The Third Assault... Taro Attacks

(R-18G depictions are omitted, but please be advised that bandits are executed.)

[Core Room]

"It seems the bandit who escaped last time has called in his comrades. Headcount estimated at around twenty, same as before. One mounted, however. Judging by the interval between raids, their base is at most a three-to-five-day march out."

"So horses that aren't Horse-Head do properly exist too, then."

[Halfway up the Hill]

"So this is where my younger brother was swallowed by the earth."

The mounted bandit was plainly a man, but dressed as a woman.

"Yes."

"Advancing any further is dangerous. If there's a trap here, there must be a spy lurking about to set it off. We'll fall back for now and take another road."

The bandits came down the hill and circled once around its base.

"There are three roads up the hill, the first being the main approach. We could of course ignore the roads entirely, but… oh? This road, up to here it's just an ordinary road, but beyond this point the ground has been hardened. So this is the trap, is it. You'd think to outwit me, Hiki Uemon-no-jō?"

"Lord Taro, shall we leave the road?"

"No, surely there are devices on both sides of the road as well. My Hiki clan is descended from the toad, and ranks, alongside the Tsukuba clan (descendants of the bullfrog), as a house of distinction. Unlike that grubby little upstart Oyama Shimotsuke-no-suke. A trap as paltry as this, no better than child's play, I can see through with ease."

Without realizing it, Uemon-no-jō had splendidly insulted the younger brother who'd walked straight into that very trap.

"How shall we proceed?"

"This road is the central one, and its orientation roughly matches the run-down highway down at the foot, which means there's traffic in this direction. The others are the road continuing to the highway's far side, and the road leading out into the wasteland on the side with no highway. We set up a stronghold at the foot of the hill and prey on travelers. Being a new settlement, they cannot possibly be self-sufficient… is what I'd like to say, but we're short on provisions."

"Lord Taro, even to turn back we've food only through tomorrow. It won't be enough."

"Was bringing the horse a mistake. Now then, we might dispatch an envoy to demand surrender, but the envoy is liable to become a corpse, and to make camp here would be as good as announcing, 'I want to die. Please raid me by night.'"

That they hadn't the strength to mount a night raid was a circumstance he had no way of knowing.

"And then there's the high likelihood that that tower is a 'dungeon.'"

"That's the worst of it. A dungeon's walls can't be broken. There are of course no doors original to a dungeon, so the trick of breaking down a door is open to us. The best play is to enrage the tower's lot by devouring all the fields around it, draw them out, and storm in the moment a door opens, except…"

"That tower no doubt doubles as a watchtower, so our movements are in plain sight to the other side. Surely there aren't traps around the entire perimeter of the fields, though."

[Core Room]

"Cautious, for bandits. If night falls like this, instead of a night raid we could send in a loudspeaker, or even a drone… Mint, do we have drones?"

"Nope. I'd like to build one eventually, but the partwork-encyclopedia-style magazine appendices look tricky to handle, so it's better to take something apart and reassemble it."

"And even if we said bottle rockets, magazine appendices don't come with gunpowder… If they'd just camp within the dungeon's sphere of influence, I could pull the ground out from under them while they slept, but they're staying just barely outside."

"Could we open a hole right beneath the bandits while they walk?"

"Removing it from the dungeon structures, that's instantaneous, but digging a hole takes time. If they leave the road I can deal with a single intruder using the electric fence, but with this many it'd be impossible."

[Halfway up the Hill]

"Camping is dangerous. We settle this before dark. Men, eat all the provisions you like."

"Aye."

"But do not burn the rope we brought. There's wire inside it. It's a secret weapon for cracking this dungeon."

[Core Room]

"… Marie-san, the bandits are having a banquet."

"There's no sign of a supply unit coming either, and I can't think they brought any great quantity of materiel. Could there be something beyond my imagining at work? This world's technology level looks to be around the 18th century, but Umeda, the Mercantile City is probably the 20th; Asuka, the Temple of Stone the 7th; this dungeon the 21st. That being so, it's not out of the question that 22nd-century goods are circulating from some dungeon or other."

"Troublesome."

"If we knew their true nature we could devise countermeasures, but not knowing what sort of tools they're carrying is the problem."

[Halfway up the Hill]

"The tower's arrows won't reach as far as the edge of the fields, but there's no telling where the pit traps lie. Still, a pit trap is finite in size.

So, to raise the strength, I've prepared rope reinforced with wire run through it. First, we bind ourselves to one another with the rope, so that even if someone should fall into a pit we can pull him out. On that footing, we advance carefully and trample their fields. After that, as arranged this afternoon."

"Lord Taro, there's something like a fence."

"Just three strings strung between stakes. The strings are fastened with some odd contraption, but… no matter, cut the strings."

[Core Room]

"More of a monkey than I expected. Watch them closely, and… Mint, switch on the current!"

A blue-white spark leapt, and in the next instant the bandits dropped one after another.

"Marie-san, this electric fence is…"

"I brought in cabling for high-voltage power reception and ran the World Core's 6600V high-voltage current straight through it. The voltage is about the same as an animal electric fence, but the current is overwhelmingly greater, so it functions perfectly well as a trap. I'd originally prepared it to pick off a lone spy, but to think it'd be this effective."

Hiki Uemon-no-jō, who'd been mounted at the rear, was startled, fell headfirst from his horse, and by ill luck broke his neck and died. The horse went galloping off somewhere.

"Enemy annihilated."

"So it would seem. In the end the bandits' identity remains unknown, then."

It was merely that Hiki Uemon-no-jō Taro never got the chance to announce himself.

Incidentally, an electric fence is dangerous even at 100V when the current is high. Agricultural electric fences are designed to deliver only an unpleasant electric shock by means of high voltage and low current. For this reason, they cannot be used to dispatch deer or boar.

[Outskirts of the Library Dungeon]

The dungeon side had no chance to learn the bandit's full name, but since the head was obtained nearly intact, Taro's head was put on display beside the highway, a severed head on a pike.

In the otherworld there was also a cross-dressing member of the Hiki clan named Hiki Yoichibyōe-no-jō, but this world's Hiki clan is a branch of the Fujiwara clan, not an ancient clan that took the toad as its totem.