【Era of Succession Year 150: Spring / 0】
Uhh… let’s see.
Yo.
I’m not a highwayman, nor a pirate. I’m just a common bandit. A Mob. That’s me.
Hmm… my memories are a bit hazy. I see, that makes sense. It looks like the cycle has reset.
Even if I die, I’ll just wake up again, but my memories only carry over for ten deaths.
It’s not like I forget everything and become a total baby, but unless it’s something incredibly important, I don’t really remember it. Honestly, it’s a nice change of pace to clear the head.
I wonder what kind of trashy bandit life the “previous me” led.
Well, before I get lost in thought, I should probably check the current situation.
It looks like the aftermath of some kind of battle. Most of the bandits are dead, but at the very least, I’m alive. No injuries, either. I guess I managed to play dead pretty convincingly.
There seem to be a few other survivors, but they’re half-dead. Once those types realize they’re still breathing and the Boss isn’t around to glare at them anymore, they start scattering in every direction.
I decide to follow suit and make my escape. Wherever I end up, it’s gotta be a better way to live than ambushing people along the highway.
According to my body’s muscle memory, it seems we targeted some adventurers and got served a counter-attack.
However, it looks like the opponents weren’t exactly “one-man army” types; the fight was close enough that we thought we could win. But in the end, the bandits lost. Even the Boss died after a fierce struggle.
“Gu… ugh…”
As I was about to leave the highway, I heard a groan.
It was near the pile of corpses. Right beside the Boss’s body. It belonged to an adventurer. A young boy.
Should I pretend I didn’t see him? Or should I finish him off?
“Marie… I’m sorry…”
A lover? Family? He spoke in a thin, pre-pubescent voice, as if offering a final confession.
Finishing him off is out of the question. …And, ah, I guess pretending I didn’t see him is out, too.
I hate having a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Since I’m doomed to repeat this cycle of living and dying anyway, the last thing I want is to carry around the weight of “I should have done things differently back then” through every life.
I move closer to the boy. He has wounds, but they aren’t deep enough to be fatal. However, the scars are turning a strange color. I’m not entirely ignorant; I know poison when I see it. Since the stuff a common bandit can extract is pretty limited, this probably wasn’t homemade.
Some special poison found by chance was used. And in a gang, the one who always uses the special items is the Boss. Not many Boss have a big enough heart to let their underlings carry stuff like that.
There’s a chance he only had the poison, but usually, if you’re carrying poison, you’re carrying the antidote too.
I reach into the Boss’s coat and find five medicine vials. One is almost empty, with a skull drawn on the label. Obviously the poison. Of the remaining four, one has a label showing a cracked skull. The other three are identical bottles with a label showing a fist striking a palm. I’d guess that one’s for boosting spirit or something. If it were a medicine for wounds, the label would probably have bandages or stitches on it. I don’t have high-class pharmaceutical knowledge, but even I know that mixing them all together is a bad idea. I have to bet on the one with the highest probability. I grab the bottle with the cracked skull label.
“Hey, kid. Open your mouth. It’s medicine.”
“Ugh… ah…”
He weakly complied and opened his mouth slightly.
I made him drink more than half and smeared the rest on his wound for now.
If this didn’t work, I’d try the next one, but the effect was immediate. His sickly complexion and the nasty color of the wound returned to a normal range.
Before he woke up, I picked out some cloth that looked relatively clean and pressed it against the wound. I have this knowledge that even if you use cloth to plug a wound, unsanitary rags will just make it worse.
I have a feeling my knowledge comes more from experience than from being taught—maybe I died from an infection once? For a bandit to have concepts of hygiene that are usually reserved for nobles who have the chance to study is pretty rare.
“…A-Ah… you are…”
“Doesn’t matter who I am. Don’t move suddenly; I haven’t actually healed the wound. The bleeding stopped because of your good karma or your sheer toughness. Easy now. Stand up slowly.”
He nodded and stood up as instructed.
His hair was a faint, pale ochre—not quite shining, but distinct.
His features were sharp; he had the kind of beauty that could fetch a high price. The theory that the Boss wanted to capture him alive was gaining ground.
He moved his eyes, searching for his weapon. I grabbed the sword lying ahead of him, picked it up in his stead, and sheathed it for him.
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“You have a place to go back to, right?”
He nodded.
“I’ll see you part of the way there.”
“Why?”
It was a natural question. I was a bandit, and we were effectively on opposite sides of a life-and-death struggle.
The reason “I want to help people even though I’m a bandit” might be weak, but maybe saying what I’m thinking will help organize my own mind.
“I’ve always admired adventurers. You know, the cool kind who save people.”
“Does that… serve as a reason to help me?”
“It’s normal for an adventurer to escort someone, right?”
Basically, I told him I wanted to play pretend. Becoming an adventurer isn’t easy. You need a license, and the places that issue them only exist in the big cities.
Getting inside a city isn’t easy, either. For a bandit to become an adventurer requires luck so astronomical it would flip heaven and earth—and usually, that kind of luck is something I have no connection with.
“It’s hard for a bandit to become an adventurer. So, I just thought I’d satisfy that admiration of mine through you, kid. It’s just a hobby, so I don’t need a reward. Actually, in this case, maybe I’m the one who should pay you for tagging along.”
I didn’t see any suspicion in his eyes. Whether I was worth trusting or not, it seemed I’d successfully conveyed that I was a “weird bandit,” different from the usual lot.
“I really want to be an adventurer, you know? A cool one.”
“I don’t think everyone is a ‘cool’ adventurer. If it weren’t for you, I would have died… leaving Marie… my little sister, behind. Dying and leaving a precious person behind isn’t very cool, is it?”
He had a point, but you need money to live. Everyone has to earn their keep, and in this era, that means risking your life.
“Why did you become an adventurer, kid?”
“To raise my sister. It became too difficult to live in our home city.”
“That’s cool. Being able to choose a dangerous job for your sister’s sake… that’s plenty cool.”
He nodded shyly, appearing happy that the job he chose was praised.
“I guess I can add another reason: I wanted a cool senior to tell me about being an adventurer along the way. All I can offer as a reward is taking care of you on the road, but how about it?”
“That’s… yes. I understand. Please, I’d be honored.”
In reality, considering he was injured and his stamina was likely depleted, having someone by his side would make things much easier. Perhaps because of that, he agreed to go with me.
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