Joe's first mistake was not expecting a group known to have bought a Mage in the past to not have a Mage now. His second mistake was thinking that there would only be one. The crocodillian woman finally recovered from the Cold Snap he hit her with and threw fire at him and Melanie. They both had Elemental Shield active so it didn't do a lot to them.
Even though they knew they were illusions, the extra bandits still distracted Joe, Ferric, and Melanie. Belstak, on the other hand, easily discerned the true bandits with his sense of smell. He killed the bandit he had jumped on earlier and moved on to another.
Ferric came up to the leader, still struggling in his wooden armor. “I don't appreciate people trying to kill my citizens.” He brought his dragon bone sword in with an overhead chop. Despite his reduced maneuverability the leader managed to twist out of the way of the blade in time so it instead scraped along the wood itself, leaving frost in its wake.
The axe wielding bandit tried to get out of the dangerous area while the illusions were distracting Joe's team, but literally ran into a problem when he impacted the invisible force field Joe enacted around the area. Before he could shout a warning to the others Melanie zoomed up behind him and impaled him with her sword, wreathed in flames.
The assassin couldn't reach the knife embedded in the back of his now wooden armor, but it no longer mattered because Joe was tired of playing around. Glowing green chains erupted from the ground and immobilized the man before they started to dissolve his armor. Even if he couldn't see the man, Caustic Chains should take care of someone who didn't have a high Strength. Joe recalled all of his knives and then turned to the Mages.
A negative Karmic Bond between himself and the two Mages later and he was ready to approach them. The crocodillian again threw fire at him, but he wasn't close enough to any of his friends to hurt them as well. Both women immediately reacted to the burns they received. The dwarf cast Healing Touch on herself which helped Joe as well. Just then awful screams erupted from the assassin. It seemed the chains finished getting through the armor and were now going for his flesh.
The leader, still fighting with Ferric, called out, “Get us a gate out of here, now!”
The illusions disappeared as the dwarf opened a familiar looking portal. Ferric was tripped by the leader who had his own Trip spell before he stumbled through the portal thanks to his armor hampering him still.
Worried about Mages with Backtrack being able to get anywhere in Rust's Edge whenever they wanted, Joe cast Compress Time again and Launched several daggers at each of them, all loaded with his first spell, Lighting Bolt. Before dropping the time distortion, Joe reviewed his CGS display and saw 5 deaths recorded. That accounted for all of them except the leader who escaped, the assassin who was still screaming, and the poor guy wrestling with Belstak.
When Joe stepped out of his bubble Ferric brought his sword across to decapitate the assassin, to save him from suffering longer. “Need help there, Belstak?”
Before the dragon could respond in the party chat, he got the bandit underneath him again and then turned into a giant boar to crush the already weakened man. “No, I'm done playing with him, thank you.”
“Before we do anything, let's count the bedrolls to make sure there aren't more of them running around our town,” Ferric suggested.
They only found provisions for eight people, so it appeared that the entire party had been dealt with, excluding the escaped leader.
“That was a great idea, messing with their armor, Joe,” Melanie remarked.
“Thanks. I had contemplated using it to get past tough armor by turning it into something like cloth, but when I saw them wearing leather I figured they had a lot of Agility I needed to counteract.”
Ferric pulled out his SACT to let the others back in town know that the problem has been dealt with while the rest of them started looking around the camp for anything that would provide more information on why these bandits were here and why they were targeting Joe.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Melanie made a questioning noise as she examined the two Mages. “Guys, these women aren't teenagers, they look to be in their late twenties, at least. I don't think they were bought like Lessa was.”
Ferric nodded at her suggestion. “Yeah, if they had Joe's teleportation spell, why would they stick around with people against their will? I'm sure you're right.”
“Um, guys? I think I know why they were here,” Joe said as he pulled something from a larger pack on the ground. It was a small leather pouch.
“What do you have there, Joe?” Ferric asked.
“I know this pouch, I made it. Even though it was more than a year ago, there's a faint aura still from when I created it with Harvest. And if I'm right, inside will be-” A blue, sparkling dust could be seen as Joe carefully teased open the drawstring of the pouch.
“Wait, so that's-” Ferric began to ask.
“Yes, I thought it would have been used by now.” Joe confirmed.
“Hang up, you two are talking but not saying anything, what is that, where did it come from?”
“Sorry, Melanie. When I first discovered the mana crystals growing under the mine I crushed a couple of crystals into powder and sold them to a merchant. Since we didn't have our own merchant at the time the pouch was sold for just 1000 gold. I lied and claimed we only had 2 crystals growing and that it would be some time before they regrew enough to harvest again.”
“But it's odd, we've seen that merchant many times since that sale. He's never done anything odd or out of the ordinary. He's never even asked if we have more powder to sell him yet,” Ferric supplied.
“It's odd that they'd bring it here, too, unless they needed to. What if one of the Mages had a spell to trace something to its origin? That merchant probably hasn't acted suspicious because he has no reason to,” Joe theorized.
“I don't see anything of real value here, their weapons aren't very good. Let's clean this up then get back to town,” Ferric suggested.
“If Belstak digs a large pit, I can handle the rest. That way you and Melanie can get back to town and start planning on the defenses for when they return,” Joe said.
Ferric nodded and he and Melanie started heading towards the river to follow it north to town. While Belstak was digging a large pit in his natural form, Joe climbed a tree and cut off a portion, Harvesting it into dried firewood. As soon as the pit was done, Joe let Belstak know he could return, then piled the wood at the bottom, then the bandit bodies along with all of their camp.
Joe used Force Field to create a tall chimney up beyond the treetops, with gaps at the bottom to bring in oxygen. Set Fire along with Sudden Wind activated the makeshift crematorium. The force field was able to contain the heat so the forest was not impacted by the flames that reached up into the sky. It didn't take long to reduce his opponents' remains to ashes, then he used Levitation to fill the pit in and went back to town.
- - - - -
“So that's how the town has become so prosperous!” Thagro exclaimed after Ferric explained the secret. The entire town was still in the tavern when Joe got there and Ferric was telling them the seeming cause of the attack.
“Yes, I'm sorry we kept it from you, but we knew this knowledge could be dangerous, and you have no obligation to fight for this town,” Ferric admitted. “I didn't want to put you in the middle of it.”
“Well, Kela's Landing is done. We're Edgers now, so we're in this, same as you lot,” Ziko said.
Many heads nodded in agreement.
“Okay, in that case, it's time for you all to get your first Guidebook upgrade.”
- - - - -
“This is great work, guys. I can't believe it's done after just two weeks,” Ferric remarked.
Ferric, Kerras, and Joe were standing on top of the new stone wall around the town. The wall didn't cover the river, of course, nor the fields or lumber mill on the other side of it. Joe had, however, made emergency portal arches so the Blackfeathers or Gymmie could quickly evacuate to the town proper if anything came their way. The one by the fields was disguised as a well.
“We cheated a lot during the process,” Kerras admitted. “Joe made Intelligence Boost potions which let us continually use Compress Time to put together larger stones from piles of small ones brought out from the mines. Then we used Levitation to move them into place, more Meld Stone, and finally Shape Stone to get them looking decent.”
“I really don't care how you got it done, just that you got it done,” Ferric acknowledged.
“Teril is churning out a lot of magisteel. I'll soon have enough that we can start reinforcing the wall with arcane patterns, powered by the flow of the river and the heat of the sun,” Joe said.
Joe looked at the progress he had made since that fight against the bandits. His Compress Time and Meld Stone spells both went up 4 levels. Shape Stone went up 2 levels, and Levitation and Backtrack both went up 1 level. The Backtrack was mostly because he was sending the former Kela's Landing residents around training in combat.
The wall construction brought his Masonry skill up by 3 to level 10. Normal care of his growing plants brought his Agriculture up 1 level and his Horticulture up 2 levels. All the spells cast through his armor spell conduit brought the corresponding skill up another level, and finally he got another level in Alchemy for making the potions they used to keep their mana supply high.
Kleo came down from above. “I spotted a large contingent of armed men and women traveling along the road south of here, heading this way. They should be here in a couple of hours.”
Ferric nodded. “So, it starts. Sorry you boys won't be able to reinforce the wall just yet.”