17 - Episode 16 Crisis and Escape

It is impolite for a race of insects to keep me waiting.

Sbaran, a racial adventurer, had just finished his business and returned to his friends - and there stood a strange young man of the elf species.

His honey blonde hair was tied back, exposing his jeweled green eyes and pointed ears.

His face was so well-defined that he could have been mistaken for a woman.

In a sense, he was a typical young man of the elf kind, standing there with a broad greatsword in his hand.

Gilbert, a party member with whom I had just had a pleasant conversation, was lying on the ground, his head severed from his torso.

The young elf stomped on Gilbert's head with his foot, with whom he had shared many years of hardship, and waited for Subaran's arrival.

......ッ."

The sight of him made me instantly scream out with blood in my head, but Subaran is a veteran adventurer.

This was not the first time he had seen a fellow adventurer die an unreasonable death.

He was also dealing with an elven species, which was apparently superior to his own.

With his head still bleeding, he would surely lose his life.

Sbaran breathes in, letting the cool night air cool his anger.

(Calm down, calm down. ......)

I repeat 'calm down' over and over in my chest and tell myself to calm down.

He looks at the other members sleeping in the tent, but the large amount of red liquid flowing out of the tent indicates that they are probably dead.

Subaran seems to be the only survivor.

(...... is surrounded by a shallow swamp. If approached on foot, the sound of the water would surely alert them. Yet Gilbert's head was chopped off with no sign of a struggle. (In all probability, it was caused by witchcraft.)

He calmly makes a decision, sits back and reaches his right hand to his waist.

(The opponent is a higher-ranked elf species that uses magic ....... If I, as a racial person, fought them head-on, I would surely lose. It's impossible for me to deal with it on my own. I must report this attack and murder of an adventurer to the Adventurers' Guild. Then the adventurers and the guild will form a strike team to kill him, even though he is a member of a discriminated race. If I survive and report his characteristics, race, and information to the guild, I win!　Don't think you can win on your own!)

Jiri Jiri retreats and distances himself from the blond elf youth.

The blond elf youth, Kite, stuck out his tongue in a bored manner.

Ignoring me when I'm talking to you, this is why I don't like humans (inferior species). Can't you at least make a witty joke?

"............"

Why don't you say something?　How pathetic is it to be kicked in the foot by your own people and remain silent, no matter how inferior you are to the most inferior of all species?"

Kite kicks Gilbert's severed head.

Sbaran, seizing the opportunity, throws from his waist a trump card in case of emergency - a smokescreen ball for escape.

!　Smoke screen!　You're not going to fight, you're going to run away!　You're a coward, you know that?

'Keep talking, you f*cking elf!　I'll definitely let you take out your fellow enemies someday!"

Sbaran begins his escape in an explosion of white smoke.

(The scary part is that it is totally unknown what kind of hand the sorcerer has. But they do have their weaknesses!　Without visual capture of the target to be defeated, most offensive magic is meaningless. (Let's get them out of our magic range while we're blindfolded by a smoke screen!)

Above all, Sbaran is a self-appointed scout who has the ear of the party members.

He has also spent years fighting monsters in a three-level swamp. He has it all drilled into his head where to find everything in this vast three-level swamp.

I know all the safe places to hide, the food to eat, the water to drink, and so on.

（I'm going to get away from those d*mn elves!　And make them pay for killing Gilbert and the others and kicking them in the foot--?)

I felt a strong push on my back.

A wide sword grows out from my back to my chest.

I immediately understood that it was the sword blade in the hand of the elven species.

The blade had penetrated halfway through Subaran's body.

It was a fatal wound.

He looked down at the sword blade, which was stained with his own blood.

Bam, I wonder!　Goho!　With the smoke screen, I couldn't see the exact location, gah, it should have been ......!"

I spit out a mouthful of iron-smelling blood and scream out a reality I don't understand.

If this is some kind of offensive magic, it is something of a higher offensive magic that Subaran doesn't even know about.

But it's a sword attack.

How was he able to pinpoint his exact position through the smoke screen and catch the fleeing backside with all his might?

He gathered all his strength and looked behind him.

--But there was a scene different from what he had expected. He wondered why he had been ambushed from behind even though he was blindfolded by the smoke screen at the same time.

The reason why veteran Gilbert was killed unprovoked, despite the fact that the surrounding area was a shallow swamp and he was on alert.

Chi, kusho, ga ...... hanso, dakuro ga no way--"

Subaran is unable to utter the answer and his consciousness breaks.

Before he could utter the last word, his life drained out of him.

Kite kicked Subaran, who had died, in disgust.

Subaran is a domestic animal that is only killed to improve my level, and you're making me have to go through all this trouble just because you're an insect. If they were still killed in a quiet way, it would be cute, but they have strange cunning and wisdom, so this kind of human (inferior species) is a nuisance.

He regains his composure and checks his status.

But Kite's level had not increased.

I guess it's still not up. ...... I'll keep up my race-killing until it goes up.

Then he disappears from the scene without a sound.

All that remained were the bodies of the slaughtered race of adventurers.