The Big Brotherhood in the Rear gang moved through the road like a group of refugees, carrying sacks and barrels along with four wagons that were filled with stolen goods being pulled by the lowest-rank bandits that were not very strong in a fight and only useful as manual labor.
Right now they are currently relocating their base of operation after the incident last night.
Among the group of burly bandits in kilts, Gayder could be seen leading in the middle, his fur cape and kilt ripped in some places and his eyes darting wildly over his shoulder and upward in the sky, paranoid that the damn ghost might appear again.
"Don't slow down!" Gayder barked, voice cracking from dehydration. "That fucking thing can only come out at night, but that doesn't mean we can waste daylight!"
After the encounter with the ghost, Gayder immediately gathered his men and packed up everything they could carry from their hideout on the abandoned farmstead and fled into the night without looking back. They didn't even bother to pretend to care about some of their comrades who got trampled to death by their own gang members during the panic escape.
The bandit gang has traveled through the night nonstop until the sun rose again as they moved through the forest road without rest. Their legs burned with exhaustion, but fear kept them moving forward, as a ghost that they can't touch is not something that they could fight. They had never seen a ghost like that before, and Gayder even mistook it for a weak undead like a will-o'-wisp, but the ghostly scream that gripped their souls proved otherwise.
The gang kept moving for quite a while with their feet dragging on the dirt road, but then ahead, where the forest thinned slightly, they could see a lone carriage parked on the road in the distance with no sign of people around it.
"A carriage…?" Gayder squinted his eyes—no driver, no horses. Just an ornate carriage parked in the middle of the road. Even if his mind might be exhausted from the lack of sleep, he still could tell that it was fishy.
"Halt!" Gayder yelled an order, raising a fist in the air. His men stumbled to a stop, panting, and put down their sacks and barrels with a sigh of relief. Their leg muscles feel so numb and sore.
"Boss?" One of the bandits with a split lip from running into a tree last night when he escaped from the merchant caravan muttered as he looked at the mysterious carriage in the distance. "That... is quite a suspicious carriage, right? What do you want to do, Boss…?"
Gayder didn't answer yet as he squinted his eyes and tried to see the carriage better. The carriage was luxurious, made of dark red wood, and utterly devoid of any living being around it. It just sat there, blocking the narrow road like a misplaced whore in the temple. His instinct as a bandit screamed trap, but his pride, bruised and cracked from last night, shoved caution aside. He couldn't look weak to his men again, or they would begin to think about replacing him very soon.
"Tsk. Groban! Waldo!" Gayder called, pointing at two of his men. Groban, a stupid-faced brute missing an ear, clutched a mace in response, together with Waldo, a short brawny man, who nodded his head to Gayder.
"Go poke that fancy box. See if it's empty... or if someone's playing games." Gayder's voice lacked its usual false kindness, replaced by rough impatience. "If there's loot inside... drag it out, and if not, then we just take it with us; we can use another wagon anyway!
Groban grunted in acknowledgment, adjusting his kilt before walking towards the carriage with Waldo, who spat his saliva and unsheathed his sword. They move past the other bandits, weapons held loosely in their hands while the others look at them with bated breath.
The air felt unnaturally still to the two bandits; even the birds had stayed silent as they finally arrived five meters from the carriage while they quickly raised their weapons in readiness. They now feel a bit nervous as they move towards the silent carriage door, wondering what they will find inside.
But before the two of them could get too close, the mysterious carriage suddenly distorted and rippled, not like heat haze, but like disturbed pond water. The two bandits blink in confusion, watching what is going on in front of their eyes as well as the other bandits in the distance, and then it's gone. The carriage vanished into thin air with no explanation whatsoever.
"Ah…?" Groban and Waldo uttered in surprise, as where the carriage once stood, there's now something else, something more terrifying, appearing in its place.
"What…??" All of the bandit gang now see fifty black-armored knights just materialize in perfect formation, straddling black skeletal horses whose bones were as black as coal, with their hands holding a white bow and arrow. It was so abrupt that the bandit's brain went into a loop of denial.
When he came back to his senses faster than anyone else, Gayder almost choked on his own spit at the sight of a platoon of knights riding what seemed to be an undead horse.
"Ambush—!!" He immediately screamed, voice cracking but still loud, but before the warning word could even finish echoing, two of the knights in the front of the formation quickly drew the white bows with their movements synchronized, unnervingly precise, like they were sharing a brain cell. Then the arrows on their bow glowed with faint light—magic condensed into lethal projectiles—then with a crack of the bowstring, twin streaks of death sliced through the air towards the still dumbfounded two bandits!
Groban's mace didn't even manage to move, as the magic enchanted arrow was already going through his throat, silencing his grunt forever, while Waldo jerked his head backward as the second arrow pierced his forehead clean through, and his sword clattered uselessly to the ground beside him. Both bandits immediately crumpled like a sack of potatoes before they could even put up a fight.
No command was shouted verbally, but with a telepathic connection from their summoner, the Black Cavalry began surging forward in unison as one silent wave with thundering hooves tore into the packed earth, churning dust clouds behind them.
The knights' charge seems unstoppable—a dark tidal wave of shadow and steel coming towards the bandit gang, who now begin to panic.
Gayder's men cried out in fear as they saw the knights approaching; the terror of the cavalry charge broke their already low morale instantly. 'The ghost from last night and now this—are we fucking cursed…?!'
The bandits immediately dropped everything they were carrying on the roads as they summoned their last strength to escape. Kilts flapped wildly as Gayder's men scrambled into the forest, some tripping over roots and each other, but no one was helping anyone, as it was every man for himself.
"Don't split up, you fucking morons!" Gayder bellowed, desperation thick in his throat. But none listen to his order. Their courage already dissolved into panic as everyone ran for their lives.
÷×÷×÷
Far away from the battlefield, inside the real carriage that was not the illusion Xin prepared for the cavalry to ambush the bandit gang, Zarba could be seen sitting on the seat with Xin as they watch a floating magic circle that displays the image of his golem cavalry charging towards the fleeing bandits.
"They gave up way earlier than I expected," Zarba remarked, leaning closer to Xin's magic circle. The fleeing bandits resembled panicked ants scattering from a kicked nest—utterly disorganized from the bird's-eye view.
"Well, they seem to have already been low on morale to begin with, so it's understandable," Xin murmured, her fingers tracing the edges of the magic circle before the image flickered to display a bandit tripping over his own leg and another diving into a thorny bush with his clothes and flesh getting cut by the thorns around him. "Fear does make men desperate and stupid but also grants them great resolve sometimes..."
"Heh, even if they went into the forest, it's not going to help them." Zarba chuckled, as he had already prepared another ambush in the surrounding forest to take care of the runners; he is determined to not let anyone escape with their lives. "They'll find out soon enough…"
÷×÷×÷
Inside the forest, there was suddenly a movement as a bunch of ranger knights slowly revealed themselves as they came out from the trees and the bushes like experienced hunters. They moved in silence like a predator, flanking the group of panicked bandits that were fleeing inside the forest without knowing that another ambush awaited them…
When one of the bandits, panting and whimpering, broke from the main group and wandered off by himself, hoping to leave this gang altogether, one ranger knight simply stepped into his side from behind the tree, and a short sword flashed clean through his neck as the bandit's headless body ran three more steps before collapsing while his head with a shocked expression rolled around on the ground behind him.
The ranger knight watches the body with indifference before swinging the sword aside with the bandit's blood sliding off the blade completely, and then the ranger knight turns his masked face towards another bandit who walked in on the murder scene with his expression frozen.
The newly arrived bandit didn't even notice that another knight was already standing behind him with a dagger rising above his head…