Savage Ascension: Starting with God-Tier Plunder Ability-Chapter 106: You Call Yourself a Boss?!

The Second Disciple, Pandevus, waited quietly for the coming fight. Then a bandit came sprinting over.

"Boss! The soldiers pulled back!"

"Good! The time has come, brothers!"

A cave with multiple tunnels would inevitably have moments where the enemy's strength thinned out. Even if Gesilian had decided to starve them out given how poorly the bandits fought, he would have changed that call before long. The prediction had landed dead on.

The number of soldiers guarding the chokepoint had dropped sharply. Pandevus raised his large round shield and began hammering it with his one-handed mace, and dozens of bandits let out a roar.

"Horse-Legs Sserdepan! Horse-Legs Sserdepan! Horse-Legs Sserdepan!"

The bandits didn't know the Second Disciple Pandevus's real name, so they screamed their boss's name at the top of their lungs. At that, Pandevus let out a thundering battle cry. He looked bold and fearless, but inside, he was burning up.

'How did a subjugation force get here! I have to run, fast!'

It should have been perfect. He had squeezed the bandits dry and, operating under the name Back-Door Gang, set up shop well off the main road. If a subjugation force came in, they would have spotted them early.

More than a week ago, a few small bandit outfits had been wiped out in the area, but he hadn't thought much of it. Things had gone quiet after that.

'It was the calm before the storm. I should have run back then.'

The regret was crushing. How did he miss those warning signs? Stupid. And finding one natural cave and happily settling in without doing a damn thing, that was its own mistake. At the very least, he should have dug out an escape route.

He had wasted time messing around with the women they'd kidnapped.

'Damn it.'

His master was going to chew him out something fierce, and maybe worse, torture him. Fear swelled up hard inside him. But even that was better than dying.

The diversionary plan that the Second Disciple Pandevus had come up with was improvised on the spot.

When the subjugation force moved toward the other tunnel to suppress it, that was the window to break out. Sound enough in theory. But improvisation always comes with its own flaws.

'Not enough people.'

The number of bandits with Pandevus was only 23. The Back-Door Gang totaled 85. But only 23 of them were here. 18 were in the middle of getting wiped out, and 10 were down another tunnel.

The number of bandits facing Senior Soldier Bulsheben was 34.

There was no way for him to know all of that. He had to work with what he had, knowing only that 23 out of 85 were with him. He tightened his fist.

'But it has to be done.'

Horse-Legs Sserdepan had thighs so thick they looked almost unnatural. You could feel the power just looking at him. They were proportioned close to a deformity. His arm muscles weren't small by any measure, but next to those enormous thighs, they looked almost scrawny.

From a distance, that bizarre build was impossible to miss. The cave was decently wide but winding, so the few bandits who had always seen him up close couldn't help but pull in a sharp breath.

"Whoa..."

It was obvious why they called him Horse-Legs.

"When their numbers thin out, that's our chance! Even against a subjugation force, this is our hill! Our valley! Let's kill them!"

"Kill them!!!"

"Kill them!!!!"

Pandevus was shorter than Handless Sendabil, who had been the boss of a massive mountain stronghold before losing his hand, but the Second Disciple was still tall by any standard. His upper body had a permanent stoop, because at nearly two meters, he always had to hunch down to look other people in the eye.

The plan these bandits had in mind was to punch straight through the subjugation force's current weak point. But the subjugation force was not stupid.

They had built a solid barrier out of mud, firewood, and rocks. All the rookies had gone with Commander Gesilian, so the ones holding the chokepoint were veterans and two-to-three-year soldiers.

Behind the barrier, long spears rested over the top, and in the center lane without cover, shield soldiers had taken position. The shield soldiers were split into two types based on their weapons: axemen and shortsword men.

The axe-shield soldiers, whose axe handles had cross-shaped (+) ends to flexibly plug the gaps between shields, were in the back row. The shortsword soldiers were up front. Six shield soldiers, three on each side, had also been spread out to the flanks alongside the spearmen.

Even at the most packed section, there were only three rows. Usually they held two.

It looked thin, but the Second Disciple Pandevus didn't read it that way.

'Elite soldiers.'

Not a single unnecessary movement. It was like looking at soldiers cast from steel. Humans have a very hard time holding perfectly still. Soldiers who showed not even a twitch and just held their form—their skin was probably stone cold to the touch.

There were 20 soldiers. Not much of a difference from 23 bandits, but the way it felt in reality was a different story. The tightly clustered soldiers looked few, and the loosely spread bandits made themselves feel like the bigger force.

"YEAAAAHHHH!!"

One bandit charged out without hesitation, puffed up his chest, screamed, and swung his head around. An obvious taunt. When the soldiers didn't react, the bandits went even wilder. They all made a ruckus, waiting for their boss, Horse-Legs Sserdepan, to step up.

They were setting the stage for him. But Pandevus, as the Second Disciple, wasn't about to be the one charging elite soldiers head-on. His master had told him: even fighting one elite soldier is like fighting three men at once.

The ultimate expression of combined techniques.

Just then, through the commotion, ten bandits appeared from another tunnel holding torches high.

"Horse-Legs! Horse-Legs! Horse-Legs!"

At that shout, five of the soldiers broke off toward them. It couldn't get any better than this.

"Attack!! Attack!"

With hands the size of pot lids, he grabbed bandits by the head and shoved them forward. That brazen move sent the bandits charging at the soldiers—they had seen five soldiers peel away too.

"We outnumber them!"

As Pandevus said that, he sauntered forward, smacking hesitant bandits across the head, kicking them in the rear, swinging the iron club through the air, and shoving backs with his shield.

"Ow!"

A bandit who caught a hard kick in the rear stumbled forward in a frenzy.

Thwack!

He dodged one spear, but before he could exploit the gap, a shield soldier waiting by the left barrier hurled a sharpened wooden javelin and caught him square in the shoulder. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"AAAGHH!"

The moment it hit, he convulsed and crumpled. Moving was out of the question.

"Fall back!"

The spearmen pulled back, and shield soldiers filled the space. There were gaps, but nothing could be done about it. A bandit who stepped up and stomped on the barrier built from mud, firewood, and rocks found his eyes going wide. It had looked solid, but it was anything but.

The mud hadn't dried at all. His foot sank in with a squelch, and instinctively his gaze dropped, and in that same instant a shield soldier stepped forward and cleanly took his throat with a shortsword. The sensation of the ground giving way had made him look down without thinking.

That alone was enough. Eight bandits lost their throats without exchanging even a single blow. The tactics of elite soldiers who had been through all kinds of hell were creative.

The shocking rate of loss meant not one bandit tried to approach the now partially collapsed barriers on the flanks. Eight bandits, throats cut. Not one of them had swung a weapon. Killing was deterrence.

"Hut! Hah! Hup!"

The shield soldiers barked sharp, clipped shouts and hammered the tops of their shields with the flat of their shortswords. The ringing iron struck the skin like a threat.

Meanwhile, the bandits and soldiers in the packed center lane were just grinding it out in a messy back-and-forth. No spearmen on that stretch. But the soldiers weren't just sitting behind their shields.

The moment a bandit got a little too confident and showed any gap, a shield rammed into their upper body and knocked them back, and the legs exposed below the shield got sliced by a sword. Sometimes a soldier stepped forward boldly.

An extremely dangerous move, but only dangerous when you're alone.

"Gack!"

The axeman with a shield in the back row buried his axe straight into a thigh. The soldier who had stepped forward came walking calmly back as blood splattered thick across the knees.

"You sons of bitches! You all want to die?! Get in there! Get in there!!"

Not even three minutes into the fight and a third of his people were dead. The Second Disciple Pandevus was losing his mind. He hadn't realized they were this useless in a fight. That shout momentarily, if briefly, pushed seven bandits to rush in together like a pack.

"Hold the line!"

The bandits' breath was right there on the other side of the shield. If they couldn't hold, they'd be pushed back, and if they were pushed back, the formation would collapse. That meant death; that meant defeat. These soldiers had been training and drilling constantly, and most had been in the ranks for two years or more.

On the other side, the bandits had strong legs too, toughened from running up and down the hills. It was a dead-even pushing match.

"Boss!!"

The bandits were calling for Horse-Legs Sserdepan. But he didn't help them. He grabbed their shoulders, stepped on their backs, drove power into his legs, and jumped.

The Second Disciple Pandevus, known as Horse-Legs Sserdepan. Those extraordinary legs launched him high. He was already holding only the mace, having ditched the shield just in case. Everyone saw it, soldiers and bandits alike.

For a moment, the fighting stopped.

The bandits' faces went dark. Anyone could read it. Look at that back, not turning around once. He was running.

"Hey, you piece of shit! You call yourself a boss?!!"

One bandit screamed it out raw, but what followed wasn't good. The soldiers had overwhelming combat experience over the bandits. They swung first. Bandits left in shock took hits across every part of their bodies.

"Damn it!"

A bandit with a gashed shoulder swung his weapon wildly, then sat down hard on his rear, panting, and eventually dropped the weapon and moved toward the wall. He'd given up. He chose getting captured and doing a few years of labor over dying in a fight.

"Huff! Huff!"

The Second Disciple Pandevus moved fast. He covered ground in long, powerful strides. His step was enormous and his legs were exceptional. He tore through the cave like a horse running flat out on open ground.

The glow of dusk met him bright and wide. Pandevus burst out and caught his breath, head swinging frantically side to side. He opened his eyes wide and took in the light, looking for which way to run. His pupils dilated fast and the surroundings came into sharp focus.

"Wh... wha! What, what, what!"

Doren was pointing at Pandevus with a wooden ladle, spilling surprise with every syllable. This was the first time a bandit had ever come bursting out while soup was being made, and there was no way not to be thrown off. Espin, true to a back-alley upbringing, reacted in an instant.

But Pandevus was already sprinting the other way.