Villagers were running around in fear while bandits were pillaging their homes. Some started setting fires to houses, seemingly just for fun. Overwhelmed by large numbers of bandits, the village couldn’t put up resistance.
Bandits that are doing bandit’s stuff, now that’s first. I searched for so long to finally find competent bandits. “Finally. This is my moment.”
Running as fast I could, it took me just a few seconds to reach the center of the village.
“I am here! Bandits prepare to be defeated! By justice!”
The biggest of the bandits turned to me and spoke. “Ha-ha-ha. Alright kid, I like your spirit, but if you want to save the village you will have to beat me.”
He looks strong, he has giant muscles and tattered clothes made from beast fur. Certainly, a bandit boss. Guaranteed.
The one-on-one fight against the bandit boss! This is going great! “Fine! Bandit, it’s just you and me! Prepare to lose, I will beat you and save this innocent village!” Activating my heroic pose, I folded my arms and leaned to the side while looking cool.
Not impressed, the bandit responded. “That’s great, that’s great.” He said mockingly, not taking my words seriously at all. “You know what, why don’t we give you a chance? If you beat me, we will let the village alone. What do you say?”
“Alright!” Duel to the death! Final battle! Fight to win it all! I prepared for our confrontation, but instead of readying his weapon, one of his goons brought him some weird, relatively thin rope.
“We will play jump rope, who can jump over it more times wins!”
Wait, what? Jump rope? What about my epic boss battle? What the hell? That’s so stupid, why, why are they all so stupid? I don’t get it, they seemed like normal bandits but moments ago, and now they are trying to pull a scam like this.
“What, are you scared?” The bandit boss guy grinned at me as he waited for an answer.
“Whatever fine! Have it your way!”
“I will go first. So you know what you are up against.” Two bandits took the rope and stretched it in front of the bandit leader guy. On his signal, they stared to swing the rope, and he easily jumped over it. He jumped and jumped, each time faster than before, as they were speeding up, quickly reaching inhuman speeds.
Then suddenly, he stopped. “One hundred should be enough. How about it? Do you still think that you can beat me?”
That looked quite impressive, near the end they were going really, really... like really fast. This isn’t his first time doing this. He got it trained!
“Humph… I am ready.” As I got into position, I used my gravity skill on a middle part of the rope and increased its weight by a few orders of magnitude.
The bandits swung the rope, but instead of moving, the rope stayed firmly on the ground. Confused, they tried again, but the rope refused to respond in kind. Unable to figure out what is going on, we all just stood there awkwardly.
“If you refuse to swing the rope, then why bring it up to begin with?! I should have known that you can’t be trusted!” I pointed at the bandit leader guy as I spoke with an accusatory tone. “Wait… You must be afraid that you loose so you resorted to cheating, if I never get to play, then I can’t win! If you don’t want to resolve it fairly… we can still fight it out!”
Ignoring my words, the bandits refused to lift the rope, while adamantly pretending that they were trying. The bandit leader, clearly annoyed, shouted at his underlings. “Hey, just swing the dammed rope already! We don’t have all day.”
“I am trying!” “It’s stuck.”
The bandit leader, fed up with their antics, approached us and easily picked up the middle part of the rope without a problem and dropped it back down. He eyed his underlings on both sides of the rope with a questioning gaze before returning to his original position.
This matter seemed to be resolved, but when bandits tried to swing the rope, it again stayed on the ground.
“Is this your plan? To never swing the rope, so I can’t win. I should have known that your word can’t be trusted. You are clearly afraid of my athletic skills. I saw through you!” I crossed my arms and turned away from them.
“Now are you just messing with me or what!” Bandit leader boss guy shouted at his underlings.
In response, one of them shouted in response with a hint of fear. “It’s stuck, I swear.” He dropped his end of the rope and went to check the middle of the rope. After not seeing anything, he picked it up effortlessly.
“So? Are you done?” Asked the bandit leader, already fed up with the situation.
“I… I… It was stuck before, I swear!”
“Stop wasting my time already!”
He ran back to his end of the rope, ready to swing it again. But, yet again, it didn’t work. The rope was seemingly stuck.
“Get out of the way.” The bandit leader showed him away and grabbed his end of the rope.
He looks much stronger, maybe I should increase the weight a bit more…
The bandit leader tried to swing the rope. But instead of pulling the rope, the rope pulled both of them closer together. Perhaps I overdid it… The rope started to dig itself into the ground, dragging both bandits at each side of the rope with it.
“What the hell!” Shouted the bandit leader as he refused to let go of the rope. Coming to his rescue, the rest of the bandits joined on both sides, pulling with all their strength. And at first, it seemed to work, but quickly the rope pulled back even harder, not giving them even a moment to recover. Slowly digging itself further and dragging them with it.
Seeing their unrelenting effort, I also grabbed on to the rope, trying to help them. But it was futile, the rope pulled back harder and harder, and then everyone let go, and we all collapsed to both sides. The rope disappeared, leaving only a narrow hole in the ground.
What a durable rope, where did they get that anyway? It didn’t snap, nothing, it just survived under such a pressure. Some good quality right there.
Satisfied with my work, I turned towards the collapsed bandit group. “Looks like we will have to fight it out, the good old way!”
The bandit leader frowned as he stood up. At first, he observed the hole left by the rope before putting on an indescribable expression. But that soon turned into a cheerful smile. “That was certainly weird. But don’t worry, our fight can continue as it was.” He turned towards his underlings. “Bring the backup rope.”
“They have a backup rope?”
Well, it’s just a single rope, surely, I can just…
However, suddenly, a singular bandit crawled out of the bushes. “Boss, I found some more.” He shouted as he stood up. As I looked at him closer, I noticed that he had more than one backup rope on him. He had a bunch of them! Some he carried in his hands also over his back, in a pocket over his head and back, one was tied around his chest, one he dragged behind him and another one was sticking out of his pants.
Stiffly, I turned towards the bandit leader, but he only gave me a mocking grin as he took one of them to his hands. “It’s your turn.”
“Noooo!”
I jumped out of my bed with a horrified expression. “What was that… it was… it was… … It was just a dream.” A sense of relief washed over me. “Thank god, it was merely a dream.”
Nevertheless, that dream was disturbing… how will I fall asleep now? I need to speak with someone, that should help. But who could I bother this late into the night? Right, Alexander!
Not long after, I barged into his bedroom.
“Who…?”
“It’s me! I had a terrible dream like you wouldn’t believe it. Like there was a bunch of bandits slaughtering a village.” I turned toward him with dead eyes. “You know, like the ground was littered with corpses, and the village was burning with fire. Like they seemed like a real deal! I went in, ready to stop them. But! When I tried, they made me play jump rope. It was so cringe! And… And… Huh!” Suddenly, I had a terrible realization, with my sheer shock, I put a hand over my mouth. “What if… what if… I am… traumatized?!”
He stared at me speechless for a moment before he put his right hand on his forehead. “You just got here, and you are already giving me a headache.”
“What do you mean?” I friendly bumped him with my elbow. “We are like best buddies, I bet you can’t imagine a better way to spend your time.”
“…”
“Why are you crawling on the floor?” Seemingly whittling in pain, he didn’t respond to my inquiry.
“…”
Did I hit him too hard? “Sorry, I will be more careful next time.”
“…”
“Anyway, you see, because of that nightmare I can’t remain in my room, so I am moving here for tonight. But look at it from the positive side, we have a great opportunity to get to know each other.”
“…”
“Yeah, yeah, get up already. I don’t have all night.” I gave him a light kick for a good measure.
“…”
“…”
“…”
Slowly rolling across the floor, he remained unresponsive. “Alright. Now you are just doing it on purpose!”
I watched him for ten more minutes. However, I ended up getting bored and so used my healing magic on him.
