Inside the barricade, crude thatched-roof huts lined the reddish-brown earth.
At a generous estimate, there were a few hundred at most. In human terms, the settlement was roughly the size of a village or hamlet.
"Not a soul in sight."
As the hooded man murmured this, peering at the surrounding houses, Mohi—the man with black hair grown long only at the crown of his head—chimed in.
"Yeah. With how on guard they were, I figured they'd at least take shots at us with bows from the houses, but there's no sign of anyone at all."
"Nine times out of ten, it's a trap."
"Must be."
Abandoning his previous relaxed demeanor, the hooded man, Koukin, drew a longsword from his waist and began advancing with slow, deliberate steps, scanning his surroundings.
Their marks were monsters, no doubt about it. But with the enemy's strength unknown, they couldn't afford to get careless. Those with soft heads were always the first to die. For bandits like them, that was practically an unwritten law of survival.
Mohi drew a knife from his waist as well, keeping his center of gravity low as he moved forward.
"..."
After advancing a few meters, Mohi raised his right hand, prompting Koukin to halt in his tracks.
There were patches where the reddish-brown earth had been freshly dug up. The signs were glaringly obvious; there was no need to even wonder what caused them.
Mohi picked up a stone from the ground and tossed it directly ahead.
The moment the stone landed, the earth gave way. It revealed a deep, gaping pitfall large enough to hold two or three men.
"Ha! A pitfall? They seriously think they can catch us with this garbage? Monsters really are simple-minded fools."
"Go easy on 'em. Amateurs fall for stuff like this all the time."
Koukin sneered mockingly.
Worrying had been a waste of breath. They were just monsters after all. They might have animal instincts, but they lacked real intelligence. At this rate, the whole job would be a walk in the park.
Humming a tune, Mohi twirled the knife in his right hand, nimbly stepping around the childishly crude traps.
Koukin snorted, sheathed his longsword, and followed.
When they entered the noticeably large building at the center of the settlement—evidently the residence of the monsters' chieftain—most of their fellow raiders from the Sadotela gang were already gathered inside.
"You guys made it too, huh?"
A fellow bandit with a blond buzz cut spoke up, looking bewildered. He led the team that had breached the settlement from the south, directly opposite Mohi's approach.
"Don't tell me your side was empty too?"
"Yeah, not a single one."
No matter how you looked at it, something was wrong. That was clearly the consensus among everyone in the room.
Sadotela's forces had entered the settlement from all eight directions and converged on the center. If no one had run into anything, the place was truly deserted.
"If they ain't here, does that mean they ran? What the hell was that barricade for, then?"
"Probably just buying time to get away."
"Dammit! We got played by a bunch of damn monsters?!"
The blond man kicked an abandoned chair, sending it crashing into the wall where it shattered into splinters.
"So, Mohi, what's the play?"
The hooded man turned to Mohi to ask what they should do next.
"Yeah, well... Huh?"
Just as he crossed his arms to think over their next move, a cloying, sweet scent hit his nostrils.
He had smelled this somewhere before.
As his nose twitched, trying to dig up the memory—
"Hey! Are you listening to me?!" Koukin barked in frustration.
"Aah, I'm right on the edge of remembering! Shut up for a second!" Mohi snapped back, clutching his hair in irritation.
"You piece of—"
A vein popped on Koukin's forehead at the dismissive tone, and he grabbed Mohi by the collar.
Right. Might as well ask him.
"What do you think this smell is?"
"Smell?" Koukin asked, his brow furrowing.
"Yeah. This sweet smell." Mohi raised an index finger.
Just as the words left his mouth—
"M-M-Monster!!"
The shaved-headed bandit, who had been unnaturally silent until now, let out a bloodcurdling shriek. Drawing the longsword at his waist, he swung it down at the blond bandit with all his might.
For a second, Mohi stared blankly as his comrade was cleaved diagonally across the chest, killed instantly, and collapsed onto his back. But gradually, his frozen thoughts thawed, and a vivid memory rushed back to him.
It was a conversation with an old man—now dead—who had been Sadotela's only poison specialist.
That's it. This smell is—
"Get out of here right now! It's dream grass!"
Twisting his body to dodge the wild swing of the crazed bandit's longsword, Mohi screamed the warning and bolted toward the exit at full sprint.
Tumbling out of the building, his mind raced.
W-What kind of terrifying scheme is this?!
He realized with sudden dread that their enemy wasn't soft in the slightest.
A sweet aroma hung heavy in the air outside. When dream grass was treated a certain way, its hard shell grew brittle, bursting under the slightest impact to scatter invisible pollen that triggered violent, crippling hallucinations when inhaled. A massive amount of dream grass must have been packed into the bottom of those pitfalls they had so casually triggered, and the falling stones had released it into the air.
Dream grass was known to disperse huge clouds of pollen when shaken or struck. That was it. There was no doubt about it.
"Hey, shouldn't we do something about those guys?!" Koukin shouted, emerging from the building and pointing back at the structure, where bizarre wails and agonizing screams still echoed.
"It's too late for them! If you don't wanna die, hold your breath right now!"
The interior of that building was almost certainly thick with dream grass pollen. The men who had arrived first had already inhaled a lethal dose of that sweet scent. They would never be human again. Mohi and Koukin had only been spared because they had barely stepped across the threshold.
"..."
Koukin nodded, his face deathly pale. Mohi gestured for him to follow and sprinted across ground where no traps had been laid. Thick clouds of dream grass pollen were drifting up from the pitfalls. At this concentration, a single breath in the lungs could paralyze a man, leaving his mind completely shattered.
Dammit! Dammit! Dammiiiit!
Screaming internally, Mohi kept running.
They had been naive. Utterly naive. They had looked down on their opponents just because they were monsters. But he would swear on his life: whoever engineered this plan was no mindless beast.
Even those obvious digging marks had likely been a psychological trap. Anticipating that seasoned bandits would follow protocol and dismantle every trap they found, the enemy had played right into their habits.
To begin with, dream grass was so dangerous that anyone who understood its effects would never dare touch it. Using it in such an insane way to turn the entire settlement into a massive trap was sheer madness.
How much further?!
Sprinting flat out while holding his breath was an agonizing torment.
"Aaaaaaaagh!"
Suddenly, Koukin's scream tore through the air behind him, and his presence vanished.
I knew it!
Mohi clicked his tongue as his worst fear was confirmed.
Koukin had stepped right into one of their traps. This one had undoubtedly been flawlessly concealed, without a speck of disturbed dirt. Mohi had only managed to avoid them because his treasure-type Gift let him perceive where the traps were laid.
This has to be a joke!
Koukin, their vanguard combat specialist, and the few mages they had were all dead. Capturing this settlement was completely out of the question now. Above all, he wanted nothing more to do with whoever devised such a devilish scheme. No matter what the boss said, he was turning tail and running—
Guh!
The moment he skirted past several pitfalls and stepped onto what should have been a narrow strip of safe ground, a heavy impact smashed into his chest. An instant later, an unbearable, searing agony tore through his spine, as if a red-hot iron rod had been driven straight through him.
Wh... what?
Wiping away the crimson liquid spilling from his lips, he looked down at his chest.
A single spear was buried deep inside him.
In the next instant, a shockwave rattled his skull, and Mohi's consciousness faded into pure white.