Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)
Volume 1 - Ch 5.06

As the three Bandits moved forward the light of their torches eventually revealed the presence of the Villager woman to them. She tried run away, but she tripped over her own legs and hit the ground pretty hard after only a few meters.

[ X X X X! X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X!] [X X X! X X X X X X X! X X X X X X X X X X!] [X X! X X X X X X! X X X X X X X X X X X X X X!]

The Bandits caught up to her in no time. They slowly surrounded her while screaming at her. I couldnt make up the exact words, but I was sure they were mocking her.

[X X X X X X!!!]

After another scream, one of the Bandits kicked the woman in the stomach so hard that she ended up coughing up blood. The other two followed after him and joined in on the fun, even though the woman was already on the verge of losing consciousness after that first kick. Eventually the one who started the beatdown, the guy who looked like he was the boss of the other two grabbed her by the hair and began to drag her away into one of the back alleyways.

[Now were going to have some fun. And you can be sure that well take our sweet time with you!]

The man, a Lv.9 Bandit spoke in Brahim. He and his comrades dragged the woman behind another corner, and then the light of their torches slowly disappeared as they kept on getting farther and farther away.

After that incident, the area became silent again. Almost eerily so.

The Bandits are now gone, so I can probably leave my hiding spot. Theres no one here who would be alerted by my presence anymore, so I can stop worrying about that. But what I have witnessed right now that was a rather unpleasant experience. I didnt like it one bit, and Im not happy that I saw it. Even though it was kinda her fault for walking alone around such dangerous neighborhood this late at night, I dont think that girl was a whore. She was probably just a regular citizen who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. If she was not a prostitute going back to her brothel from visiting a customer, then maybe she was just visiting a friend and ended up staying at their place too late? Whatever her reasons might have been, they are not important now. What matters is that due to her misfortune she got beaten up, and now she will probably become a plaything for those guys.

Of course, Im not proud of myself for not helping her, but even if I tried to do so, attacking those three blindly would have been a bad idea. That group only consisted of three Bandits, but who knows if there are no other, larger groups nearby. Its true that I want to replace Bandits so I can take them down and collect the prize money, but nothing good would come to me from recklessly starting a war with them without any information about them.

At the very least, that encounter showed me that they are a violent bunch. Maybe that violent tendencies were one of the reasons for their banishment from the city? I also pretty much confirmed that they are present in the slums, and that they are quite possibly ruling it from the shadows with an iron grip of violence.

With the knowledge that I have obtained from this chance encounter, my current plan of action will be as follows: wait until tomorrow night and go to the part of the slams with the brothels (lets call it brothel district) around the same hour as today. If I happened upon three random. Bandits by a complete accident, then if I play my cards right I may be able to replace the Bandits that Im looking for.

And just like that, after going back to the inn and sleeping until morning Ive spent the majority of the day in the Labyrinth (making sure to avoid any suspicious-looking pathways in order not to bring another ordeal like that previous one down on myself, and after that I got back to my room and slept until dinnertime.

And now, sometime after midnight, my mission to infiltrate the brothel district in search of the source of the Bandits begins!

My first observation: even though the brothel district is quite busy, the closing hours come relatively fast. I wonder if that is a principle that holds true for all the brothels in this world, or is it a phenomenon unique only to the ones in Veil? Well, I call them closing hours, but Im sure that just means that some of the richer customers simply stay in them overnight. Come to think of it, thats actually a pretty valid strategy: get as many potential customers right before the closing hours arrive and coerce them into staying the entire night, adequately increased prices be damned.

The hour was late, the shops were closed, and no people to be seen walking around on the streets. A perfect time for the Bandits to start appearing out of nowhere, and they did. So my initial assumption was correct: they really do come out during the nighttime, I just failed to nail the approximate hour correctly. Now they were casually walking around the streets like they owned the place, unafraid of being found out by the guards, because lets face it, no guardsmen with his sanity still intact would willingly go on a patrol to the slums in the dead of the night. Some of them simply walked around, and some of them were entering bars and houses that I thought were long closed. So it looks like that they have their own places for entertainment, hidden away from the prying eyes of those who would seek to deliver them to justice. If I hadnt decided to come here this late, I would have never learned that valuable piece of information. But that is still not enough for me to just go and randomly attack them.

For now I have to continue observing them from the safe distance.

Observation number 2: the Bandits who wander around the slums probably do not belong to a single group, but must be divided into separate ones that might be rivaling one another. I have arrived at that conclusion after witnessing that some of the smaller groups of Bandits avoided making any kind of contact with certain other groups, and that not every group was going to all the establishments opened for criminals. Maybe that has to something with some kinda turf wars between them? Anyway I didnt bring any lanterns with me this time, so as long as I stick to the shadows I probably wont have to worry about being caught.

Some of the Bandits walked together and were chatting with each other, but those were always the ones who were dressed in similarly looking attires of possessing some article of clothing that made them distinguishingly different from the others, and it would seem that those groups were going in circles around specific areas while maintaining a safe distance from the other groups. Maybe they really are patrolling their respective territories?

The ones I am tailing now wear the same clothes that that the Lv.9 guys I have encountered yesterday wore, and the area that they are going around is close to the place where they ganged up on that 26 years old Villager woman. Is this their territory? If so, then it does not seem to be very wide.

After tailing them for a few more rounds, I had a stroke of luck, because the guys I have been following actually met with the Bandit from yesterday who could speak Brahim! Awaiting how the situation was going to develop, I gently approached them while making sure that my presence was being obscured by the darkness the entire time. Maybe their territory really is that small, or maybe there is just not that many people patrolling it at the moment, but this is definitely near the place I saw the Brahim speaking guy yesterday, so could it be that their hideout is somewhere nearby? If that is the case, then maybe their group really isnt that big after all. If so, then maybe Id actually have a fighting chance against them?

[X X X X X Hugo X X X X X.]

Well thats something new. Another Bandit from a different group has appeared, and he started talking with my Lv.9 target, but not in Brahim so I obviously couldnt understand a word they were saying and that was driving me nuts! Just what are you bastards talking about?! I didnt come this far to be cockblocked at the point of entry now!