Reincarnated into a Game As the Hero’s Friend

When Zegers heard the report that soldiers and knights had arrived in the nearby village, he immediately called his second-in-command, Eickstedt.

“You’re here, Eick. They came just like you’d predicted.”

“…Yes. I heard the news.”

Eickstedt had a resigned expression on his face. Seeing that, Zegers laughed.

“Didn’t everything go according to your prediction? Everything will work out somehow.”

“Because everything went according to my prediction, we should have left this place as soon as possible.”

Eickstedt replied to his leader’s carefree remark. In his original plan, this place was supposed to be a temporary base, but Zegers refused to move after the group gained an overwhelming victory against small bandits’ groups while fighting here.

Not only that, there had also been a conflict of interest between Eickstedt and Zegers. Eickstedt wanted the group to join another bandits’ group, but Zegers sent an arrogant letter demanding that bandits’ group to join his group. As a result, Zegers’s group had become isolated. Zegers’s simple-minded personality that made Eickstedt want to use and control him ended up shooting Eickstedt in his own foot.

There had also been the problem of food. Ever since the adventurers started to stay at that village, Zegers’s group had lost their source of food. Despite that, Zegers still refused to move. According to Zegers, this hill that overlooked its surroundings was a really precious place.

Zegers’s arrogant attitude also caused the survivors from Dagover’s and Granack’s group to not ask for help from Zegers’s group, which in turn caused Zegers’s group not to know the information about Welner’s army. Of course, neither Zegers nor Eickstedt knew this fact.

“Leader, they came.”

“Finally.”

Leaving Eickstedt, who had a dark expression on his face, Zegers left the building and looked down the hill from behind the hastily constructed fences with a curious expression on his face.

“What’s that green board and black tower they brought with them?” (Zegers)

“I don’t know.”

One of his subordinates answered Zegers. Most of the bandits here were former commoners, so it was not strange for none of them to have seen a catapult before. Additionally, the lower half of the catapult was hidden from their point of view, so they must have thought of the catapult as a strange thing made of wood.

But not long after, a loud voice resounded as a stone of the size of a child’s head came flying into the fence.

“W…What just happened??”

“That… catapult!? They brought that kind of thing here!?” (Eickstedt)

Eickstedt rushed over after he heard the loud bang and with a surprised voice, he confirmed the identity of the ‘strange thing’. Immediately after Eickstedt’s exclamation, a second stone flew and landed outside the fence, causing a dent in the ground.

“Whoa… it almost hit the inside of the fence again.”

“But it seems like that thing’s aim sucks.”

“Eick, won’t it be better if we just go out and destroy that thing?”

It was said that the range of a catapult was 200 meters, while the range of a longbow was 400 meters. But that was only possible if a skilled archer was using a well-maintained longbow, arrows shot by the likes of bandits wouldn’t be able to reach that far and it definitely wouldn’t be able to reach the catapult.

Eickstedt knew this, so he shook his head.

“We can’t. The soldiers who are standing under the shadow of the board have crossbows. We will suffer a lot of casualties before we will be able to even get close to the catapult.”

“Tch.”

Zeghers clicked his tongue, but he soon relaxed. After all, the two stones that were thrown by the catapult didn’t cause any harm to his subordinates, so Zeghers naturally assumed that the catapult’s aim was poor. The bandits also appeared to be calmer.

“Unexpectedly, that thing isn’t that dangerous.”

“Catapult is a weapon designed to tear down a town wall, after all. Bringing many of them here might be dangerous, but just one of them is nothing much.”

Just when Eickstedt was wondering why the governor’s army brought a catapult here, the catapult shot a ‘barrel’ which landed inside of the fences. The ‘barrel’ then shattered and the sound of fluttering wings resounded in the area.

Several bandits who had realized the identity of the sound screamed.

“B…BEES!!???”

Even Eickstedt and Zegers were dumbfounded. Inside the barrel was a shattered beehive. The bees which had just lost their hive furiously attacked their surroundings. Sounds of screams filled the base in an instant.

“Ouch. it hurts.”

“Help…!!”

Against a swarm of bees, swords were practically useless. The bees’ stings hit the bandits on their unguarded faces, hands, and feet. Unable to bear the pain, some bandits fell. Others tried to ask for their comrades’ help, but unfortunately, the state of their commanders was no better than theirs.

The bandits who usually had no qualms about killing people were running left and right to escape, but it was futile. The fences that they had built themselves ended up being a cage that trapped them in this swarm of bees.

“Wha…What…”

Neither Zegers nor Eickstedt could think of any countermeasure against the absurd situation that unfolded in front of their eyes. A swarm of bees headed to both of them and before they could comprehend what exactly had just happened, their faces contorted in fear.

“Well, we have no use for these hives even if we saved them, so just throw them all on the bandits.”

“The precious honey is going to be wasted…”

When Schunzel gave a signal, the soldiers loaded the next ‘barrel’ filled with a whirring sound onto the catapult with a twitched expression.

Just like that, the soldiers loaded the ‘barrel’ and shot it to the bandits’ base with an unprecedented speed, as if they were hoping to discard these hives as soon as possible. As the barrel hit the ground, a fresh round of screaming seemed to be resounding from the direction of the bandits’ base, but that might just be the wind playing tricks on their ears.

The fact that the soldiers were sighing in relief after all the barrels had flown away was true.

“I have never heard of a battle strategy involving throwing a beehive at your enemy.”

“Really?”

Holzdeppe muttered and Welner replied. In his previous life, Welner had even heard of a general deliberately ordering his subordinates to throw corpses to the enemy’s camp to cause a disease outbreak. Therefore, Welner didn’t think he did anything strange.

However, the adventurers who brought the beehive all the way here would retort to Welner’s thought. Even the mercenaries were watching the sight of bandits being attacked by the bees with twitching smiles, so they might agree with the adventurers.

While being relieved that stuff from his hazy memory worked out well, Welner kept gazing at the fences that the bandits had erected.

“Still, a catapult sure takes a long time to be prepared.”

“Well, I think that depends on who the users are.”

Welner’s first impression of the catapult was that it was a powerful but hard-to-use weapon. The catapult couldn’t hit an object the size of a person accurately, moving it was troublesome, and the preparations took quite a bit of time.

In Welner’s view, it was safer to use the catapult as an unmovable weapon, rather than bringing it around. While that thought was running inside of Welner’s head, the gate of the bandits’ base opened and a swarm of bandits chased by the bees came out of the gate.

“Prepare the crossbows!!”

“The crossbows are ready!”

“Fire!!”

Schunzel instructed the soldiers without needing Welner’s order, and the rain of arrows turned the group of bandits into porcupines. While side-eyeing the dead bodies of bandits, Welner ordered for torches to be prepared.

“The clean up will be a hassle.” (Welner)

“I wonder if there is any honey left…” (Neurath)

“If there is any leftover honey, you can scoop it out and eat it.” (Welner)

As expected in this kind of situation, Welner didn’t have any other choice but to burn the bees. Most likely, cleaning up the bees would take more time compared to handling the bandits, but Welner was fine with that. After all, using the bee strategy minimized the casualties among his army.

Welner ordered the army to stay vigilant and while waiting until the bees became tired and sluggish, Welner decided to spend the time doing some brain exercise.

The so-called ‘brain exercise’ was calculating the compensation for the villagers.

A few hours later, after investigating the bandits’ base while exterminating the bees, Welner and his army took the surviving bandits as prisoners.

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