That request also made the villagers start treating him like a messenger from the goddess herself, but he was okay with that.
“It ain’t so eeassyy—hold on!” Vandal was flying toward the Sixth Pioneer Village when he spotted a number of people moving below. It was a group of men wearing worn leather armor and carrying dirty weapons, proceeding along the same path toward the village. Vandal took out the map Kain had provided, scratched onto tree bark, to confirm he was in the right place.
Vandal called to one of the spirits clinging to the men and discovered that they were bandits. Vandal asked a few others and got the same reply; they really were bandits.
That seemed like due diligence enough. Vandal decided to wipe them out.
“Listen up, you filthy dogs! Once we reach the village, kill the men, then enjoy the women and kill them too! But any that look like they’ll fetch a high price, don’t lay a finger on them! Understand?”
“Not really,” Vandal said.
“The hell! What’s your problem?” The apparent leader turned around to find Vandal hovering in the air. “Huh? Who is this kid?!”
“Boss! Looks like a monster!”
“It just dropped down from the sky! Gotta be a ghost or something!”
“Nothing of the sort,” Vandal replied to the ogling bandits. “I’m just a passing seven-year-old with the power of flight.”
Of course, that was in no way normal.
“Gah! Cheeky brat! Kain, get up here and crush this nuisance with your Brute Strength!”
At the boss’s orders, the biggest of the bandits—a skinhead with a grin plastered across his face—stepped forward.
“Boss, can I have some fun first?”
“You’re a sick man, Kain. Whatever you want!”
“Heh heh, I get to have fun!” Kain gave a happy shout, his eyes sparkling as he swung his two-handed war hammer like a kid showing off.
“Boss, we need to get to the village,” one of the others said.
“Don’t worry. He’ll snap a twig like this in seconds.”
“Good point.”
“Hey, kid! Be nice and I’ll only play with you a little after I snap your arms and legs! Fight back and I’ll give you the works!”
“. . . Yikes, what an idiot,” Vandal mumbled.
“What did you say?! I hate being called dumb more than anything! Don’t you know that?!”
“Why would I?”
“Still mocking me! Enough!” The bandit Kain was red with anger, looking like a boiled octopus. He proceeded to bash his hammer at Vandal. “One swing is enough to take out a kid like you!”
And if it isn’t, you’re really done for. You’ve got nothing but raw strength! You don’t even have Club Proficiency, from the the look of you.
Rather than quip back, though, Vandal poked out his tongue. “And my tongue is enough to deal with a small fry like you.”
“You little—” Before Kain could finish his shout, Vandal’s cheeks puffed up. Even with his expressionless visage, he did look a little cute when doing this. A moment later, though, and he spat something out, his cheeks and mouth returning to normal. Kain froze in place, then crashed backward like a felled tree. His left eye socket no longer contained his rabidly twinkling eye, but a mess of blood.
“Huh?”
“Kain! What’s wrong with you?”
The bandits were stunned by this turn of events. Then, something red and snake-like emerged from Kain’s eye socket.
“Hyaah!” As the bandits cried out in surprise, the red snake flew through the air, dripping blood as it returned to Vandal’s mouth.
“That’s an original battle tech I cooked up. I call it Barbed Tongue. Firing it off with some added Virulent Poison seems pretty strong. The downside is that I have to re-affix my old tongue or grow a new one after I use it before I can talk again.” This Brawling Proficiency tech made full use of Poison Dispersal (Claws, Fangs, Tongue). First, he used Spirit Bodification to cut his tongue off at the base and then combined it with Remote Control to fire it out.
Of course, Vandal was the only person who could hope to think up, let alone execute such an attack.
“I guess it could be useful as a last resort,” Vandal concluded.
“What the hell did you do?!”
“All I did was make sure that the only guy named Kain in these parts is a good-natured hunter,” Vandal replied. “I’ll just deal with the rest of you more traditionally.”
“Run!” the boss shouted. “Run for it! This kid is a freaking monster—what?! My legs can’t move!”
“Mine neither! I’m shaking in my boots! Why? What can’t we move?!”
Vandal flew up to the struggling bandits, sliding through the air. The claws extending from his small hands were still more than enough to chop through their throats.
“I just spread a little poison. But now, more importantly, I’ve got just one little question to ask you. I suggest you answer it. Even if I have to kill you first, I’ll just ask you again once you’re dead.”
“I don’t know . . . I really don’t know . . . anything!” The boss of the bandits had eyes like a dead fish, foam spilling from his lips as he replied.
Vandal gave a small sigh. “I guess you really don’t. The timing is odd, though.” Just one day after a merchant attempted to poison a whole village, a bunch of bandits were about to attack a different settlement. It was hard to consider this a coincidence. However, neither the bandit boss nor his bandits had any real leads.
The bandits had been on the move, looking for a new base of operations, and purchased info about the pioneer villages on the cheap from a broker in the closest town, a place called Niakki. Learning that only the Seventh had an adventurer presence, they had decided sixth would be a ripe target.
This broker sounded suspicious, offering information on these villages that only a few ever really visited. But none of the bandits knew his name, and his face had been covered below the eyes with cloth. Tracking him down would be almost impossible.
“Maybe I should give you a little more, just to make sure,” Vandal mused.
“No . . . please, no . . .”
“Tell me, how many times did you stop, when the people begging you not to kill or rape or sell them asked the same thing? If you stopped even once, I might consider it.”
“I . . . never did . . .”
“Exactly.” Vandal slid the tip of one of his claws into the open mouth of the boss. It was dripping with poison. This was also a product of his Poison Dispersal (Claws, Fangs, Tongue) and was what might generally be called a truth serum.
He had obtained Poison Dispersal when he took the Poison Master Job. It did exactly what it sounded like—dispersed poison—but, unlike the poison-related skills that ghouls had, this poison wasn’t limited to things like their nerve toxins. Before he took the Job, he had thought it would improve his handling of poisons and chemicals. It turned out the poisons he could make were weaker than those made using Death Attribute magic, but that they could have all kinds of effects.
In fact, Vandal practically had turned into a living pharmacy, capable of dispersing truth serum, detox agents, anesthetics, stomach medicine, sunscreen, eye drops, and even vitamins. The cost wasn’t MP, but rather nutrition taken from Vandal’s body, meaning he couldn’t fire them out like magic.
Vandal repeated the same questions to the boss again, but before he could answer, the man started convulsing and dropped dead.
“Tell me now. Answer my question.” Vandal treated his death like it was nothing.
“I don’t know . . . I really don’t . . .”
Vandal also wasn’t bothered when the reply was the same as before. He grabbed the boss’s still warm body and bit into his neck to use Suck Blood. The blood included the remains of his own truth serum, but his Resist Maladies skill took care of that.
“Phew,” Vandal said. “I’ve been missing out on animal protein since yesterday. That’s just what I needed.”
He quickly rifled through the pockets of the bandits, finding a reasonable amount of money. He also collected their weapons. Then he used Golem Creation to make a hole for the corpses, used Decay to rot them down to the bones, and buried them.
“That takes care of that.” Vandal then used Flight once more, heading toward the Sixth Pioneer Village again.
None of the impending trouble seemed to have reached the village. A crowd of surprised villagers gathered when a white-haired dhampir dropped down from the sky. Vandal asked them if they needed anything, healing a few ailments, and then set off for the next village.
“Please, wait, oh great envoy!” called one of the villagers. “I have to thank you for healing my father’s eyes!”
“Oh, no need. I didn’t do anything special.” After a quick Spirit Bodification surgery, he had created some eye medicine, and then used Golem Creation to make a bottle for it.
“Thank you for healing my son’s burns! He has his fingers back!” That had been another simple Spirit Bodification surgery, accompanied by an application of Rapid Healing.