"George, wake up!" A soft and feminine voice said. A familiar one, too.

My brain was sluggish to return to consciousness. I wanted nothing but to return to sleep. But then I felt the hard ground, sunlight, and a breeze. I opened my eyes and saw a blurred face right in front of mine. I recognized the smell.

"Alice?" I asked, my voice slurred.

At least I felt no pain. Not even the dented armor plate that was digging into my back. I wasn't wearing it.

Forget that. My wrists and ankles were sore. The tied-up-with-crappy-ropes kind of sore.

I smelled petrichor and blood in the wind. Blinking the confusion away, I focused on the elf's face inches away from mine. The afternoon suns dipped low beneath the planetary ring, almost at its edge. I was unconscious for the better part of the day, some eleven hours or so. The forest canopy I expected was nowhere in sight. Had I been moved this far? The forest in this region extended for dozens upon dozens of kilometers.

"What happened?" I asked as I rubbed my wrists.

"Nothing out of the ordinary. Here, drink this potion."

That woman's sense of normality was too skewed by her level. She had a unstoppered potion near my mouth.

“I am fine. No need to waste—”

“Drink the damn potion!” She protested with glistening eyes.

Alice’s chest heaved under her robes. The hand holding the potion trembled.

I sat up and took in my surroundings. Around me, the earth was churned, with ground wood, branches, rocks, and the occasional limb protruding from the dirt. It was as if someone had tilled the whole forest, trees and bandits alike.

"Nothing out of the ordinary..." I deadpanned.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Alice said with a straight face.

I sighed and checked my Status. My HP was capped at the new maximum. And…

"Holy…"

I had around a hundred notifications from my Parallel Progression. I stopped them from playing in front of me. A slew of System notifications scrolling in front of one's eyes was never fun.

I didn't bother to count how many points I got. It was enough to know my Dexterity had surpassed Strength again. By a lot.

The implication was that someone committed mass murder based on intelligence I gathered. I stared at the broken limbs poking out of the churned earth. The broken humanoid limbs. I could see a mangled hand and a leg with a boot still on.

I shuddered as I thought about what happened here. Only one conclusion could be reached. Alice had wiped the bandit camp with extreme prejudice. I could picture it.

She sensed the arrow and came straight away as fast as she could. Once she reached the arrow, Alice spent a few hours searching for me, found the bandit camp, and then went doomsday Archmage on them. The devastated landscape around me was the sole witness to what happened.

The only patch of soil that was intact was a three-meter circle centered on me. Broken planks stuck to the ground told me this was once a hut. It was empty except for the both of us and one item.

Scout's Oath lay right next to me. I took my heirloom weapon and held it against my chest. It was unstrung. I wasn’t too afraid of losing it. A heritor could always track their heirloom.

"My gear?" I asked.

Alice shook her head. "Dunno. I salvaged only your badge from the ruins of the leader’s cabin. Don’t worry about it. We will buy new gear back in town. The bounty on these bandits will more than pay for the costs."

"Wait, they kidnapped a lady that was traveling with a merchant…"

Alice smiled and nodded. A reassuring hand landed on my shoulder and gently squeezed.

"They had prisoners, yes. I rescued them. You did a good job, George. While I’m mad, you let yourself be captured, I’m proud of you, my Scout."

I dry swallowed. She would learn of my folly sooner rather than later and then I doubted she would remain proud. What was I thinking? Go after an enormous band of bandits on my own at level six? Damn, dad would never let me off the hook with such a thing.

I stood and looked around. The boost in Wisdom sharpened my senses. I could recognize more things in better detail, though I had to improve Intelligence to speed up the processing of said information.

Those points of Charisma had to wait. Not to mention Clarity. What if I gained a spellcasting Perk at level ten? Fuck. I needed to raise Strength and Intelligence. No way around that.

"What happens next?"

"We go home. The forest will grow back stronger than ever. The lingering mana might improve spawn rates but we can send a party periodically to clear the spawns. I can call in a favor with a Druid friend of mine to grow the trees faster."

"My pack," I suddenly remembered. "It was hidden on the other side of the road, near the destroyed wagon."

Alice nodded. "Most likely it is still there. Let's fetch it, then we go home."

*

*

Crossing the devastated field that once was a thick and ancient forest brought with it time for reflection. I once more had given in to my impulses and acted before I could give it some thought.

I almost died there. My only luck was that my opponents didn't overestimate me and were filthy people traffickers. Plus, if the boss knew about heirlooms, he probably wanted me to release Scout's Oath. The conditions varied for each heirloom but almost all of them didn't work under coercion.

"I should've just fired the arrow up and wait, shouldn't I?" I mumbled, knowing full well that Alice's elven ears would pick it up.

"Maybe. I don't know the details of your altercation, only the outcome. But if you are thinking that way, it means you're on the right path. Our world, the System, rewards risk-taking. It also punishes a lack of risk-assessment skills severely. How many bandits did you kill before they caught you?"

"Five? Six? I wounded some and then they finished their comrades."

"It's a common stratagem to deny your enemy the Experience points of your dying and beyond hope allies. One that is frowned upon by civilized people but still used, nonetheless. There are hundreds of philosophical treatises on the matter of system cruelty. How it rewards murder. And the reasons for that."

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"What is their conclusion?"

"The most accepted one is that the System benefits from the murder. See all the bandits we killed?" Alice spread her arms as if to embrace the churned earth. "The Systems got its cut. Actually, since it gave me no Experience altogether, it kept every ounce of energy the deaths granted."

"And what does the System do with all this energy?"

Alice pointed at the red moon looming above the planetary ring. "You have to ask the System God himself."

Frustrated, I complained. "How will I even reach the moon?"

"You won't. Unless the System God himself invites you there. It has happened. And the secret gospel of the System says that's not a moon. It's a space station."

I stopped and stared at her.

"It's nothing to twist your panties about," Alice tried to defuse the mood with a laugh. It didn't work this time either. "Look, there's the people whose lives you saved today. Let's go!"

The honorable Guild Master broke into a run like a young girl one-fiftieth of her age. She glanced back, blew a raspberry, then kept on running. I was fairly sure she could run ten times as fast if she wanted, which meant she was toying with me.

And yet, the idea of getting away from this devastation was enticing. So, I ran along and caught with her.

*

*

"Guild Master, thank you so much for saving us," a middle-aged woman with fair hands, probably a noblewoman gushed once Alice reached the thin strip of forest flanking the road.

The rescued people all laid praise at Alice's feet. I didn't mind. A Scout wasn't someone after glory. Recognition. We gathered intelligence and pointed the real heroes in the right direction.

That thought made my actions even more stupid. I let Alice with her instantaneous fan-club and crossed the road to retrieve my pack. The destroyed wagon and the bodies were gone. Only a few broken arrows and a red splotch on the road remained as witnesses to what happened.

With my pack back in my possession, we made our way back to Forest's Edge. From there, the former prisoners stayed to wait for some passenger wagons Alice sent out of town. It would take the wagons a couple of days to get here.

After saying goodbye to the former prisoners, Alice and I jogged back home. We camped in a fallow farm field for the night and reached the city as the gates opened in the morning.

*

*

Once back in the city, I stopped by home to drop my pack and change into clean clothes. I wish I had the time to take a bath bit my boss wanted to lead me to the Guard garrison.

"Do you know how to claim a bounty?' she asked.

"Not really," I replied. "If I had to, I would ask a Guard." The subject never came up during my father's lectures.

"Well, first you need proof. Here," she took a big burlap bag out of her magical satchel. It was full of spherical bumps.

I took the bag and felt the smell of fresh blood. Resigning myself, I walked to the pair of Guards flanking the garrison gate.

"Halt! State your business!" The guard barked a routine command. Then he glanced behind me, probably at the meddlesome elf by the face he made.

"I want to claim a bounty on these bandits," I explained, pointing at the huge sack with my free hand.

"Is it dripping blood or other fluids?" The bored guard asked as if going through a routine questionnaire.

I looked underneath the sack and back the way I came. "It doesn't seem to."

"Identification?" The Guard sounded bored.

I displayed my Guild badge. If the Guards were impressed, they didn't show.

"Is this bag the only bounties you are claiming today?"

I glanced behind me. Alice pointed at her satchel.

"No, there are more. No idea about the quantity."

The Guard scowled. "Kid, did you even—"

Alice loudly cut him off. "Are you questioning the words of a Guild officer, guardsman?"

“Who do you—” He coughed and wiped the scowl off of his face as he recognized who was talking to him. "No, Guild Master, ma'am."

"Good," Alice scoffed haughtily. "Then stop wasting our time!"

They opened the gates for us. "I trust you know where to go, Guild Master. Good luck for you and your pupil."

That last remark stung right on my dying pride. We went inside. I saw a booth labeled "claims, bounties, and complaints." I beelined toward it.

A young woman, of half-elven ancestry, greeted me with a smile. "Good morning. How may I help you, sir?"

Compared to the detached monotone of the Guards outside, it almost sounded cheerful.

"I wish to claim some bounties," I said and hauled the sack onto the counter. Still not dripping dead people's fluids. Whatever Alice did to the heads to keep them from leaking, I was thankful.

"Big haul, eh? Aren’t you too young to be a bounty hunter?" The girl looked up and saw Alice. “Guild Master!”

“Clerk Kara!” Alice greeted back. “Good to see you. I vouch for the bounties’ legitimacy.”

Kara looked from Alice to me and then back to Alice. She smirked briefly and then controlled her expression. “How many heads are in there.”

"Close to or maybe a bit more than a hundred," I replied. “I didn’t count them.”

“I see, I see. Well, we can count them together. I will need your Identification, please." I handed her my badge. "Thanks… George. Now, let's check if you got a big juicy pay. Open the sack. Let's see if any of these carry a bounty."

Kara put on some gloves and opened the sack. One by one, she pressed the pale faces against a stone slab covered in runes. Most didn't trigger a reaction but quite a few made the runes light up, displaying a number. The clerk made sure I saw the number before writing it down on a notepad with a ballpoint pen.

On and on the heads went, forming a pile inside her office. As she reached the end, forty-eight heads and counting, Alice produced another sack. I raised an eyebrow and the elf made a ‘it is what it is’ gesture.

The clerk silently watched as I hauled the second sack on the counter. I think I saw a brief smirk but wasn't sure of it. Once she had my attention again, she kept scanning the faces, digging into the second sack once the first ended. One hundred and seven heads.

The thought that Alice collected that many heads before she woke me up sent a chill up my spine. But when I thought about it, I remembered she somehow moved the prisoners away too. Maybe she did both at the same time. I never learned more about that. I never asked her what happened either. I always felt I was better off not knowing. Alice could be scary sometimes.

"Okay. Everything seems in order. I need your signature on this receipt… here."

She handed the ballpoint pen to me along with a clipboard with the receipt on top of a sheaf of papers, one of them black. I skimmed it for any legalese; found nothing but a list of names, classes, and a monetary value. I signed without a thorough reading.

"Your bounty totals Two hundred and thirty-six gold coins, already after tax," she said as I handed the clipboard back.

I raised both eyebrows in surprise. Behind me, Alice hummed her smug "I told you so" tune.

"How does that slab work, if I may ask?"

"Oh. It reads the face and checks it against our criminal database. It can also check for criminal classes. Then it displays the adequate bounty value."

I was shocked. “What? The slab can tell Class?”

“Only for the deceased. It’s a very ancient and valuable artifact, impossible to be reproduced,” Kara explained with an air of mystery.

I focused on another issue. "Are you telling me each head was worth almost three gold coins?"

"Yes. The bandit leaders skewed the value way up, though. You could've saved a lot of weight if you brought only those. But every head is valuable, so long they were lawfully obtained. Necromancers pay a lot for them." Kara said and sighed. “Don’t go around murdering and collecting heads; The plate can tell. It’s somehow connected to the System.”

"You don’t need to worry, I intend to stay within the bounds of the law, always." I signed the receipt. My hands felt a bit numb.

“That’s great to hear, George,” Kara smiled at me. Her eyes seem to bore into my soul. "Okay. Wait a moment…" she scribbled something. "Here is your check. You can deposit it to your account, George. It might take a few days to clear, though. Thank you for making our land safer!"

"Oh, erm… you're welcome?"

Kara, the Clerk, beamed a coy smile, then glanced over my shoulder. For some reason, Alice made a soft squeal behind me and the clerk's smile widened. Ignoring the silent exchange between the women, I read the check a few times, feeling that I didn't deserve such a windfall.

I had to spend a few days decompressing and unraveling the spaghetti of emotions I was feeling right now. Damn.

"Goodbye, then!" I said without making eye contact.

"Hey, don't forget your copy of the receipt!" The half-elf clerk said, waving a carbon copy of the document I signed. As I went to take it, she made sure I saw an address and a time written on the left edge in the bright blue of the ballpoint pen.

I glanced up. She was biting her lower lip with a conflicted expression. Was I missing something? Why would she write… an address and a time… in the early evening…

I glanced up at Kara and she was eagerly waiting for a reaction. I felt even number. Was she…

"Today?" I mumbled.

Kara shook her head vehemently as her lips curved into a smile.

Behind me, Alice squealed again. That was the cue to make things click in place.

Oh.

Damn.

In my defense, it was my first time. I looked Kara in the eyes.

"I'll make sure to wear something nice."

Kara nodded. Her smile stretched upward.

"See you." I waved and turned around, walking at a brisk pace toward the garrison exit.

Alice joined me, rubbing her arm against mine and humming an elven tune. I didn't need to look at her to know she had a very, very smug smile.

I had my first date ahead of me. Maybe I could go and find another bandit group?