Chapter 155. Improvised Weapon Efficiency, Remarkably High
Lia, who had been calmly sipping her tea mere seconds before, didn’t even bother reaching for her sword. Her eyes darted across the table, assessing the battlefield with the cold, analytical precision of a tactician.
Her gaze landed on a basket of bread loaves so ancient and so thoroughly baked, they might as well have been carved from granite.
The nearest bandit, a wiry man with a jagged dagger, lunged toward Lia with a snarl. "Die, little--"
WHAM.
Lia’s arm blurred. She snatched a stale, rock-hard baguette and hurled it with the force of a crossbow bolt. The bread struck the bandit squarely in the throat.
There was a sickening crack, the sound of cartilage splintering as the projectile connected. The man’s eyes bulged, his windpipe collapsing under the impact, and he flew backward, crashing into a table of terrified locals with enough force to splinter the wood.
"By the gods," Ellie gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.
She was torn between a hysterical laugh and the genuine alarm of watching a human being get winded by gluten. "Lia, that was... that was actually terrifying."
Lia didn’t even blink. Her expression remained as placid as a still pond, though her fingers were already diving back into the bread basket with deadly intent.
"Fear is an inefficient emotion, Ellie," Lia said calmly, her voice carrying over the sounds of clashing steel and screaming bandits. "Besides, this bread is structurally superior to most training weapons."
"She’s not joking," Clara whispered, ducking as a dagger whizzed past her head. "She’s actually weaponizing the carbs."
"More carbs!" Kaela roared, swinging her skillet in a wide arc that caught another bandit across the temple.
The sound was like a mallet hitting a melon, splat,splat and the man spun away, blood spraying across the floor in a grotesque arc. "This is for the honey cakes!"
Lia’s arm moved again.
Thwack.
A second loaf, aimed with deadly accuracy, caught a third bandit mid-lunge directly in the forehead. The impact made a sound like two stones colliding.
The bandit’s head snapped back so violently that his teeth audibly clattered together, sending him staggering backward, clutching his bleeding skull.
"Target neutralized," Lia muttered tonelessly, already scanning the table for a third projectile. "Though I do believe the crust on that sourdough was slightly suboptimal for maximum impact."
"Suboptimal? Lia, you just gave that man a concussion with a dinner roll!" Ellie cried out, half laughing as she ducked behind a chair to avoid a stray blade.
"Precision over power, Ellie," Lia replied primly, her eyes locking onto the final bandit who was charging toward them. "Now, hold still."
"I believe there’s a pumpernickel loaf that requires testing."
Kaela was no longer fighting; she was performing. A manic grin split her face as she abandoned the skillet for a thick, heavy wooden serving tray.
She moved with the same aggressive, forward-pressing energy she usually reserved for her Ember stance, her feet planted wide as she danced through the chaos.
A bandit swung a rusted cutlass at her ribs, but Kaela didn’t flinch. With a snarl, she batted the blade aside with the edge of the tray, the wood splintering slightly under the steel, and in one fluid motion, she drove the reinforced rim directly into the man’s solar plexus.
The sound was sickening: a wet, hollow thunk followed by the unmistakable crack of ribs folding inward like dry kindling. The bandit gasped, blood frothing at his lips as he doubled over, his body folding completely in half before he collapsed in a heap of wheezing agony.
"Fourteen kills against the monster swarm during last week’s raid," Kaela shouted to the ceiling, her voice ringing with gleeful bloodlust, "and now I’m about to add bandit skillet and tray victories to my personal record!"
"That is statistically inaccurate and ethically questionable," Lia called back without breaking her rhythm.
She grabbed a leftover chicken bone from a platter—sharp, splintered, and deadly—and launched it with the unerring accuracy of a crossbow bolt. The bone whistled through the air and punched directly into the exposed kneecap of a fourth bandit.
A wet pop echoed through the room as the joint shattered, sending the man screaming to the floor, clutching his mangled leg.
Clara, meanwhile, was a study in terrifying calm. Amidst the blood spray and the splintering wood, she had produced her leather-bound journal.
Her quill scratched furiously against the parchment even as she moved.
"Improvised weapon efficiency," she narrated aloud in a clinical tone, "remarkably high, given zero prior training in cutlery-based combat."
As she spoke, she flicked a pewter spoon with surgical precision. The utensil caught a bandit attempting to flank Kaela squarely in the left eye socket. There was a squelch as the spoon sank in, sending the man reeling back with crimson streaming down his face.
"You’re writing this down right now?!" Ellie screamed, genuinely incredulous.
She ducked under a wild swing and released a tightly controlled, blinding burst of holy light directly into the face of the final bandit. The man shrieked, clawing at his eyes, leaving him completely vulnerable.
From the shadows near the bar, Olivia materialized like a wraith, delivering a single, efficient strike that left the man convulsing on the floor.
"Documentation waits for no one," Clara said serenely, snapping her journal shut as the last bandit groaned in humiliation.
The room began to settle, the adrenaline still humming in the air. Kaela grabbed a stray honey cake from the table, wiping a fleck of blood off her cheek with the back of her hand.
"Finally," she huffed, taking a triumphant bite. "Now, where was I? Oh yeah, dessert."
THUD.
The tavern door creaked open again. The bandit leader, his face a ruin of purple bruises and congealed blood, staggered back in.
His breathing was ragged, a wet wheeze that sounded like air escaping a punctured lung. His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on Kaela with murderous, humiliated intent.
"You..." he croaked, spittle flying from his torn lips. "You little... witch..."
Kaela didn’t even look up from her cake. "Oh, for the love of—you’re like a cockroach, aren’t you?"
With an irritated sigh, she reached out and swiped her hand across the table, sending her half-eaten dessert flying directly into his face. The sticky honey cake splattered across his broken nose like a grotesque mask.
The leader froze, stunned by the sheer disrespect. Then he roared, a sound of pure, unhinged rage, and lunged forward with his broken sword raised.
"Okay, that’s it! You’ve ruined my sugar high!"
Kaela moved faster than his enraged mind could follow. She met his charge head on, grabbing the blade with a gauntleted hand, ignoring the sting of the metal, and delivering a devastating uppercut with the edge of the wooden tray.
The blow caught him under the chin with enough force to send his teeth skittering across the floorboards. Before he could fall, Kaela seized him by the collar of his filthy leather armor.
"Time to take out the trash!" she yelled.
She spun like a discus thrower, putting every ounce of her muscular strength into a massive heave. She aimed to hurl him straight through the tavern window to send a message.
"Kaela, wait for the property damage—!" Clara called out.
But Clara was faster. Just as Kaela unleashed the throw, Clara’s fingers flicked a spell, and the window latches flew open, the glass sliding smoothly aside.
The bandit leader sailed through the open frame like a human cannonball. He didn’t shatter glass; instead, he flew out into the night air, screaming a string of curses that ended abruptly when he met the ancient oak tree standing twenty feet from the tavern wall.
CRACK. THUD.
The impact sounded like a tree trunk splitting. His body slammed into the bark with bone-breaking force, the air leaving his lungs in one final, pathetic wheeze before he slid down the trunk to the ground, unconscious and broken, dangling limply between the roots.
Kaela dusted off her hands, picking up her cake with zero remorse. "See? No broken glass."
"Efficient."