Episode 355: Interlude (Somewhere in the Piata Empire)
“Guess there’s no choice…”
Eleven shabbily dressed men were present.
All were covered in dirt and grime, wearing tattered clothes.
Some had faces swollen with obvious bruises.
“A-are we really doing this…? Th-those… T-Taraizo guys, they have a lot of soldiers, right…?”
“…I heard that too. Maybe we should just find a decent wagon somewhere else…”
“That wagon ain’t comin’, that’s why we gotta do this! Got it!?”
The leader of the group raised his voice at the others’ timid words.
“We’re out of food! All the nearby villages are fortified with Self-Defense Corps! If someone can catch a boar or a deer, fine!”
“D-don’t ask the impossible… I can’t set traps…”
“E-even the rabbits got away, heh, heh…”
They were outcasts, driven from their respective villages.
Notorious men, hated in their original villages and towns, and eventually exiled.
These hopeless men naturally gathered, formed a gang, and became bandits… but ultimately, they couldn’t overcome the violence of numbers.
They attacked villages guarded by Self-Defense Corps armed with proper weapons, only to be repelled, and barely managed to survive by sneaking around.
But they had reached their limit.
Naturally, they had no ability to support themselves. They didn’t know how to obtain food in the wild, and when they found a rabbit, they all chased it, only for it to escape in the end.
Their meager food supplies probably wouldn’t last even a week.
In the first place, they didn’t have the mentality to save or share.
Some were already worried about where their next meal would come from.
“Only those Taraizo guys’ wagons are running around here. We have no choice but to attack them. Sure, there might be a lot of soldiers in the war zone, but they wouldn’t be riding in a wagon just to carry cargo.”
“T-that’s right… I-I feel like we can do this, yeah…!”
“Yeah, let’s do it! When are those guys coming next…?”
“Tomorrow night. They were running last night…”
And so, the men devised a plan to attack.
The target wagon traveled the same road at the same time every three days.
If they timed it right, attacked the wagon, and stopped it or knocked it over, they could do whatever they wanted.
With such a crude, barely-a-plan, the men began to move.
First, they snuck into a nearby village’s lumberyard at night and stole small logs, carrying them together.
A group of eleven couldn’t carry large timber. It couldn’t be helped.
Then, during the day, they tied branches to the logs to serve as handles.
Somehow, they managed to make it so all eleven of them could hold the logs and run.
Once they had done this much, the rest was easy.
They would hide with the logs in a side road, and when the wagon came, they would all run out, carrying the logs, and smash them into the wheels.
They practiced with the logs a little and became convinced of their success.
After that, they cheerfully consumed their remaining food and alcohol, and waited for the time to come.
“…Hey! Wake up, you guys!! Crap, it’s time!!”
“C’mon, don’t sleep, wake up! We’re gonna be late!!!”
Since they had even brought out the alcohol, naturally, some of them had fallen fast asleep.
They didn’t have anything to light the way, so it was pitch black all around.
Even if the men had fallen asleep, well, it couldn’t be helped.
Even so, a man who miraculously noticed the wagon’s lights in the distance kicked his companions to forcibly wake them up.
The men cursed at each other, and somehow, in the moonlight, they grabbed the logs and lifted them.
The man who had been drinking was staggering, but no one paid any attention to it.
“Alright, it’s coming, it’s coming…”
“I’ll give the signal, you guys, run…!”
“P-please…”
In the darkness of the night, the wagon came, shining brightly.
They called it a wagon, but it was not a wagon at all.
In the first place, there were no horses pulling the wagon.
The wagon ran without horses.
And unlike ordinary wagons, its running sound was subdued.
The rattling noise of the wheels was almost non-existent.
“Here it comes, here it comes…!”
And then, the man at the very back, the relatively clever leader of the group, watched the approaching wagon and timed his move.
He hadn’t even bothered to determine a simple point to start running, relying solely on his intuition to somehow make it work.
“Alright… 3! 2! 1! Go!!”
“…Uooooooo!”
“Let’s gooooooo!!”
“Uraaaaaaaa!”
In response to the leader’s shout, the men ran.
Only at this moment did everyone’s actions align.
They grabbed the branches tied to the logs and moved their Legs. They carried the heavy logs and charged at the wagon.
“…! T-too fast…!”
But.
As expected, a random command didn’t result in perfect timing.
The logs were about to jump out onto the road before the wagon arrived.
Of course, the man at the front would also protrude with them.
The man at the front tried to stop his Legs in a hurry. But the men behind him didn’t notice.
Therefore, the man who let go of the log bumped into the man behind him, who was surprised and let go as well.
The first few men released the log.
The unsupported log plunged into the ground.
“Uooooo!?”
“Gue!!”
“What…!?”
“Ouch!!”
Whether it was a bad place or a good place.
The log stuck in the ground, but even so, with many men pushing from behind, it jumped out onto the road while losing momentum.
The wheels of the oncoming wagon ran over the log.
And, incidentally, it ran over several men who had been thrown onto the road, causing the wagon to heave its body greatly.
A tremendous sound echoed around.
Not only the men who had directly collided with the wagon, but also some of the men who had been caught in the log.
Even so, about five men stood up at the scene.
“Uoooooo…! That hurt…!”
“Damn it, what the hell…!”
“…Ouch…! H-hey, uooh!”
And, in front of them.
There was an overturned wagon.
“…W-we did it, we did it!”
“Huh…? …O-oooooo!”
The men who could move cheered and rushed towards it, trying to seize the supplies from the wagon.
There was no one to help or care for the fallen men.
From the beginning, they had gathered with the idea that it was better to be together because it was more profitable.
Now that they were here, if they could monopolize the wagon full of supplies in front of them, there was no one so noble as to bother helping their rivals.
“The door, where’s the door!?”
“I’m going to the back!”
“M-me too…!”
The wagon had fallen spectacularly, but it didn’t seem to be broken, perhaps because it was made so sturdily.
The walls and ceiling hadn’t broken, and the supplies hadn’t been thrown out.
And, just as the men who had rushed over were searching for the door and clinging to the vehicle.
“Emergency. Link Lost. Stand Alone Mode.”
A mysterious voice, which none of the men had ever heard, echoed around.
“Warning. Warning. Attack on this unit detected. Commencing threat elimination.”
With a bang, the upper part of the wagon—the side, since it was overturned—sprang open.
With clanging sounds, a black, rod-like object protruded from it. It grabbed the edge of the sprung-open door and pulled its body out.
In the night illuminated by the moonlight.
A General-Purpose Escort Unit, operated by the Armed Group known as
“Self-Defense Protocol, Execute.”
A sinister shadow stood on top of the wagon, turning its head around and around.
“W-what is that…!?”
The men were completely frozen by the sudden event.
If it had been a human crawling out, they would have gleefully attacked.
But this, no matter how you looked at it, was not human.
Moreover, it didn’t even look like a living creature.
Because it was so alien, the men’s thoughts were completely frozen.
“Threat identified. Commencing neutralization.”
And then, a flash and an explosion, and the men’s screams tore through the darkness of the night.
Sometimes I want to shine a spotlight on these kinds of people…
Sorry, I want to refine the settings a bit, so I don’t think the story will progress for a while. Yes.
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