Several minutes pa.s.sed since we escaped the campsite.

Rodis had stopped in front of a small cottage that had been built as if for a hiding place.

…It looked exactly like what you would expect a bandit hideout to look like.

Rodis then knocked on the door.

“It’s me, Rodis. I’ve acquired some prey.”

After a moment, the door opened and Rodis went inside.

As the scout slimes were a short distance away, they could not see inside of the cottage.

‘Can you get a little closer while being careful not to get caught?’

‘Okay!’

‘They’ll see me if I get closer, so I’m going to hide!’

I gave the order to the slimes to go closer.

This gave me a much better idea of what was happening.

“What did you bring?”

“Two women and one man. The man looks really puny and won’t be worth much… But he is a B-Rank Scout, so maybe he has a lot of money on him. It’s an Earth Dragon investigation quest, so no one will pry into it if I say they were killed on the way.”

“And their equipment?”

“About E-Rank stuff. They should fetch a decent price.”

Apparently, they were planning on selling us and all of our stuff.

Well, it was settled then. This was a bandit hideout and Rodis was one of them.

So that meant…well, I should probably ask the veteran Adventurers what that meant.

“Tina. Rodis just joined up with his bandit friends.”

“Yuji. Your detection abilities go that far?”

“Yeah. Actually, I had my tamed slimes do the scouting. It was also them that noticed that Rodis had run away.”

I said as I pointed to the slime on my shoulder.

I felt that I could trust Tina and Lisa, and so I could at least tell them that much.

“I never heard of a Tamer doing such a thing! I knew your detection abilities were abnormal, but isn’t this is crazy!?”

“I never heard of it either.”

“I don’t know what to say, but I just can. …So, what should we do?”

“Uh… So you can tell where their location is too?”

“Yeah. Should I catch them?”

I said this as I used the slimes’ magic detection ability to scan the positions of the bandits.

There were four of them including Rodis.

They had their own weapons, but capturing and defeating them seemed like it would be easy enough with Magic Transfer.

“It would be better to kill them rather than catch them… How many are there?”

“Four including Rodis.”

“In that case, we won’t be able to kill them. There are only three of us, and Rodis is not someone I want to fight with such a disadvantage.”

Ah. She was thinking that we would all go and do it ourselves.

Well, that wasn’t quite necessary.

“We don’t have to go ourselves. I’m pretty sure I could just do it with the slimes.”

“…You can do such a thing? Slimes? Actual slimes?”

“Yeah. Even slimes can fight if you use your head. …Should I give it a try? If it seems like it won’t work, I’ll have the slimes retreat and we can make a run for it.”

Tina heard this and thought for a moment.

“If you can do it, it would be our best option without a doubt.”

As I now had the approval of the party leader, I gave the order to the slimes.

Rodis was quite strong, so I’d have to move carefully.

So saying, I cast ‘Monster Conceal’ on them once again.

The slimes were semi-transparent and it was also the middle of the night.

They would likely remain hidden unless the enemy had monsters that could detect them.

Now that I think about it, Rodis had probably specifically chosen this time to take the watch, because it made it easier to ambush us… Of course, it would be used to our advantage now.

‘Okay!’

‘Understood!’

The slimes heard my order and began to separate and surround the cottage.

The Proud Wolf moved a short distance away and hid in some bushes.

I would have liked to just use h.e.l.lfire of Death… But the magic depletion was so severe, that I would not be able to do anything if we happened to be attacked by reinforcements.

So it would be better to use something less demanding… But I don’t think I ever used magic that was perfect for a small group before.

…Well, I’ll choose something randomly. And if it doesn’t work, then I’ll use h.e.l.lfire of Death.

With that decided, I searched my memory.

I would like to use something unrelated to fire this time. Fire would light up the place and make the slimes visible if I failed to kill all of them.

And then I found something called ‘Curse of Eternal Tundra’… But the name made me think it would be in the same cla.s.s as h.e.l.lfire of Death.

Now, if there was only something a little weaker, that was also ice-type magic… It was as I was thinking such things that I found exactly that.

‘Area Freeze – Medium.’

It sounded simple and to the point. I would use this.

‘Magic Transfer—-Area Freeze – Medium!’

I transferred the magic to the slimes while making sure that no one else would be able to hear my voice.

In the next instant…the sounds of the bandits’ talking suddenly stopped.

Not a sound could be heard from the cottage.

‘…What happened?’

In order to see inside of the room, I transferred a Magic Bullet to destroy the wall.

And then…everything became clear.

At first, it just looked like the bandits were still talking to each other.

There was no surprise over an attack on their faces. If you took a photograph of bandits talking, it would look just like this.

The only thing odd was that they were completely still.

I checked their status through the slimes, and it showed that their HP was 0.

Apparently, the bandits had died without ever knowing they had been attacked.

‘Area Freeze – Medium’… It was stronger than I had imagined.

As I mused over this, I checked my own status.

…My MP had only depleted by 20%.

This was very useful. I don’t know how effective it would be against monsters, but perhaps it was the best for fighting humans.

But now I was curious about the effectiveness of Curse of Eternal Tundra… But that would have to wait.