"How do you know it's the same bandits? Are you sure you can find them?" asked Brin.
Zilly glanced at Sion, and Brin understood at once. She still wanted to be seen as a [Warrior] in the wider world, which meant that she didn't want to give away her [Rogue] perception abilities. Davi had already fumbled that when he'd announced that Zilly had already heard them coming and he had the feeling that Sion was too canny to have missed or forgotten that, but there was no reason to openly out her. He added, "Have you found their trail?"
She nodded. "Yeah. I guess I don't know for sure that it's the same group. After all, they registered as adventurers in Oud's Bog, so now that they've been outed as bandits they won't be able to show their faces in any cities in this part of Frenaria. It would be smart to just move on, but for some reason my gut is telling me these are the same guys."
Her gut, huh? She'd probably snuck up and verified it personally. He wondered if Sion's [True Reckoning] was good enough to see through the lie.
"Then this is all the more reason you should come back with us. You can explain all this to Hogg and Zerif personally. I'm sure they'll want to send a team out, and you can guide them in person."
She shook her head. "If anyone leaves the caravan I'll find them and catch up. But if you want, I could show you. I haven't dared to get too close just in case they have a [Rogue], but with all of us here I think it'd probably be ok."
Looking around, Brin saw that no one had a problem with that, except for Sion.
"Truly?" the young [Merchant] asked. "Should we not instead return and warn the caravan of the danger?"
"Is that spear just for show?" Brin teased.
"Mostly, yes! Most beasts will leave large groups of humans alone, doubly so after a poke teaches them that the humans have teeth."
Davi furrowed his brow. "But if you let them get away, you don't get the experience."
"The System gives me experience for warding off threats to my property, just as it would give you experience for using your song to lure monsters away," said Sion.
"Instead of goading them to attack you for no reason," said Myra. "Just to name an example."
Zilly barked a laugh. "You did that? Maybe I'll finally take your spot as their favorite person from Hammon's Bog."
"Nah, they blame me for that. You can't beat a [Bard] in a popularity contest," said Brin.
"You're all being awfully casual with the idea that there are bandits in this forest," Sion said. He looked at Brin. "You're a [Glasser], correct? Am I missing something, or is that a Class for making glass?"
"I am and it is. And I make fantastic glassware. Relax, we're just having a look. We won't get close enough for them to know we're there. Right, Zilly?"
"Absolutely," she said.
Sion shook his head, but didn't argue any further.
They walked through the forest, with Zilly in the lead. Every once in a while she examined a broken twig, or bent down to touch the ground and pretend she was seeing tracks, pretending to actually be following the bandits' trail. He wasn't sure if Sion was actually fooled or if he was just playing along, but Brin would guess it was the latter.
Marksi quickly became impatient with the slow-moving two-legs and disappeared into the forest for long stretches of time, only to reappear suddenly and walk alongside Brin as if nothing had happened.
Once, he had a somewhat smug look on his face, and Brin thought his belly looked a little more full.
"Hey! Pio said you're not supposed to eat any more solid food today! You better not have eaten any spiders."
Marksi huffed in contempt and refused to pretend to feel guilty for eating whatever he wanted.
After a while, Zilly stopped. "This is probably as far as we should go. Keep your voices down, just in case."
Brin peered into the woods, but didn't see a thing. "How are we going to–"
"Like this." Zilly stepped up to the nearest tree, and now that Brin noticed it, he saw that it was unusually wide and tall.
Unlike the tame national forests he'd been to in his old world, the trees of the Boglands had a startling amount of diversity. Pines and spruces would snuggle up next to oaks and birches without reason or pattern, giving the forest a strange and wild appearance. Of course, none of the exact species of tree from his old world existed here, but he found near equivalents for most of the tree-types he could name, which granted wasn't very many.
This one sort of looked like a fir, but with fewer and thicker branches that didn't seem to have enough needles for the amount of wood they grew. He knew kids around here loved this kind of tree because they were easy and fun to climb, and because they grew up much higher than the trees around them.
Aided by her high Dexterity, Zilly flew up the tree as easily as if it were a ladder. Brin shrugged and climbed up after her. The others waited at the bottom, since it would get sort of crowded at the top.
He climbed up after her, and honestly it was kind of fun. The feeling of the rough bark on his hands and the scent of pine brought him back to his childhood back on earth. How long had it been since he'd done something like this? He'd had to go to the park to find any really good climbing trees, and it had always made his mom nervous, but he couldn't be stopped. Kids were made to climb on things. If you never climbed a tree, how could you really even call yourself a human?
As they got higher, the branches got thinner and the tree started to sway a bit with Brin's movements. Luckily, the tree was tall enough that he didn't have to go more than three-quarters of the way up to get above the other trees.
He immediately saw what Zilly wanted to show him. Five lights in the distance, from five campfires all grouped together. The caravan never made more than one big bonfire each night, and that was mostly for cooking. The nights didn't get cold enough to really need it for warmth, although Brin still enjoyed gazing into the flames. Did the fact that they made five fires mean this group was huge? Maybe it meant that there were five factions and they didn't like each other very much.
He couldn't quite make out the figures around the fires; it was too far away. He could launch an Invisible Eye over there, but it would be hard to explain to the others why he wanted to sit on the ground staring at nothing for a half hour.
Maybe there was something he could do with glass? But nothing he wanted to try while sitting in a tree. He climbed back down.
When they got to the bottom, Zilly said, "There's twenty of them. Five groups of four."
"Why do they group up like that?" Brin asked.
"I haven't been able to figure that out."
Myra and Davi wanted to look next. They came down a few minutes later, not having gleaned anything that Brin couldn't.
Sion refused to take a turn. "I'll trust you all. Can we please go now?"
"Sure. I'll guide you part of the way back to the caravan," said Zilly.
Brin was thankful for that; he hadn't really been keeping track of the direction.
On the way back, he thought about seeing further with glass. Surely there was something he could do. He'd played around with lenses and telescopes back in Hammon's Bog, but hadn't gone very far with it because he'd always known he'd have illusions for seeing far away.
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He decided to see what he could pull off now. He cast [Summon Glass] to make something in an approximate lens shape, then cast [Shape Glass] using words of Language here and there to guide it into what he wanted. He pumped mana in wastefully, making everything happen faster than it should, and got a nice lens in a matter of minutes. He did it again, this time to make a smaller lens, and created it even faster than the first. When he'd tried this back in the shop, he'd had the best success with the larger lens being convex, while the smaller lens was concave, but flat on one side, so that's what he did now.
Then he made the tubes, a short one for the small lens and a much longer one for the bigger lens. This he could do quicker, since they didn't need to be clear or pure; they were for blocking light rather than refracting it.
He made the tubes just the right size so that they could slot into each other while still being able to slide, and then attached the lenses to his tubes. It was crude, and he'd used nearly a quarter of his mana to rush the job, but it was done. He'd made a telescope. Well, it was a little arrogant to call this a telescope. He'd made a spyglass.
[Shape Glass] leveled up! 32 -> 33
He gave it a try, and sure enough by pulling the longer tube in and out, he was able to focus the lenses and get a clear picture in the distance. It would be better if he could fit them together with threads so that you could carefully screw the telescope forwards and backwards for focus, but this worked good enough for what he needed it for, which was basically nothing now that the bandit camp was far behind them.
He let the others play with his new toy. Zilly, Davi, and Myra found it a bit entertaining, but when Sion got his turn he gave it a try and then stared down at the spyglass in awe.
"You made this just now? This is incredible! I wonder if you would consider selling me the design."
"If you like that, you can just keep it. I can make another," said Brin.
"But with this, I could duplicate it and create more. Please, let me pay you for your idea."
"I refuse to believe that spy glasses haven't already been invented by someone else." Brin scratched his neck in thought. "But if you're really interested, then maybe when we get to town we could find a [Glasser] who'd let me rent their shop for an afternoon. Then I could work out the kinks and make a real spyglass instead of that piece of crap that I threw together to pass the time while we walked. I'm not interested in mass-producing it, but if you want to hire someone for that, what would you say about a 5% licensing fee?"
"That would be very generous of you," said Sion.
"No it wouldn't. Five percent is the absolute baseline standard rate for things like this. Plus, you'd honestly be the one doing me a favor. You'd be doing all the work while I just sit back and get paid for nothing. Frenaria isn't super diligent about enforcing copyright. Honestly, if you just took that spyglass and did all this anyway with no royalties I wouldn't blame you."
Sion looked at Brin for a long moment, then burst out laughing. "Let me ask you something. Who taught you how to deal with the [Merchants] of Prinnash?"
"What do you mean?"
Sion shook his head. "Never mind. You will get your 5% licensing fee, my friend."
It was another half hour walk back to the place where Zilly would leave them and Brin was starting to feel it. He swore he'd never complain about sleep exhaustion again now that the nightmares had stopped, but even so doing this night after night was starting to wear on him a little bit. He was ready to get back to his bedroll.
"Anything else we can do for you, Zilly? You sure you don't want to come back to the caravan?"
"I’m ok. You’ve already done a lot. Although…" she said.
Brin thought about his bedroll waiting for him, and took a deep breath. "What is it?"
"I feel bad that you didn’t get to fight any monsters. That’s what you came out here for, right? I’d hate to make you leave empty-handed, and there's a group of Vine Pumas nearby that have me on edge. They’ve been ignoring me for now, but it’s hard to sleep knowing they’re around. I'd take care of them myself, but there's three of them and they're really good at not getting separated. I don't think I could beat them alone, but with you guys here..."
Brin yawned. "I'm down. You guys?"
Myra and Davi agreed.
Sion sighed. "If you say yes, then who am I to say no?"
"Which way?" Brin asked, stifling another yawn.
"Thank you! And don't worry about that. I'll lure them here!" Zilly dashed off into the night.
"What combat Skills do you have?" Davi asked Sion. "It'll be easier for me to direct you if I know what I'm working with."
"I've trained with the spear since I was young. I won't hold you back."
"But what does your magic do?" asked Myra. "Ooh! I bet you can shoot money out like bullets!"
"What? No! What use would a [Merchant] have for that? I buy and sell. I don't put points in Magic."
Myra looked surprised. "Whoa, for real? But Magic is like, the best stat?"
"Really? For [Weavers] and [Glassers]? I can see why a [Bard] would focus on Magic, but you two?" Sion asked.
Brin and Myra had to chuckle at that, since Davi put all his points into Strength. Davi pulled out his oud and pretended to tune it to cover his embarrassment.
"Hey, since she's bringing the fight to us, we have some time to prepare the ground," said Brin.
"Oh, good point," said Myra.
They found a nice, wide clearing where the large cats wouldn't be able to use the trees to their advantage and got to work.
Brin began summoning projectiles, bullets and javelins. He could summon them on the spot, but having a bunch ready ahead of time could never hurt.
Meanwhile, Myra unraveled the unbreakable thread she wore on her wrist and sent it through the grass, scything it down. She used the thread to gather and twist it, spinning it into more thread she could use, and spinning the thread into ropes that she left laying around the ground.
For the next twenty minutes, Brin made ammunition while Myra spun her threads. He stopped when he'd created twenty javelins and several hundred bullets. If he couldn't kill them with this then there was no number that would work. Myra kept going though, blanketing the ground with grass thread.
"Here! They're right behind me!" Zilly called.
She darted into the clearing, and the Pumas were right on her tail. They were big, the size of tigers. Their fur was a dark and sickly brown. Not green, like he'd expected with the name "Vine Puma", but then he noticed the tails. They were absurdly long, nearly ten feet, and dragged behind them like vines.
By fleeing from them, Zilly had engaged their chase instinct and they were so focused on their prey that they didn't notice the ambush until it was too late.
Davi played his song, pushing power, focus and direction onto the party. Myra screamed "
"
She dodged out of the way quick as thought with [Dash]. Marksi blinked in, running across the Pumas field of view and grabbing its attention for just a moment. That moment was enough for Zilly, who immediately flew back in and stabbed the creature in the neck, driving it to the ground.
The other Pumas were struggling through the vines. Myra was giving it everything she had to keep them tied down, but she was losing ground and they were beginning to struggle free.
Brin cast a volley of bullets into all three. They popped into the beasts, eliciting screams of anger and pain, but the wounds were superficial.
Through the song, Brin felt Davi tell Myra to focus on keeping only one Vine Puma tied down and leave the others to Brin and Zilly.
Brin cast one last volley of javelins towards the Pumas, scoring some deep wounds, and then Davi directed him forward.
He grabbed his spear and charged, pushing mana into it as he ran.
He and Zilly ran between the two cats, standing back to back and separating them.
Brin stabbed, and the Puma dodged quick as a shadow. He pressed the attack, not wanting to give the Puma a chance to regroup, and went through a spear form. Thrust, swipe, swing from the left, then the right. Up, down, thrust, again and again. The Puma sidestepped every attack, but when it opened its mouth to rush forward with a bite, Brin was always ready with another attack, pushing it back again.
He had no space to see how Zilly was faring against the other one, it was all he could do to keep this Puma on its toes.
No, he couldn't let this take so long, he needed to win now. He threw a flash of light into the Puma's eyes, distracting it for long enough to get in a good stab. He pushed as much mana into the spear as he could grab and pushed.
The spear thrust forwards with so much power that it leapt out of Brin's hands and chased the Puma down as it tried to back away. The spear struck the monster in the heart, burying itself deep.
It struggled weakly to stay standing, then collapsed, dead.
Brin turned around quickly to see how the others were faring. Zilly stood triumphantly on top of the corpse of her opponent, pulling her sword free.
There had been one more. He saw the other one was dead as well. Still held down by Myra's threads, Sion had been able to walk up and stab it to death.
Congratulations! Your party has defeated four Vine Pumas, average level 24. Experience will be split between party members based on contribution.
No one got a level from that, not even Sion, which was surprising. Or maybe not, since Myra had done most of the work on the one he'd killed. Brin was still satisfied, though. He hadn’t expected a level here, but every monster he killed brought him another step closer to level 35 and hopefully [Split Focus].
"Can Vine Pumas grow beast cores?" Brin asked.
"They can, but not all of them have one," said Sion. "Perhaps we'll get lucky? We should also collect their teeth, claws, and fur. Oh, and their tails! The tail of a Vine Puma is very highly prized."
The kids got to work, at least until Sion realized that all of them were worthless at harvesting a kill and told them he'd do it himself.
Zilly insisted on learning, and so Sion let her sit by his side as he worked and explained exactly what he was doing.
They found only one beast core, and Brin didn't let Marksi eat it. He didn't think the little guy was ready for such rich food after his fever the day before. Besides, he wasn't sure if he should let Marksi eat the cores of monsters he didn't help kill. It seemed like cheating.
By the time he stumbled back into camp, he was thoroughly spent. He murmured goodnight to the others, promising he'd tell Hogg about the bandits in the morning. He was sure Hogg would want to do something about it.