“The first kill’s always the biggest hurdle for young soldiers.” - Scipius Cornelius Barca, famed general from the Republic of Caroma, circa 57 FP.

In truth, Celia had not allowed the two bandits to charge at Kino on purpose.

Unlike Aideen who could completely control the situation on her side despite having more opponents, Celia was nowhere near as skilled. At the time, she had struck towards two of the bandits and purposely left herself open to the other two at the same time, expecting them to take the bait and strike at her. She had not expected them to take a different course of action and attempt to take Kino as hostage instead.

Typically, a mage who had awakened their magic for barely a month like Kino would not be able to control their magic well, or do major feats with them. Due to her late awakening and prodigious talent however, Kino’s control over her innate magic was at a far more instinctive level than most, to the point that she could reflexively cast magic without thought when surprised or panicked.

The pair of bandits that charged at her found that fact out the hard way as out of nowhere a sphere of pure nothingness manifested. They were barely a couple meters away from Kino at the time, and the sphere easily had a radius of at least a meter. Its appearance was so sudden and unexpected that they failed to react in time to save themselves.

One of the bandits had his upper body entirely engulfed by the sphere of void magic, and when it faded away from existence a moment later, so did his body from the waist up. The pair of legs that remained took one last step out of inertia before it toppled and splashed blood from the sudden open wound, some of which dirtied Kino’s shoes.

As for the second bandit, apparently he either had a premonition of some sorts, maybe a gut feeling, or perhaps he was sensitive to mana and noticed the buildup leading to the working, but he had attempted to jump to the side in order to avoid whatever was coming. He was still too late, however, as the sphere of void consumed the right half of his body despite his efforts.

The orcish man was left gasping on the ground, his fierce facial features twisted into a rictus of extreme agony. The right side of his torso was missing, along with the arm on that side. His entrails spilled out from the open wound on the side of his abdomen, while his beating heart – fortunately or unfortunately spared from the magic – was visible through the massive gap on the side of his upper torso.

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Despite his grievous wounds, the orc still took a few minutes longer to expire.

By that time, both Aideen and Celia had finished the rest of the bandits off. Two of them tried to escape when they saw how things went south, but Aideen wasn’t that merciful and took them down with a pair of expertly thrown weapons that belonged to the dead bandits. The two then walked over to comfort the still panicking and crying Kino who crouched and held her knees near the two dead bandits she killed.

“You all right, Kino?” asked Aideen as she rubbed the girl’s back gently in an attempt at reassurance.

“I… killed them…” stammered Kino nervously. “Am I… a bad guy too now…?”

“No, you’re just you. Kino is Kino, and nothing you do will change that,” reassured Aideen as she pulled the younger girl into a calming hug. Celia joined in and helped stroke Kino’s hair with her hand, which helped the girl calm down a bit. “Don’t think bad about ridding the world of some trash. This place is better off without them anyway.”

“Why… do they want to do bad things to us? To the point that we had to kill them?” asked Kino with trembling words.

“Honestly? I’m not sure. It could be that they just enjoy it. Some people do that. They love to flaunt their power over those weaker than themselves. At times that takes extreme forms like what you saw with these bandits,” admitted Aideen honestly. “I could tell from how they look and act that this isn’t their first time, and from what we heard from the nearby villages, some people have disappeared on this road. That’s likely thanks to these fellows now strewn around us. By getting rid of them, we spare others from a similar fate in the future.”

Kino pondered silently for a few moments, though Aideen could see that the girl clearly still had a lot on her mind. The deaths she caused clearly weighed on her quite a bit, which was no surprise, considering the gruesome corpses left behind in the aftermath. Even people who killed others in far less gruesome ways sometimes developed trauma over it, much less when you stared into the eyes of a person gruesomely dying due to something you did for so long.

“This world is not a kind one, though most people do try to make it a better place to live in, Kino,” stated Aideen while she calmly held the girl’s shoulders. “More often than not, it’s a case of eat or be eaten out there, to kill or to be killed. Even if you have no desire to harm others, it’s still imperative that you at least learn how to protect yourself, so if someone wishes harm on you, you can stop them in their tracks.”

“Can’t we all just… talk it over?” asked Kino naively.

“That works for some people,” replied Aideen with a nod. “The problem is, not everybody listens to words. Some people are closer to wild beasts, in that the only language they’d listen to is violence. Because of that, it’s fine if you want to talk nicely, but you have to make sure that you also brought a big stick with you to beat those who refuse to listen to words as well.”