Chapter 11 Savior

As Ajax carefully came up with his plan to enter the village safely, he set out to look for roads that connected the forest with the city. Eventually after searching and searching, he found a pathway cleared of trees and filled with gravel. Although the pathway wasn't entirely smooth like the roadways in his past life, it was enough for a relaxing travel path. Ajax decided that he would stand and wait on top of a tall tree where he had a clear view if anything should happen on this pathway. After almost half a day had passed, the sun was starting to set. Sure enough, this wasn't like a typical novel or anime and didn't expect anything to happen today. As he continue to wait, Ajax was already trying to think of another plan to smoothly enter the city. As Ajax's mind continued to think, he heard galloping noises not far from his location. It was coming from the forest. He saw four large 8ft horses chained and pulling on a large carriage. The carriage looked really sturdy as it was made from strong wood with a few steel plating at certain areas on it. There was a symbol on the side of the door on the carriage. It depicted a large bald eagle head with huge wings around its shoulders and a bird like upper body and its lower body looked to be half of a lion.

"Is this a griffon symbol?" thought Ajax as he stared at the symbol on the side.

As this thought came to pass, he continue to look at the carriage and saw that it was surrounded by about 15 men riding horses and was covered from head to toe with a brown hood robe. At his position, Ajax also noticed a gleam from those 15 men's sides and guessed that they were armed with weapons. Seeing this entourage, he had guessed that it was not an average entourage as it had an emblem of a griffin. Griffins were always known to be legendary beasts that symbolized strong courage and leadership. Just watching this entourage pass by coming underneath and in front of him, he was inwardly wishing for something bad to happen to this party and hopefully they were escorting a young kind maiden for him to swoop in for the rescue. It seemed like his wish came true shortly after. As the carriage and its entourage was about to pass through the forest, several groups of men jumped in front of it. They were armed with swords and leather armor and ready to attack at any moment given the order. Blocking their path and startling the horses causing them to stop. There was one man in particular who looked pretty strong, stronger than him at least. He had a body builder like body as his muscle was easily popping through his clothes. He had a bandanna that covered his head and had a large 'X' mark scar on his right cheek and a number 3 on his left cheek.

" Stop, come out of the carriage or we will kill you all and take all of your belongings" shouted the scarred-face man.

As the carriage had already came to a stop, the scarred-face man was greeted with silence. One of the men that was leading the carriage came in front and said in a stern and loud, " Do you now know who we are? We belong to the Walker family. You dare to stop us from our journey?"

" Yes we do. We do it because we do not care which family you come, just come out and take your valuables and you can leave" replied the man.

Looking at the several men around them, the man that represented the Walker family went to the side of the carriage and waited from a response from inside. Soon a slender white hand stuck out holding a large heavy pouch and handed it to the man. As he held the pouch, he understood that they wanted to deal with the position as easily as possible. The man then walked in front of the carriage and threw it at the scarred-face man that was making demands. " Here take it and leave us".

As the scarred-face man caught the pouch he looked inside and saw several silver and gold coins. As he saw the amount it was in, he grinned as he thought that it was enough to last his group a few months with no worries. He grinned and said, " hmm quite a lot huh. All right, we'll go our separate ways from here" moving out of the way.

Seeing this grin, Ajax also smiled as he clearly knew that this man wasn't going to let them go. Just one pouch had already a lot of value, he imagined that the things inside or on them would be just as valuable. As the carriage party was about to move and resume their journey, the scarred-faced man shouted to his men, " take them out".

Drawing their swords they roared loudly in excitement and charged towards the carriage and the men around it. Seeing the situation, the men surrounding the carriage responded by pulling out their swords and took off their robe. What was seen was bright silver armor that covered their body except for the proportions that made was important for mobility and their head revealing their battle-hardened face. As the two groups clash, Ajax and Tim were still up on the tree watching the situation occur.

" Shouldn't we go and help?" asked Tim as he saw that the two groups were already in an intense clash.

" No, at least not yet" replied Ajax as he watched the battle carefully. As the clash began, he had already scanned them of their stats. Besides the two men that spoke the bandits had lower stats than the soldiers.

Race: Human [thief lvl 10]

Strength: 25

Defense:20

Agility:23

Intelligence:25

Endurance: 15

Race: Human [soldier lvl 15]

Strength: 28

Defense:25

Agility:25

Intelligence:28

Endurance: 20

The bandits and soldiers had around the same stats as their own group. Seeing their stats, Ajax was slightly relieved that his stats were overall better than theirs.

Although the soldiers were stronger than the bandits, they were outnumbered from two to one. However, the clash was still intense as it can be easily seen that the soldiers had more experience in hard combat. Although the soldiers and bandits were in intense battle, both of the leaders were still glaring at each other with one having a evil grin and the other having an angry look. Ajax was still patiently waiting for an opportunity and to see who was inside the carriage and if today would be his lucky day. He looked towards their stats curious to see which is stronger.

Name: Kevin

Race: Human [thief lvl 20]

Strength: 28

Defense:25

Agility:25

Intelligence:30

Endurance: 25

Name: Brock

Race: Human [elite soldier lvl 22]

Strength: 30

Defense:28

Agility:27

Intelligence:33

Endurance: 28

As the two leaders couldn't wait much longer, the two ran towards each other and clashed strongly wanting to end the fight as fast as possible. As their swords met, the bandit leader Kevin, had taken a step back from their first clash. Seeing that he was stronger, Brock didn't wait for Kevin to prepare again and slashed towards him. However, Kevin was not as weak as to be taken down with a few moves and blocked the incoming slash with greater strength resulting in a stalemate between the two. As the two continue to exchange blows, both sides of their group began to become tired, breathing heavily with the soldier's side showing more wounds. as one of the soldiers was more injured than the rest, he was the first to die from facing off against two bandits. Seeing this, the bandits too the opportunity and ran towards the side of of the carriage and opened the door trying to enter but was greeted with a small blade piercing straight through his mouth. Seeing the death of his fellow bandit, he wanted to take a step back but his throat was greeted with a cut to his neck and quickly fell to the ground with gurgling noises and then silence. Seeing this situation, Kevin was surprised that the person in the carriage would have the determination to kill so swiftly. As most nobles who would stay in the carriage, it would mostly be lazy men or weak women he did not expect such a person would be in the carriage as he noticed the slender hand reaching out and handed the money pouch.

As the killer emerged from the carriage, Ajax saw a beautiful women that looked around the age of low thirties. She had a curvy body that was easily shown from the thin light blue dress she was wearing with a tan cloth tied at the top half of her body hiding two large bumps near the chest area. She had blonde shiny hair than ran down to her lower back. She had beautiful facial features that could rival even the top model or actress he saw in his past life. She stood a little over 67inches tall. He saw a mature and cold look as the women glanced around her and saw the two dead bandits and the surrounding men clashing.

She then looked at the Brock and said, " Hold them off as long as you can while we go ahead to the city and get reinforcements".

"Yes, Lady Walker," replied Brock seeing the situation become more chaotic by the second.

Seeing Brock slightly distracted, Kevin used all of his strength to send a blow to him knocking Brock back by several feet and made a dash towards the noble lady hoping to change the situation because he knew that it would be bad for them if she returned with reinforcements as he did not bring enough men to deal with the city guards. As the mature lady saw Kevin coming towards him, she became serious and slightly worried because of the fact that it was just not her in the carriage and she was not equipped for battle. With the dagger in hand, she gripped it even harder and lowering her body to prepare for the oncoming sword. She was planning on deflecting the blade to the side and make a run for a horse while grabbing her daughter from inside the carriage.

As the sword came down on her, she used the upper half of her dagger and swiped towards the tip of the sword successfully deflecting the path and made the sword miss. She then grabbed a hand inside the carriage and pulled the person out of the carriage and ran towards the front to hop on a horse, getting away.

The person being pulled out of the carriage was another beautiful women with blonde hair. She looked a lot younger as her age resembled around 16 years old. Although she did not appear to be as curvy as her mother, she still look like she had room to grow and mature into someone maybe even more beautiful. She also wore a light blue dress with a tan cloth covering her upper body. As Ajax saw her come out of the carriage, he lowered himself down to a nearby tree branch close enough to make a move to save her if anything unexpected happened. He had told Tim before hand to stay at the top of the tree in case anything goes wrong and he wanted to test the nature of the defending group first. The main thing that he noticed about her was that she had a small light blue insignia on her forehead and between her eye brows. Seeing the grim situation around her, she ran with her mother hand in hand, towards the front of the horse.

Seeing the two getting closer and closer to the horse, Kevin quickly threw out a dagger towards the young girl behind the mother while feeling his death from behind him. As he threw out his dagger, he quickly turned around holding out his sword in front of him blocking a sword from cutting him in half. Although he blocked the strike, he was not successful in blocking everything and it managed to continue down and strike him on his right shoulder.

Sustaining damage, he said to his group, " Forget about everyone else and capture those two women".

As the dagger came flying at the young girl, the Lady Walker pulled in her daughter in front of her taking the the dagger into her back. As she was slowly falling into the ground, the young girl in her arms quickly wrapped around her and pulled her up continuing to run towards the horse but she was a lot slower and had tears glistening in her eyes. She did not want to cry out and chose to endure and be strong like her mother.

Seeing that their boss was still handling the leader of the soldiers, about half of them made a move towards the two women surrounding them quickly before the two reached the horse. Seeing this situation took out his bow and arrow and aimed at the surrounding bandits ready to shoot when they were about to capture the two women. As one of the surrounding bandits finally made his move and stuck out his hand to grab the two, 'puchi' the hand was pierced by an arrow sending him flying to the ground screaming in pain with the arrow stuck in his hand.

With the sudden intrusion, before they could look around to find the person who shot an arrow, they saw a figure jumping in front of the two women and on top of the bandit on that was still laying in pain on the ground, killing him while everyone was still not aware. He carried a sword in his hand with a spear wrapped around his back. They couldn't believe their eyes when they saw that the figure was covered in black fur except for hits palms, feet and face standing upright almost like a human but had features that also didn't resemble a human. As they took a second look, they realized that the figured that jumped in was a monkey, no an ape. A strange ape with weapons and a piercing gaze with light in its eyes.

" An ape? Why is it here? What it is trying to do" as they men that surrounded the three thought being in high vigilance.

" Come... If... you want die" said Ajax as he was still struggling on speaking human language.

Hearing the words of the ape before them, they became angry and somewhat surprised by the ape speaking their language. One of the bandits could no longer hold back and ran towards the ape telling it to die before capturing the two women. As Ajax saw the charging soldier, he waited until he was a bit closer and slashed right into the bandits throat killing him in one move. As the surrounding bandits saw the blinding quick slash and the instant death of their fellow bandit, they were stunned and didn't move.

As they heard the scream coming to dead silence from the bandit, Kevin and Brock took a quick glance while still locked in battle was astonished by what they saw. They saw an ape that was very strong and seemingly smart stood upright protecting the two women and killing the other bandit quickly. Although the other bandits and soldiers could not notice what was so special about the ape, they felt it as their hair stood up when the ape instantly killed the bandit and felt the powerful aura that it was emitting. They looked at each other and instantly focused on killing one another again with even greater speed as they knew the situation has entirely turned strange as they did not know what the ape wanted by protecting the two women.

As Ajax continued to look at the stilled bandits, he quickly made his move, running to the front and decapitating several of the bandits and starting to kill more and more with quick speed ignoring the notifications that showed up. As he killed the last surrounding bandit, he quickly ran towards the bandits that were still fighting with the soldiers. As he approached them both sides did not know what to do and backed away from each other staying vigilance against the ape that was running towards them. As Ajax only ran towards the bandits and started killing them one by one with extreme speed, Kevin knew that this battle was over, but before he could issue a retreat he felt a sword coming towards him and raised his sword to block it but failed to do so resulting in him getting his right arm cut off. Gritting and screaming in pain, he kicked towards Brock with all of his strength knocking himself a few meters back and telling his men to retreat with Brock stumbling a few feet backwards.

As they heard the command, the remaining bandits immediately bolted into the forest running deeper and deeper. As the soldiers saw them retreating, they was about to go chase after them, but was immediately stopped by the command of Brock.

" Stop and protect the two madams" shouted Brock holding his sword towards Ajax with complete vigilance.

He did not know what the ape before him wanted but with his exhausted state and with the strength it had shown him, he knew he would not win against but had no other choice. As the soldiers stopped and surrounded the two women with their swords pointing towards Ajax full of fear.

As Ajax saw all of this happening, he looked towards Tim still up in the trees, pointed and shouted, " Finish them off. All of them".

Seeing the ape making some strange sounds while looking up into a tree and pointed towards the forest where the bandits ran to, they became even scared and vigilant as they did not notice there were more apes like him around. They continued to stare at Ajax trying to read his intention.

When Ajax approached them he stopped a few feet away and said, " Are... they... safe?"

Still looking at Ajax with fear and vigilance they finally looked back and a few soldiers went to check for injuries. They saw their madam heavily bleeding on her back with eyes slightly open while the younger madam was still holding her up while holding back her tears looking at the ape that saved her. They looked back at the ape and nodded.

"Good" Said Ajax.