“My son!” Baron Lockridge screamed in grief, seeing the bandit leader coming out.
 
The bandit leader is short for an orc, and looked with a long ponytail but had a body built like a tank. Every muscle in his body was well-defined and could burst with strength at a moment’s notice.
 
I am shocked, to my core, not only by the brazen entry of Ulag Karguk, but also by how casually he is holding the decapitated head of a blond man by hair, which is dripping with blood.
 
The dead man is the son of Baron Lockridge, who is being held back by guards. As he wants to run to the bandit leader.
 
“Bandit, you have made a grave mistake coming here,” said Lancel, with eyes filled with anger. “You are here. So, it is not a mistake,” said the bandit leader with a laugh and kept walking.
 
Stopping only when there is about a hundred-meter distance between us.
 
He is standing alone with a confident smile on his face, not caring for nearly sixty guards armed to the tooth and a High-Mage.
 
Things are not simple as they looked. This bandit is intelligent, and it wouldn’t have come here without preparations. As for why he came, he just told us; for Lancel.
 
“I was planning to hunt you down tomorrow, but since you delivered yourself, I can kill you now,” said Lancel as he took out his sword.  
 
Bandit leader’s expressions turned strange. He begins to look at Lancel as if seeing the world's biggest idiot.
 
“Hahahaha…” 
 
He looked at him like that for a second, before a smile cracked on his face and soon transformed into raucous laughter. The bandit leader laughed so hard that tears started to drip down from his eyes.
 
“Why are laughing, you wretched bastard?” Lancel asked angrily and tried to take a step toward the bandit leader, but Mage York stopped him.
 
It took a few seconds, but the bandit leader finally stopped and the first thing he did was throw away the head. 
 
It immediately brought a reaction from Baron Lockridge, and he tried to move toward the bandit, but his guards stopped him again.
 
He used that free hand to wipe away the tears from his eyes and turned to Lancel. “I am laughing at your idiocy, dear lord. You are idiot enough to assume I would come here without preparation,”
 
“Has all the luxuries in your life, had eaten your brains enough to not understand that,” I am standing in the middle of the castle, without care,” he said and mocked looking at Lancel mocking, before raising his hand up in flourish.
 
Seeing the fist, I felt all the hairs on my stand up, and a moment later; the bandits begin to reveal themselves.
 
They are coming from everywhere, from the front, back, sides, and battlements. From where, over ten archers have drawn their bow, with Lancel as their target.
 
My focus turned to the six people that appeared beside the bandit leader. Two humans, three orcs, one half-orc.
 
Three of them. I instantly recognized it. They are lieutenants of the bandit leader.
 
In these past few months, we have collected a thick file on them. They were present with Karguk, when he had escaped two days ago and killed my brother on the way.
 
The other three are completely unknown. I looked at them before focusing on the old orc with the staff. Looking at all the markings, he is a shaman; they are very hard to deal with.
 
“You have brought quite a force, but we could still defeat you,” said Lancel, suppressing the intense fear he is feeling.
 
Yes, we could defeat the bandits despite them having more men than us.
 
We have a High Mage, Baron Angus, three captains, three of my guards, and trained experienced guards. It will be a bloody battle, but victory is undoubted.
 
“You are right about that,” Karguk agreed and Lancel smiled. 
 
“Of course, I am right. You wretched bandit and since you have dared to show yourself, we will kill you and all the filth you have brought,” said Lancel, pointing his sword toward the bandit.
 
I did not feel good, especially when I see that the smile on the bandit leader's face did not dim. Instead, it had brightened up.
 
“Your force will be able to defeat us, but not before we will kill you,” said the bandit leader. “All my men, including me, will attack with you as the only target,”
 
“Many of us will die, even I might die, but we will keep going, till we kill you, and not even High-Mage standing beside you will not be able to protect you,” he said and for the first time, true fear appeared in Lacel’s eyes.
 
Earlier, the bandit leader implied he wanted to kill Lancel, but now, he clearly stated it.
 
The question is why?
 
Lancel is not a common person, he is a scion of one of the most powerful noble houses in the Empire. The House of Ravenheart wields immense power.
 
Killing him will bring the force of that house to a bandit. 
 
The whole army of Mirador Hold will descend here, and also armies of House Ravenheart and their experts. They will hunt him down, even when if he hides in the extreme magic region. 
 
You can’t just kill a member of one of the most powerful noble houses and hope to live.
 
“Why do you want to kill me?” asked Lancel and his voice was surprisingly steady. 
 
The bandit leader shook his. “I do not want to kill you; my employer wants you. If I bring you alive with me, he will pay me more, with a dead body, a little less.”
 
“So, it is your choice. You can come with us alive or as a dead body; either is fine with us,” he said with a shrug. 
 
Seeing the bandit talking so casually about his death made Lancel really angry. I have seen him angry, but not like this.
 
“I am Lancel Alexander Augustus Wilstein of House Ravenheart. You filthy bandit, you can’t kill me,” he roared, and the bandit leader grinned.
 
“You are of flesh and pitifully weak. I will kill you,” said Bandit Leader with a grin, before his pale blue turned calm as a lake.
 
“Attack!” he ordered.
 
Immediately fourteen archers begin to lose arrows with every skill they have, and all of them were aimed at Lancel.
 
I looked at the arrows before focusing on the bandit leader, who did not move from his spot. Nor do we. Attacking them before they attack us is not wise in the position, we are in.
 
It is great for us that it is making its archers attack; it will make them lose arrows.
 
So, when the real battle begins; they will have fewer arrows to work with. As for Lancel, nobody is worried about him; he had a High Mage to protect him. He will be fine.
 
High Mage had already enveloped them in a red protective sphere. It is thick but transparent. I could see both of them clearly through it.
 
The arrows were so fast that they barely took a second to reach the shield, before starting to hit the protective sphere.
 
The ripples formed as the arrows hit the sphere before they begin to fall down on the ground. Not a single one of them could breach even an inch of that protective sphere.
 
Seeing the arrows falling down, the smile on Lancel’s face became even bigger, and he looked at the bandit. 
 
The bandit's smile did not change, and it worried me. 
 
I have read every report on the bandit. Every caravan it looted, every person it killed, and the battle it fought. From all this, I know this bastard is intelligent, ruthless, and has a strategic mind.
 
I feel like the battle two days ago is not simple as people are thinking it is. 
 
If I am daring, I would even say, it had intentionally leaked his position and let the collective force attack him. 
 
So, he could lure Lancel here, as he knew as the future lord of Greltheaven, he will come here for the funeral.
 
Lancel should understand it, seeing he had worked under famous generals. One of the perks of being a member of House Ravenheart.
 
He did not seem worried, instead; he was looking at the bandit with a mocking smile.
 
I really want to curse him. If he had just listened and not used his monkey brain. We would have been safe in the Mirador Hold.
 
Hun!
 
I was tens of arrows hitting the shield, when something shocking happened. 
 
One of the arrows somehow pierced through the protective sphere and lodged itself into Lancel right below his chest, cutting through the layer of energy covering him.
 
Instantly, shock spread around me and the one who is most shocked was Mage York, who had cast a protective sphere and the protection layer around Lancel.
 
Ahhhh!
 
Now, the arrow had lodged itself deeply into Lancel, making him scream in pain.
 
“I told you, you will die and even a High Mage will not be able to save you,” said the bandit leader while High Mage York added a couple of layers to his protective sphere.
 
I felt relieved seeing the arrow lodging below his heart. If it had hit his heart and died, then I would have no option but to run for a family. As the Count wouldn’t have let me and others live, with his son dead.
 
It wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t my fault. 
 
In the short time, I have known him. I understood his nature and knew how petty and ruthless he could be.
 
Lancel stopped screaming after Mage York fed him something and looked at the bandit with fear in his eyes.
 
He only stared at the bandit leader for a moment before putting his hand into his iles bag and taking a silver scroll out. Seeing that, a smile on the bandit leader's face widened.
 
“Teleportation scroll won’t work here. My shaman had cast a powerful anti-teleportation ritual long ago,” said the Bandit leader, with a mocking smile.
 
Instead of shaking in fear, as I had expected him to be, Lancel smiled. “It is not something you little shaman could stop, filthy bandit,” he shouted and started to open the scroll.
 
The relaxed smile on the bandit leader's face disappeared immediately.
 
“Stop him, now!” he ordered his shaman, and multicolored hanging crystals on the old orc shaman's staff lit up.
 
At the same time, the Lancel unfurled the scroll fully, and silvery light covered both him and High Mage York.
 
It had just covered them, when it flickered, and fear came back in Lancel's eyes and joy lit up in bandits.
 
The flicker was temporary. A moment later; it had stabilized.
 
“Filthy bandit. I will hunt you down, even if you hide in the deepest of extreme magic regions,” shouted Lancel, and a moment later, he disappeared, taking High-Mage York with him.
 
The only person who guaranteed our victory against these bandits.
 
“FUCK!” the bandit leader screamed so loudly that it reverberated through the keep before he turned back to the shaman.
 
“You said they would not be able to escape,” he said to the shaman, with a burning range in his eyes. 
 
“The scroll he had was stronger than my ritual. Though my ritual took quite a lot of power, so they wouldn’t have teleported far,” explained the shaman hastily.
 
“Can you track them?” he asked. “He has anti-tracking measures and High-Mage would cast more, making tracking them harder,” the shaman replied.
 
“Can you track them?” 
 
The bandit leader asked again, and the shaman turned toward us for a moment before looking at the bandit leader. “Yes, but sacrifices will need to be made,” he answered.
 
Hearing that, horror filled my heart. As even an idiot could guess what the bandit leader would do next.

An.

Visit Patreon for Advanced Chapters.