Seeing Rei emerge from the dugout cabin, the bandit glanced at Seto beside him.
In Gilm, Seto was beloved by everyone—but that was largely because the residents there weren't hostile toward Rei. Compared to them, this bandit was clearly Rei's enemy. Because of that, if the man tried anything suspicious, Seto wouldn't hesitate to attack.
The man understood this as well. Or rather, even if he didn't grasp the finer details, he knew that one wrong move would mean death, so he stayed perfectly still.
Rei returned to stand before the man and looked toward the dugout cabin.
"Just to confirm—is the treasure you lot have only what's inside that cabin? For some reason, there was nothing but a huge pile of axes in there."
"Huh? Ah... um..."
The man faltered at Rei's words. Since he'd been the one guarding the place, he obviously knew what was inside the cabin. That was precisely why he judged it unwise to stay silent and finally opened his mouth.
"Behind that dugout cabin, there's a hidden staircase leading to a basement! The treasure is down there!"
The man's words caught Rei off guard. Naturally, if there were bandits and a building nearby, one would assume treasure was hidden there. But if the building contained nothing but axes, it made sense to conclude that searching further was pointless and give up.
(Even in the manga I read back in Japan, there were tricks like that—if you wanted to hide a human corpse, you could just put a dead dog on top of it to throw people off... or something along those lines.)
Unfortunately, Rei wasn't particularly fond of detective manga, so he didn't actually know whether that trick was truly effective. Still, thinking about it logically, if you were digging up the ground to find a corpse and discovered a dead dog instead, most people would see that and stop digging.
Rei convinced himself the dugout cabin was probably something similar.
"Got it. Then... no, actually. If I go around back and find something else hidden, it'd be a hassle to come back and ask again. You're coming with me. If there's some kind of trap, you'll be the one regretting it."
For instance, if you try to collapse the underground passage and bury me alive, Rei added with a full smile.
Sensing something ominous in that smile, the man shook his head frantically.
"There's no trap like that! You can't hide treasure in a place with that kind of trap in the first place!"
There was some truth to those words. But at the same time, there were parts Rei couldn't quite accept. For bandits, the treasure they'd amassed held enormous significance. It wouldn't be strange for them to think they'd rather kill whoever tried to steal it than let it be taken. After all, treasure could always be dug up again even after a cave-in.
Of course, in Rei's case, even if the ground collapsed while he was at a relatively shallow depth, the odds of him surviving through some means were high.
"Anyway, come with me. If there's no problem, then that's that."
Saying so, Rei led the man around to the back of the dugout cabin.
"So? Those boxes?"
Behind the cabin, several wooden boxes were lined up. With nothing else suspicious in sight, if there was a staircase leading underground, it had to be beneath those boxes.
"Yeah, that's right. Push those boxes aside, and there's an underground passage."
"I see. ...By the way, what's inside the boxes?"
"Rocks, sand, stuff like that."
For the bandits, the boxes were there to conceal the underground passage where their treasure was stashed. The contents didn't matter—they just needed to be heavy enough that no one would try to move them casually. ...Though that did make things troublesome when hiding newly acquired loot, they'd simply accepted it as unavoidable.
"Then there's no problem."
Rei replied, then touched the wooden boxes one after another, storing them in his Misty Ring. Once the boxes vanished, an iron door was revealed beneath them.
"No way..."
For the bandit, it must have been a completely unexpected sight. He froze mid-sentence with a gasp of surprise.
Leaving the bandit where he stood, Rei opened the door and descended underground. For the record, the door was heavy enough that it would have taken several brawny men gathered together to open it—but for Rei, that was hardly an obstacle.
The staircase leading down wasn't particularly long. After descending about five meters, Rei arrived at the basement. There was another iron door here, and this one was locked to boot—but for Rei, such things were no obstacle at all. He forced the door open, snapping the lock. In a sense, it was a crude yet highly efficient method of lock-picking. Naturally, there were limits to what locks could be opened that way. If it had been a sturdier lock, even Rei wouldn't have been able to force it.
Entering the basement, what Rei found was...
"Well now... it might be worth some money, but for bandits, there'd have been no use for it."
He muttered to himself. After all, the majority of what was there were iron ingots.
Selling them to a blacksmith would fetch a decent sum, but bandits obviously wouldn't have connections with ordinary blacksmiths. That meant they'd have to sell to dark merchants who traded with bandits—but iron ingots carried considerable weight. And if dark merchants were caught by guards, they'd be arrested on the spot.
Some dark merchants bribed certain guards and maintained friendly relationships with them—or rather, most of them did—but even for those merchants, selling ingots required a lot of effort for very little profit. If these had been magic ore ingots, it would have been a different story. But what lay before Rei were nothing but iron ingots.
On top of that, since they'd been obtained by bandits, the purity of each ingot would need to be individually inspected. A lot of effort for very little money.
(Still, there's no doubt they have value. That's surely why the bandits couldn't bring themselves to discard them.)
There was a considerable quantity of ingots, and selling them at market price would undoubtedly bring a substantial sum. That was surely why the bandits couldn't throw them away and had hidden them here. There were also jewels, gold coins, and silver coins, but even so, the iron ingots vastly outnumbered everything else in volume.
"In my case, I've got plenty of uses for them, so I'll be taking them all."
Saying so, Rei stored everything in the basement into his Misty Ring.
Selling the ingots was difficult partly because dark merchants couldn't afford to draw too much attention, and buying from bandits meant they'd need to sell for more than the purchase price or operate at a loss. But Rei had defeated the bandits—though most hadn't been present—and seized their treasure, so he had no capital invested. Even if he sold them for a few copper coins, he'd still turn a profit.
Of course, Rei had no intention of selling at such a low price.
Alternatively, rather than selling to a blacksmith or a merchant, he could use them as throwing weapons. Or he could toss them into Fire Whirlwind to boost its lethality. Were they more practical as throwing weapons? Since they were ingots, they were all uniform in shape. That meant when throwing them, he didn't have to worry about wind resistance or similar issues—he could use them consistently without much concern.
"In terms of spoils, this wasn't bad. ...For me, at any rate."
The bandits had probably been unable to discard the ingots and been at a loss for how to dispose of them. But for Rei, the ingots held great significance in the sense that they could be used as weapons as they were. Of course, using ingots in such a manner would make any blacksmith's eyes bulge in outrage, and for the bandits who had possessed them, it would have been utterly unacceptable.
"The rest is information. ...That said, from what I've heard, they don't seem to be survivors of bandits who'd been operating in this area for a long time, so I can't expect much on that front."
From what he'd briefly gathered, those bandits had only arrived here recently. Given that, and considering the current situation, the likelihood of them having the information Rei wanted was very slim. Even so, there was a chance—a truly slight, one-in-a-million chance—that they possessed what he was looking for, so he intended to gather what he could.
Stepping outside with these thoughts, he found Seto and the bandit man exactly as they'd been before he entered the basement. For the bandit, if he so much as tried to run, he'd unquestionably be killed by Seto. That belief was surely what kept him from fleeing, even though Seto was lying on the ground with his eyes closed.
In fact, Rei thought that was the correct assessment. Just because Seto appeared to be sleeping, if the man tried to escape... what awaited him would be certain death. Since Rei had given the order, Seto letting the bandit escape was virtually out of the question.
"Looks like you stayed put."
"In this situation, there's no way I could escape. ...So, how was the basement?"
Having come this far, the man must have decided there was nothing he could do about his predicament, because he seemed somewhat calmer now.
"I never expected that many iron ingots."
For some reason, the man looked surprised at Rei's words. He opened his mouth timidly.
"I'm impressed you figured out they were iron ingots. Even we didn't know what they were when we first got them. We only found out after asking the merchant who was holding them."
"Comes with the job. I get plenty of chances to see all sorts of things. Iron ingots aren't exactly uncommon for me."
This was no exaggeration—it was simply fact. As an adventurer engaging in all kinds of activities, he had ample opportunities to see not only iron ingots but also magic metals like Mithril. Of course, that was because Rei was a highly skilled adventurer; an ordinary adventurer wouldn't easily be blessed with such opportunities.
"Now that the treasure situation is sorted, let's move on to the interrogation."
"Interrogation...? What more do you want to know?"
The man had already explained that his companions wouldn't be back for several days. Given that, it was only natural for him to wonder what else there was to ask.
"First off—why did you lot come to this mountain, to the area around Egginis?"
"Why? Because we heard there was better money to be made here."
"There. Who exactly did you hear that from?"
Whoever was funneling bandits to Egginis must surely understand what was causing the bandits to disappear. That being the case, whoever had told them they could earn money around Egginis would be a major clue for Rei.
But contrary to Rei's hopes, the bandit man shook his head.
"Who, you ask? It was just a rumor, I couldn't tell you who exactly..."
"Think harder. If you can remember that, I might just let you go."
"Really!?"
The unexpected words that left Rei's mouth clearly caught the man off guard. He stared at Rei in disbelief.
But for Rei, when it came down to it—letting one bandit go versus obtaining the information he wanted—the answer was obvious. Even the bandits he'd encountered on the road to Egginis had been released because they provided valuable information. Besides, the man before him couldn't continue as a bandit anymore. At the very least, he couldn't keep being a bandit in Egginis. He'd been left behind as a house sitter, and Rei had stripped the place clean of everything. Even if the bulk of it was iron ingots, selling them at a fair price would still amount to a considerable sum. And the man had let it all be stolen. If the other bandits found out, they'd definitely come to kill him.
"However, you understand what will happen if you feed me false information just to save your own skin, don't you?"
At Rei's words, laden with killing intent, the man nodded again and again.