The Regression Of A Grand Mercenary

My name is Elena, and I thought my life was over…But it all changed when out of nowhere, a man in armor appeared like a ghost and made justice towards all the injustice before us. He came and gave us the foundation for our own hope to stand on.

And It all started back when trouble came at our village.

At the time when I was simply inside my room, sewing at my old and worn coat that I use for winter, all of a sudden I heard a noise coming from out in the living room. My mother, I could hear her scream as if something terrible had gone wrong, so I went to check.

When I ran out, I saw the sight of two bandits fighting my father and cornering him like he was a trapped animal. He didn’t have anything on his hands to protect, not a dagger nor a sickle we use on our farms. He was empty handed.

“Elena, get your mother and go inside your room! Now!” said my father as he only had a chair by his arms to push the distance away from the bandits.

To his voice, I quickly called out to my mother, but she was too afraid and in shock of what was happening. She couldn’t move from where she was standing. So I had to down near her. But as I did, one of the bandits tried to approach her with his sword scarily waved around.

“Get away from her!” said my father as he threw the chair at the man approaching my mother.

And by sheer luck, one of the legs of the chairs struck the bandit down at the back of his skull.

It didn’t take a doctor to see that the bandit was killed instantly. But in chance of protecting his wife, the other bandit who was focused on my father, thrust his sword forward and it struck my father’s chest straight through.

Blood gushed through his back and he quickly fell to his knees.

Seeing that, my mother screamed and quickly went to my father side.

My father was quickly turning pale, so the only remaining bandit knew that he didn’t have long.

My mother was in too much anguish from my father’s dying breath, while me…I was left standing beside my door…trying to process all of what had happened.

Before I knew what had happened, before I could even cry for my father, the bandit pulled my by my hair and he dragged me out of my own home.

It was there that I started screaming.

My mother…she was left trying to fix my father’s injury, while I was dragged out of my home. Not before long, as I was dragged on the snow, I soon noticed that a few other bandits came about, carrying women who were around my age.

It was then I realized that our village was being raided by bandits, and many of our neighbors were done in the same way. Not many of us could protect ourselves from these brutes…

Some tried every way they could to escape, but their grips were much stronger than ours, and by their hands, they carried a threatening sword that made us weak to revolt.

We were hopeless from the moment we were caught by these men. And before long, around twenty of us were captured. Some were young children, and some were mature women. It made it easy for them to gather us all in one single group.

The men from our villages tried to fight back, but the bandits held their swords near our necks, making the men fearful of what might happen.

Those bandits knew what needed to be done to discourage anyway of rebellion.

As we were now held hostage, the bandits started to speak as if making terms towards the villagers. The one who took charge out of all the bandits was an old man who was around the same age as my father. Yet unlike my father, this man was as dirty and as rotten as the rats you would find by the garbage. It made us sick just watching this man smile like a goblin.

Speaking in authority, the man warned the villagers that they were going to take all of our harvest. All of our resources…as well as us, the women who were gathered and held with a sword by our necks.

And that if the village tried to do something about it, we would be killed. But I knew that from the moment these bandits spoke of anything, it could never be trusted.

In retaliation, our village elder suddenly approached the leader of the bandits and tried pleading to let us go. But the leader didn’t care for it and instead, he made an example to the village elder for us all to see just how serious he was.

In a blink of an eye, he was able to cut off our elder’s hands with nothing but his own left hand formed into a flat palm.

The leader of the bandits showed such a deadly demonstration, it made everyone of our village turn quiet.

“…”In that single attack, the village were both afraid and angered by this action.

The next thing I knew, I was marching across the harsh snow in my thin boots…

After four hours of walking, we made it to their disgusting camp, I fell to my knees and nearly lost consciousness. But just as I fell, the bandits forced all of us into cages that was exposed to the cold icy winds. It didn’t have any walls to keep us warm.

The only thing that made us warm were our own body heat. We huddled into groups…trying to keep warm…and from there, we waited for two days.

During thodse two days, we weren’t fed, we were barely given any water…and we were far from the fire, so it was cold. Because of this harsh conditions, it was suicide to fall asleep.

The moment we all fall asleep, it was impossible to tell if we could even wake up the next hour or so, so we made the decision to always stay awake.

We didn’t know why these bandits were treating us like this, but hour after hour, I was starting to feel weak. And it didn’t take long before half of the women got fevers. Their chances of surviving then were slowly dropping.

We all assumed the worst when we were in the cages. Some thought of being sold to slavery, sold to being used as experiments by some dark magicians, but the worse thought that everyone assumed was going to happen was that…we were going to be raped by these bandits.

In the past two days, we’ve only been looked at by these bastards from the side. We could all feel their desire to pounce at us and use us for whatever sick thought that was in their heads.

Especially the old man…the leader, he had his eyes on me for the past few days. We learned that his name was Warden, a rather known bandit for a village as small as ours. It was these kinds of men that target small villages like ours.

Before long, half us started to cry…some became desperate to escape.

But it was pointless.

Before long…our hopes were slowly reaching its end.

At the second night, something strange happened at the camp. They suddenly made a campfire that was big enough to even put us at a warm embrace. In this event, we all felt a bit of grace coming from the warm large campfire.

But something was off.

They were celebrating too proudly…like the days of a festival, they all shouted with a hint of excitement in their tone.

And soon enough, we were pulled out of the cages and put nearer to the campfire. It was placed in the center of the camp. In the center, we were placed like decorations for the lusting men to ogle at.

And knowing that, I felt my entire body tremble in fear.

With us at the center, they suddenly carried two barrels full of water and with it, they started mixing some sort potion into the water. From the looks of it, something was about to happen.

Many of us started to panic. Some tried to pray to a God, others suggested that we all run away at this very moment. We weren’t tied, we were not held down by a chain or enclosed in a prison at that very moment. But we were very weak, hungry and feverish

With the snow against our conditions, it was impossible to escape.

50 bandits against 20 weakened women…it was clear suicide to act on desperation.

In the end, all we could do was wait.

For people like us…God doesn’t look our way to save us. We were not born special in anyway. We were only simple village farmers and nothing more.

The only ones who could possibly go against a terrible event such as this were the people who could bend the laws of nature against itself. Those who were born with the blessings of God. The ones with the talent to slay monsters…to slay dragons…

Through the days of our struggle…many of us prayed, many hoped for a miracle…and many called out to a name that everyone in our village knows the name of.

That someone was a person who was once a simple boy who was living with his family, in a moderate house at the corners of our village. They were a family who was known for being the only blacksmith shop in the village. We were blessed to have them be apart of our community. Without them, it would have been hard to live life as a farmer.

If farming materials were broken, with their shop, they could easily fix things. If houses needed to be fixed after a few passing storms, the blacksmith shop was the only place to access good quality nails.

Their shop rarely sold anything that would have been used for anything worth a blacksmith’s talents. It was a typical shop selling typical things…a day to day occupation.

But one day, a dragon fell from the sky.

Everyone who saw its large span of wings screamed out in fear. Everyone knows that if a dragon were to appear before a village, the chances of ever surviving its attacks were hardly positive.

Death was the only thing to expect…

And me, out of all the days I should have been by my home, tending to my chores, I was instead the closes one to stand before the dragon.

I was supposed to be there to just buy a few things for our dinner that night, buying spices and bread at the market.

But instead, I was before a dragon that was flying over the skies like it was a ruler.

Losing all of my strength, I fell to my knees and tears suddenly fell from my eyes. I couldn’t control my own emotions before the dragon. The only words I could say then was…

“…Why is a dragon here?”

It was pointless to run…it was pointless to hide…it was pointless to take shelter.

Death is what arrives besides the dragon’s actions.

Knowing that, I accepted my faith. So I closed my eyes and made myself free for death to take me. Yet right as I accepted this fact, all of a sudden, I heard a rather opposite call to my own demise.

“Here! Over here you overgrown Lizard!!”

It was a man’s shout.

Being drawn to this, I opened my eyes and saw that a man in armor flew towards the dragon and struck it with no fear present.

He lured the dragon away from the village with that attack, all the way to a field…and from there, I witnessed what seemed like an impossible feat.

The man fought the dragon and won.

He won without any sort of trouble at all. He was dominating the challenge, and with it, not a single soul was lost that day.

Dragon’s were supposed to be a sign of death over villages, but this single man completely turned the definition around. Instead, he brought death to the dragon.

Many cheered that day when he slayed the dragon. We were all in awe of such a hero…but for someone who slayed a dragon, we didn’t know his name.

For someone to do it, it had to be a strong warrior.

Some speculated that maybe it was a wandering adventurer.

Some say that it was the ghost of a hero from many years ago.

But through out all the speculations, in a small village like ours, some started to recognize who that person was.

“His voice, didn’t it sounded familiar?” they said.

“Ah, now that you think about it…it did.”

“I think I’ve seen that kind of armor before.”

“Hey, there’s only one place in the village that has that kind of armor. Hell, there’s only one place that sells weapons here in the village.”

When the people started putting clues one over the other, it all lead to one conclusion.

It was the blacksmith family. The Cicial family. More specifically, the only one capable of doing it must have been the eldest son. Thill Cicial.

In a matter of a day, rumors started to spread that he killed that dragon. No one knew who spread the rumors, but even so…such a large news came to quickly spread.

Some tried to reject the idea and of course, this kind of revelation wasn’t fully accepted in just a day, but for the next few weeks, many came to slowly look into the family’s daily lives and realized that it was true.

The eldest son had grown much taller, more muscular and quite handsome. He wasn’t the incompetent man we all once saw back in the past. In fact, because of the rumors that he killed the dragon, many came to admire him as a protector of sorts. In admiration, the people called him the Dragon Slayer.

None of the villagers knew how he attained his strength, but everyone could feel just how much he has changed. Everyone in the village soon came to see him as a reliable figure in the village.

And in private, the Elder of our village declared that we respect their privacy. We followed that rule of course, but in days of peace, we would thankfully gift them with a bit of our harvest from our gardens.

So…in times like this…in times when we were put against a corner…when we have nothing else to look out for, we prayed…we hoped that he would come.

And to our hopes…he did arrive.

Just as how he came out of nowhere to defeat the dragon. He suddenly appeared before the bandits like a ghost in the wind.

The Dragon Slayer came…and he looked as admirable as the day he came to confront the dragon.