He could hear screaming already, and several members of the caravan were dead, having been struck by the arrows of the bandits. The families that were traveling with the caravan sheltered as best they could, crawling under carts or hiding behind crates in the wagons themselves. He estimated that there were at least thirty of the marauders, not including the archers, and they were making a dead sprint towards the caravan. The few guards of the caravan were forming up to make their stand and meet the bandits, giving the rest of the caravan members as much time as they could give to escape. He saw his companions, minus Atrax, hurrying to join the guards, drawing their weapons.
Frazay began firing immediately, her immaculate skill with the bow allowing her to make shots at an unbelievable distance, and her skills began to activate in the crowd of bandits. Xander noticed the same vines that had grown on the bone giant taking root around the bandits caught in the skill’s path, wrapping around legs, arms, and torsos alike as they hacked at the roots to break free. Still more feel to Frazay’s fire, not all the arrows bearing a skill.
Xander decided that he’d best get to helping too, and began to fly towards the bandits, swooping low over them. Fifteen feet above the bandits, he released a grenade amongst the throng, activating it by channeling mana into the flame rune set into the inside, causing it to detonate and throw shrapnel throughout the crowd. A secondary explosion from [Explosive Effect] rocked the area, annihilating the small crowd of bandits that Xander had bombed. But that group was only a small portion, the bandits having scattered to better counteract Frazay’s skills, and there were still at least fifteen of them as they clashed with the guards.
From the air, Xander noticed a couple of the caravan guards knocked to the ground as they were hit full tilt by a bandit charging into their lines. Distressingly, he also saw Gabrelle knocked to the ground as well. Frazay had disengaged and moved back from the line once the bandits drew near, and Graffus stood unshaken, hammering any exposed bandits. Xander flapped his wings, bringing him as close to the melee as he could, casting [Improved Rune of Shielding] on Gabrelle’s prone form before casting [Reactive Armor] on himself as he crashed into a bandit at the edge of the fray. He’d been going too fast in his attempt to get within range of Gabrelle, so landing smoothly wasn’t really an option. Though Xander couldn’t see it, the sword that was swinging down towards Gabrelle rebounded several inches from her head, deflected by a blue glow, giving her time to roll to her feet and properly engage the man that had bowled her over.
Xander untangled himself from the bandit he’d smashed into, viciously hammering his gauntleted fist into the man’s face as he did so, disorienting the bandit. As the man tried to scramble away and wipe the blood from his eyes, Xander caved his head in with his mace, which had materialized in his hands, along with his shield. He caught sight of the large, armored form of Freyja batting a man clean off his feet, chest shredded wide open from her claws before another figure confronted him.
Xander was faced with a wild-eyed man wielding two axes. Raising his shield defensively, he activated his [Automaton] skill, feeling the backpack forming, the straps sliding across his armor and binding the automaton to him, while he waited for the man to attack. As soon as the man rushed him, he commanded his automaton arms to open wide. As all eight of the machine’s arms sprang to life and opened wide, the bandit hesitated. That hesitation cost him his life, as Xander swung at him with a [Shock and Awe] charged strike from his mace while he’d frozen for a second. The bandit recovered in time to bring up one of his axes in an attempt to block the strike, but the combination of runes and the skill powering the strike of the mace shattered the wooden haft of axe before continuing on and burying the mace in his chest. Xander put his foot to the now dead bandit’s waist and yanked the mace out of its fleshy prison. Looking around, he noticed that the bandits at the edge of the group were fleeing.
No longer faced with a bandit to fight himself, Xander opted to help clean up the few remaining fights, teaming up with the other guards and his groupmates to finish the last few bandits that were locked in combat. Gabrelle had managed to dispatch her opponent, and linked up with Xander as he was moving to relieve Graffus, who was currently fending off three bandits on his own. The numbers now evened, the highwaymen quickly fell. Xander quickly checked the field again. He caught a few more glimpses of the bandits fleeing through the trees before they disappeared from sight. The archers must have also fled, as he heard no more sounds of combat, only the weeping of scared children and distraught families mourning any loved ones that had been killed or injured in the ambush. Xander was confirmed correct about the archers having left when Atrax joined them, informing them of that exact thing.
“Should we follow after them?” Xander asked.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Graffus said. “We won’t be seeing them again. With how many we took out, it’ll be a long time before they’re able to try anything serious again. Besides, we’re needed here.” He gestured to the disheveled caravan as people rushed about, filling buckets from the nearby river to put them out.
Gabrelle nodded in agreement. “I’ll start triaging and healing those who can still be helped,” she said, trotting off to the first wounded figure she saw.
“What do we do?” Xander asked Graffus.
“Stay close. Provide strength for the people who can’t fight for themselves. They need to feel protected now, more than ever. And, we can clear the bodies out of the way.” The dwarf grabbed the ankles of a dead bandit and began dragging it away from the caravan.
Xander figured it was probably the most useful thing he could do in the moment and reached down to grab the corpse’s arms and help Graffus carry it. As he touched the body, he felt a familiar feeling in his status sheet. [Heaven’s Bounty] was activating. “Oh no…” he groaned. “Graffus, [Heaven’s Bounty] just activated. Drop the body.”
They both dropped the corpse back to the ground as the familiar vortex began to drag bandit corpses into its maelstrom, shredding them into their constituent parts with horrifying, crunchy, wet noises. A few onlookers, Gabrelle included, having come to see what the commotion was about, vomited from the sight. After five corpses had been consumed, the magical bandit blender stopped, and in the place of the swirling viscera, a backpack appeared, slowly falling to the ground.
Xander looked at it, confused. “A… backpack?”
He reached down and picked it up.
---[Heaven’s Bounty] has created an object: Greed’s Reward---
There was no other information about the backpack, beyond the fact that it was, for some reason, named. Xander hesitantly opened it, to find that it was empty, though the inside was spacious and lined with many interior pockets.
“It’s empty… weird. It’s just a backpack from what I can tell. Nothing magic about it, other than it’s origin.”
Gabrelle had finished heaving, and was slowly making her way towards Xander and Graffus. “What… What was that?”
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“Another ‘marked thing,” Graffus said, thumbing towards Xander.
“Uhhh, it happens sometimes when I touch a body. They occasionally get turned into items. It’s weird. And no, I don’t know why it’s so… gross. Here, have a backpack.” Xander tossed the empty canvas and leather back to Gabrelle, who caught it awkwardly, and then, fully realizing where it came from held it away from her.
“Eww! It’s made of people! I don’t want it!”
“It’s not made of people! I think. The people were just… consumed as fuel to manifest it? Anyways, it’s all yours, I sure don’t need another backpack,” Xander said.
“But…” Gabrelle let out, but was interrupted by Xander.
“Come one Graffus, let’s haul the rest of this trash out of here.”
Gabrelle steeled herself and looked in the bag. It was clean, empty, and had plenty of pockets for her herbs. “Well… it is a nice bag…” she said to herself.
The rest of the month-long trip back to Anlet proved to be uneventful. Xander provided daily showers for the caravan as a small way to cheer up some of the glum families that had lost a loved one in the ambush and raid. It wasn’t much, but it was at least something. The party arrived back in Anlet, happy to be done with their exploration contract.
Entering the guild hall, the air was different than it was the previous times that they’d visited. It was just as busy as it usually was, but things were quieter, more subdued. As they reached the counter to receive their payment, Frazay leaned forward and asked the clerk, “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“You haven’t heard?” The clerk asked in amazement.
“No, we’ve just got back from an exploration contract,” Frazay answered.
“Ohhh, I see. Well, you ought to know, we, that is, the Kingdom of Dardin, is officially at war. Have been for nearly two months now. The northern kingdom of Thrask, the bastards, have invaded. They’ve been eying our farmland for years, and now they’ve decided that they aren’t willing to pay for the crops anymore. As I’m sure you know… the king reserves the right to draft any individual into the kingdom’s army. That means that if things start to go poorly, well… who do you think the first people that will get drafted are? People like you, who have real, concrete combat experience and the skills to go with it, that’s who. It’s got everyone down, I doubt there’s a mercenary hall in the country that’s not looking like this right now.”
“Dardin is at war?” Xander asked anxiously of his teammates after they’d left the guild.
“So it would seem,” Atrax said grimly.
“Do you really think the kind would draft us?” Gabrelle asked.
“I’ve only seen it once before, but it was before my time as a mercenary…” Atrax answered. “If things start to go poorly for Dardin’s armies, I don’t think the kind would hesitate to draft every mercenary that is a citizen of the kingdom that he can get his hands on. We’d either have to flee to another kingdom and hope to gain citizenship there, or be branded as deserters.”
“Thrask is a large kingdom,” Graffus commented. “It’s a hard, cold land. The folk are tough up there. They’ll support any bid for their king to grab better farmland. Considering the size disparity between Thrask and Dardin… we should be making preparations for war, ourselves,” he said grimly.
The five of them stayed at their usual inn, Robert’s, and reconvened at a table for dinner.
“Do you think they’ll split us up if we get drafted?” Xander asked.
“Doubtful,” Graffus answered. “The king’s army knows that mercs work best in teams, so they’ll likely draft teams as a whole, and have us supporting a company of regular soldiers. With our well rounded team, the variety of area of effect attacks we have, as well as the fact that we have a healer on our roster… I expect we’ll be quite appealing to the crown.”
“Fuck,” Xander cursed. “And there’s nothing we can do about it?”
“I know you’re not tied to this land like we are, Xander,” Gabrelle said, “But I grew up in this city. My parents live here. If the crown calls, I’ll answer. I’ll be damned if I see Anlet burned.”
Xander looked at each of his teammates in turn, seeing a resolve to defend their homeland that he didn’t share. “I see…” He said, finally. “Well, I might have a home here in this land, at least not yet, but I’ll go where you go. If one of us goes, we all go,” He said with finality. He raised his mug of ale.
“If one goes, we all go,” they echoed back, bringing their mugs together.
“I think,” Atrax said between sips of his drink, “That we should wait before we take on any more contracts. We have enough in our pockets to stay here for some time, and I’d like to hear more news from the front before taking another contract.”
A month passed before they heard news, and Xander did not spend his time idly. His first idea had been that he might be fighting more highly leveled skill users. If Dardin began drafting it’s mercenary citizens, then surely Thrask would begin doing so as well. What would he do if he came up against someone with defenses like him? He needed something that could provide overwhelming force to overcome any armor he encountered. So, he set out to design something that would likely defeat even his own armor: a runic gauss rifle. Using a levitation rune to keep a one-inch diameter steel ball floating in the center of the barrel, a dense array of movement runes lining every inch of the layered carbon fiber barrel would propel the steel ball from its resting place at the rear of the barrel at a blistering speed forward. He’d tested it on several suits of runically augmented armor that he created, and only the most densely runically layered armors had been able to withstand the one-inch steel ball hitting it faster than the speed of sound. Xander had created a small picatinny section so that he could transfer the scope from his .22 caliber rifle onto the gauss rifle, giving him the ability to strike targets at extreme distances. Unless they had armor that was created of multiple runed layers, Xander doubted that anyone would be able to survive being shot with this rifle. Hell, even if their armor did resist being penetrated, the impact alone might kill them.
The other device he created… he felt guilty for creating. It was insidious. Far, far more insidious than any rifle could ever be. He called it a soul ripper. Using some of the principles he’d learned from the altar, he’d created a grenade that, when it briefly flared to life before destroying itself with a small explosive, would attract the soul of anything within a fifty-foot radius. He’d unfortunately had to test it on several animals he’d purchased, and it had proven horrifyingly effective. It was tedious to create, requiring a long, coiled sheet of metal for the runes to be engraved upon, but the effects were undeniable. When he'd tested it, the animals he’d bought, which were interspersed at varying distances from the grenade has simply… died. There was no obvious damage to them, one moment they were standing, and the next, they had fallen, lifeless as the device ripped their souls from their bodies. Even momentarily having one’s soul removed from the body was enough to prove fatal. He wasn’t sure if other adventurer’s would have abilities that might be able to defend against this weapon, or perhaps increased willpower could factor in to being able to resist for a time, but somehow, he doubted that most people, especially the average soldier, would have any form of defense against this. He hoped that he’d never have to use it. He’d resort to conventional explosives first. The soul ripper grenade was his last resort.
The news from the front was not heartening. Graffus had been right, and the Northern Kingdom of Thrask was making steady gains with their armies. If Dardin wanted to hold on to its farmland, it would have to begin drafting mercenaries. The country, being wealthier than Thrask, despite its size, had a higher-than-average population of mercenaries. It was hoped that this would be able to tip the scales of war, the combat tested mercenaries of Dardin would outnumber what Thrask could muster for its own mercenary citizens. A group of troops supported by a merc auxiliary team would almost always win out over a similar number of troops that was not supported by higher leveled skill users.
The drafts began to roll out that very week. Mercenary teams which had skillsets suited to large scale combat were prioritized, and while Xander and his four teammates did have area skills available to them, there were some teams which consisted of almost nothing but wide area attacks. By the second week, such teams had already been claimed by the crown. Now, teams like the one Xander was a part of were being drafted, the Kingdom of Dardin beginning to rush more and more mercs to the front lines to stem the string of losses they’d been suffering as the defensive line was pushed back. Fortress cities were being isolated near the border as Thrask’s front line encroached further, and those same cities were falling under siege as Northern forces surrounded them.