Chapter 7

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Chapter 7

Matilda, being a rabbit beastman, has a much better sense of hearing and is much more sensitive to detecting presences than regular humans.

However, even with Matilda’s animal instincts, she wasn’t able to notice the men who had mastered how to hide their presence all the way up to their own breath. They went completely unnoticed until they leapt out of the bushes.

Matilda was too late to notice.

Immediately, she shouted, “Noein-sama!” and kicked at the noise coming from the bushes to her right, and when she turned to look at her master.

“Whoa, don’t move. Don’t move… “

Her precious master was being held captive with a knife edge to his neck.

Noein himself was still having a hard time comprehending his situation because it was so sudden.

“This guy is your owner, right?… If he is of importance to you, don’t move …… and I won’t take his life.”

The man with the knife to Noein’s neck warns him, while looking at Matilda.

He was probably in his mid-thirties, with numerous scars on his large arms that extended from his short sleeves.

At first glance, he had the air of someone who had spent his life in battle. This guy was probably the leader.

Next to him, the slender man who was holding his sword against Noein’s belly also had a battle-hardened expression.

“Hey Radley, are you alive?”

The leader of the group called out, and the man Matilda had just kicked out replied, “Ouch, my face…….”

The man’s nose may have been broken by the kick to the face, and as he stood up, his nose bleeding, he seamlessly held his sword up and circled around to the front of Matilda.

“…… Well, what do you want? Money, is it?”

Noein spilled the words in a carefree voice that sounded somewhat out of place in the tense atmosphere.

In spite of his tone, his face was pale with fear.

Seeing her beloved master frightened at the point of a blade, Matilda’s chest ached. But there is nothing she can do to save him right now.

“Indeed, our aim is money. If you act obediently, we won’t kill anyone. If the bitch of a rabbit beastman wants to be a pain in the ass. I’ll let you, her owner, stay a hostage to keep her in check.” [Tl note – They have used bitch twice to call Matilda which is mentioned in latter chapter so, keep that word as is.]

While explaining this, the leader of the group kept an eye on Matilda. I’m not sure if he pegged her for a fighter after seeing her kick one of the group members, or if he was just being cautious.

“In the meantime, Radley, tie that bitch up. We’ll take this guy and get the hell out of here.”

Commanded by their leader, the man who got kicked approaches Matilda with a rope in his hand.

Matilda could only glare at him and withdraw, as the man said, “Hey, hey, I’m just going to tie you up. I’m just going to keep you stuck until we get far enough away. …… You move and that kid’s going to get hurt, okay?” warning her.

Right as the warning left his accomplice’s mouth, the leader brought the tip of the knife close to Noein’s right eye……

“All right. I’ll be quiet! So please don’t do anything to Noein-sama.”

Matilda said this before the tip of the knife could reach Noeine’s eye, and as she fell to her knees.

The man with the broken nose tied her up deftly and then went through the wagon, picking up the several bags of food.

The slim man, on the other hand, rummaged through Noein’s clothes and said, “There it is, Boss,” and handed the bag containing all of Noein’s wealth to the leader of the group.

After taking the money and food, the men seemed to have achieved their goal.

“We’ll run away then. We’ll let the kid go on the way, but if you come after him, we’ll cut him up and kill him. If you don’t like it, just roll over there tied up.”

After the leader of the group said that, the three of them picked up Noein and fled.

“It’s okay, Matilda. I’ll be fine, I’ll be okay.”

The master, who was only fifteen years old, gave Matilda such brave words despite his anxious and teary face, as he was carried away like a piece of luggage.

Just as he was about to disappear.

“No!!!…Noein-sama!!! Noein-sama! Noooo!”

Trying desperately to control her agitation and think of a way to save her master, Matilda finally reached her limit and shouted so.

・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・ ・

Noein Arkvist’s character is one that’s quite twisted, but that doesn’t mean he’s mentally tough.

He was born into an unfortunate situation, so he is not afraid of being hated by others. But that didn’t prepare him to be held hostage with someone with legitimate intent to kill, let alone have a blade physically pointed at him.

He’s never been good at physical activities, has a small body, has never been trained in combat, and has never been in a life threatening situation before.

He was very scared now. He had been told that he would be ‘released on the way to escape’, but there was no way he could trust what the bandits were saying, and he was more and more afraid that he could be cut to pieces and killed.

I don’t want to be killed. I still have a lot of things to do in this world, both as a lord and as an individual.

So, how can I get out of this situation?

He knew that he would be no match for these bandits in terms of strength, even if the heavens and earth were turned upside down.

The only way to get out of this situation is to use your head, your words. It’s not that I’m confident in my ability to speak, but I’m sure there’s more hope for me than to challenge them with my strength.

While Noein was thinking about this, the bandits continued to move with Noein in their arms. They seemed to be heading south, following the shallow part of the Bezel Forest.

Along the way, two more people joined the bandits, perhaps in their company. They were a man and a woman.

“Boss, it seems that the prey was captured safely.”

“Oh, you guys did well … Now that we’ve come this far, I guess we’re done with you.”

The leader of the group looks at me as he says this to his subordinate who has joined him.

The other four also looked at us. In total, there are five pairs of eyes looking at me.

I’m scared.

“I found out while hiding in that city and gathering information, you seem to be a nobleman. ‘Baron of the Forest’.”

The man who was the leader of the group said. As he said this, the man’s face, which had previously shown no emotion, instantly became filled with hatred.

“I lied when I said I would let you go. Usually, we really do let hostages go unharmed, but not nobles. We tend to kill nobles. So, we’ll be killing you too.”

Says the man and pulls out his knife.

No, no, no, bad, bad, bad. I’m really going to get killed.

“What, why do you only kill nobles? Why do you have a grudge against the nobleman?”

These were the words that came out of his mouth as soon as he could in order to prolong his life even for a minute or a second.

“… Hmm. You want to know? You’re going to die eitherway. I’ll tell you. The reason we have a grudge against the nobles is because they tried to kill us.”

Then the man – Yuri – told him about their circumstances.

They were working as a mercenary group of a certain scale, and he was the leader of the group.

He was hired by a nobleman in the southern part of the kingdom as a force to provide troops for the conflict with the Pallas Empire in the east, and went to the battlefield.

There, he was turned into a pawn by his employer as a means for the regular army to escape, and many of his comrades died miserably.

They fled the battlefield in order to survive, and by doing so, they cut down several knights and were hunted down by the army, and ended up becoming bandits.

They resented the aristocracy for putting them in such a situation.

When the aristocratic kid heard Yuri’s story, which he himself thought was quite tragic, he did not show sympathy, but rather had a pondering look on his face.

It was a strange reaction considering the flow of the story.

“Hey. What the hell are you thinking?”

“… Could it be …, could it be, that it was the Count Kivileft who hired you guys and tried to use you as pawns?”

“What?” “What the hell?” “How did you know that?”

Yuri quickly hardened his expression and stifled his agitation, but his men could not go that far. They reacted bluntly, easily revealing that they had escaped from the command of the Count Kivileft’s army.

Then, the aristocratic kid, who had been frightened to the point of incontinence, changed his expression drastically and smiled wickedly.

“I see….. I see, I see. You guys were also discarded by that fucking decrepit old man who’s also my father ”

It was a very different and unusual look for a kid who may or may not be an adult, and who had been crying half the time earlier.

It’s the kind of evil smile that would frighten even Yuri, who has known many battlefields, just a little.

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This translation is presented by Nocturne Translations.

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