1-9 Raid

Alright—based on what I’d learned from the old men, my immediate goal was decided.

Somewhere, I would obtain identification in this world.

If possible, I wanted an adventurer qualification—it seemed convenient.

And then somehow I’d make it to the royal capital and live a civilized life there.

I would hone my skills.

And also Body Enhancement, and the like.

I was in a world that truly embodied the saying “as long as you live, you can try again.”

And I would develop attractive products, too.

For now, I had to earn money or I wouldn’t survive.

Then, if I could, I’d search for a way to return to Japan.

As for that… at this point, it felt extremely unlikely.

“Ah, come to think of it—what about magic?”

“Basically, magic belongs to the nobles. Still, since third sons and beyond, or those who fall from power and become commoners, exist… there are some commoners who can use magic, but it’s rare. Among them, people with storage abilities are in huge demand. Merchants in the royal capital would want to hire them. And nobles, too. But apparently, even capable people like that have a hard time if strange types set their sights on them.”

That was useful to hear.

That was one possible plan as well.

Like a warehouse or transport company.

Or maybe… something like those monthly rental storage boxes in Japan—“human storage containers,” basically.

But in an isekai with no room for carelessness, it meant I’d need to be extremely cautious.

“Well then, gentlemen. Thank you for telling me so many useful things.”

“Not at all, not at all. At our age, this kind of thing is about the only fun we have left.”

“Ah—miss, the bill.”

“Fifty copper coins.”

A slightly plump “miss” from a bygone era told me the amount.

I handed her one precious silver coin and asked a favor.

“Use this. With the rest, let these gentlemen drink their fill.”

Then I thanked the old men and stood up.

“Have a good night! Thank you for all the great stories.”

“Oho! You’re sharp for a young man!”

Sent off by the knowledgeable old men, I headed back to my room.

It was nothing but incredible information.

Right now, to me, it was worth a fortune.

One silver coin was cheap for that!

For now, I supposed tomorrow I’d aim for the next village.

And that night, the village was raided by a bandit gang.

A harsh bell, violently hammered in the dead of night, jolted me awake.

Even the frenzy that bell signaled seemed to lose to the pressure of darkness, cutting off abruptly.

This was—

“Bandits!”

A shout echoed in the distance.

“What!?”

I sprang up in a panic.

While hurriedly fixing my clothes, I looked out the window—fires were breaking out everywhere.

Hey!

This wasn’t a joke.

Crap—was this a raid by the vicious, lawless garimpeiro-class type?

I… I’d been careless.

Maybe I’d relaxed too much after finally, with great effort, getting myself a place to stay.

I’d planned to depart toward the royal capital tomorrow morning.

I’d been testing my PC functions in bed, and since I was tired, I must have fallen asleep as-is.

I hadn’t set the radar or the alarm.

Damn it—this was a fatal mistake.

So for the village, it hadn’t become a “good night.”

And—unbelievably—this inn had already been hit.

When I expanded the map to a size that showed the whole village, the number of red dots was insane.

Could I even count them?

A red dot blinked in the margin; when I focused on it, it displayed the number fifty.

That was a lot!

The village had been hit by a midnight surprise attack and had fallen behind.

There were also 350 yellow and 52 gray.

Gray was the dead.

This was serious.

And bandits had actually forced their way into this inn, too.

Inside the inn, yellow dots kept turning gray.

My own face might have gone pale.

This was bad!

They were already on the second floor.

Fast.

I’d been asleep, so I was still in my tracksuit, like pajamas.

I hurriedly stacked multiple casts of [Body Enhancement], and did the same to the tracksuit.

Adrenaline kicked in as well, flooding my body with strength as I tensed.

I’d only just found my goal—no way was I dying in a place like this.

I knew where they were.

The radar showed red dots.

When I zoomed in, they were already right in front of this room’s door.

Were they trying to kick in the door, the one barred from the inside!?

There wasn’t a second to hesitate.

The next instant, I steeled myself, pulled out a great spear, and with both hands I hurled it with full force straight through the door.

Thrown with my enhanced power, it punched through the thin wooden door of the cheap inn like paper, carving a huge hole.

I kept pulling out more and throwing them in a frenzy.

My life was on the line.

There was no time for hesitation.

More than half the flimsy boards of the cheap inn door were blown away by impact, and the hallway beyond became visible.

Including the first two, I’d driven in four more spears in rapid succession, but of the four red dots, only two disappeared in the end.

Watching the radar, I gripped a spear in each hand and stepped out into the hall.

The others were no longer there.

All that remained were two corpses pinned to the wall by six spears.

Fast again!

The remaining ones had already gone outside the inn.

They were practiced.

They always assumed counterattacks, didn’t they?

The bodies with spears cleanly driven through them, and the overwhelming, raw stench rising from the large splatters of blood that had flowed down the hallway—

This was my first murder in my long life.

Ugh… spare me the splatter.

Even if it hit me hard, I didn’t have time to dwell on it.

If I spaced out, I’d be killed.

Just like the ambush by Gryon in the mountains.

If I hadn’t acted, it would’ve turned into close-quarters combat in a cramped room against four seasoned killers—an overwhelmingly bad situation for me.

Maybe the surprise attack had numbed my brain with adrenaline.

And maybe I’d adapted a little, since I already had a life-and-death battle against a monster behind me.

I never really had an “everything will work out” mindset to begin with.

Maybe it was also because I’d grown up in a city where, at the end of the Sengoku era, streets were stained with overflowing blood, and during U.S. firebombing raids, masses of people were burned alive.

Even now, that city never lacked execution mounds and memorial stones.

They said the number of temples and shrines in the city—setting scale aside—was about the same as Kyoto.

If you did nothing against an attacking enemy, you and your family would simply become corpses.

My homeland’s history was etched into me at the genetic level.

I collected “those things” stuck to the wall.

They might be useful later.

Like “ears” for mercenaries.

There might be bounties on them.

—What!?

Those bastards who ran outside, without a shred of hesitation, set the inn on fire!

Just to kill me—for taking down their comrades.

There was no one else alive in the inn anymore.

They’d slaughtered them.

And I was the only guest, anyway.

Tch—so they’d stolen oil from the kitchen and splashed it around, too.

What efficiency.

The flames spread in no time.

Fire had already reached the first floor, the staircase was engulfed, and smoke was filling the building.

Bad.

If I inhaled smoke, I’d be trapped in the fire and die.

This raid was absurdly professional.

No mercy. No hesitation.

This was beyond a joke.

Damn it—I’ll kill every last one of them!

At this point, it was kill or be killed.

Maybe my short-fuse temperament helped—without hesitating, I moved to counterattack.

The ones who’d attacked me were outside the inn.

Two of them were standing together—idiots.

I’d drop one of my homemade bombs on them.

Aiming from the window, I lit it, then used line-of-sight through the item box to drop it right over their heads—and it exploded almost instantly.

The power was intense.

In daylight, the white smoke would’ve been insane.

They were, of course, dead.

But if I’d thrown it by hand, it would’ve been dangerous even for me—that timing made me panic a little.

Figures—shoddy junk made by an amateur on the fly.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d blow myself up.

For now, I could only use it through the item box.

Just as I’d thought, it was too unstable, so it needed improvement.

The history of explosives had always been a cycle like this.

Unstable powder and explosives detonated on their own, blowing up military depots—stuff like that was practically routine.

Apparently it even happened once at a Japanese Army powder storehouse in eastern Mikawa.

That site was now a Self-Defense Force facility, and if you toured it, they explained things like that.

At least for me, I didn’t have to worry about it exploding during storage.

So that made four down.

Trying not to look too closely, I collected the bandit corpses that had been blown apart.

I was calm enough to think they probably paid rewards for kills.

After stacking more Body Enhancement, I steeled myself, tore off the window shutters by brute force with my enhanced strength, and jumped barefoot from the burning second floor.

But I landed with an easy thump.

It was so shockless that I almost felt silly for a second.

Then something heavy slammed into my abdomen, making me involuntarily cough out a breath.

It was an arrow—with a steel broadhead!

Whoa!

This was not the time to relax.

I was grateful I’d enhanced my body—and my clothes.

Maybe my increased HP helped too.

I wasn’t hurt at all.

Normally, I’d have died in one hit.

Checking the radar in a panic, I saw there were about four of them.

A four-man cell or something?

What was this, airsoft?

Except right now we were literally in a real survival situation, killing for real.

And their heads were wide open—careless to the extreme.

See you.

From above them, I mercilessly rained down roughly three hundred spears—the best piercing weapons in any world.

That made two teams—eight kills.

I checked, and the red dots were down to thirty-seven.

The villagers were fighting hard.

Over ten percent of the elite bandits had already been reduced by villagers.

Because I’d warned them, they’d had time for mental preparation and the minimum war-ready setup.

But after a midnight surprise attack, the village hadn’t escaped unscathed—there were many dead.

They’d been ambushed by ex-mercenary types, so the casualties were brutal.

At this point, there was only one option: finish it completely.

There was no room to say, “I don’t want to kill people.”

There were lots of children in this village.

I changed clothes, put on shoes, got ready, found bandits with the radar, and slipped behind the nearest group.

Then, in the darkness, the glint of my handmade spears fell on them almost soundlessly.

Those gleams—possessing sharp piercing power thanks to modern Japanese craftsmanship—delivered an inescapable fate, and they died without ceremony.

That made twelve kills for me.

Then I attacked two more groups of bandits in rapid succession.

Tonight’s forecast was spear-rain; I didn’t need to hear it.

By this point, the total number of bandits I’d killed was twenty.

Twenty-three remaining.

The villagers seemed to have dealt with seven.

That cut the enemy down to less than half.

Since they were spread out across different places, they still hadn’t realized how many had been wiped out.

There was probably no radio in this world, and they wouldn’t expect to struggle that much against villagers anyway.

I prioritized attacking where I could flank, and picked them off in sequence.

Thanks to stacking Body Enhancement to an extreme, I could move at shocking speed—even if it was brute-force speed.

I took down three more groups.

That made my total thirty-two kills.

With their numbers reduced, the villagers hit back even harder using a multi-person encirclement tactic.

They managed to take out about twenty percent of what remained.

The enemy was down to eight, and they finally realized the odds had turned against them.

They began preparing to retreat—far too late.

I had no intention of letting them escape.

No—I couldn’t let them escape.

If they did, they’d gather more comrades and return to banditry.

I pictured the villagers I’d seen in the daytime.

If only I’d handled things properly, it wouldn’t have come to this mess.

Chasing the enemies as they gathered—maybe for a headcount—I prepared about five hundred dropping spears.

Then, on the battlefield, a dangerous rain glittered in the dark night.

In an instant, the last enemies, who’d gathered to flee, were annihilated.

I killed forty bandits in a frenzy.

Even if it was self-defense against a raid, my first murder had turned into a mass murder.

Compared to an ordinary serial killer in Japan, it was literally an entirely different order of magnitude.

By Japanese court standards, I vaguely remembered “usually, three or more murders warrants the death penalty,” but people like that were rare.

In peacetime, for a civilian kill count, wasn’t this among the worst in Japan?

My future isekai life felt bleak.

If I recalled correctly, the record for murders in Japan was 169, wasn’t it?

I prayed my lifetime kill count wouldn’t surpass that.

At this pace, in a world where life was cheap, it didn’t feel impossible.

But if I didn’t do it, I’d be the one killed.

That was the kind of world this was.

I felt like I might get depressed.

Still, it was fortunate my first human battle happened at night.

In the daytime, I might have hesitated from staring directly at bodies.

And the sheer amount of flowing blood would’ve stripped away my composure.

The village had 322 survivors and an appalling 80 dead.

There were many injured too.

Probably half the survivors were wounded.

The village chief was safe.

But the inn and the shop had burned down.

After such a savage raid, the number of dead was probably “low,” relatively speaking.

Two tenths of the people were lost, but at least the village could still continue.

I approached the village watch, who were still on guard, dumped the bandit corpses with a thud, and said:

“I killed forty bandits. Do you pay reward money?”

The villagers were stunned, but I continued.

“There were fifty bandits in total. Ten were killed by the village, and I killed forty. I wanted to capture some for interrogation, but that would’ve been difficult for me. And letting them escape would’ve been trouble, so I wiped them out. The ten I saw earlier were among them. I recognize some faces. You can consider this bandit gang exterminated.”

“Who are you?

You’re incredibly skilled. And you have storage ability, too?”

One villager stared wide-eyed.

They’d realized I had storage, but at this point there was no helping it.

“It’s nothing—I travel as a merchant alone. Being able to handle myself like this is only natural. I won’t lose to bandit trash. Though, tonight I was asleep. I slept thinking the village had prepared and could handle it if they came. But I was naive. I didn’t expect them to attack the very same night after I spotted them. Maybe they were desperate for something.”

I dropped the overly polite, ingratiating speech.

After committing outright violence, it didn’t fit anymore.

“You’ll get a reward. We have to report to the town’s lord as well.”

That was what Chief Damul told me.

“The problem is… tonight’s lodging burned down. Sigh.”

Looks like I’d have to sleep outside tonight.

It felt extremely hard to bring out a car or any modern-civilization-smelling object here.

Even my tent was too colorful and flashy.

I should’ve brought something drab like a JSDF tent.

“If so, come to my house. If it’s alright that those who lost their homes come too.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’m grateful just to have a roof.”

Yeah—far better than outside.

“Tonight we’ll post guards and stay alert. You rest well. You saved us.”

“I’ll take you up on that. To be honest, I’m exhausted. I’m really exhausted.”

I stored the bandit corpses again.

My mind felt numb, and even seeing bodies didn’t affect me much.

They attacked first.

There was nothing else I could do.

Still, even if they were bandits, it didn’t change the fact that I’d killed a lot of people.

It would be bad if it hit me later, like a soldier returning from war.

This world probably didn’t have counselors or psychiatrists.

I was beyond tired.

It was mentally brutal.

I just wanted to sleep like a stone.

I followed the village chief’s guidance, and collapsed onto the shabby bedding—nothing but old cloth—like I was shutting down my mind.

The next morning, after waking late, I was served a meager meal: thin barley porridge.

Even that was probably the best the village could manage right now.

I prayed, and ate it gratefully.

Then the magistrate came and said:

“I’m going to report to the town today, so please come with me.”

“Ah—I don’t have identification, so I can’t enter a town.”

When I said that, he looked quite shocked, so I gave my usual light excuse.

“Um… I wasn’t raised in a town or village, so…”

“It’s fine. I will write a temporary identification document, and you can register at the Adventurers’ Guild in the town. It’s common for traveling merchants to also be adventurers. You are the one who rendered great service this time. You must be rewarded. For the sake of those who died, too.”

Really?

I was delighted by the unexpected development.

Honestly, I’d mostly fought to protect myself.

And in the latter half I’d gotten fired up and it turned into a massacre.

The day after all that, I was surprised at how relatively okay I felt mentally.

Maybe things like HP and MP had effects like that.

And… I was someone who’d been born and raised in a place notorious nationwide for bad public safety.

Historically and temperamentally, it was a hot-blooded region, and even someone relatively mild like me had spent over fifty years slaughtering bad guys in my head.

So I ended up going to the town with the magistrate and his people.

The village’s few horses had been killed by the bandits, so we walked to town.

Horses were valuable, weren’t they?

Come to think of it, those bandits had been on foot for some reason.

Was it because maintaining horses was hard?

It felt like you could feed them with roadside grass.

Or maybe they traveled through mountains to erase their tracks.

Ah… the horses here had been friendly and cute—what a pity.

I’m glad I patted their muzzles first.

May they rest in peace.

Since the village was still on alert, the village watch would stay behind to guard and clean up.

Only three of us headed to town: the magistrate, one subordinate villager, and me.

“Well, the bandit gang is dealt with, and you’re with us as well. I’m counting on you.”

“Leave it to me!”

I grinned and rubbed my hands together in the most flattering way possible.

That was the ex-salaryman in me.

People in this world walked incredibly fast.

Measured with the map function, they were casually doing about 5 km/h.

If they got serious, they could probably keep up a pace like a Japanese person jogging lightly, for a decent distance.

Without Physical Enhancement, I couldn’t have kept up.

With yesterday’s gains as well, by the time we reached town, my Physical Enhancement had risen to Lv. 3.