236 The Cause

"Where is the food! The small dishes that they gave us were already licked clean, besides didn't the chief promise us that we would also enjoy some of that... hehe…"

"I know right? I can't wait as well! Wanna go and check on them?"

"Since there is nothing left to eat, we might as well-"

"Is this where the rest of your bandits are...?"

"Yes, young hero…"

"Chief…?"

Seeing the burly chief they always admired walking in with his body fully bruised while lowering himself to an unknown youth, the whole bandit group had a hard time digesting what they saw let alone think about how it happened…

"Idiots! Why are sitting still in your places like stone statues instead of coming here to greet the young hero!"

"What…?"

"I'm very sorry young hero, they are just too stupid and have a very slow reaction… didn't you hear what I said! Come here and stand in line to help the young hero with his practice…"

"Yes, chief…"

Not knowing what to make out of this, the foolish bandits could only remember what they would usually do when they couldn't understand anything.

'Just do as the chief says!'

Thanks to the strict training of the bandit chief who wouldn't usually let anybody defying him, and the natural effectiveness of his orders, and with the bandits themselves being naturally stupid, they developed this golden rule that reeked from the lack of self-reliance…

As such they foolishly walked away and stood in a vertical queue that ended out of the hall…

Slap!

They were already used to how the chief's orders and insight was unrivaled as he always lead them to victorious raids where they would usually have the last word…

"Ah!"

"Next!"

So… just why in the world were they stupidly standing in a line to get beaten by an unknown youth who seemed to have monstrous strength…

`~~`~~`~~`

A few dozens of minutes later!

'That was good practice indeed!'

It was truly somewhat hard to use the correct amount of strength against the correct target, especially that my strength was growing at an extreme pace for a while, and my enemies were normally ones that needed me to exert my full strength, so having so many test subjects that deserved the beating to experiment on wasn't bad at all!

"I think they are all reformed right now, they will work on the fields to compensate whatever they stole from you, isn't that right, 'chief'?"

"Of course, young hero! We were the mistaken ones, so we will naturally make up for our mistake."

"Good, now get out."

"Young man… I believe young hero will be more appropriate indeed, I'm, no, we are deeply grateful for your help…"

The village head moved his head to look at the other villagers who were in the same room as they nodded to confirm.

According to the words of village chief, these 'Tyrant Blood' bandits have suddenly appeared about an hour ago, saying that they were having trouble with food, and would be very grateful if the village helped them, this was of course just a pretense to their vile plan of enjoying a few days of free stay till they drained the village out of life, but the old village head was left with no option to accept to stall for time before sending his grandson to ask for help, after all, the village barely had any combatants as they only relied on farming for food and money…

But as his counter plan soon fell to stop the bandit chief's plan, a Tier-4 Sword Master who could easily crush the whole village in a few hours, the situation soon deteriorated to the scene I came to later, barely managing to come on time before the village head's unknown last ditch effort...

"No need to, enforcing justice isn't my job, but doing it once in a while is still for the greater good, besides, I didn't help you for free…"

Most of the villagers suddenly frowned as expressions of worry appeared on their faces, thinking that they only got rid of a tyrant only to be threatened by another…

Only the old village chief seemed to be totally free of worry as he still had his calm expression…

"Considering the help you have provided us, it's indeed worthy of reward, if you really wanted, I wouldn't mind giving away half of our money, but I believe that's not your target…"

"Hmm…? You are really good at this old man! I indeed want no money, in fact what I want isn't materialistic in any sense, I just want information… even basic simple knowledge would do, but I'm more curious about your methods… how is you insight this good…?"

The old man simply wanted to entrust his granddaughter to me without even knowing who I was, and here he was again, making guesses at my payment method...

"Well, it's not a big secret or anything, it's just that my family has a bit of a special ability that allows me to know a part of a person's nature, it's not that great, but it has some credibility to it, right?"

'Is that something like an innate ability…?'

"Oh! It's indeed a useful ability!"

For natives to have an 'Innate talent' or just something that was close to it meant that they weren't normal at the very least, after all, there were only a few such talents that were allowed to enter the game...

"You flatter me…"

"Alright, I will ask you a question then. Out of all the times the bandits could attack on, just why did they attack now? It couldn't be a coincidence, right?"

I could simply ask the beaten bandits, but since I had no base or scale of info to weigh their confessions to, it was better to see if the village chief had any idea before confirming with the untrusted bandits...

"To be honest with you, I thought it was just a really bad coincidence that had caused to attack, but after hearing some of the bandit chief's talk, I realized that there was indeed something special about today…"

"Hmmm…"

"About more than an hour ago, there was a flash of lightning that lit the entire sky out of nowhere, we thought it was just a normal thing as we aren't too familiar with these stuff, but now that I think about it, it might be related to a treasure's birth or something similar…"

"Eh?"

'Was I the actual cause of those whole thing?!'

"Grandfather!"

Suddenly, the anxious young man who was rushing earlier and also the one who directed me to this village rushed into the room as his voice seemed to contain a hint of deep sorrow…

"Gran…"

"Grandfather! I have let you down! Even though I tried my best to get there as fast as I can, once I arrived, I wasn't welcome at all, the whole place seemed to be a bit deserted as the guy who shoo-ed me away said they were too busy to let normal people in to complain…"

"Gran, hear me out first…"

"You don't need to explain, grandpa, due to my incompetence you must have had to surrender to these vile bandits… I already saw them spread around the village waiting for any second to terrorize the people…"

"Ahem… ahem… Gran, they aren't out there to terrorize anyone, they are just trying to help…"

"Ehhhh???"