8 — 1-7 Bandits

Well then—what was I supposed to do now?

I had gotten out of the car and was walking.

Since nothing had happened on the way to the town, maybe I’d let my guard down a little.

I’d assumed that on a highway people traveled, truly dangerous things like monsters wouldn’t show up all that often.

I later learned that assumption itself was wrong.

I was walking on purpose, thinking I’d raise my Physical Enhancement level.

Why leveling worked in such a strange way, I had absolutely no idea.

After trudging along and taking breaks—about five hours into it—I suddenly heard a sound that ripped through the air.

What—? Before I even had time to think, several men blocked the front and back, and I was neatly surrounded.

Wow. This was the first time in my life I’d experienced something like this.

In America, I’d dealt with a knife robbery once, though.

Those guys approached pretty friendly, lulling you into letting your guard down—and then suddenly shoved a blade in your face, locking your mind and body in place.

It was the kind of nasty robbery that exploited the emotional drop.

These guys, on the other hand, didn’t look like they’d become my buddies for even a split second.

Since I was wary from the start, I actually felt calmer than I had with that American knife robber.

Compared to Gryon—the one that had the presence of several bears—these were just humans.

Looking down, I noticed an arrow stuck in the ground near my feet.

So that earlier sound had been this.

It hadn’t hit me only because I’d happened to stop suddenly to check the time.

Maybe it was “the usual thing” again.

This kind of crisis-avoidance that looked like pure coincidence happened to me fairly often.

That was close.

No—this was bad.

In my despair, I hadn’t even deployed the radar!

Come on—was I an idiot?

When I finally activated it, the screen turned bright red.

Right.

So that meant hostile intent.

Ten of them in total.

They all wore grimy leather clothes with crude armor on top.

Every single one looked exactly like a classic mountain bandit.

Eight were right in front of me.

Two were lying in ambush behind trees.

The hidden ones probably had ranged weapons.

Did this world have guns?

They were licking their lips with bladed weapons in hand.

It didn’t look like they had guns.

Instead, they used bows.

Those weren’t something to dismiss either.

On Earth, every country used to kill each other with them.

Judging by the quality of the fletching, their arrows looked deadly.

They were bandits.

When I appraised them, a whole list of vicious crimes like murder lined up one after another.

If I spaced out, I’d be killed.

I decided instantly—pulled the car out of the item box, and dove in.

After that monster incident, my movements had gotten a lot sharper.

The bandits looked stunned, like they’d never imagined cornered prey could escape that way.

I hurriedly locked the doors.

Thank goodness.

No stupid “I panicked because the car was locked” scenario!

I immediately started the engine, slammed the shift into Drive, and mashed the accelerator to the floor.

The roar of that monstrous four-liter engine—built in Japan, my homeland’s Detroit—and the charge of a gaudy, never-before-seen block of color surging forward under full throttle made the bandits jump back in a panic.

Even in a life-or-death moment like that, I didn’t forget the seat belt.

Habits were terrifying.

While I was at it, I visually stored some of their belongings into the item box.

That might help me figure out who they belonged to.

It could be useful for something.

I also snatched up the arrow that had been stuck near my feet.

Whew… that was close.

There was no arguing it—my head had been in the clouds.

Man, this was a world where life was cheap.

Was I really going to have to wander this unknown, dangerous world forever?

Monsters and bandits.

I could not be less grateful.

A mouthy blond delinquent in a town? If they were drinking, you could just sneak up behind them and hit them with a big wrench about fifty-seven times, and they’d usually settle down like a sheep or a pill bug.

But these guys weren’t something you could handle like that.

Unless you killed them, there was no fixing it.

This time, I kept the radar map fully deployed, with the warning alarm on.

Back there, I’d been about twenty kilometers from that town.

After driving about ten kilometers from there, I spotted a village.

Just like the map said.

The next village was another thirty kilometers beyond that.

According to the wide-area map, this country looked several times larger than Japan, but the population density seemed very low.

I parked in a bit of open space and ran another simulation.

I wasn’t repeating that earlier mistake.

Driving the car into the village was probably a bad idea.

Especially with that flashy, bright-yellow body.

After filling my stomach with bread and juice and taking a leak in the bucket toilet, I checked my gear.

I copied the watch into something like a sturdy stainless-steel accessory and had it imbued with an item box.

On the left side, I arranged it so I could quickly pull out weapons like a sword, knife, spear, and axe, and I also prepared inventories for firebombs, gasoline, and ignition tools.

On the right side, I stored things I could deploy in front of me—rocks, iron plates—so I could use them as a shield if needed.

Basically, anything I held with my right hand was stored on the left, and anything I held with my left hand was stored on the right.

I could also pull items from the item box inside the magic PC, but it contained an enormous variety of supplies—so if I couldn’t grab the right thing instantly in an emergency, it could get me killed. That was why I prepared a dedicated item box.

Earlier, I’d desperately been thinking, “Car—now!”

I also kept the car in this one so I could deploy it immediately.

Given what had just happened, I re-applied reinforcement to the car carefully.

I also made sure the radar map was fully active.

I marched toward the village, but there was no one at the entrance of the fenced-in settlement.

Still, someone had to be watching from somewhere.

Right…?

As I kept walking, a sudden challenge rang out.

“Who are you? You’re an outsider.”

The speaker wore shabby clothes—he looked like an ordinary villager.

Yeah, villages like this were strict about outsiders.

“Hello! I’m a traveling merchant. I’ve come here looking to trade and find lodging for the night.”

I answered his harsh call with the biggest smile I could manage.

“Oh?”

Suspicion was plastered all over his face.

My outfit was just slightly off from this world’s fashion.

Leather boots, jeans, a sweatshirt, a leather jacket.

And on my back, a slightly large daypack—cleanly shaped, mass-produced, clearly an industrial product.

So, to steer his attention, I decided to drop a bomb right here.

“I saw bandits up ahead. Also, this is something I picked up.”

I showed him an arrow still caked with dirt, the one I’d yanked out using visual storage.

It looked as fresh as a dirt-covered radish.

Even if it was fresh, you couldn’t eat this one.

The man’s eyes widened, and he told me, “Come with me.”

I was hurried off to the village chief’s house.

This was a fairly large residence.

Well, it was still a small village, so it wasn’t anything extravagant.

Then I explained—embellishing the details a bit.

“It was about a third of the distance between the town over there and this village. There were ten of them. They looked extremely vicious and were heavily armed. I only survived because I spotted them first.”

Here, I made sure to sell it with big gestures, just a little over the top.

When I showed the arrow, the village chief pressed his mustached mouth into a thin line, deep in thought.

“Recently, there have been people attacked by bandits on the highway. We must prepare defenses immediately. Still—thank you for warning us.”

“Do they ever raid villages?”

“Of course. Even in this area, ten years ago a village was attacked, and it no longer exists. This arrow resembles what those men used back then. It’s likely there are far more than just ten of them.”

T-terrifying.

That kind of story sounded like something you’d still hear about in remote parts of Brazil.

Those were garimpeiros, right?

Among them were outlaws who would wipe out an entire village after looting it.

They were so experienced that they could even evade sweeps by a regular national army.

Even talking with Brazilians from big cities like São Paulo, you heard some intense stories—so out in places beyond the authorities’ reach, things like that probably did happen.

Brazil’s police sounded dangerous too, and public safety overall was brutally bad.

A Japanese older man I’d known more than thirty years ago—someone who’d worked at my company’s Brazil branch—had told me some shocking things.

When he arrived, his boss silently handed him a handgun and ammunition, a wordless “congratulations” message: Protect yourself.

I couldn’t stop my face from twisting.

“So you can tell that much from a single arrow… Also, I picked this up with it.”

From the bandits’ belongings, I produced a cloth with something like a crest on it.

The village chief’s complexion changed immediately.

“It’s them…” he muttered.

“Is there a shop in this village?”

I asked because I needed cash.

In a village this size, barter might work, but still.

“There is. Follow the road ahead and you’ll find a small shop—the only one in the village. Say… you don’t happen to have salt, do you?”

“Yes, I do. I have salt and pepper.”

“That’s good. We may have to defend ourselves. I was thinking of requesting supplies through the magistrate, but this is perfect. Sell it to the shop. Tell them the village chief Damur sent you—they’ll understand.”

I gave the chief a shallow bow and hurried down the village’s bumpy, hard-to-walk road.

Following a stone-strewn path along a wooden fence, just as instructed, I found a tiny, shabby shop.

“Hello. Village chief Damur sent me.”

“Yeah, hello. What’s this? Who are you? What did the chief say?”

The shopkeeper, wearing a rough shirt and trousers like any villager, looked me over rudely from head to toe as he asked.

“I’m a traveling merchant, but I saw a bandit group on the way. The chief said they might be the same people who raided villages around here long ago, so for defense preparations he wants salt and such.”

I used a polite tone I didn’t usually use—softened my voice like I was coaxing a cat.

“What did you say? Those washed-up mercenary types?! Fine. Give me every bit of salt you’ve got!”

Just now, an extremely dangerous-sounding term had slipped into the conversation…

I made it look like my bag was packed to bursting, and then produced about twice what it should have held.

They were copies: plastic containers swapped into glass with wooden lids, and pepper containers treated the same way.

“Now that’s…”

The shopkeeper’s eyes went wide.

Uh-oh—had I messed up?

“What is it?”

I asked tensely.

“These are fine containers. Aren’t they expensive?”

“I don’t know. They weren’t that pricey.”

I lied casually.

Even low-grade glass was too much?

Maybe I should’ve made every container wooden.

But it was too late.

So I decided to push through by force.

“Now isn’t the time to worry about that. Hurry and appraise them!”

I urged him on.

“Alright. Let’s see… you went out of your way to come here, and the containers are high quality. The goods look good too. I’ll buy them for five copper coins per jar.”

I put on a thoughtful face for a moment, then answered.

“Understood. It’s our first deal, so let’s agree to that.”

I accepted with a smile like I’d given him a special deal.

The cost was basically zero anyway.

No—well, I had actually bought the originals in Japan.

I’d just increased them with my object-copy ability.

A hundred jars each of salt and pepper became one thousand copper coins.

In total, that was two silver coins, thirty large copper coins, and five hundred copper coins.

“Sorry—this is a village, so it ends up being a lot of small change.”

“No, no. Thank you for a good deal. By the way, is there an inn?”

“Yeah—only one, and it’s also a tavern. It’s mostly for peddlers like you who pass through sometimes. Don’t expect much, though. On the other hand, it’s cheap. About five copper coins a night. That’s one jar of salt. Hah!”

Yes!

Village prices were cheap.

Maybe one copper coin was about 100 yen?

Then what I had on hand was around 100,000 yen.

Not bad.

Five hundred yen a night.

Ridiculously cheap!

That was totally the price of an old-school backpacker hostel.

Maybe even less.

I’d gotten money, but there was absolutely no way I could copy it.

The bandits’ status screens had shown “Rewards and Punishments.”

If I did it, that would definitely show up on mine too.

If things went bad, it might be time to call in the “Mr. Concealment” solution—but this world wasn’t something you could take lightly.

There might be magic skills or magical tools that could nullify concealment.

I couldn’t take that risk.

Not even if the chance was less than one in a trillion.

I was the kind of person who hated risk to an extreme.

So much so that it had often made my life worse.

And honestly, copying money just didn’t sit right with me on a psychological level.

Counterfeiting was a signature move of terrorist states even on Earth.

The communist bloc countries on Earth really were hopeless like that.

These days they’d gotten pretty rich, so aside from a few places, they probably didn’t do it anymore.

And cash had become high-tech enough that even if a poor country tried to imitate it, it would be difficult.

In my case, I could obtain all the trade goods I wanted, so there was no need whatsoever to do that kind of thing.

I couldn’t accept a taboo like that.

This world surely had people with Appraisal.

That wasn’t even some overpowered cheat ability.

That shopkeeper in the village had it.

Since people could appraise you via skills, I couldn’t just hand over anything recklessly.