The fangs of Bone Wolf pierced the legs of the bandits, and when they fell down it ripped out their throats.

「Oooh... Oaoooooh~」

Bone Man put away his bow and drew the long sword that he had taken from the other bandits they had defeated to cut his way into the bandits' ranks.

「Hiiii!? Gyaaah!」

Bone Man against the bandits. Both sides had never received any formal training in swordsmanship, and soon Bone Man came out as the clear winner.

Their fighting skill was about the same, and the longsword that Bone Man was using was an iron sword with a crude casting. In fact, the enemy's weapons were of better quality.
However, the strength of a Rank 3 Skeleton Solider was far above that of an average human, and especially because of the 【Superhuman Strength】 skill, Bone Man was far stronger than the bandits.

As humans lacked physical strength and special abilities, they honed their skills and learned martial arts and magic in order to fight against monsters. A human going up against a monster while possessing the same amount of skill as the monster had no chance of winning.

「Ooooh...」

Bathed in the blood of his enemies, Bone Man shivered from the feeling of getting experience by taking a life, and wanting to earn even more, jumped at his next prey.

「Boss! These aren't Rank 2 monsters!」

「We can't handle them! Help us, boss!」

Hearing the pitiful screams of his subordinates as their number decreased, the leader clicked his tongue.

『Those useless fools! If it's come to this, I have to get away by myself.』

The bandit leader chose to run without hesitation. He didn't think about fighting the Undead for his men for even a second.

He didn't even have enough skills to even fight one-on-one with a Rank 3 or higher monster in the first place.

He had certainly been a soldier at point in his life, and even had a level 2 skill【Halberd Technique】that allowed to him to use the Halberd. But in the end, he was just an ex-security guard. According to the Adventurer's Guild, his fighting prowess was at most a E-class.
It was said that to win a fight one-on-one with a Rank 3 monster, you needed to be at least D-class.

If he made well use of his subordinates, he could defeat maybe one of the Undead. But there were four Undead. No, five.

「...」

The leader noticed Bone Bird, who was finishing off the bandits that had fallen unconsciousness by stabbing them with its beak, but considered that to be an exception.

Even if he did manage to defeat one of them, there would be no point as they would be finished off by the rest. There was no point in retaliating if there was no hope of winning.

「All of you! Don't back down, push forward!」

Giving that unreasonable order to his men, the leader himself began backing off carefully so as not to be noticed by them. He would just jump in the carriage he had taken from the merchants and run away. If he could get away, he form another bandit group.

「Get up.」

His hopes of getting away were shattered as a wooden wall grew from the ground behind him.

「Uoh?! W-what?! An alchemist?!」

He had heard a shrill voice like a small girl's through the dying screams of his men and the resentment filled roars of the Undead. He realized that this was the doing of the owner of the voice, and looked around for it's owner.

He found him almost immediately.

A small child stood some ways away, wearing a rag. It was easy to tell that he was a baby.

「Are you telling me this is all this kid's doing!?」

The leader's eyes opened wide, but there was no denying the child's – Vandalieu's – strangeness.

The white hair and odd-colored deep crimson and purple-blue eyes. And even on this bloodstained battlefield, the weak, ghost-like presence. If the child hadn't said anything, he could approached the bandit leader all the way up to his feet without the leader noticing.

「A-are you the one controlling these Undead? I-in that case, I give up. I surrender. I'll let you have all the treasure, go ahead and hand me over to the Adventurer's Guild or wherever.」

Throwing down his Halberd, the leader put up both hands and gave up.

If he couldn't win, he would run. If he couldn't run, he'd live by giving up. Stubbornness and pride wouldn't get you even one Amid.

「Surrender?」

「Yeah, that's right.」

Forcing a smile to his face, the leader replied to Vandalieu who spoke in a flat tone.

「There's a bounty on my head. And I also have information about the other bandit groups in this area. And the half the money made from selling criminal slaves goes to your pocket. Don't you see? If you capture us alive, it's a lot more profitable for you.」

The things that the leader said were all true. This was man that was willing to sell off other people in the same trade if he was able to live.

Also, depending on the severity of their crimes, the bandits that were captured alive were sold off as criminal slaves. Most of them were overworked in mines and the army, doing odd jobs and labor. Half of the profits earned from them were not to be underestimated, and depending on the number of bandits captured alive, it could be worth even more than all the treasure that the bandits had gathered.

「... Are you an idiot, perhaps?」

But what came was an insulting reply; a baby asking about his mental capacity.

「Wh-what did you say!?」

「As you can see, I am a Dhampir. If I took you to the Adventurer's Guild to hand you over, I would just be killed. I would be dead before you could be sold as a criminal slave.」

In the Amid Empire and its countries, where the people worshipped Alda, the God of Law and Fate, Dhampirs were treated as monsters rather than people. Even if he entered the city with the intention of handing over the bandits, the guards or adventurers would prioritize dealing with the Dhampir over the bandits.

The bandit leader was not an adventurer and he was unaware of the Dhampir panic that had happened a while ago, so he was late in realizing that he was talking to a dhampir.

「Th-then make me one of your subordinates! I'll be really useful. Your Undead are pretty strong, but you do need one human subordinate as well, right?!」

In that moment, Vanadalieu's impression of the bandit increased slightly as he thought that he was more clever than he looked.

In fact, Vandalieu had been been feeling the same thing from quite a while back. The Undead that followed his every command. The spirits of Darcia and the others. Their presence alone could not solve the small inconveniences of his day-to-day life.

However, using the man in front of him to solve them was unthinkable.

「While it is true that I need a living companion, I don't need a bandit who would sacrifice his men to run away. But I can make you one of my subordinates after you've died.」

Pointing at the leader that had first expressed hope and then despair, Vandalieu asked Bone Bear and the others.

「Do it.」

「P-please wait! I-I don't want to die!」

「...? Wasn't it same for the people that you killed?」

This man was oblivious to many things. By the time this thought occurred to Vandalieu and he turned around to talk to the leader again, Bone Bear had already crushed his neck.

「Gu, guru?」

Crap, did I kill him too early? Bone Bear seemed to ask, but Vandalieu waved a hand to say「It's fine, it's fine」and exhaled heavily.

「Ahh, that was nerve-wracking. It was my first time talking to anyone besides Mom, so I was pretty nervous.」

He had suffered from stranger anxiety in all three worlds: Earth, Origin and Lambda. He wished that he could have avoided having this kind of face-to-face conversation in this bloodstained place.

「The smell of blood is so strong that I'm getting hungry. But I don't want to get closer to being a vampire by sucking the blood of the bandits, so I have resist. Resist... For now, I'll check if there are any survivors.【Sense Life.】」

To distract himself from his hunger caused by the smell of blood, he used a death-attribute spell that detected all the life in the vicinity.

Ignoring the reaction from bugs, weeds, germs and fungi, he searched for reactions from animals, humans containing magic or large monsters.

There were... three large animals behind the large hut, probably horses. There was also a reaction from the basement of the hut. From the reaction, it was human.

He had heard from the spirits that the number of bandits had been nineteen. The number of corpses was also nineteen.

「There's someone in the basement of the hut, is it a new guy?」

『N-No, that one is not my subordinate. It's a peddler I caught a few days ago. Ugeh. I let him live because it seems like he has a family business or something in a town over in Viscount Maggio's domain, and ransom money can be e-expected. M-my n-neck.』

Because of the shock and fear he had received at the time of his death, the neck of bandit leader's spirit was still twisted. Vandalieu wrinkled his eyebrows as he processed the information he had given.

Things had become a little troublesome.

Name: Bone ManRank: 3Race: Skeleton SoldierLevel: 39Passive skills:Dark VisionSuperhuman Strength: Level 1 (NEW!)Active Skills:Swordsmanship: Level 1 (NEW!)Shield Technique: Level 1 (NEW!)Archery: Level 1 (NEW!)Silent Steps: Level 1 (NEW!)Name: Bone Monkey/Bone Wolf/Bone Bear/Bone BirdRank: 3Race: Bone BeastLevel: 24~32
Passive skills:Dark VisionSuperhuman Strength: Level 1 (NEW!)Active Skills:Silent Steps: Level 1 (NEW!)