* * *
“Hey! Come out, you inside! Don’t bother resisting futilely!”
The sound of a thief yelling while kicking the carriage can be heard outside.
“Oh, madam…”
A maid with a plain face and glasses turns towards her master, trembling.
“…Let’s get down.”
Wrapped in a modest yet elegant one-piece dress, Baroness Emma Salar looks pale but still manages to put on a determined expression and speaks in a clear voice.
“That’s right. Staying cooped up here won’t do us any good.”
Hearing a young voice in agreement, the lady and the maid turn to look at the other passenger in the carriage.
The owner of the voice is a beautiful girl with peach-colored hair.
She is Sara, Emma’s daughter.
“I peeked outside a little while ago and saw the thieves. There are about ten of them surrounding our carriage!”
Sara said, not appearing scared at all and speaking excitedly.
“So, if each of us takes down about three, we’ll be good! It’s simple math!”
“Yes, you did the math nicely. But those kinds of words, you should say them at least after you’ve learned to use basic magic properly.”
“Aw…”
After gently hugging her daughter, Emma handed her over to the maid.
“…I will try to negotiate. Please take care of Sara. Look for a chance to escape.”
“Ye-yes! Leave it to me! Even at the cost of my life, I will surely save the young lady!”
“I won’t run! I’ll fight too! Hmph! Hmph!”
Provoking the thieves carelessly should be avoided. Emma and the maid, while silencing the noisy Sara, got down from the carriage. Waiting for them was a large man with a bushy beard. Flanking him were men with slender faces, one with an eye patch over his right eye and another with an eye patch over his left eye, likely the boss of the thieves and his lieutenants.
It was around 3 p.m. The summer sun was strong and relentlessly scorching, but Emma, due to her nervousness, hardly noticed the discomfort.
“Ha… I’ve heard rumors about a beauty, but this one is indeed a fine piece,” the bearded man said, leering at Emma with a disgusting gaze, then smirked.
“Hehehe! She doesn’t look at all like she’s a mom who has had a kid!”
“And was it Sara, you said? Your daughter is quite cute too! Hehehe! She’ll fetch a good price!”
Listening to the thieves’ vulgar conversation, Emma clicked her tongue in her mind. These men knew exactly who they were attacking. This ambush was not a random act.
“…What do you want?”
Emma started negotiating to buy time. This was a move made in the hope of a miraculous chance encounter with an adventurer’s party passing by, rather than any concrete strategy. The road where they were ambushed was a rural path through the Salar baronetcy in the Kingdom of Teenidys, seldom traversed by travelers, meaning the likelihood of Emma’s actions paying off was slim.
“From the way you speak, it’s clear you know we are from the Salar baronetcy. Why target us? Threatening a poor baronetcy like ours, the ransom you could get is limited, isn’t it?”
Indeed, the Salar baronetcy was not wealthy.
Emma herself originally came from a certain count’s family, but her relationship with her birth family was not good. To put it bluntly, it was bad. She was so certain that her family wouldn’t spend a penny to help her out after she had married into the Salar baronial family.
“That’s right, you see, we were hoping… Ow!?” Before the man with the square face and an eye patch could finish his sentence, the bushy-bearded man punched him away.
“Madam might not know this, but being beautiful can sell for a high price by itself. Enough for folks like us to get by for a while. Hahaha!”
“Heheheheheh!” Following the lead of their boss, the bushy-bearded man, his subordinates burst into laughter. During this moment, Emma scanned her surroundings for any opportunity, but the situation seemed dire. The male servant who had been driving the carriage appeared to be alive but was knocked down and lying on the ground. The three adventurers who were supposed to be their escorts were now encircling Emma and her company, in league with the thieves.
They were in cahoots.
“Come on, lads! Tie them up quickly! We’re taking them to our hideout!”
“Yes, boss!” On the bushy-bearded man’s command, the thieves moved to grab Emma, Sara, and the maid. The maid, who had been holding and hugging Sara, was rudely shoved away and fell to the ground.
“Stop it! Let go of your filthy hands!” Once free from being silenced, it was inevitable for Sara, with her personality, to start causing a commotion. She was exceptionally spirited and fearless.
“Hehe, what a spirited young lady.”
“Shut up, baldy!!”
“Baldy!?” The thief who had grabbed Sara’s arm, wearing a hat, instinctively clutched his hat tighter with his other hand.
“You brat! Why would you…!”
“Shut up, baldy! Let go of me quickly, baldy! I’m going to save my mother and the others—Baldyyyyy!”
“You, brat! How dare you, over and over and…!!”
The thief with the hat, Hagen, who was trying to tie Sara up, became enraged, his eyes bloodshot and his face turning bright red. He was very sensitive about his recently receding hairline that had started to spread to the top of his head. He never forgave anyone who mocked him for it, whether it was a fellow thief or a cheeky village boy. Anyone who made fun of someone’s insecurities was in the wrong, a basic rule of human decency. Those who did so had their heads split open with Hagen’s axe.
Of course, Sara didn’t know anything about Hagen’s hair situation; she just called him bald as a form of insult. But that didn’t matter to him.
“I’ll never forgive you! I’ll kill youuuu!!”
“!? Hey, you! What are you doing!? She’s merchandise!!?”
Hagen, with his hatchet raised above his head, about to strike down on Sara. The bushy-bearded boss notices his subordinate’s rampage too late to stop it. The bloody, filthy hatchet, stained with the blood of many, poised to crack open Sara’s skull and feast on the brain matter inside…
…did not succeed.
Because.
With a tremendous crash sound right at the moment,
Hagen realized.
The hatchet he was swinging down.
The blade broke off from the handle and was flung somewhere.
“What happened…!?” Hagen stumbled and looked around in confusion after suddenly experiencing such an impact at his hand. What had happened? However, he would never know the answer. Because, with a sound like that, the next moment his head had burst open. This was the end of Hagen, a thief and serial killer.
“What!?”
“What’s going on!?”
“A mage!?”
The sudden death of their comrade threw the thieves into panic, and they heard two sounds like something bursting, the same sound they had heard before.
Emma involuntarily gasped. The heads of the two thieves who were holding her and the maid had suddenly disappeared. The bodies of the thieves collapsed.
“Hey, hey, hey!? What is this!?”
“What’s happening!? What’s going on here!?”
“Come out, you mage coward! Hiding and skulking around! Coward!!”
The chaos among the thieves grew as they brandished their weapons, looking around frantically. However, their movements abruptly ceased. Not likely provoked by the word “coward,” but because the perpetrator of this tragedy appeared from the bushes of the forest on one side of the road. Seeing the figure, the thieves were dumbfounded. So were Emma, the maid, and Sara.
She emerged from the deep shadows cast by the blazing sun, a small girl who at first glance might even appear frail. Wearing dirty, tattered clothes and, despite having come from the forest, barefoot. With ominous and dreadful black hair and eyes, white skin. That was the girl.