Michael looked at Sleazy and saw genuinity in his face. The man that had planned to kill a Rebornian driver to steal a truck was now showing complete remorse over his own actions.
His little monologue about wanting the other bandits to live a better life here in Reborn could make even grown man cry.
"...sniff…sniff…I guess you're not such a bad guy after all," Fudge said, with violet tears streaming down his amorphous body.
"It's safe to say that you have good intentions in having us dismantle the Bastard Bandits," Michael muttered. "If so, then you should start to tell us everything you know."
Sleazy nodded and began to spill the beans about the Bastard Bandits' modus of operandi.
First of all, they mainly stayed in the forest, where they had absolute mastery over the environment. They used the caves, the trees, and the ground to surprise the people travelling through their territory.
They paraded their business as a security agency, charging people with a safety fee to travel in the forest. But of course, this was nothing more than a scam. It was just a fee not to get harassed by them.
If a traveller refused to pay, then the Bastard Bandits would immediately send out people to scare them, either through force or through tricks. Once people were afraid of their lives or if the bandits stole enough cargo, then they could leave the forest unharmed for the rest of the trip.
"You say they use tricks, what kind?" Michael asked.
Sleazy leaned in. "I don't know if you believe this, but did you know that Fairies are real?"
Michael's eyes widened. It looked like his guess was right. The Fairies were involved with the Bastard Bandits. As for the degree and reason for their cooperation, he had yet to know.
"The reason that we have remained as the dominant force in the forest was because we had help from a supernatural force: the Fairies.
There were countless companies and organizations that had enough of our 'security fee' and tried to attack us in our base, but we would always prevail against them even though we had nothing but scraps for our equipment.
They would storm the forests in search of our base, sharp weapons and tough shields in hand ready for a fight, but they would always end up getting lost in the maze of the forest. They would find themselves losing maps, getting separated, and even attacked by the ground itself in the dead of night.
This was the work of the Fairies—not the Bastard Bandits as others would believe."
It seemed that the connection with the Fairies and the Bastard Bandits were a lot closer than Michael thought, if they were the one helping the Bandits to keep control of the forest.
"Why are they helping the bandits? Do they have an alliance with them?"
Sleazy shook his head. "No such thing. The Bastard Bandits and the Fairies are not friends of any kind. In fact, I have only seen glimpses of their small glowing figures a couple of times before. And I'm sure that low-level bandits don't even know of their existence.
Fairies and the Bastards are just unlikely acquaintances with a symbiotic relationship with each other.
The Bastard Bandits use the Fairies for protection, and the Fairies use the Bastard Bandits for sustenance–for food."
Fudge immediately cringed. "Ew! They're eating bandits?"
"No. Fairies do not eat food like us humans. They eat something completely different: human emotions. Specifically, they want fear. Oh, they love it when humans scream in terror."
And finally, things were starting to make sense for Michael.
"So that's the reason why," he said in contemplation. "They want the bandits to continue scaring travellers."
The reason why the Fairies were sticking around and helping the Bastard Bandits was because they feed on all the fear and terror that the bandits give to the foreigners entering the forest.
It was a completely symbiotic relationship. If the Bastard Bandits were defeated and ejected from the forest, then the Fairies would no longer have a reliable source of human emotion. Well, to be more accurate, the Fairies were using bandits, and vice versa.
"But I heard that the Fairies have been too active lately. Do you have any idea why?"
Sleazy had no answer because he had been transferred here to the prison long before this strange event happened.
"I don't know for sure, but I do know that the Fairies get really pissed off if they don't have anything to eat. We had a really slow month where we didn't have a 'scared' human to offer them, and they turned all our beds into rocks and all our water into sand."
If that was true, then maybe Michael's Golden Road may have had an effect on the Fairies' consumption of human emotion. After all, there were less and less people travelling to the East thanks to the easy taxi services that Reborn offered in every town or settlement connected to the Golden Road.
Less travelers meant less people scared.
"Maybe the big change in the Bastard Bandits had something to do with that," Sleazy muttered to himself.
"What do you mean?" asked Michael.
"Before we tried to rob your automobile, the Bastard Bandits had just recently undergone a major change.
We were approached by people from Flarecorp who wanted for us to become allies. Normally, we would have just scoffed at their attempt, but we were given an offer we just couldn't refuse.
They offered us twice the gold coins we were making each year off of the 'security fees', as well as lifetime supplies of Flarecorp products including their weapons and armors.
The only thing we had to do was to pledge allegiance to Flarecorp and become subordinates to their 'King'.
Not a lot of bandits liked that idea, so the agreement with Flarecorp wasn't accepted right away. But maybe that changed."
With bandits becoming subordinates to Flarecorp, no doubt their days of threatening travellers for a measly amount of gold coins was over.
This was what probably pissed off the Fairies the most.
"Hmm…so I guess that expanding East of Angora City won't be as easy as I thought. I'd have to deal with the Fairies, the Bastard Bandits, and Flarecorp all together."
Michael wasn't too worried about Flarecorp and the Bandits. He knew what he was dealing with if he fought with them. However, he didn't know anything about Fairies and their strengths as of yet. It would be a complete disadvantage for him if he picked a fight with them knowing nothing about them.
Sleazy looked up at Michael and gave him a word of warning. "I'd be careful with angering the Fairies too much," he said with a grave voice. "There's a reason why even our Bandit Leader treats the Fairies with a lot of respect and fear. The last time he didn't, he lost an arm.
The Fairies are being led by an ancient and very powerful figure as wise as even the oldest trees in the world. They say that this demi-human is equivalent in strength and in power with even that of the Ocean King and the Demon Queen.
They call her the Pixie Queen."