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Within the first three seconds of jumping into action, the screams of pain and the sounds of flesh and bone being cleaved resounded through the village. As for the bandit boss and his aura-capable lackies, they had other things to worry about.
While the knights and man-at-arms fought the aura-capable bandits, I kicked at the bandit boss with a front kick. He managed to block the kick, but it still sent him flying through the wall of one of the houses. Besides the shock of being sent flying through a wall, the bandit boss suffered little more than a few scrapes as he dug himself out of the rubble.
When the bandit boss finally extracted himself from the rubble, I was lazily bringing my leg down from the position I kicked him. When his brain caught up with what just happened, I saw anger in his eyes as he dashed toward me with all the superhuman speed his aura could afford him.
The bandit boss took a swing of his executioner's sword at me, but aside from its intimidating size, the executioner's sword in his hands was a slow and clumsy thing. I could see the telegraphed strike a mile away, and simply side-stepped the overhead chop.
Missing his first strike, the bandit boss swung his sword sideways from the ground, aiming to cut my legs off from under me.
I responded by performing a small hop over his strike and planted my boot in his face, sending him stumbling back a few steps. When the bandit boss recovered, he touched his face and winced in pain as his hand reached his nose, finding that it was no longer the shape that it used to be.
I saw the fury in his eyes grow as he snorted out the blood from his nose and shouted, "Draw your sword!" at me.
I just shook my head and said, "Your ego may be hurt by the skill gap, but honestly, you are not worth the cloth I use to clean my blade."
Now that really got him worked up as he charged at me, almost frothing at the mouth. I let him make five moves, a mix of slashes, punches, and kicks, before I made my move. On his fifth move, the bandit boss swung his blade, aiming to decapitate me. I leaned back, dodging the blade, and he followed up with an attempt at a reverse roundhouse kick.
In response, I ducked low and moved in under his striking leg, grabbed the foot still on the ground, and lifted. This sent the bandit boss over his head, faceplanting on the ground. And before he could recover, I concentrated my aura into my right leg and stomped on his sword-wielding forearm into the ground with a satisfying snap of his bones breaking.
The bandit boss yelled in pain as I kicked his sword away, and moved on to kneecapping him with another stomp. This caused him to spout an impressive amount of cussing at me, and when he ran out of steam, he fell back to a chanting "I'ma kill you, I'ma kill you, I'ma kill you…"
He was too absorbed in his pain to realise that the sound of fighting in the background was no longer there.
I looked around at the rest of the group and saw that they were in the middle of either cleaning their blades or looting the dead bandits. As they were doing so, I heard the sound of a door hinge creak and looked in that direction, soon noticing that the villagers were now peeking outside.
I locked eyes with one of the men peeking out and said, "Please call the village chief. I would have words with him."
The man just shook his head with sadness in his eyes before replying, "Sorry to say, good sir, but we do not have a village chief at the moment. These bandits killed him when they took over the village."
"Sorry to hear that. Then I will make do with whoever is in charge at the moment." I said to the man, and I patiently waited as I saw him run off, kicking the bandit boss occasionally when I found him too whiny.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged man limped toward me with the help of a makeshift crutch. He stopped a few paces away, looked at the bandit boss, then at the other dead bandits, my men, and finally back at me with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Clearly, the man was on guard, even from me, his supposed savior. Which, to a certain degree, I understand, because for all he knows, me and my men could be just another band of bandits who won a turf war against all the bandits we just killed. So I stayed quiet to see what his reaction would be.
The man gave as deep a bow as his limp allowed him before speaking, "Thank you for saving my village, good sir." he said optimistically, hoping that his suspicions were wrong. "My name is Jovan, son of the late village chief… which makes me the current village chief… I guess. May I know our saviors' names?"
"You may," I said, pulling off my left glove to reveal my family's signet ring on my pinky, "I am Luke Ironcrest, first son of the Ironcrest family."
The moment I said that, Jovan limped forward as fast as he could to take a closer look at my ring. After a few seconds of looking between my face and the ring, relief washed over his face, but soon turned to sadness, and before I knew it, he fell to his knees as he broke down crying, "My… My Lord!... I beg for your help!" That was all I got before his cry-talking became incoherent.
As Jovan cried, other villagers who were close enough to hear me introducing myself started coming out of their homes.
***
With the help of some villagers who came forward, we managed to calm Jovan down enough to talk. "I apologize for my outburst, My Lord, but we do need your help. These bandits came four days ago, killed a few of us who resisted at first, then took our children hostage and threatened to kill them if we opposed them. Please… save our children."
That explains why I haven't seen any kids when I came into the village or when I finished dealing with the bandits. Good thing I kept the bandit boss alive.
Af first, I kept the bandit boss alive because there was no way he had so many men in his crew and not have a hideout somewhere to stash their illgotten gains, that meant that they would have loot to add to my family's coffers, but now, i have a more altruistic reason to extract the information out of him… hopefully one fingernail at a time. It is the least he could endure after all the trouble he has caused.