“Carriage Ambush” ~From Emma's Perspective~

“Oi! You lot inside, get out here! And don't bother resisting!”

Outside, they could hear a thief bellowing as he kicked the carriage.

“M, Madam......”

A maid with a plain face and glasses turned to her mistress, trembling.

“......Let us get out.”

The woman in the plain but elegant dress, Baroness Emma Salar, had gone pale, yet she set her face in a dignified expression and said it in a clear, carrying voice.

“That's right. It's no use staying shut in here.”

Hearing a young voice agree, the baroness and the maid turned to the carriage's other passenger.

The owner of that voice was a beautiful girl with pink hair.

Emma's only daughter, Sara.

“I peeked outside just now and saw what the thieves were up to! There are about 10 of them surrounding this carriage!”

Sara said it with an eager huff, not the least bit scared.

“So we just have to beat about 3 each! It's simple math nano!”

TL Note: Sara likes to end her sentences with “nano,” a cute, childish sentence ending in Japanese. It doesn't change the meaning; think of it as her verbal tic.

“Yes, nicely calculated. But that's the sort of thing you say once you can at least use basic magic properly.”

“Auu......”

After gently hugging her beloved daughter, Emma entrusted her to the maid.

“......I will try to negotiate. You, please look after Sara. Find an opening and try to escape.”

“Y, yes! L, le, leave it to me! Even if, even if it costs me my life! The, the young miss, I'll d-d-definitely save her!”

“I'm not running! I'm fighting too! Hmph! Hmph!”

It wouldn't do to provoke the thieves carelessly.

Clamping a hand over the fussing Sara's mouth, Emma and the maid stepped down from the carriage.

Waiting for them there was a large, bushy-bearded man.

Flanking him were a long-faced eyepatched man and a square-faced eyepatched man.

Most likely, the bushy-bearded man was the boss of this thieves band, and the two at his sides were his lieutenants.

The time was around 3 p.m.

The summer sunlight was strong, searing the skin, but Emma was so tense she didn't even notice the discomfort.

“Hoh...... I'd heard rumors that she was a beauty, but this one's quite a prize, isn't she?”

The bushy-bearded man ran a lecherous, leering gaze over Emma, then grinned and said it.

“Hehehe! She sure don't look like a mom who's had a kid!”

“And Sara, was it? The little girl's a real cutie too, ain't she! Hehehe! She'll fetch a nice price!”

Listening to the thieves' vulgar conversation, Emma clicked her tongue inwardly.

These people had launched the attack knowing exactly who Emma and the others were.

This ambush was not a random occurrence.

“......What is it you want?”

To buy time, Emma began negotiations.

Buying time, though, only meant hoping for some miracle, like a party of adventurers happening to pass by.

This was the highway passing through the Salar Barony of the Teenidys Kingdom.

It was a country road flanked by forests on both sides, and people rarely traveled here.

In other words, the possibility of Emma's actions paying off was quite low.

“From the way you talk, you must know full well that we are of the Salar baronial house. So why us? Threaten a poor baronial house like ours all you like; the ransom we could pay is hardly worth the trouble, you know.”

Indeed, the Salar baronial house was not a wealthy noble house.

Emma herself originally came from a certain count's house, but her relationship with her birth family was not very good. To put it bluntly, it was bad.

Bad enough that she was certain her birth family would never spend a dime of their own money to help her after she married into the Salar baronial house.

“Well, y'see, we were aske...... Ogh!?”

The bushy-bearded man punched the square-faced eyepatched man just as he was about to say something.

“Don't you know, my good lady? A pretty face sells high all on its own. High enough for the likes of us to get by a good long while. Hahaha!”

“““Hehehehehehe!”””

Following the bushy-bearded boss, the underlings burst into laughter.

Using the moment, Emma let her eyes roam over their surroundings, but it was just as bad as she'd feared.

The male servant who had been the coachman seemed to be alive, but he had been beaten down and was lying on the ground.

And the 3 adventurers they had hired as guards were standing with the thieves, hemming Emma and the others in.

They were in cahoots.

“Now, you bastards! Hurry up and tie them up! We're taking them to the hideout!”

“““Yessir! Boss!”””

Under the bushy-bearded man's command, the thieves lunged at Emma, Sara, and the maid.

The maid, who had been covering Sara's mouth and hugging her, was violently pushed aside and tumbled to the ground.

“H, hey! Stop it! Get your filthy hands off me!”

Once that happened, it was only natural, given her personality, that Sara, who had been kept quiet with a hand over her mouth, would start raising a ruckus.

She was more stubborn than most and not intimidated in the slightest.

“Hehehe, what a spirited missy.”

“Shut up, Baldy!!”

“Baldy!!?”

The hatted thief who had grabbed Sara's arm instinctively pressed down hard on his hat with his other hand.

“You! Brat! How did you......!”

“Shut up, Baldy! Let go of me, Baldy! I'll save Mother and the others! BALDYYYYY!!”

“You, brat! Again, and again......!!”

The hatted thief, Hagen, who had been trying to tie up Sara, grew furious, his eyes bloodshot and his face turning bright red.

Lately his forehead had crept all the way back to the crown of his head, and he was very sensitive about it.

Anyone who pointed it out and laughed at him, no matter who, he never forgave.

One must not make fun of things people are sensitive about.

It is a basic rule of the human world.

Whether they were fellow thieves or some cheeky boy from a nearby village, such people had all had their heads split open by Hagen's axe.

Of course, Sara knew nothing of Hagen's hair situation and had simply called him Baldy as a form of abuse, but that didn't matter to him.

“I'll never forgive you! I'LL KILL YOUUUUUU!!”

“!? Hey, you! What the hell are you doing!? She's merchandise!!?”

Hagen whipped the hand axe from his belt up over his head, ready to bring it down on Sara.

The bushy-bearded boss noticed his underling's rampage and tried to stop him, but it was too late.

The filthy hand axe, stained with the blood of many.

Thirsting to sip the brains of a new victim.

Came down hard, split Sara's skull, and burrowed inside.

......It didn't.

Because.

GAAN!!!

A tremendous roar like that rang out right at his hands.

By the time Hagen noticed.

The hand axe he had been swinging down.

Had snapped from the handle onward, and the head had been sent flying somewhere.

“Wh, what just happ......!?”

Enough force to send the head of a hand axe flying.

Taking a jolt like that to his hands out of nowhere, Hagen staggered and looked around in confusion.

What had happened.

But he would never, ever know the answer.

PAAN!!!

Because the very next instant, with that very sound, his head had burst apart.

That was the end of the man called Hagen, thief and serial killer.

“Wha!?”

“What is it!? What's going on!?”

“A mage!?”

Into the ears of the thieves, panicking at their comrade's sudden death, came two sounds, paan, paan, the same bursting sound they had heard a moment before.

“Hih......!?”

Emma involuntarily gasped.

The heads of the two thieves who had been restraining her and the maid had suddenly disappeared.

The thieves' corpses crumpled to the ground in a heap.

“Wait, wait, wait!? What is this!?”

“What's happening!? What the hell is going on!?”

“C, come out, you mage bastard! Hiding and sneaking around! You coward!!”

Their confusion only grew, and the thieves milled about in a panic, weapons at the ready.

But then, all at once, they froze.

Surely it wasn't because the word ‘coward’ had goaded them.

It was because whoever had wrought this carnage had stepped out of the thicket on one side of the highway.

When they saw who it was.

The thieves were stunned.

Of course, so were Emma and the maid.

And Sara as well.

It was.

She who stepped forward out of the deep forest shade cast by the blazing sun.

Was a small girl, one who at first glance even seemed frail.

Clad in filthy, tattered clothes.

Despite having come from the forest, she was barefoot.

With ominous and dreadful black hair, black eyes, and white skin.

That was the kind of girl she was.

It's not good to make fun of people's physical characteristics.

Let's go through life thinking properly about how other people feel, okay?

But I think it's a bit much to snap and try to kill someone just because you felt mocked.