When Ayu heard these men say they would use him to threaten his mother, he steeled himself, twisted around, and bit the calf of the bandit holding the crossbow.
"Ah!"
The bandit pulled his foot back in pain.
Ayu seized the chance to scramble up from the ground and dash toward the edge of the slope, trying to roll straight down it.
But he had only run four or five steps when a bald bandit lunged after him and kicked him in the back with a thud.
"Urgh..."
The kick nearly lifted his small body off the ground, and the searing pain almost made him pass out on the spot.
"Clever little brat, aren't you? But trying to escape right under my nose? Dream on!"
Like picking up a chick, the bald bandit lifted Ayu, who had curled into a ball from the pain, and walked back toward the middle of the clearing on the slope.
"Grandpa Immortal..."
"Grandpa Immortal, can you... hear me...?"
Just then, Ayu, dangling from the bald bandit's hand, began murmuring faintly in a daze.
"What, little fellow? You know an immortal?"
Once back in the middle of the clearing, the bald bandit tossed Young Ayu onto the ground and asked with a sneer as he waited for his mother to come up the hill.
"Grandpa Immortal... I don't want... to learn to turn stone into gold... I only want... only want you to save my... mother..."
Already slipping into semiconsciousness, Ayu murmured brokenly, as though talking deliriously.
Thud!
A one-eyed bandit beside him kicked Ayu again, then cursed:
"Even an immortal couldn't save you!"
The other Mountain Bandits roared with laughter.
But after taking another kick, Ayu merely gave a muffled groan, curled up his small body again, and kept murmuring:
"Grandpa Immortal... I don't