Chapter 8.2 – Bloody brilliant comedy

The fat noble was stopped from leaving and was tied up.

Before asking questions, Kai wanted to wake up Sophie, so that she wouldn't miss anything important.

"Oh, welcome back!" Kai greeted as he was leaning towards Sophie to get a better look at her.

But the response was totally unexpected, at least for him. The thing is, he was still covered in blood from head to toe, and seeing such a sight as Sophie opened her eyes, she thought the Devil was standing before her.

Amazingly, her first reaction was to throw a punch, or maybe she just aggressively raised her hands in defense. And, amazingly again, it hit Kai straight in the chin. He seemed unfazed though, probably realizing the cause, he went looking for water to clean himself.

When Kai was returning, she noticed the huge amount of corpses and heads laying on the ground. Actually, she somewhat knew what had happened. During the fight the bandit's leader, Bosuichi tried to use Sophie as a hostage. But it was useless – Kai only glanced at him, after which there was some sort of glint from Kai's direction and the next moment Bosuichi's neck had been pierced by a sword. That was how the leader met his end... Then, as he fell he shoved Sophie making her trip and probably hit her head, thus fall unconcious.

Kai got to questioning the nobleman.

That guy sure was pathetic. When they first met him he was really loud, arrogang, making himself look all important and such. But now, in front Kai, he was quivering like some small afraid animal and could barely speak. He even pissed his pants.

Was the man's reaction perhaps normal? Let's think about what he had seen – first there was a man who looked no more than some weak commoner, who even dared to be carefree when he was about to be killed. But in the next moment that commoner had killed three men in an instant. The man was first confused at the sight, but after that commoner proceeded to single-handedly slaughter everyone around, fear overwhelmed him. 'Was he going to die in this hellhole?', he thought. 'He has better things to do, like torture,' he thought.

Anyway.

Since his name is irrelevant, let's just keep calling him nobleman.

So, the result of trying to talk to the nobleman was this.

He first went on to threatening Kai with something like "I'm an official of the state! I can make your life a living hell, if you so much as even touch me!" But it wasn't effective.

Then he started to beg for mercy and tried to bribe Kai "I'm rich! I can make you live like a king for the rest of your life, if you spare me!" This, too, was ineffective.

That was when Kai finally got to asking questions, which was what he just wanted to do in the first place.

The man was supposedly quite high nobility and also a state official, a minister of something, and was quite influential. What was a person like him doing here in the forest? Well, though he was hesitant, he somewhat revealed that he likes to 'break the minds of strong-willed women, especially of those of nobility', or that's what could be concluded from his incoherent words.

Then, a week ago a certain hidden princess, that being Sophie, returned. The nobleman was in the vicinity when she and Roland, the Minister of Education, met. That was when he requested the band Red Leaves to capture her.

Here's where a little backstory is required. Though Sophie was of royalty of the Kingdom of Lazure, ever since she was little she was a bit different from others. What's of relevance here is that unlike other girls of her age, she was fairly strong-willed and more drawn to swordmanship than some ladylike activities. So, one time when the nobleman was visiting the kingdom, he heard of her, and when visiting the palace, he saw her training with such focus, that he immediately wanted to make Sophie his.

Sophie shuddered at hearing his explanations, but she was also disgusted by him.

"Now, one more thing," Kai continued, "If you so like to 'train' these women, as you said, you must have a base of sorts, right?"

"N- No, I can't tell you that!"

"Oho--, you know, I could use some creative ways to 'convince' you to reveal it..." Kai tried to smile, but to the nobleman it was something like a demon wanting to eat him.

"Pl- Please, I'll tell you! I'll tell you! Just spare me--!" he cried.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, the place where he kept the captured women was his own villa at the outskirts of the capital, which was about a half day's distance away.

"So, what do we do with him?" Kai turned to Sophie, who had been quietly listening so far.

"What do you mean?" she didn't underestand why he was asking her.

"Well, kill him or not? I don't care about it either way..."

"...As detestable as he is... We can't kill a harmless man," was her answer.

"Fine with me," Kai turned to the nobleman, "You'll be guiding us to your villa, then," he said with a commanding tone. The nobleman didn't have much of a choice.

"But before that," Kai started walking towards the biggest building of the, let's say, village.

Before heading out, one should prepare supplies for the travelling. Because Kai's and Sophie's equipment had been confiscated, it was time take them back.

Actually, the villagers had been watching all this ordeal as they hid in the houses. When Kai started walking towards them, they thought that he would kill them like he had killed the warriors.

The band Red Leaves, as it was called, wasn't really a bandit group. Sure, they sometimes attacked caravans, but they tried to refrain from killing anyone. And from the 500 or so people that lived in the village, only about 150 were actually warriors that went out on the rare raids, the rest of them were normal people, farmers, lumberjacks, tailors and such.

There was a reason for living in this secluded hidden village, but that's not important right now. And, as for the kidnapping, that was one of the specialties of the leader and a small group of his subordinates. Kidnapping can be actually quite profitable, and it was deemed as necessary in order to acquire a living.

"Please, great warrior, please spare the lives of these poor villagers," an old man came out of the largest house. He was probably the elder of the village and had to take up the courage to confront the stranger known as Kai. He continued, "These people just want to live peacefully, the leader and his group of brigands were the ones committing evil deeds. Us normal people are innocent," as he explained.

There was probably more to it, the old man would naturally hide some things and lie about others. However, none of this was relevant to Kai right now.

"Umm, sure, I won't kill you, if you don't attack me. I merely want to get our stuff and horses back, then we'll leave," Kai responded without a care.

The old man was really grateful for it. Noone would attack Kai after seeing what he's capable of. However, on the other hand, the village had lost its protection against wild beasts and monsters, and some women had also lost their husbands, so Kai was still looked upon with hateful eyes.

After having retrieved their belongings, Kai brought their horses from the stables and gathered back at the entrance of the village.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yeah, but, I must ask, why do you want to go to the villa yourself? You could report it to the authorities, I think whatever has happened there wouldn't be ignored," Sophie said.

"Ee, this is like an event! Therefore I must complete it myself."

"Event?" perplexed, Sophie tilted her head in confusion.

"You know, saving women from their misery and becoming their prince on a white horse," Kai declared, puffing up his chest majestically "...That sort of thing..."

Hearing his reason, Sophie momentarily thought he was delusional, but besides that, his optimism also gave a little hope. Oh were both of them so wrong...