A battle was taking place in the direction they were heading.
At Rei's words, Lindy's expression turned severe.
It was only natural. In this whole affair, there was a chance—a real chance, however slim—that they might find a lead on what had happened to Golias.
"Let's go!"
With those brief words, Lindy sprinted past Rei.
Find a lead, immediately incapacitate them, and extract information.
Driven by that thought, she ran with her spear gripped tightly in hand.
Rei chased after Lindy, mulling over the current situation as he ran. A question nagged at him: Isn't this all a little too convenient?
It was only natural to think so. They were hunting bandits in search of leads on Golias, and by sheer coincidence, someone connected to his disappearance just happened to appear?
Any reasonable person would conclude this was a trap.
Still, I have no choice but to go. If there's a trap, I just need to tear it to shreds.
An ordinary adventurer, upon learning there was a trap ahead, would avoid it. But Rei possessed enough cards up his sleeve to tear through a trap with his own strength—let alone destroy it entirely—with ease.
With Rei's abilities, he could handle most traps, and even in situations where he couldn't, he still had the option of relying on Seto to take to the skies.
As he continued running with these thoughts... eventually, the metallic clashing reached Lindy's ears as well, and her pace increased even further.
Spear in hand, she burst through the underbrush and charged into the battlefield.
"That's far enough!"
She shouted sharply, surveying her surroundings—then froze in confusion at the scene before her.
"Lindy...? What are you doing in a place like this?"
One of the men who had apparently been fighting the bandits raised his voice in surprise at the sight of Lindy bursting out of the bushes.
The face staring back at her was one she recognized.
They weren't particularly close, but it was a party she had teamed up with on requests several times before.
"...Umm..."
She had been fully convinced that something—or someone—holding a lead on Golias's disappearance would be there, so the scene unfolding before her eyes was entirely unexpected.
Right at that moment, one of the remaining bandits was cut down by a companion of the man speaking to Lindy... and shortly after, Rei appeared.
Lindy was a familiar face, but to the men, Rei was someone they had never seen before, and they regarded him with caution.
That said, since he had arrived with Lindy, they likely assumed he was her companion. Though they kept wary eyes on him, they didn't assume a combat stance.
"So, what's the situation here? From the looks of it, someone beat us to subjugating these bandits."
At Rei's words, the men finally understood why Lindy had come and spoke with slightly apologetic tones.
"Sorry, Lindy. Subjugating these guys was our request. This one's first come, first served."
"I... see."
It made sense when she thought about it. Just because the bandits around Egginis were vanishing one after another didn't mean new ones wouldn't arrive to fill the gap—quite the opposite.
Given that, the fact that visitors to Egginis were still being targeted hadn't changed. If anything, since many of these bandits were freshly turned, they carried out raids far more frequently than necessary. The result was that while the bandits were always repelled, the number of attacks had actually increased.
Under those circumstances, it was only natural for merchants, lords, or anyone else in Egginis to commission bandit subjugation.
Moreover, while Egginis held the status of an Autonomous City, if public safety continued to deteriorate, there was a real possibility—worst case scenario—that it would no longer be able to function as one, and its autonomous authority could be frozen entirely.
"I have no problem with you taking the subjugation. But before that, can I have a word with those bandits?"
"Huh? Well, I don't mind."
For the party that had claimed the subjugation, since Lindy had also intended to hunt bandits herself, she wasn't making unreasonable demands like telling them to hand over the bounty. If all she wanted was to speak with the surviving bandits, they could accommodate that without issue.
...Though the fact that Lindy was somewhat popular among adventurers, and they wanted to earn her favor, was probably also a factor.
"Thanks. Then let me have a little chat with that bandlet over there."
She called out to a bandit a short distance away, whose thigh had been pierced by an arrow.
Despite bearing such a wound, the man sneered at Lindy, who was clearly younger than him.
"Heh, I got nothin' to say to a little girl like you. Though if you're offerin' to sweeten the deal... guagh!"
Lindy silently drove her foot into the man as he spat out words dripping with contempt.
And her kick hadn't targeted his body—it had targeted the arrow embedded in his thigh.
Naturally, that sent a far more violent lance of pain through him than a kick to the body ever would have.
The man had been acting tough, but even he couldn't endure that.
As the arrow snapped in half and clattered to the ground, Lindy simply fixed the bandit with an ice-cold stare.
Normally, even against a bandit, Lindy wouldn't go that far.
But right now, she wanted even the slightest lead on where Golias might be.
She couldn't afford to waste time on a slow approach.
If they had been the ones to take these bandits down, she could have taken her time and tried to persuade them without resorting to such methods.
But they hadn't defeated these bandits, and the window for gathering information was limited.
That was precisely why she needed to extract what she could as quickly as possible.
"Yeah..."
To those who knew Lindy's usual demeanor, her actions were nothing short of astonishing. They probably never imagined she was capable of something like this.
"You want information as fast as possible right now, so don't worry about it."
"...And you are? You don't look like Lindy's party member."
"Yeah, I guess you could call myself Lindy's collaborator."
Since Rei had his Dragon Robe hood up and wasn't accompanied by Seto, the man hadn't recognized him as Rei.
He answered the question without hesitation.
The man probably didn't fully buy it, but seeing Lindy's demeanor, he decided to trust him for the time being.
The Adventurer Man, prodded by glances from his companions, pressed further.
"So, what kind of information is Lindy trying to get out of the bandits?"
Rei considered how to respond... but quickly decided that since Lindy and the bandit weren't that far apart, he'd be able to hear their conversation if he paid attention.
"Do you know an adventurer named Golias? An acquaintance of Lindy's."
"Huh? Yeah, of course."
The man nodded immediately at the name.
It seemed Lindy's description of Golias as a well-known, skilled adventurer in Egginis was accurate.
"That Golias apparently vanished suddenly. So Lindy is looking to the bandits for leads to track him down."
"...Why the bandits?"
For the man, Golias going missing was serious, but it was only natural to question why bandits would know anything about it.
"Are you aware that bandits have been suddenly disappearing lately too?"
"Is that so? Doesn't feel like the total number of bandits has changed much, though."
"That's because..."
New bandits were flooding into Egginis one after another.
Rei had been about to say exactly that when a question suddenly struck him.
Isn't that a little odd?
It was true that the area around Egginis offered bandits a chance at a big payoff from a single job. That much was certain. But at the same time, if the rewards were that high, the difficulty was correspondingly steep.
Unless they were exceptionally lucky, they'd be counterattacked by escorts and killed in the worst case.
Weighing those circumstances, there was no denying that plenty of questions remained—just as with the bandits Rei and his group had captured earlier.
Disappearing bandits... and new bandits appearing one after another to replace them. If it happened a few times, sure—coincidence. But... no matter how many you take down, the bandits never truly disappear. Is that also a coincidence?
Even bandits blinded by greed valued their own lives.
Hearing that their kind was vanishing one after another, it wouldn't be strange for some to lose their nerve.
Despite that, bandits kept pouring in without pause.
Unless the bandits already in the area were disappearing or fleeing, the numbers should have reached an unnatural overcrowding.
Could that really be the product of mere coincidence?
Phrased that way, even Rei couldn't nod and accept it.
Something artificial was clearly at work.
If that's the case, then to what end? Gathering bandits means more is better. In other words, someone is deliberately spreading information to draw bandits here? But what do they do with them once they're gathered?
His thoughts churning, Rei shifted his gaze to Lindy, who was pressing the bandit for any knowledge of Golias, and to the other adventurers, who watched her frantic intensity with wide eyes.
To secure work for adventurers? No, that's absurd no matter how you slice it.
With bandit subjugation jobs available, adventurers wouldn't struggle for work. Even so, having that many bandits around Egginis meant that when weighing risk against reward, the risk was astronomically high while the payoff was startlingly small.
"Rei."
Lost in thought about the bandits, Rei suddenly heard his name and snapped back to reality.
He looked toward the voice. Unsurprisingly, it was Lindy.
"You're done?"
"Yes. He didn't have a single scrap of information about Golias."
Lindy made no effort to hide her frustration.
She had believed that these bandits, who had been active around Egginis for a reasonable stretch of time, might know something about Golias. That expectation had been completely shattered.
"I see. Any information on other bandit groups?"
Lindy shook her head at Rei's question.
"They're extremely tight-lipped. Ordinary interrogation won't squeeze anything out of them. It might be different if you handled it, Rei."
"We don't have that kind of time, huh?"
The adventurers who had allowed Lindy to interrogate the survivors would want to hand the living bandits over to the guards as quickly as possible—not to mention check the treasure the bandits had stashed away.
But with Rei—an unknown quantity—present alongside Lindy, they couldn't very well do that.
Depending on how things unfolded, a fight over that treasure wasn't out of the question.
Rei wasn't thinking along those lines at all, but that was merely his own perspective. He hadn't said as much to the adventurers, and even if he had, it was questionable whether they'd believe him.
"Right. Well, there are still other ways to find bandits. No need to fixate on the ones here."
Rei looked up at the sky as he spoke.
With Seto patrolling from above, locating bandits hiding in the mountains would be difficult but not impossible.
If they were concealed beneath thick branches or holed up inside caves, spotting them would be a challenge... but even so, it was undeniably more effective than searching blind with no leads.
Several of the adventurers who overheard this exchange directed curious glances toward Rei.
The party that had subjugated these bandits had probably struggled considerably to find this hideout in the first place. Given that, it was hardly surprising that Rei's claim—suggesting a high likelihood of finding new bandits—piqued their interest.
That said, they decided their own work took priority over questioning Rei. After confirming the bandits were securely bound, they left a man on watch and headed down into the underground hideout.
Watching them go, Rei left the scene with Lindy.
If they lingered any longer, Lindy would be fine as a familiar face—but he himself would likely draw suspicion.