Screams reverberated in the air as a merchant caravan was being attacked by bandits.
"No, please don't hurt my daughter!" a woman grabbed the bandit's leg while pleading.
The bandit was holding a little girl in his arms, as he sneered at the girl's mother. Clearly, he was unwilling to let her go.
"Scram! I don't like used goods!!" The bandit roared as he kicked the woman away.
"Nooooo! Mama!" the little girl wailed as he saw her mother's body crash on the ground.
"Men! Take the treasure and all the good looking girls. As for the rest, kill them all!" The bandit leader ordered as he chopped off the head of one of the caravan's guards.
""Yes!"" the bandits simultaneously replied as they looked at the carriages with greed.
The woman painfully propped her body on the ground, but the injury she received made her unable to stand.
"Lucy!" the woman cried out her daughter's name as tears streamed down the side of her face.
"Mama!" Lucy called out to her mother.
"Sorry, little girl, but you're not going anywhere."
"Let me go! Let me go! I want my Mama! Waaaaaaaaaaaah!"
The little one struggled, but it was all for naught. The bandit was way stronger than her and the only thing she could do was cry and call out to her mother.
The merchant group had descended into chaos as the bandits looted and killed to their heart's content. The guards were hard pressed to fight them off because the bandits had the number advantage.
Over a hundred bandits had appeared out of nowhere and ambushed them.
The leader of the Merchant Group, Benjamin, led his men and fought off against the bandits with everything he had. However, their enemies were simply more powerful and more experienced in battle than them.
When hope seemed lost, and the end was at hand, the whistling sound of an arrow pierced the air. It landed in the forehead of the man who was holding a little girl in his arms, who hadn't stopped struggling to run to her mother's side.
Everything happened so fast that the bandit fell to the ground, not knowing how he died.
"I wish not for dominion, but I cannot let the innocent suffer," the voice of a young boy spread over the chaotic battlefield.
The Bandit Leader glared at the direction of the voice and saw what seemed to be a boy, wearing a hooded robe, seated on top of an Angorian goat holding a bow and arrow.
"Gate Open…," William muttered as he nocked another arrow on his bow and took aim.
Behind his back, a portal appeared and a herd of Angorian War Ibexes' charged towards the Bandits with fury.
William's arrow flew straight and true as it pierced through the neck of a bandit that was carrying a little boy on his shoulder.
"Mama, use War Cry!" William ordered.
"Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!"
Ella's War Cry resounded in the battlefield which strengthened the capabilities of William's herd by 30%
"W-Why are these goats so strong?! Arghhh!" A bandit cried in alarm as a glistening blue horn pierced his chest.
"T-This can't be! This is not possible!" The Bandit Leader backed away when the War Ibexes made their appearance. "How have these war beasts from the Northern Regions appeared here?!"
Benjamin, the leader of the merchant group, felt that the tide of battle had shifted in their favor. He immediately ordered his men to support the Angorian War Ibexes that had appeared and fought against the bandits with renewed vigor.
Benjamin had never seen these beasts before, but the Bandit Leader's words were laced with shock and disbelief. As a merchant, he was well aware of the tribes in the North, but they had never gone there to trade. Even so, it was not something that he needed to worry about right now.
What mattered most was that the newcomer was on their side!
"Men! Kill them all!" Benjamin roared as he led his men to battle.
William kept on shooting his arrows at the fleeing bandits. The arrows he was using were not ordinary arrows. They were steel arrows forged by the greatest blacksmith of Lont, Barbatos. Aside from their piercing power, it also had a paralyzing venom that was taken from the Millennial Beast, Amphisbaena.
Anyone who got pierced by William's arrow would become paralyzed and unable to move for a few hours. That was how strong the Millennial Beast's venom was.
"Return," William ordered and the arrows that had pierced the bandits flew into the air and returned to the quiver on his back. Some of them were still stained by blood, but William didn't care. He didn't have that many arrows in his possession and each of them was precious.
"Who are you?!" The bandit leader roared as he charged at William with his War Axe.
"Just a shepherd," William answered as he deposited his bow and arrows inside his Ring of Conquest. "Come forth... Stormcaller!"
A purple flash of light burst forth from the ring. William grabbed the two-meter-long spear in a firm grip as tendrils of lightning traveled along its blade.
Ella then took that as a hint and charged towards the bandit leader. William was like a cavalier riding a warhorse to battle. His spear was poised to strike as the bandit leader closed the distance.
"Lightning God War Art, Thirteenth Form!" William roared. "Go for the kill, Gae Bolg!"
William threw Stormcaller and the body of the spear crackled with lightning bolts. The Bandit Leader knew that he couldn't face the attack head-on, so he jumped to the side to dodge. He succeeded and the spear passed by his side by mere centimeters.
The Bandit Leader then immediately propped himself up on the ground and prepared to clash with William. At the same time, a string of words drifted through his ears.
"Omae wa mou…"
The Bandit Leader didn't understand these words because it was said in a language that he was not familiar with. It was at that moment when his face grew lax and his legs collapsed under him.
As the Bandit Leader fell, his body skidded across the ground, due to the momentum, and only stopped in front of Ella's hooves.
Like the bandit that William had shot with his arrow, the Bandit Leader had died not knowing how he died.
William didn't even give the corpse under Ella's hooves a second glance as he waved his hand to control Stormcaller. The family heirloom of the Ainsworth Family snaked across the battlefield as it reaped the bandits' lives like the God of Death.
When the last bandit fell dead on the ground, Benjamin and his men cheered and raised the weapons in their hands to proclaim their victory.
Everyone in the merchant group breathed a sigh of relief because they had survived from being wiped out by the bandits.
Benjamin was about to thank their benefactor, when he noticed that the young boy wearing a hood had disappeared. Even the Angorian War Ibexes who had trampled and impaled the bandits were nowhere to be seen.
An eerie silence fell upon them as Benjamin and his guards glanced at each other with dumbfounded expressions.
"D-Did we just get rescued by a ghost?" One of the guards asked in a stuttering voice.
"That can't be possible, right?" another guard offered his opinion.
This was the same opinion of everyone in the merchant group, but the fact remained that they couldn't find their benefactor. Just like a ghost, he had appeared and disappeared like a passing breeze.
"He was real!" the little girl who was supporting her mother from the ground shouted. "He's not a ghost. He saved me and Mother from those bad bandits!"
Everyone looked at the girl and nodded their heads. They had seen the young boy with their own two eyes, so it was impossible for them to say that he wasn't real.
"Yes, he was real. As real as you and me," Benjamin replied. "We will properly thank him if we cross paths with him again in the future."
This was the only thing that Benjamin could say to pacify his people. Even so, deep in his heart, he wished that he would once again meet the mysterious boy who had saved all of their lives without asking for any reward.
After this merchant group arrived at their destination, the story of a young shepherd leading a herd of Angorian War Ibexes spread across the land. By the time this happened, William had already arrived at the capital of the Hellan Kingdom and had successfully enrolled at the Royal Academy.
-----
End of Volume 1: The Shepherd of Lont