If You Win, Your Prize Is The Princess

Sylia hardly remembered what happened to her as a young child. She found herself in an orphanage, on the outskirts of a small country. She didn’t even know who her parents were if she had other relatives or any of their faces.

Sylia grew up there. Violence and theft were rampant as the guards were not working as intended, probably because it wasn’t a rich country and their defenses, in general, were also poor. She spent her days in such a place.

The orphanage Sylia was raised in was also poor, and though she was lucky she never saw those ruffians, her life was still difficult.

(Someday, I’ll leave this country.)

Sylia always thought that because she was always hungry and couldn’t eat to satisfaction. She was going to go to a better country and try to find happiness there.

So she grabbed a wooden stick.

(I have to become stronger.)

It might not be necessary if she was just going to move to another country. But she knew: she couldn’t do anything unless she excelled in something.

She had no education. She had no capacity for magic. She had no other special skills. To begin with, surviving each day was all she could do.

All she could do was train her body, swing that wooden stick, and become stronger.

She left that country when she was 8 years old. There were no satisfying meals there. Her muscles didn’t develop well when she trained, but it wasn’t a stretch to say she was the most well-built and strongest among her peers.

That’s why she paid a little amount of money to a wagon heading to another country. It was an escape from her current life. This was a new beginning for her.

“So is your sword technique and combat skill all self-taught?”

Kranz interrupted in the middle of the story. Sylia had power and sword skills that made it hard to believe she was only 15 years old. If she had developed all that independently, it spoke of impressive talent and aptitude.

But, Sylia shook her head.

“The day I left my country for the first time, I met my master,” she said.

Back to that day. There were many other people in that wagon heading to a neighboring state. There were those on business, there were those who were traveling for the sake of it, there were those who were moving to a new country. Except for the young Sylia, there were no unusual passengers.

The poorly maintained mountain roads were bumpy and caused a lot of pain. Although the neighboring country was close by, it was tough to travel like this for more than a few hours.

Still, it was a big achievement for someone as small and young as Sylia to get out of that devastated country.

Some of the people in the wagon seemed to be a bit worried about a young girl like her, but they didn’t seem to be willing to pry into her strange circumstances nor get involved with Sylia.

However, that didn’t mean that wagon was silent the whole trip. Even if they were only meeting for the first time that day, they talk to each other for however much they feel comfortable doing so. Sylia listened to them, especially the ones talking about their businesses and where and who were having conflicts, as she didn’t know what information she could use or could ignore.

Then that moment came.

“Uh, waah…”

The wagon suddenly came to a halt. It wasn’t instantaneous, but the jerk was so strong the passengers almost fell forward.

“What the…?” one of the male passengers muttered.

Even if it’s a sudden stop, it was polite to warn the passengers. In short, it was a situation outside the driver’s control, when they couldn’t say as much.

“Don’t put up a fight! Just be quiet!”

The somewhat muffled, loud voice of a man echoed in the wagon’s interior.

“We’re the bandits of this region! We can’t guarantee you’ll keep your lives unless you stay quiet!!”

Everyone was terrified by the voice echoing inside.

(Whatever this is, it’s bad…!)

Sylia was trying to restrain her shaking body. It was a given that bandits were everywhere, she’d even heard stories of the damage they left in their wake, but she never thought she’d be a victim of them.

“Damn it…” one of the male passengers hiss.

He has a dagger on his waist for self-defense, but it may as well be decorative against the bandits. Sylia had been training her body for all this time but her waist is bare. She couldn’t afford to buy a sword.

As the passengers were confused and panicking, the curtains at the back of the wagon were yanked open.

“Hii…!” a middle-aged woman screamed.

It was inevitable, as there were five bandits visible from beyond the curtain. Considering that the wagon was surrounded, they were certain there were more than 10 bandits here.

The thieves seemed to be eyeing the passengers with suspicious snickers.

“It’s not your lucky day… now, if you don’t fight back, you’re not going to die. So get on out here!”

He was probably the captain. He was gesturing outside with an ax that looked messy like it had been recently used.

The passengers, Sylia included, were ordered to put their hands behind their heads and kneel on the ground, they quickly obeyed.

Some of the thieves boarded the wagon and started rifling through their possessions. And as Sylia tried to look around, the owner of the wagon was also forced to kneel some distance away.

“I’ve had hard times recently,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but I’ll give you anything.”

It’s a robbery. No one can speak. They didn’t mean to trade their lives for answers.

Everyone gave up resisting, thinking that at least their lives would be spared. Except for one passenger.

(………)

Sylia realized that she was being terrifyingly calm. Her body used to tremble with fear is now surrounded by the sounds of unsheathing blades and silence. And Sylia’s eyes were discreetly aimed at the waist of the man kneeling beside her.

(If I use that…) Sylia thought.

The man’s dagger has not been confiscated for some reason. If it was deemed worthless for crude craftsmanship or if it went unnoticed, it’s a situation where she’s got something to gain at the moment.

If she had to pick a target, it was the captain, the man who was raising his voice a short while ago. He seemed to be focusing on the passengers, unlike the rest of the bandits rifling through the luggage.

Their aim, of course, is to sell them for money.

“Well, well.”

As the captain finds Sylia, he squints his eyes and moves closer to her. Everyone feels sorry for her: she was being aimed for, too.

“Any of you the parent of this kid?” the captain asked.

He looked around as he asked but no one came forward. Now that he’d confirmed the answer, the captain grinned.

“Little girls sell well,” the captain said. “Especially those without relatives.”

The captain grabs Sylia’s slender arm and yanks her up to her feet. Slyia knew it: the most valuable person in this scene was a little girl like her. There were only men or middle-aged women otherwise. It was inevitable that Sylia, both the weakest and most valuable, would be a prime target.

But just as the bandits targeted Sylia, so did Sylia target them.

“Guh?!”

Right as the captain yanked Sylia up to her feet, she grabbed his other arm and swept his feet out from under him.

If the captain was wary of an attack, he would have easily stopped it. However, the captain hadn’t even considered that such a young girl would do that, thinking Sylia helpless prey, so he was knocked down to the ground without any fuss.

The captain groaned. “You little shi…”

His words stopped there. A dagger was stabbed into his throat.

“Ah, ah, gah…?” he gurgled.

“Gobuh” he coughed, and the man stopped moving, his eyes wide open as he spat blood, probably dead before he realized what had happened. And the man who owned the dagger was also surprised: before he knew it, it had been stolen from his waist.

“Fuh, fuh…” Sylia panted.

She felt her body was burning hot. Was it excitement or fear? It seemed that a beast with small but sharp fangs had just been unleashed.

She still needed the dagger. She needed it to kill the thieves who hadn’t realized what had happened yet. She pulled it out of the captain’s throat.

“Bi-Bitch…!”

The bandit who finally realized what had happened rushes to her and swings his ax. If getting caught means being sold into slavery, Sylia would die here. It was bad for the passengers who wanted to save themselves, but Sylia intended to stick to her decision.

But the need to do so suddenly disappears.

“Igah…?!”

The bandit who jumped at Sylia let out a strange scream and collapsed from something.

“Eh?” Sylia asked.

A knife was lodged deep into the man’s head.