Demon King of the Royal Class

Chapter 151

I neutralized the adventurer seated next to me, then picked up Austin who was seated opposite me in a flash and threw him out of the carriage before making my own escape.

The inside of the carriage was too cramped to fight in.

Ellen shattered the nose of one of them then escaped from the carriage as well.

The carriage had come to a complete stop.

Even the coachman was in on it.

“You brats are quite perceptive, aren’t you?”

Three adventurers who were still unharmed crawled out of the carriage, wearing wary expressions.

Two of them had already been taken down before anyone from their party could make a move.

“How did you guys know?” one of them asked as he drew his sword.

Ellen drew her sword in response. “I’ve heard that most adventurers are no different from thieves.”

Adventurers...

They lived in places where the law didn’t reach.

Ellen must have heard a lot about the reality of such adventurers from Ragan Artorius.

It wasn’t that there were brigands among the adventurers.

It was that, at any time, an adventurer could become a brigand.

“Rather than taking risks, there are many adventurers who prefer to rob well-equipped novice adventurers.”

Ellen and I were armed with equipment that looked brand new and expensive at a glance. On top of that, we appeared young.

They could have always been brigands, or perhaps they hadn’t been when they’d first met us.

But, having seen us, they had no choice but to become brigands.

Ellen seemed to have known they would act this way. This wasn’t a fairy-tale space filled with the romance and mystery of adventures.

It was a land teeming with adventurers who adventured not for the thrill of it, but for money—a land of profiteers.

Being an adventurer was a profession where one risked their life for money.

If there was a way to make money that was less dangerous and almost guaranteed, there was no reason not to choose it.

They knew that stripping Ellen and I of our equipment and selling it would make them much more money than hunting demons or mapping out some terrain to earn a reward.

That was why they had been glancing at Ellen and I while engaging in casual conversation.

It wasn’t their first time doing something like this.

“Y-You can’t mean... to do that kind of thing...”

Austin staggered to his feet and drew his own sword. How much help he could be was uncertain. Austin seemed to be siding with us, making it three against three.

“... Alright, fine.”

The one who appeared to be the leader nodded his head.

“Don’t regret this, brats!”

They charged at us, each of them approaching Ellen, me, and Austin.

In this unexpected situation, I was engaged in a real battle against humans instead of demons. It was nerve-wracking, but there was hardly any time to feel that tension.

The guy in front of me started to bring his sword down from above.

As I watched the sword coming down from above, I felt a bit flustered.

‘You’re seriously coming at me like this?’

This was my first taste of real combat, but I had dealt with this kind of attack hundreds of times.

And I had countered such attacks hundreds of times too.

There was only one difference between this attack and the ones I’d faced so many times before.

It was too slow.

I grabbed the handle of my sword with my right hand and the blade with my left.

It was a half-swording technique that Ellen occasionally demonstrated.

Holding the sword horizontally, I caught the descending blow.

Clang!

Flowing through the move and letting the tip of my sword rotate around, I pushed it toward the neck of the man rushing at me.

As I parried, I stabbed. Defense transitioned into offense in one fluid motion.

His sword was deflected down and to the right, and the tip of my sword was aimed at his neck.

Pushing any further would pierce his carotid artery.

Clang!

His sword dropped to the ground.

“P-Please, spare me.”

As soon as my sword touched his neck after just one exchange, he immediately dropped his sword. His face turned pale.

Thunk!

“Ugh!”

Ellen didn’t even use her sword.

She’d neutralized the man charging at her with a single low kick. Just one kick left him sprawling on the ground, gasping for air.

The difference in body weight had been rendered completely irrelevant.

Just how strong was she?

“...”

Clang!

The man who had squared off against Austin immediately dropped his sword once he saw his two companions so quickly subdued.

“I... I surrender.”

Austin might not have realized it, but Ellen and I had quickly assessed that they were not in our league.

The fight ended as quickly as it began.

We had won.

We had triumphed in a life-threatening situation.

‘... What is this?’

Somehow, though, the victory felt incredibly hollow.

Why had it been so easy? Just like when I trained with Ellen, the actual fight had ended in just a single exchange.

Anyway, that was beside the point.

“You scumbags. Empty your pockets now.”

It was time to rob the robbers.

***

Five adventurers.

Plus one coachman.

I disarmed all of them and made them kneel in a row.

I squatted down in front of them, holding and shaking the six pouches in front of their eyes.

“Guys, these are things you’ll leave behind if you die anyway. Why hide them now? Hand them all over while I’m asking nicely.”

“That...That’s everything...”

“We’ve given you everything we have...”

They burst into whining in response to my threat. Ellen was leaning against a tree, paying no attention, and Austin was staring dumbly at what I was doing.

It seemed unbelievable to him that we had subdued the robbers only to rob them in turn.

“You worked as a team, even the coachman. You’re clearly habitual offenders. And you’re telling me that all the money you have combined is less than ten gold coins?”

“Th-That’s because...! W-We spent it all buying gear!”

“Is that so?”

I smirked.

“Then hand over your equipment.” After all, these guys had also planned to rob Ellen and me of our gear. “Strip it all off. Now.”

At my command, the guys hesitated for a moment before reluctantly starting to undress. They might have thought about trying something with their bare fists, but Ellen and I far surpassed these guys in skill.

I sighed as I watched them strip off their armor.

“Damn it.” My fierce glare drew some interesting expressions from them. They probably never imagined being intimidated by someone as young as me. “When I say strip, you strip. Do you think you have any rights now?”

I rummaged through the clothes of the six of them who were stripped down to their underwear and managed to find another five gold coins.

***

Five adventurers and one coachman, left in nothing but their underwear.

“What should we do? Their equipment doesn’t seem worth taking. It doesn’t look useful at all.”

The equipment could potentially be sold for money, but the quality was questionable. The story about spending all their money on gear was probably a lie. They must have stashed or hidden it somewhere else.

In any case, we hadn’t come to this land to do business.

At my words, Ellen shook her head. “It’s not about the money. Let’s decide what to do with these people first.”

“Hmm...”

These guys hadn’t suddenly turned into brigands; they had been colluding with the coachman to pull off this scheme from the start.

I wondered what they’d done to the novice adventurers or other noobs that they had robbed before.

The fact that these guys were operating so openly without having been caught yet implied that the adventurers who’d fallen into their trap might not have made it out alive.

Ellen was posing a seemingly-obvious question, but it was laden with a chilling implication.

She was suggesting that we decide whether or not to kill these criminals right here and now, regardless of whether it was our place to do so.

Had we been defeated, they would have robbed us and killed us.

Killing someone...

Was that something else I could do?

I had caused knights to fall from their horses while escaping the Demon King’s castle, but whether they died or not, I didn’t know.

I had seen people die before, and witnessed countless dead bodies.

Murder...

Whether I could bring myself to do it directly with the sword in my hand—whether I could bear that sensation—I wasn’t sure.

Though I had become accustomed to violence, I was entirely unfamiliar with murder, and I certainly did not wish to become familiar with it. Ellen likely felt the same.

‘What about Ellen? How does she feel?’

If it came down to it, it seemed like she would do it, but she definitely wouldn’t enjoy it.

“How about we hand them over to the Egxian guard?” suggested Austin cautiously. He had been watching our conversation.

The six fellows in their underwear were trembling on their knees, their lives hanging on our decision.

Not dealing with it ourselves, but handing them over to the guards.

“... To anyone who looks, we might appear to be the perpetrators, not the victims.”

“... Indeed.”

I couldn’t help but agree with Ellen’s remark.

We didn’t have a scratch on us, while the robbers had been stripped of everything but their underwear. If we brought these guys in and claimed that they had attempted a robbery, we might end up getting arrested instead.

“If these people claim that we’re the robbers, that could complicate things.”

“No, No! That won’t happen! If you let us go, we’ll quietly... quietly go to jail!”

“Please, sir!”

“Just spare us this once! We’ll live as honest people from now on!”

It was somewhat amusing how they suddenly spoke to us in such a formal manner, considering the way they had looked down on us as mere kids before their fates landed in our hands.

“Promising to clean yourselves before even stepping into a toilet doesn’t make you sound believable, you scumbags.”

Of course, I had no intention of believing any of their promises.

Sending them to the guards could cause us to become wrapped up in more troublesome matters.

In most web novels I’d read, the standard development was to behead them coolly and move on. If you didn’t kill them, you’d be bombarded with hateful comments from readers demanding why not.

Now that I found myself in the exact situation, I understood that was the right move, but I couldn’t easily make such a decision. Most people wouldn’t even break a chicken’s neck with their own hands. Suddenly having to kill a person was understandably distressing.

Of course, I was already past the point of never having twisted a chicken’s neck.

“Killing them might be too much, so how about we cut off one hand each? To prevent them from doing this kind of thing again. We can cauterize the wounds with fire to prevent death from blood loss.”

At that, Austin and Ellen stared at me wide-eyed.

That look...

I think I understood what it meant.

“... Wait, is that more psychopathic?” I asked.

Ellen seemed unusually pale.

“... It’s terrifying because it’s too detailed,” she said.

“...” Austin turned deathly pale and remained utterly speechless.

I wasn’t thinking of killing them, just considering what would be an appropriate punishment.

The idea of cutting off a hand and cauterizing with fire was my way of showing mercy. If we didn’t cauterize the wound, they might bleed to death. I was actually trying to save them, you know?

... Was this the problem of someone who often described violence in writing?

Upon further reflection, it did seem pretty insane.

It was basically the same as saying something like, “I’ll pluck out your eyes, but since you might collapse without eyeballs, I’ll put pebbles that look like eyes in their place. It’s all because I care about you, you know.”

Austin seemed to be growing increasingly terrified of me in real time.

Naturally, the robbers who’d overheard this bit of conversation were so terrified that they began to convulse involuntarily.

They seemed to deeply regret provoking such a lunatic.

Ellen, in the end, seemed not to want to unnecessarily bloody her hands.

“Let’s just let them go,” she said. “But in exchange...”

Ellen pointed to the leather armor and other gear and clothes that the brigands had taken off.

The items looked terribly worn, and probably wouldn’t be worth much if sold. And trying to sell such stuff might just make people suspect us to be the thieving adventurers.

“Burn them all.”

For attempting to rob us, these robbers were sentenced to the punishment of returning to Egxian in nothing but their undergarments.

***

In the end we did not sell the brigands’ equipment, but chose instead to burn it all.

Ellen personally destroyed any equipment that didn’t burn.

Even with shin guards on, the sight of her shattering a sword like snapping a baseball bat with her shin made me break out in a cold sweat.

It seemed as though she could break the blade itself, and not just the handle, with her kicks.

The brigands realized they had messed with an unbelievable monster, and their faces went pale.

Despite losing everything they had, they thanked us for sparing their lives, bowing repeatedly as we left.

In the end, our loot totaled eight gold coins and a carriage drawn by three horses.

Austin, who had experience driving carriages and had been to Saints Point a few times, took the reins. Given his earlier behavior, he didn’t seem like the type capable of harboring any ill will.

Ellen and I did not sit inside the passenger compartment but took the seats beside the coachman’s seat.

“Aren’t horses expensive, though?”

Even though this was a medieval fantasy, this world didn’t exactly correspond to the real medieval era.

Weren’t horses incredibly expensive in the medieval period?

Horses are expensive even in the modern day...

Stealing three horses felt like we had stumbled upon a fortune.

I mentioned this more to myself, but Austin replied anyway.

“Ah... Uh... You’re thinking about destriers, the type that knights ride. Of course, these horses aren’t dirt cheap either...”

I nodded at Austin’s explanation. The horses pulling the carriage were clearly bigger than ponies, but didn’t seem like they were fit for riding. They also seemed to be rather old.

The horses that were used for riding lessons at the Temple clearly differed in breed and size from these. Austin, squeezed between Ellen and I as he drove the carriage, was sweating bullets. He seemed to be feeling a lot of pressure.

“You... You guys are incredibly strong.”

“Indeed. I was surprised as well.”

“Surprised?”

Yes.

Even though I had pulled it off, I was surprised.

“I thought they were experienced brigands specializing in robbery, but I didn’t expect to finish them off in one move.”

It was more than likely that they were violent criminals with experience in killing and ample real combat experience. Yet, the fight had ended with just a simple downward slash of a sword.

Had I not stopped, plunging my blade straight into the carotid artery would have meant sending them to their grave in an instant.

“Not many are professionally trained in martial arts,” Ellen murmured with her arms crossed as she quietly observed the passing scenery.

“To be precise, anyone can sign up to be an adventurer. And among those people, few are properly trained in how to wield a weapon.”

“Is that so...”

Although Ellen was talking to me, Austin muttered as if he was struck by her words.

Becoming an adventurer was essentially a career for all sorts of people looking to strike it lucky. All kinds of people were drawn to it. They carried weapons and even swung them around, but in the end, they were not professionally trained.

Life as an adventurer could make one proficient with a sword. But that proficiency tended more towards swordsmanship that was geared for survival, rather than systematic fencing.

It was basically learning how to keep yourself alive with your sword.

In a way, it was like comparing a street brawler to a mixed martial arts fighter. Of course, one could overpower a fighter with sheer size, but when it came to weapons, technique often played a bigger role than physical strength.

That was why it had been so easy for me to overpower my opponent.

“Most martial arts assume that the opponent will be armed. For an adventurer who only has to deal with the situations that arise from day to day, it’s almost unnecessary to know such techniques, unless it’s a situation like just now.”

Ellen’s words made sense.

The enemies of adventurers were usually demons or monsters, which typically did not wield weapons. Of course, there were exceptions, but those were rare.

However, what Ellen and I had been taught involved overpowering and killing armed opponents.

In short, techniques predicated on facing armed humans.

Adventurers had little need to know such things. Therefore, if one was only going adventuring, there was no reason to delve so deeply into swordsmanship.

Of course, knowing more was always better than knowing less, but it wasn’t a necessity.

Anyway, Ellen and I had continually honed our skills in overpowering armed humans. No matter how much more real-world experience they had, they could not stand against us, who had undergone systematic training.

At best, the sword swings they used to bully weak monsters or inexperienced newcomers were merely suited to street brawls.

That level of swordsmanship could never work against us.

Anyone who faced off against Ellen couldn’t possibly stand a chance, and neither could those facing me—who, despite being in training for a shorter time, learned persistently from Ellen every day.

In the end, the swordsmanship skill possessed by most adventurers could not surpass the level of the pseudo-swordsmanship techniques I had acquired before.

This was another revelation...

“Did you guys... train specifically in swordsmanship?” Austin asked.

“... You could say that.”

Although I learned some of what I knew from lectures, most of my training was with Ellen, which essentially made her my swordsmanship instructor.

“I’m envious...”

The vague sentiment in Austin’s words did not resonate easily with me.

I always believed I was significantly weaker compared to Ellen, and that was a fact.

Within the Royal Class, with all the training I’d done, I could have been considered around average in terms of combat prowess.

But it seemed Austin never even had the chance to learn swordsmanship, whether because of financial issues or something else.

At the Temple, not only did students in the Royal Class undergo weapons training, but many of the students in the general classes also chose combat majors and underwent training as well.

Those students would be considered highly skilled in places like this.

Yet I was a student from the Royal Class at the Temple, a select group of individuals, and even among them, I practiced daily with the most outstanding among us.

‘... It would have actually been more strange if it hadn’t been easy.’

Not being able to easily overpower those guys would have been the real surprise.

Unbeknownst to me, a tremendous gap in combat ability had already developed between myself and the average person, to the extent that even life-threatening battles felt overly easy.