Results of scouting

"What happened Ren?" asked Leana once we all sat down.

"So its like this. I wanted to see how well I can scout, so I decided to go and check out the path we are going to take."

"So did you get attacked while scouting?" asked Cleo. She was still concerned about me.

"I am fine really! I didn't get attacked. In fact, no one saw me"

"So there was someone?"

"Ah… well let me start from the beginning"

I started telling the story starting with what I felt how well I scout. For some reason, no one believed me. Since I had more important things to get to, I started talking about how I saw the bandits carrying to people and how I followed them.

"That was too risky Ren" exclaimed Turek.

"I kept my distance. I am used to sneaking around in the city. I am not as good in the forest so I stayed far enough away."

Since there were no more objections, I decided to continue the story. When I told them about how the bandits were so devoted to the bandit queen, Cleo was surprised and asked "They let a woman be their leader? She must be really strong…"

"Well I will come to the part about how strong she is later but I don't think she is leading them by strength."

"What do you mean?" asked Leana.

Then I told them about Nina and Tien's encounter with the bandit queen. Once I was done Turek was looking at me with shock while Leana had her hands on her mouth.

"She…. she raped them?" asked Cleo with her brows furrowed.

I nodded my head.

"A woman was able to rape a man?" asked Turek.

"She looked like she was really strong. She overpowered Tien with ease."

"Didn't you say that Nina was an F ranked adventurer? That mean's Tien was too right?" asked Leana.

I shook my head and said "I am not sure. He was far enough away from me that I couldn't tell for sure. But there is a good chance that he too was an adventurer."

Everyone fell in thought. I guess they had also never heard of a woman like this before.

It turns out that is not what everyone was thinking.

"I know all of you are really surprised," said Cleo in a calm voice, "But if you think about it, there is no reason that a woman wouldn't be able to do this."

"But in the city…" I started to say that I had never heard of anything like this.

"That was the city. Normally, men tend to be stronger than women. That is if they don't train their bodies. But strong women like the bandit queen should be easily able to overpower weaker men. Just because they are men, doesn't make them stronger. We shouldn't forget that as adventurers."

Cleo was right of course. After all, here were two women that were much stronger than the men in their parties. I really was ignorant of the world that I had entered. In this world, what I had learned so far was of no use. I needed to become more cautious until I learned more about the dangers of being an adventurer. I thought about the thugs that had tried to bully me. In that cave,I had seen a woman that was far worse than the thugs. She was cruel and merciless. I hoped I never had to go through what Tien and Nina had been through. I thought about how much more they were going to suffer under that woman. While the bandit queen had sent Nina back to her cell, that didn't mean Nina was safe. Once the bandit queen had her fill of Nina, she might just hand her over to her underlings. Her fate might be even worse in that case. As for Tien, he was taken away by the bandit queen. I didn't really have much hope for him.