It's early in the morning, after some light training with the girls in a vacant lot near the inn, I decided I would be walking the streets alone today.
Dhammi-chan said that she and Blacksmith-san would go shopping for clothes. I managed to get the three Lords, Fire Lord-kun and Illusion Lord-kun, to do the porter work for today. Since Wind Lord-chan is also a woman, she should enjoy shopping with the other girls today.
Given that they have become my scapegoats for today, I pulled them aside and quickly gave them my thanks before heading out myself.
As I would be wandering alone, my hood and cloak alone cannot cover my Ogre body. I used [Metamorphosis] and [Shapeshift] to change my body into my previous human form.
I need to be careful, it's better not to become suspicious here and create a scene.
I continued with my information gathering in the city as I wandered around; rumors spread very quickly here, you know.
Basically, Ogres are known as Monsters that often go out of their way to harm other species. The same may not be said about a rare Ogre Mage, who rarely attack humans; but given their recognition as a very dangerous race, humans will probably be even more cautious around them. My troubles at the gate can also be attributed to it.
The situation at the gate happened because they had no ability to recognize that I was different than most other Ogres.
Just baseless prejudice. Typical of human nature.
I walked along the city's main street for about three hours or so. I stopped for lunch at a restaurant and spent some time gathering information. After a while, I left to continue exploring the city.
Since I wore some pretty good equipment, some thugs must have thought I would be a good target.
As a result, they started to trail me. There seems to be six thugs in total, armed with things such as knives and hatchets. The most amusing aspect about these idiots was their "Gwehehe" squeaking laughter. I found the similarity to the stereotypical villain to be quite amusing.
I walked down an alleyway to coax the idiots into attacking me. When there was no one around, the thugs began their attack without even bothering to threaten me. Since I had actually forgotten that I'm in my human form, and my body is far smaller than I'm used to, my sense of distance was distorted and the first knife managed to pierce right through my heart.
Unfortunately for my opponents, I'm still an Ogre, just in human form. This wound was nothing to me what so ever. Seeing that I hadn't died, nor was I even in pain, the thug who stabbed me pulled back in surprise. I played with them for awhile, making them suffer greatly until they wished I would kill them, to which I would oblige the second they asked. I'm not cruel after all. I would end it quickly by snapping their necks. I decided to eat their corpses in the back alley. Even though no one appeared on my 【Sense Presence】, I still ate them as quickly as I could.
Ability unlocked [Job-Thief]
Ability unlocked [Silent Stab]
Ability unlocked [Smoke Bomb]
The six of them appeared to have been thieves. Since there was a common pattern on the rings that each of them wore, it would seem that they belonged to the same organization and that this organization may have a large number of members.
Well, this really had nothing to do with me, so I decided to leave it here for now.
None of their equipment was worth collecting, so I just dissolved all of their worthless possessions with my acidic body fluids, clearing the site completely of the death of these six people.
Walking around the back ally a while, expecting more thugs to try and jump me, I saw a boy violently arguing with five men.
Those men had a hardy and tough aura, and their average age was around the late twenties. Having knives on their chests, I suspected that bloodshed is an ordinary subject for these individuals.
At the same time, the young boy in the center of the men was about thirteen or fourteen years old.
His blonde hair reflected the dim light in the alley; he actually had a very pretty face the way it was shining. No doubt, he would grow up to be a very handsome figure of a man in the future. He was wearing silvery-white light armor, a cape and a red cloak. He might be the apprentice of a knight, judging from the sword strapped to his hip. From the looks of him, I would guess that he comes from a high-standing noble family of a high breed.
While I was hiding, I decided to eavesdrop. Apparently, the situation was something about a kidnapping.
The Boy Knight seemed to be pressing the thugs to get information. As he continued, he slowly made ready to unsheathe his blade at a moment's notice. I wasn't very interested in getting involved. In fact, I actually thought about going back, but then... then I noticed that these thugs had the same rings on their fingers as the ones I ate earlier had.
Just when I thought I had convinced myself not to watch any further for risk of involving myself, as expected, a fight broke out.
Though the thugs outnumbered him, but the boy had better equipment by far. The difference in number, however, was not that easy to overcome. In the end, the boy ended up overwhelmed by the five thugs and captured.
One of the men lowered his knife to the boy's chest while the rest of the thugs held him down. That one man put enough power into his swing to cut through a horse as he went to pierce the defenseless boy's chest. At that point, I jumped in and knocked out all five of the thugs. I decided to leave them all alive, for now. Using my [Parasite] ability on them, I planned to investigate the location of the thug's hiding place, just in case.
I carried the worn-out boy and left the place. Since it's troublesome, not to mention easy to be caught leaving the scene as I was with several fainted men behind me, I made sure to stash the thugs so they would not be discovered.
Once we had arrived at a remote location, I saw to curing the Boy's injuries, for a fee of course. The boy was quite livid at me for letting the thugs live, I passed him a lie saying that I had already killed them and I was responsible for saving his life. It was only a partial lie; I probably will end up killing them once they serve their purpose. When asked who I was, I gave him a vague answer, stating that "I'm just an ordinary mercenary", without revealing who I actually was.