At that time, Zich was clutching the back of his neck while Joachim bathed in a pool of blood and Evelyn searched the corpses for handsome faces.
“What are you doing, leader?” A new voice called out for Zich and made his headache worse.
As if he didn’t want to turn his head, Zich forcefully moved his neck like a rusty wheel that hadn’t moved in a long time to check the owner of the voice. What caught his eyes was the man’s hair that was as white as snow. His hair looked as if it had passed through a long period of time as it lay over his handsome face. However, what finally caught hold of viewers’ eyes was neither his aged hair or his face which looked like it would gain the affection of many ladies. It was his eyes. He had the devil’s eyes that could make most people’s body hair stand up at once, lose all the strength in their legs, and land on their own mess.
Upon closer inspection, his body appeared to be covered in blood. His white hair was also colored in red as if he had poured dye over them. Of course, the blood didn’t belong to him but the enemies that were lying somewhere in this area of death. This white-haired man was one of Zich’s subordinates: Tim Platt, also known as the Werewolf. He was also the guy who was the worst at listening to Zich’s orders.
Zich was tired of Joachim’s and Evelyn’s eccentricities, so he didn’t welcome Tim’s appearance. Zich knew Tim would bring him more annoyance and rage than those two.
“What are those guys doing?” Tim asked while looking at Joachim and Evelyn and clicking his tongue.
“As you can see, Joachim is bathing in blood while Evelyn is collecting the heads of handsome men,” Zich answered.
“Such perverted bastards. How do their heads work so that they can think of things like that to do?”
It seemed Joachim and Evelyn had heard him. Joachim clicked his tongue sarcastically while Evelyn outrightly glared at him. However, this made Tim puff out his chest even more. One could almost hear an echo of the phrase, ‘So, what?’ even when he didn’t say such words.
“…I can’t believe that’s coming from you,” Zich said to Tim.
“Why? I’m disappointed to hear that from you, Boss.”
Among all Zich’s subordinates, the one who was most like Zich was Tim. For instance, they both were greedy for strength. However, there were also clear differences between them. While Zich didn’t possess many worldly desires and didn’t care for murder that much, Tim enjoyed debauchery and slaughter. Although the people Zich usually stomped on and tormented his enemies, Tim crushed and insulted everyone he deemed weaker than him. To put it simply, Zich was someone who purely sought strength while Tim was someone who enjoyed wielding this strength. Thus, Zich’s other subordinates didn’t hesitate to call Tim pure trash. Yet, no one insulted genuinely from their hearts since they were all Demon People—they were all insane and rotten to the core. Thus, it was just light-hearted joking among colleagues.
‘Of course, they must all really think he is trash though.’
It was some unbelievable display of teamwork; if these subordinates were the punishment for his sins, Zich thought it might be better if he started doing a few good acts from now on.
‘How would I be able to do it?” On second thought, Zich realized that he didn’t know the method and gave up on the thought immediately.
Tim wandered between the corpses and kicked them. He seemed to be checking if any one of them were alive. To his disappointment, there were only corpses.
Kick!
Tim kicked one of the corpses hard. The corpse got tangled up with other corpses and fell on top of the others, making a huge slab of meat. Unlike other corpses, the corpse was well-armored, and a crest engraved on its chest plate seemed to indicate that he was someone of a high-standing position.
“What kind of guy was he?” Zich asked.
“You don’t remember, Boss? He’s the guy who blabbered on about justice, judgment, and all that crap in front of all these guys earlier.”
“…Ah, that’s him?”
Since there were so many guys just like the fallen soldier, Zich barely paid attention to their words. He could only faintly remember what that man said because it had not been that long ago before he had turned into a corpse.
“But that guy was the first one to die under your hands.”
“Yes, he did,” Tim chuckled. Then, he started kicking the corpse. Although he didn’t use mana, Tim’s body was already a weapon and could crush the corpse further. “All talk! And nothing behind it! What a stupid bastard!” Tim spat a string of curses as he kicked the corpse.
He smiled sadistically. Evelyn sneakily approached Zich and asked, “What do you think that perverted bastard is planning to do?”
Although Zich wanted to retort back and gossip about Tim with her, he clamped his mouth shut when he saw the heads hanging from her waist.
Tim stared at the sky and looked at Joachim this time. After cupping his hands and filling it with blood, he scattered them in the sky. As the blood poured down like rain over him, Tim smiled.
‘…Should I really try learning how to do kind acts?’ Zich thought again as he watched his hopeless subordinates.
* * *
After recalling his past memory for a bit, he checked the person right before him. With his appearance, personality, voice, and characteristic frowning face, Tim Platt appeared exactly like the Werewolf he once knew.
‘Yeah! This is how it should be!’
It had been completely ridiculous up to this point. One guy was nicknamed the Vampire because of his ability to control blood had hemophobia while the other one was nicknamed Succubus and killed men by taking away their vitality feared of men. Thus, considering Tim’s violent personality, Zich had thought Tim Platt might have been a peaceful scaredy-cat in the past. Yet, Tim Platt appeared before him exactly as the trash he was before the regression. Zich couldn’t help but feel deeply moved.
‘I’m so glad I avoided a fight with him at first sight!’ The reason why Zich quietly overlooked Tim’s provocations was to make sure that he was a bad person. Aafter observing him for the whole day, it seemed clear that Tim Platt was trash. Zich almost got the same feeling one would get meeting another person of the same nationality as him in a foreign country.
However, this was all strictly in Zich’s mind. Tim Platt, whose hands were grabbed for no apparent reason and was called ‘trash’ at first sight, obviously got angry.
“What the hell is up with this crazy bastard!” Tim roughly pulled away from his hand and swung his fist. He looked extremely agitated since he put a lot of strength into his fist. Moreover, even though he hadn’t expected Zich’s actions, he felt threatened that his hands were caught so easily by a random stranger.
However, Zich narrowly avoided his fist. Tim was surprised; he couldn’t believe that someone evaded his fist. He hadn’t controlled his strength like when he fought the thugs earlier either.
However, it wasn’t only Tim who was surprised. Zich was also surprised.
‘This guy, he’s pretty strong already!’ However, Zich could understand why. Even among his four subordinates, Tim Platt had the highest combat abilities. If Zich’s forces and another large force collided, Tim was always at the forefront of battle.
Tim lowered his eyes; his sloppy posture disappeared. He moved his feet to center his balance and lifted his fists.
‘Is he planning to fight me seriously now?’
Tim was completely different from when he fought the local thugs; the surrounding people sucked in their breath as Tim let out a threatening aura. Zich’s hand also flinched. His hands itched to immediately take out Windur from his back.
However, unlike Tim, Zich was a person trying to do kind acts. He couldn’t fight in a store full of people. Moreover, he had no desire to fight Tim in the first place.
“Hey, sorry about this.” Zich raised his hands to show that he had no intentions to fight. “You look like someone I know. I was mistaken.”
“…If you’re sorry, why don’t you lower your murderous aura?”
Even though Zich had his hands raised, he let out a murderous aura as if he was going to jump into battle at any moment.
“If I relax right now, I think you’ll immediately attack me.”
“Do I look like a guy who’d do that?”
“Do you think you’re not the type to do that?” If it was the Tim he knew, Tim would definitely ambush him at the right moment.
Tim glared at Zich. Even though he wanted to immediately rush towards Zich and turn him into mush, Zich didn’t seem like an easy opponent. Even though Zich had his hands up, his muscles were tense as if he could move at any time, and there was a threatening aura surrounding him. Moreover, he had a bizarre-looking sword on his back. However, Tim didn’t retreat, and Zich could easily guess why.
‘That guy really hates getting treated like a weakling. He’s probably worried that people will think he’s a coward if he gets treated like this.’
Then, the best solution was to reinforce his pride. Zich said, “I’m really sorry. I sincerely apologize for calling you trash.”
Then, Zich took out a jewel from his box and threw it at Tim. His eyes grew wide open. “That’s probably enough for an apology.”
“…” After scanning the jewel, Tim stared at Zich. His greedy eyes looked as if he wanted to take Zich’s entire luggage. However, Tim looked like he wasn’t sure if he could beat Zich, so he didn’t rush to attack Zich.
“…Fine! Since you gave me something like this, I’ll generously look over your behavior.” Tim put the jewel in his pocket. “Consider yourself lucky.”
Then Tim left the store. Zich looked at him with a pleased face.
‘It’s really great to see that he has no manners.’ It was really Zich’s type of appreciation.
* * *
Even though Zich was very happy about his fun reunion with Tim, he didn’t forget his original mission. He went outside the city’s walls. Then, he spread his senses out as wide as possible and began running outside the city like crazy. He used the invisibility artifact whenever there were people nearby since it would be bothersome if a rumor spread around that there was a strange guy running around like crazy outside the city.
As his usual shameless self, Zich wouldn’t be bothered by such rumors, but the bandits might be threatened if these strange rumors reached their ears. Zich patrolled outside the city for several days. Since Zich was able to run at an extremely fast speed, the amount of area he was able to cover in several days surpassed people’s imaginations.
However, he couldn’t find anything. He found several people living outside the city, but they were all poor people pushed out of the city. Judging by their numbers and movements, they were definitely not bandits. Zich had no success today as well. He sat down on a field outside the city.
‘It’s getting difficult.’
The bandit’s base was at least not outside the city.
‘What should I do now?’
The first possibility was to continue to run around the city and jumping on the bandits when they ambushed people outside the city. However, this plan was too dependent on luck. Moreover, after investigating the bandits for the past few days in the cities, Zich realized that the bandits’ radius of activity was extremely wide, so the feasibility of this plan was even lower.
However, Zich didn’t give up; he did have an idea in mind. Judging by the situation right now, no matter how much he searched outside the city, he wouldn’t be able to find the bandit’s home base.
‘It’s simple actually. If they’re not outside, they must be inside.’
Zich turned his back. Bambis’ thick walls looked like a gray tent hiding something inside the city.