Published: February 1, 2026
He was starved for stimulation.
He must have been born that way. Even as a child, he would charge alone at monsters, end up with injuries that brought him to the brink of life and death, and still laugh like he was having fun.
His somewhat airheaded parents didn’t hate him for that. They only made him promise, “Don’t die,” and then let him do as he pleased.
Had the people around them known, they would have been creeped out by the child, yet shamelessly set that aside to loftily criticize the parents as cold-hearted.
But no one blamed these people who lived quietly in the forest, and he genuinely respected such parents.
He left them when he was finally old enough that walking alone in town wouldn’t make people think he was lost.
Having grown so bored with days that no longer offered any struggle against the monsters in the forest, he decided to leave it.
His parents once again made him promise only, “Don’t die,” and sent him off with slightly worried smiles.
They were the kind of parents who wouldn’t stop their child from hunting monsters even if he came home half-dead, and yet they still sent him off loaded with gifts like parting presents—proof they truly loved their son.
He set out, grateful for the weight of that parental affection.
When he reached a nearby country and learned about adventurers, he didn’t hesitate to register as one, seeing it as the perfect profession that matched both his hobby and his practical needs.
For a time, a child who went alone into dangerous labyrinths, hunting monsters and returning covered in wounds, became a topic of rumor.
Humans get used to anything, though. After it happened a few times, people stopped worrying, stopped jeering. It simply became normal.
Fighting stronger opponents and surviving, his skill never plateaued. By the time his height had finished growing, none of the monsters in the area could match him.
As for why someone like him didn’t aim for adventurer glory and instead became a bandit—he could only say it was how things turned out.
Seeking strong, unfamiliar monsters, he wandered into a forest and met bandits. He was attacked, and when he killed the man who appeared to be their leader, for some reason the surviving bandits lifted him up as their new chief.
A bandit who’d been around since those days once told him they’d thought he couldn’t possibly be a civilian. They had assumed some rival bandit group had come to seize their territory. Regrettable.
He could tell right from wrong, but being starved for stimulation, he somehow started acting as a bandit—and whether it was talent or not, the small bandit gang grew until it could properly be called an organization.
The daily life of hunting and being hunted was too exciting to give up, and he thought that strangely combining the lives of an adventurer and a bandit chief wasn’t bad at all.
Once, when the gang had grown large enough, they had a chance to decide on a name. He tossed out something random, and thanks to a mishearing it somehow turned into a bizarre name.
Since it was just something he’d come up with offhand anyway, he didn’t bother correcting it, and before he noticed, it had stuck.
His turning point came one night when he decided to kill some time by attacking a carriage.
He found just a single carriage and thought it wouldn’t bring in much, but the fine construction whispered to his instincts that there might be something unexpectedly valuable.
One carriage, one man reading by the fire.
He assumed the man was on watch, but the gentle-looking fellow didn’t look like an adventurer at all. Maybe they couldn’t even afford to hire one? Feeling like he’d drawn a dud, he still took advantage of having come all this way and calmly loosed an arrow at the man’s skull.
When the arrow was deflected and a black figure leaped out, a chill of excitement ran up his spine.
Sharp eyes looked at him coldly. He knew without a doubt he couldn’t beat this man, and what rose inside him was joy.
It had been a long time since he’d met someone he absolutely couldn’t win against. That was why he was happy.