Chapter 155: From Being Too Late to a Counter Attack (1/2)

Loren’s party hurriedly left the store and got back to their inn. They headed for the stable, where their donkeys were kept, as soon as they arrived. Sensing something had happened, the innkeeper asked them about the current situation, but they had no time to answer him. They packed and loaded the donkeys, but before they could take them out of the stable, the situation had changed.

“Ah, this is no good, ain’t it?”

Gula, who was pulling the donkeys’ reins, said the moment she left the small hut. In front of them rose a thick, billowing column of black smoke, completely different from the wispy one they had seen at the grocery.

Apparently, some people weren’t satisfied with the havoc they had wrecked somewhere else, and had stretched their hand to this town. Or maybe it had been their intention from the very beginning.

“Are we too late?”

“Seems so.”

If the town had already been under attack, it was unlikely that the bandits would let their party leave so easily. Not to mention that the smoke was rising from the south, where they were heading to. They couldn’t leave town without passing the area where something was surely happening.

“We have no other choice but to leave through another exit and take a detour later.”

“If only our opponents were stupid enough to let that happen.”

Their opponents were large in number, and if their operation method was good, they would never leave a gap for townsfolk to escape.

If the town was larger, the bandits wouldn’t have enough men to keep watch and even if they did, the crew would be spread thin. But in not-so-large towns like this one, that was too good to hope for.

“Even if they are stupid, we still won’t be able to move fast in the current situation. They’ll discover and surround us sooner or later.”

Lapis said when looking at the donkeys’ loads, which had become huge again after food restocking. The two creatures looked somewhat tired. Donkeys weren’t fast animals even at their prime, and considering the amounts of luggage currently on their backs, they could barely walk, let alone be able to run away from anything.

“I’ll take responsibility and deal with this…”

“Don’t talk about things you can’t do.”

Gula tried to say, but Loren held her back.

Tizona probably thought Gula was feeling responsible and tried to solve the situation alone even though she couldn’t, and Loren was dissuading her from doing so. But the truth was, Gula really could solve all this by herself, but Loren had no idea what Tizona would think after witnessing that, so he had to rein her back. His ‘can’t do’ carried the nuance of ‘can’t show Tizona’.

“Then lemme check the situation first.”

“What do you plan to do?”

Gula didn’t answer Loren, she just threw the donkeys’ reins to Tizona, then placed both hands on the stable’s wall and smoothly climbed up to the roof.

Loren and Lapis just watched her climb while Tizona asked in amazement:

“Isn’t she a magician?”

“…If you think all magicians are delicate, then you’ve made a big mistake.”

“Is that so?”

Loren couldn’t answer that. To his knowledge, amongst the small population of magicians in this world, none could climb a wall with almost no foothold or support using only hands and feet like Gula did. But if he was asked how she did it, he wouldn’t be able to answer, so he had no other choice but to keep his silence.

“Loren, this is bad! I can see fire coming from the south!”

Gula, who was standing on the rooftop with one hand shading her eyes, looked at the direction of the flames and said. From her position, she could see things they couldn’t down here.

“Then it’s truly a raid, and we have no choice but to act accordingly.”

“There should be a limit to our bad luck. Is there anyone with ties to the God of Pestilence here?”

“I-it’s not me, I think.”

Tizona was the only one to get flustered by Lapis’ question and Loren didn’t think it could be him at all. The only one who seemed likely to have links with the God of Pestilence was the one currently on the rooftop. But, since he didn’t know the difference between the God of Pestilence and an Evil God, he couldn’t consider the two entities to be the same.

“What do we do now, exactly?”

“There’s no other way but to repel the raiders. I’m not sure how many of them are there, but they should withdraw if we kill about thirty, right?”

“Does it mean there are almost a hundred of them in total?”