Two months after the meeting in the war room, mountains at the eastern reaches of the Red Stone Barony.

…

My name is Gordon. A common name for someone that was once a simple villager but is now the strongest bandit in the entirety of the Red Stone Barony.

The Gray Bear band that I control has more than thirteen thousand members, thirty of which are martial artists of the first level, six of the second and me, a third level Martial Artists.

My band has been the terror of many villages for a long while, since the baron has no interest in dealing with us since we don’t really attack important villages, and the common baronets can’t hope to deal with us.

However, I am currently dead. After I died, this weird man called GM told me he would make me wealthy in my next life if I relived the last moments of my life and monologued inside my head, although I can’t move my body.

When I asked why, he simply said: “I think it’s a clever way to narrate this chapter.”

I don’t know what he meant by that, neither can I hope to understand the thoughts of such a weird being.

Anyway, it all started in this seemingly normal day. I was having lunch with my six commanders and appreciating some good music by some bards we captured.

“It was a great haul yesterday! We managed to get all of the man and women in that village to become slaves!” One of my commanders, a thin man with black hair, said while eating a pig leg.

Getting all of those people to become slaves is indeed rare, since many would rather die instead. Differently from legal slaves, those that we captured would be sold in the black market and tortured into submission, then have all their rights stripped and sold as if they were war slaves of extinct kingdoms.

Among those, the nobles sold for the highest price.

“Yes, that was really a stroke of luck! Hey, speaking of that, you guys heard of that new baronet? The peasant one? It’s rare for a peasant to become a noble, it would be a good idea to attack him now wouldn’t it?” I said, my envy completely unconcealed.

Whether I made that decision or not wouldn’t have mattered, because as if divine punishment, a scout entered the dining room right after.

“Boss! There are enemies approaching!” The scout said, beads of sweat covered his entire face.

Oh, how I wish to have just ran away as soon as he entered.

“Yeah? So what? Is it some baronet coming for us? Or did those worms form an alliance again?” I sneered, showing the confidence I had in my band, and in my own strength.

Again, I very much want to slap myself now.

Why did I have so much pride? I can’t eat it and it’s definitely not worth anything! It even killed me for divines sake!

“No! We don’t know who they are, but it seems like there are more than two thousand cavalry troops! All of them are heavily armored!” The scout said, worry visible in his face.

It was then that the shock in my face became visible.

Two thousand infantry troops isn’t rare. Even the weakest baronet should be able to get that many.

But cavalry is an entirely different matter. Not only is it difficult to train both the knights and the warhorses, there’s the matter of feeding the horses, the wages of the knights and providing for their families. In exchange, a single knight is worth ten infantry troops, and are unstoppable in the battlefield unless they encounter a Magus or Martial Artist.

“Is it that Baron Angus is aiming for us? No, that’s impossible, he doesn’t have any cavalry and most of his troops are elite martial artists. Is it some foreign baron? No, the closest baronies won’t gain anything by attacking us.” I thought hard about who that could have been, until one of my commanders answered me.

“Gordon, I’ve heard rumors that there is a big cavalry regiment going around the Barony killing all the bandits. But until now I didn’t think that was true.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?!” Another commander bellowed.

“As I said! It was just a rumor, and one that’s hard to believe even!”

The two showed signs of fighting, but I intervened.

“Enough! Gather all the boys and arm everyone! We are in a mountainous area, so horses won’t be able to do much, and it’s only two thousand troops of cavalry. We can deal with them if we stay in the caves.”

Indeed, our base was in a cave complex that we secured, it seems that it was once a dwarven mining site so there was more than enough room for our big band.

“Yeah, boss is right! We can easily kill all of them! And then we’ll have a lot of new equipment!” Another commander said.

It made sense at the time, horses would have no advantage in caves, there’s no way we can lose with the numeric superiority.

That is what everyone thought, but it couldn’t be far from the truth.

Not to mention numerical advantage, we didn’t even have the terrain advantage.

“Why are there so many of them?!”

“Why are those horses becoming naked people?! Gaah!”

“How are they so strong?! They are using their bare hands damnit!”

In the cave, the bandits were being buried in a wave of enemies. Among them, there were more than seventy martial artists. Not only that, the horses of the knights became naked men and women that could explode a man’s skull with a punch even if they were using a helmet.

The knights, that should have been burdened by their heavy armors were charging tirelessly despite having lost their horses, and more than twenty thousand men and women that used light metal armor and wielded various weapons appeared out of nowhere.

It was a one-sided slaughter.

Not only that, whenever we cut off the arm of an enemy, they would keep attacking as if they didn’t feel pain, and when we cut off their legs, some would keep crawling as if they were three-legged dogs with just a little decrease in speed and attack with headbutts and bites. Only cutting their heads off guaranteed a kill.

“What is this?” I stood at a platform in the central cave alongside my commanders, not believing what I saw with my eyes.

Monsters, they were all monsters in human skin.

“We can’t win against this!” One of my commanders said.

I nodded, the most sensible thing to do would be to use the emergency exit, this isn’t a battle we can win.

The seven of us decided our retreat, but when we entered the meeting(dining) room, we saw something different from what we expected.

There was a young man, a little girl and a stern knight in the room.

The little girl was eating all of the meat we had in stock, however, aside from our meat she was also surrounded by half-eaten corpses, obviously which I recognized were the lieutenants.

Aside from that scary little girl, the young man that had black hair and black eyes was looking at us with an empty gaze, his eyes were the most terrifying I had ever seen, and they appeared to look down on us, as if we were just ants and not humans.

“Took you guys long enough. I have been waiting here for a while, seeing violet eat those guys has ruined my mood.” The young man said, looking at the corpses of my lieutenants with an altered expression. It seemed to covey disgust.

Knowing better, there were many signals that should have led me to run away.

The first and most obvious was the almost uncontrollable urge to shit my pants.

“Who are you?! Why do you want to exterminate us?!” I roared angrily… Okay, the urge to slap myself increased.

The young man didn’t show any change in expression, and just answered nonchalantly.

“I am Kyle Adley of Brow Stone. I don’t exactly wish for your extermination, it’s just that your band was the largest cluster of XP points and more than enough to get me to fourth level.” He answered, getting up and unsheathing a silver sword.

The sword had vein-like magic paths, exhibiting its status as a magic item. Such item would cost several hundred gold, a giant amount of money for a bandit like me.

“So you are that baronet I’ve heard about! Good! Even though your army is great, don’t think you are that powerful as a simple initiate! I killed many like you before!” I taunted him, although that was probably me going dumb with fear.

I took the long axe I had on my back, and charged, destroying the wooden table and reaching the baronet in front of me.

The baronet didn’t look fazed, as he simply activated the sword in his hands.

“[Iaijutsu - Yuki no Hana]” He whispered something I have only heard now, revisiting the scene.

It was then that his sword moved, much faster than I have ever seen someone draw a sword before. The sword was clad in ice, and the wind seemed to be torn apart to give way for the blade.

Before my ax could fall, I had already been slashed in half.

And that’s as far as I go, I’m ready to be reincarnated in a rich life…

GM: Yeah, that’ll happen after you are reborn as a coyote to atone for your sins.

I’ve been BAMBOOZLED!!!

 

…

 

After the body of the bandit leader fell, I released a sigh of relief.

I didn’t know whether I would be able to use this technique under pressure, and even though Violet would deal with any problems, I couldn’t help but be afraid.

This technique, that I’ve completely renamed, is one of Mary’s self-created sword techniques

[Flowers of Four Seasons – Winter Flower], also the only one I can use with any mastery.

This technique basically uses Ice and Wind magic to split the air in front of the sword and freeze the humidity in the air to coat the sword in ice and further diminish the friction. That not only makes the slash much faster, but also increases the sharpness of the edge.

Obviously, this skill requires an absurd mana control, which I lack, but this sword solves this problem. It is the first magic item I have ever created, and the result of many trials and errors, the sword I named Ice Edge. It uses three inscribed magic circles, becoming a three-layered spell, two control the ice and wind to execute the Yuki no Hana technique, while the third one is a spell I created which only works in inscribing, [Automatic Control]. It basically just fills the other two magic circles with my mana in the correct way, so I don’t actually need to control the spells.

The technique was then renamed by me to become [Iaijutsu – Yuki no Hana], since the original name wasn’t to my liking (wasn’t chunni enough).

After killing the leader, there was no need for me to personally kill the rest, and Violet wasn’t in the mood either after eating the Martial Artists (who have a better enhancing effect than normal meat), so I just asked Albert to deal with them.

With his top-notch equipment, killing six badly equipped Martial Artists is a piece of cake.

After they were all killed, it didn’t take long before the enemies outside were all killed.

I went outside the dining room and saw the scene of carnage. Tens of thousands of undead soldiers, mostly disguised skeletons, walked around and organized loot.

“I’m very surprised to see these guys… As expected of you, their AI is top-notch.” Violet sighed when she looked at my undead working.

They moved like actual soldiers when out of combat, that’s all because of the two months I spent creating an AI for them.

I can command my undead with my mind and send commands, so it’s only obvious I can program them.

Obviously, it was hard, since I don’t have any prior knowledge of their logic, and I don’t have any software to aid me. But I was still able to make a great AI, so they can at least pass as humans. Simple answers, and somewhat deep conversations are covered, after a few months I can add a few methods for them to create some individual backgrounds, but that’s still gonna take a lot of trial and error.

“Yeah, it was a pain in the ass to train these guys… I can’t believe they have brains at all.”

It was then that I felt the death energy in my Dread Core increasing, after so many killings, I had finally broken through the fourth rank…