her, the leading girl stops her steps with a regretful expression. She stands still and looks to the corner of her eye as if collecting her words. But before she can speak out, the man behind her steps in front of her.
"It seems you guys already found out. That's right, we betrayed you guys and lured you guys into a trap that we help set up with the bandits, but we're not here to fight." The man declares before pausing briefly to see our reaction.
To be honest, this guy brought me and the girls into danger if we didn't figure out their plan first so I honestly feel the same as the nearby mages from the Relentless Waves who have their spells ready and aimed. But since Vorn is more experienced in dealing with rogue adventurers, I'll let him deal with it for now.
"You guys betrayed not only us but your honor as adventurers. In accordance with the guild rules, we should do whatever we deem as necessary to bring you in alive and execute you should you resist. Now that you've saved us the trouble of hunting you down, give us a reason not to cut off your legs right now and drag you off to the guild." Vorn yells out his response angrily at Keith's party.
Seeing that our hostility towards his party hasn't budged, Keith continues.
"We understand that we had done something unforgivable and I know you care not for our reason but we do not regret our actions. But that also doesn't mean we don't acknowledge our wrongdoings against you, so please do as you wish with us." With those words, Keith throws his weapon away and sits down on the ground, accepting any punishment to come.
Immediately following him, the rest of his party except the previous woman does the same.
The woman falls into a panic, urging her friends to stand up.
"Please, it's all my fault, let me take responsibility myself." The girl urges, trying to lift her companions up.
Seeming to not care at all, Vorn approaches them with one of his strength enhancers as his guard.
Realizing that her efforts are futile, she turns her attention to the approaching men instead.
"Please, they only did it to save me, they aren't bad people. Once they saved me and told me the situation, they readily agreed with my request of coming back to help you guys. If you want to punish someone then just punish me, it was all my fault in the first place."
Despite her words, Vorn and one of his slaves expressionlessly move up towards Keith who has his eyes closed and motionless, sitting on the ground.
I watch on, debating in the head on whether I should let what is about to go on proceed. A side of me that has been imbued with modern ethical sense since small scream out in disgust at imminent extrajudicial punishment but the other part of me insists that they deserve it for trying to bring danger to the girls and me.
Seeing that Vorn has reached Keith, the woman quickly approached Vorn and kneeled in front of him, holding onto his legs.
"Please, punish me instead, I'll take on all their punishment."
As if not hearing the lady's words, Vorn brings his spears up, in position to strike downward.
With no unanimous decision being made in my self-debate, I look over to Faris and Neri to see what they think. I'll support whatever their decision is, my girls are the most important to me after all.
Both of them are watching the scene with a little pity in their eyes but they don't seem to have much of an opinion on the matter. I guess they've left the decision to Vorn for now, I'll follow suit and continue doing nothing then.
"PLEASE, IT'S ALL MY FAULT!" The woman screams and closes her eyes, unable to bear watching any further.
With Vorn's back facing us, we aren't able to see the scene clearly as the sound of something metallic shattering reaches our ears. Vorn then bends down for a moment before stepping back to the side after prying his leg back from the woman's grasp and starts walking back towards us.
With nothing left to obstruct the view, the scene is all laid out before us. Contrary to what I expect to see, which is Keith laying in his pool of blood, I see Keith in the same position without any injuries and Vorn retrieving something off the tip of his spear as he continues to walk in my direction.
"I was just testing if they were surrendering to us for real, sorry for the scare madam."
Hearing those words, the woman who had her eyes closed opens them to a scene she did not expect. She pauses for a moment, allowing reality to settle within her before an audible sigh of relief and sounds of joy start to ring out as she jumps to embrace Keith.
Upon closer look, I figure out that the item Vorn retrieved is actually Keith's guild badge.
"I'll stick to the rules and let the guild decide your punishment but don't expect a comfortable ride on our way to the guild."
Vorn's words instantly annihilate the tension in the air and his companions cancels the spells they had prepared and start to approach Keith's party, removing their guild badge and tying them up to constrain their movement with the exception of the woman.
With the incident over, we start herding our new prisoners onto our transports and reporting the situation to Mr.Lensly and his fellow mages.
"I see, these are matters of your adventurer guild's so I have nothing to say in this matter. The girl can join me in my carriage while you're busy with ensuring the safety of our caravan."
With Mr.Lensly's words, we quickly finish preparing to continue our journey. Some of our vehicles are slightly damaged from the fighting but they are mainly just superficial wounds.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
We decide to split Keith's group onto different vehicles to separate them during the journey, and it just so happens Keith himself is going to be riding with us. You better keep your eyes off my girls or I won't be as merciful as Vorn.
---
23rd of the third month
Not even an hour after lunch, our caravan finally spots the strong stone walls of the town of Ellam, signifying that we'll finally be able to have a good night's rest tonight.
We've been traveling non-stop and throughout all of yesterday after the encounter with bandits and all of this morning. Though with the girls accompanying me, it's still bearable, I am full of admiration for the others who easily endure the travels. Especially our prisoners who haven't even step off our vehicles throughout our trip since yesterday besides to go do their business.
We enter the town after a brief inspection by the city guards because we are entering with quite a number both in personnel and luggage.
We head over to one of the inns near Ellam's branch of the merchant guild and Mr.Lensly will be the one paying for our accommodations during our stay as we are still in his employ. We'll all be in the same inn to his generosity and to simplify logistics and our ability to perform our bodyguard duties although it doesn't seem it'll be needed.
With each of us having checked-in to our rooms, I start heading over to the adventurer guild in this town alongside Vorn to turn in our prisoners. Mr.Lensly will be sending Sera to accompany us to act as a witness to simplify the process. Just the three of us will be going to keep our logistics simple, leaving my Faris and Neri behind at the inn.
I head to retrieve Keith from my wagon to take him to Vorn's carriage that we'll be taking.
"Keith!" A girl with the short brown hair exclaims as she moves over to assist the ragged-looking man.
It's the same girl from yesterday who plead on her party's behalf. It seems like her name is Cecily.
"...What happened to his face, Aster?" Vorn asks the moment he sees Keith.
"He fell over when we hit a bump on the road. You know, we don't have that many members to look after him the whole time."
"How could you be so careless, let me take a closer look," Cecily says in a worried tone as she moves closer to inspect Keith's wounds.
"..."
Both Sera and Vorn look at me speechlessly, as if they can't believe that I expect them to be tricked with such an excuse.
Well, I guess it's a bit weak of an excuse after all, his bruises on his face definitely doesn't look like it's from a fall but I'm too lazy to come up with another one.
It's obvious that the reason his face is bruised up is because of me anyway.
He was fine throughout all of yesterday after having surrendered to us but once I had a good night's rest thanks to my kind and caring girls, it really started to piss me off whenever I saw his face.
After all, this guy tried to bring harm to my girls and that is an unforgivable crime!
And to top it off, I caught him leering at my girls blatantly when I was coming back from scouting!
"...Help... he beat me... all morning." Keith weakly says as he is carried into the carriage by Cecily.
At his accusations, Sera and Vorn all look over my way skeptically while Cecily looks over with a gullible expression, waiting for my explanation.
Fucking snitch, there's a saying from where I'm from, snitches get stitches.
Vowing to make sure our journey to the guild will be as 'bumpy' as possible, I give out the most textbook response to justify Keith's injuries. Go guild rules!
"He tried to escape." I spit out the words casually as I move to board the carriage.
"I didn---" A voice sounds out from the figure poking his head out of the carriage door.
"Stop trying to escape!" I yell out as I conveniently slam my fist into that very same figure peeking out as I board the carriage.
"KEITH! Please behave yourself! Even though I know you want to come to check on us, you should know better than to sneak around when we're under so much scrutiny." Cecily complains.
"..."
Sera and Vorn give each other a look before shaking their heads and boarding as well.
Seeing that we are ready to depart, Cecily stops worrying about Keith and mounts her horse to set off alongside the carriage as Vorn proceeds to close the carriage door.
Throughout our entire 'bumpy' trip to the guild, it seems they choose to just ignore my actions as Keith's companion keeps their sight off to a corner silently, trying their best to keep attention away from themselves to Keith's disappointment.
Don't worry Keith, as a civilized adventurer, I still have the decency to use healing magic on you.
---
It didn't take long for us to finish our report of the incident to the guild, especially because we are accompanied by a member of the fourth nature mage division, Sera, who acted as our witness to the events.
Once we each finish recounting our experiences, Klein and the rest of his party, including Cecily, are taken by the guild. They'll be waiting for an official decision on what their punishment will be after the guild themselves finish conducting an investigation.
And of course, the guild didn't even blink at Klein's unfortunate wounds as heavily injuring traitors are not that uncommon and are acceptable as long as it can be justified which doesn't take much at all.
After Vorn and I stop by the guild counters to turn in our mana crystals, the three of us head back to our inn in Vorn's carriage. Vorn is silently acting as lookout throughout the ride while Sera keeps to herself mostly but no longer has that hostile attitude she once had when approached. We uneventfully make it back to the inn and report to Mr.Lensly in his room.
"I see, so that matter is in the guild's hands now. Incidentally, I also finished the matters with the merchant guild and Mr.Fide also happily depart to tend to his own business. Despite our 'rough' handling of him and his men, he graciously passes his thanks to you gentlemen as well."
No shit he's happy, he manages to make his delivery on time to make a profit without having to pay a dime to his escorts since they went rogue!
"I also received compensation from the merchant guild for our help in this matter and I won't forget to thank you and your companions for their assistance. I'll award each adventurer five gold coins for their efforts in this incident, here."
Mr.Lensly personally retrieves two bags of coin from the table and hands it over to me and Vorn before continuing.
"There isn't anything else to do but to restock on supplies and prepare to set off once again tomorrow morning. But until then, do go get yourselves some much well-deserved rest."
With his words urging us to take our leaves, I immediately head back to reunite with my girls.
Entering into my room, I spot Faris sitting on one of the beds leisurely reading a book next to her leather equipment that is neatly laid out. The shine that her equipment gives out obviously shows that it has recently been serviced.
Near her, Neri is sitting by the table that has pieces of her plate armor sprawled in front of her as he tends to her gear. It seems she is in the middle of performing maintenance on her gear, it can't be helped that plate armor will take longer to service.
The two stop what they're doing and look over my way.
"Welcome back master!" Faris closes her book and greets me with enthusiasm.
"Master." While Neri glances over to greet me before resuming her work.
Not wanting to disrupt Neri, I walk over to Faris.
"Don't mind me, continue doing what you were doing. We're free until the caravan sets off tomorrow morning again." I say as I urge Faris to sit back down by pushing her shoulders back down.
I quickly position myself comfortably on the bed, laying myself down while using Faris's thighs as my pillow. From my view down here, I see Faris looking down at my antics before she glances back toward the book that she's holding.
Now, it's time to count up our earnings so far.
I open the small bag of coins I received from Mr.Lensly as well as the coins from selling our mana crystals back at the guild.
15 gold coins plus 2 gold coins and 97 silver coins from the 297 mana crystals we earned so far equals to a total of 17 gold coins and 97 silver coins. Add that to our existing funds, we now have a grand total of 75 gold coins 191 silver coins and 43 copper coins.
We don't receive our pay until the escort request is finished but for the rate of 1 gold coins and 50 silver coins a day, we have a payment of 9 gold coins pending as well. Well, we still have a lot of money to make by completing the part-time peddler request of delivering alcohol to the capital so it's not the end of it yet.
Time to take a look at our status, I've been too tired to look since my levels haven't been going up anyway but with our recent fight with bandits, let's see if it has gone up.
I cuddle Faris's thighs before I cast identify on each of us.
Human Male Age: 18
Magic Level:
Water Lv. 17
Electric Lv. 16
Light Lv. 2
Fire Lv. 1
Earth Lv. 1
Wind Lv. 1
Healing Lv. 1
Dark Lv. 1
Nature Lv. 1
Unique Magic:
Identify
Human Female Age: 18
Magic Level:
Dexterity Lv. 26
Stamina Lv. 18
Strength Lv. 1
Fire Lv. 1
Water Lv. 1
Unique Magic:
Sense Danger
Dwarf Female Age: 19
Magic Level:
Strength Lv. 24
Stamina Lv. 22
Dexterity Lv. 1
Fire Lv. 1
Water Lv. 1
Unique Magic:
Physical Boost
Sense Location
Finally! It's only one level but I finally leveled up in both my magic. It seems like Faris's stamina level went up as well.
Neri's level remains the same though they are pretty high already. It looks like the leveling becomes a lot harder once it reaches the twenties. We'll need to fight stronger opponents to continue getting stronger.
To do that safely, we'll need to assemble more members to our party which brings us back to finishing our current escort request and the one to deliver dwarven alcohol back to the human kingdom's capital.
Let's hope it all go as smoothly as planned.