The scar-faced man reined in his horse and greedily swept his gaze over the trembling villagers.
"Today is the day you pay your protection fee. My brothers should have come to notify you last time. You've prepared all the food, right?"
"Don't blame me for putting it bluntly, but if you don't have enough food, you'll have to hand over people to make up the difference."
"And you."
His gaze finally fell on the Gauss Squad, which stood out sharply from its surroundings.
It lingered especially on Alya and Shadow for a moment.
Gauss had already quietly had his teammates remove their Adventurer Badges.
The purpose was to avoid alerting the enemy.
He also wanted to know why this band of bandits had come here, so they wouldn't change their attitude after seeing his adventurer rank.
Otherwise, how could he know whether they had come to rob and plunder?
Judging solely by the villagers' one-sided account also seemed somewhat unfair.
But now, perhaps because he had no badge that could directly prove their identities and ranks, or perhaps because he had not noticed them in time,
the scar-faced man had already announced his purpose of robbing the village to everyone, allowing Gauss to relax.
"You."
Normally, when a bandit leader saw such beautiful women, he would definitely abduct them back to the mountains.
But for some reason, just as he was about to utter something filthy, an ominous sensation seemed to grip his throat with an invisible hand, leaving the words stuck at his lips.
"You. You're adventurers, right?"
"Don't meddle in our business, and I can let you leave."
Although he felt somewhat uneasy, the more than twenty subordinates beside him, all wielding iron weapons, still gave him sufficient courage.
A group of more than twenty people armed with