A Lesson in Brutality

When I stopped walking, the three following me asked what was wrong. I raised a finger to my lips.

“Shh, quiet. Draw your weapons. Something’s here.”

“So what on earth!?”

Thwack. An arrow struck my carelessly outstretched hand.

‘Huh? What?’ I was genuinely surprised. I had only extended my hand to make a dramatic gesture, yet something had actually flown at me. A belated, searing pain shot through my arm, but I swallowed my scream and immediately drank the Cogi potion, which I had pinned to the top of my inventory.

Jack, who had nearly been struck by the arrow right before his eyes, flinched violently and immediately raised his shield. The others also drew their swords, scanning their surroundings warily.

With a sickening thud, I yanked the arrow from my hand, and the flesh began to heal instantly. ‘Ugh, this. The damage itself is low, but it hurts like hell. Damn it all.’

As if on cue, armed figures burst from the tall grass. Their attire marked them as typical bandit NPCs. I seized the neck of one who lunged at me, tearing it free, and then addressed the three.

“I’ll handle only the archers. You three take care of the rest. Jack, you should practice using your shield.”

The formations employed by these NPCs were quite rudimentary. Typically, two or three archers would be positioned, while the remainder charged forward with swords. Larger bandit groups occasionally included magic-users, usually novice mages.

More precisely, they were bandits capable of casting basic spells. Their mana pools were minuscule, allowing them only a few spells before they’d draw their blades and rush into melee. By design, mages were rare, and those with greater skill usually belonged to evil-aligned classes. Things like necromancers, or vampires, for instance.

While the three fended off the swarming bandits, I casually dismembered the ones who engaged me, tearing off their heads, and pressed further inward. As I approached, the two archers, startled, drew the swords from their waists and aimed them, but I dispatched them with equal ease.

“Ah, now that I think about it, it would have been cooler to create an execution scene with an axe rather than just tearing off heads.”

I had prioritized eliminating the ranged attackers to protect the newbies, but I hadn’t considered the cinematic potential. ‘Well, it can’t be helped. They’re just mere bandits, and there probably won’t be any event cutscene saved anyway.’

After collecting items from the bodies whose heads lay detached and rolling, I returned to find my companions frantically fighting.

“Hey, you haven’t even dealt with a dozen or so yet?”

“It’s 17 against 3! Do you think it’s as easy as it sounds?”

‘I wonder what their original level was. It has risen, but…’

If they had been level 1, they wouldn’t have been able to fight and would have all been defeated. Considering that, their current ability to endure suggests their levels have increased, even if only slightly.

‘Perhaps it’s because I’ve only let them fight weaker demons; their levels aren’t skyrocketing as I’d hoped. Though, seeing them with those ‘newbie’ sprouts is quite endearing.’

“H-he’s that guy from earlier!”

“The one who tore off heads alive!”

Suddenly, the bandits caught sight of me, shrieked in terror, abandoned their fight, and attempted to flee.

Hostile NPCs typically don’t flee unless under specific circumstances. If they’re going to run, they usually do so the moment they see you. It’s rare for them to escape mid-fight, unless their health is critically low and they’re crawling away, or they’ve been inflicted with a fear status effect.

‘I haven’t inflicted fear, and at my companions’ skill level, their health shouldn’t be that low. Why are they running?’

“Why aren’t you fighting?”

I erected a barrier in front of the fleeing bandits, blocking their escape. Seventeen, no, now sixteen. Nocturne had just dispatched one. The sixteen remaining bandits trembled, frantically scratching and pounding at the protective shield.

I picked up the swords the bandits had thrown aside and handed them back. With dumbfounded expressions, they accepted the weapons, staring at me.

“Fight. My companions are short on experience points. Their skills are rudimentary, so they need practice.”

“P-please, spare us! We were wrong! We have wives like lionesses and children like bears at home!!”

“I’m going to kill you anyway, but if I do it, they’ll get experience but no practice. Especially Jack; he needs to work on his parrying.”

‘Can they be reasoned with? Combat could be halted if a specific event were involved. But I have no use for trivial quests from these low-level bandits.’

“S-Sir Haut. Couldn’t we just let them go…?”

“You can’t even handle monsters. Humans are the weakest opponents, so practicing on them seems like a good idea. Why should I let them go?”

“B-but they’re still people… Is there really a need for such a one-sided slaughter?”

‘I truly don’t understand. Evil-aligned NPCs aren’t truly human. They’re merely mobs in human form. This insistence on them being ‘different’ is utterly frustrating.’

“How are they different from monsters?”

“Huh? E-excuse me?”

“They’re worse than monsters. Monsters don’t actively hunt humans. They attack if you enter their territory, but if you flee, they let you go. Humans aren’t their food source, after all.”

You can easily avoid monsters if you try. They’ll stop pursuing you if you put even a little distance between you, as they have designated territories. However, humanoid NPC enemies will chase you relentlessly. They don’t just attack; they’ll also randomly steal your items.

“These guys will follow you to the ends of the earth, kill you, and steal your belongings. Killing them here is beneficial in many ways. While you don’t get much experience from killing humans… wouldn’t this many still be a decent haul?”

Despite my elaborate explanation, my companions had turned ghastly pale. The bandits were in no better state. When I forcibly placed a sword in one’s hand, he trembled, his gaze darting between the blade and my face.

“Aren’t you going to do it? If you have to, fight. It’s better practice for you to kill them yourselves than for me to do it.”

‘Their reaction is still strange. At this point, they should be gritting their teeth and lunging at least once, but they can’t do anything. Are they broken? Is this a malfunction?’ Just as I considered killing them myself, someone embraced me from behind.

Faust was clinging to my waist, weeping.

“Sir Haut, you can’t. Please? There’s no need to go this far. To deliberately harm an enemy who isn’t resisting…”

‘Good-aligned characters are bothersome in this regard.’

It was plausible that their high good alignment prevented them from fighting. Yet, trying to stop the combat altogether was simply illogical. ‘Should I try to persuade them using the game’s lore?’

“The humans these bandits killed never got a chance. Wouldn’t it be unfair if these very bandits, who have killed so many, were to be given a chance?”

‘This could be a branching point for a favorability increase event. I know. Important branching events do occur occasionally, depending on character alignment.’

‘In that case, what if I make a ‘choice not typically made’ here and force them to kill them all? If it works, I might even be able to change their alignment. If not? Well, I’ll just lose some favorability, and a different event will pop up later.’

‘Because that’s just how this game works.’

“Sir Haut, don’t you… like humans?”

“These aren’t humans. Even dogs don’t just bark for no reason, but these things just hack with swords.”

“But… if we could stop now, even now…”

“They’ll do it again. They’ll keep doing it. That’s how they’re programmed. Can you take responsibility for the lives of the humans who will die in the future? Is it acceptable for dozens, even hundreds, to die just to save these sixteen?”

My words were venomous, utter nonsense, yet precisely because of that, they sounded plausible. ‘If I play this right, I might be able to change their alignment more easily.’ While Faust hesitated, I seized one bandit who was attempting to sneak away and tore off his head.

The blood clung unpleasantly to my skin. The sensation was so vividly damned that my fingertips tingled.

“Look at this. You’re begging me to spare these guys, yet they’re just thinking about secretly escaping to save themselves.”

‘It can’t be helped. That’s how they’re programmed. Enemy NPCs are designed to flee when the battle turns unfavorable. They’ve only given up fighting because I’ve held them here for too long.’

I gently unwrapped Faust’s arms from my waist and smiled.

“I’ll just do it myself. Try to do better next time, okay?”

Then, I proceeded to tear off the heads of all the remaining bandits. Screams filled the air, and blood splattered. The temperature of the blood on my hands was disturbingly warm.

They offered no loot and no enjoyable fight, yet my companions’ levels had each risen by one.

It was a regrettable turn of events that, despite my efforts to let them enjoy themselves for the past few days, the three had once again become sullen and withdrawn.

‘I should have pushed them all the way. Faust’s weeping face was so pitiful that I intervened and finished them myself, which only resulted in a favorability drop without any real benefit. Nothing but losses.’

They weren’t fleeing like they did when we fought demons, but their profound silence was equally unsettling.

“You used to chatter constantly. Say something, anything.”

“…I don’t really have anything to say.”

“What’s wrong with everyone? Weren’t you all happy and having fun at the Singing Lake?”

‘Was the effect duration too short? Since I’m not an NPC myself, I have no way of knowing how long it would last. I should have researched it more if I’d known this would happen. Now that I can’t log out, I can’t even experiment.’

‘I thought they’d like it more, but it seems I was wrong.’

Ultimately, I rented two rooms in a small village. It was better for the three of them to sleep in beds, even though I only received minor additional buffs. NPCs, after all, could fall ill if they camped outdoors for too long.

‘I thought it would be more fun…’

The fun was fleeting. Things weren’t working out as I’d hoped. They had only seemed happy for a brief moment when we visited the lake.

“Hey, what do you like?”

“Huh? U-uh… are you talking to me?”

We decided to split the rooms between myself and Jack, and Nocturne and Faust. I disliked Nocturne because he always put me in a strange mood, and Faust vehemently opposed the arrangement, saying Jack couldn’t be with him. Personally, I didn’t care who I was with, as long as it wasn’t Nocturne.

I grabbed Jack, who was about to pray before bed, and asked him. He flinched, pulling his body away. Anyone would think I had hit him or something.

“Why isn’t your favorability rising? Is there anything you want? What can I do for you?”

“…Why do you even need my favorability?”

“To raise you well, we need to get along. I want you all to have fun.”

‘And I wish I could have fun with them too. It would be better if they were real people. Then I could get close to them more easily. I just don’t know what the problem is.’

Jack subtly pushed away the hand I was holding and then stroked the back of his own hand. It was the spot where he had received Hamman’s divine mark.

“This, you said you did it?”

“Yeah, I asked Hamman to give one to each of you.”

“That’s where you went wrong, right there.”

“Why?”

Jack seemed both angry and dejected.