POV scouts

I looked behind me and I was again angered. My so-called partner did have promise but he was slowing me down too much. And now I was sent on a stupid mission to go and scout some territory that came out of nowhere.

I can understand the need somewhat but why did it have to be me? Well, I also know the answer to that cause I was the best and fastest scout they had so why did they give me a slowpoke as a partner I do not understand.

Perhaps I should have gone back to the, what were they calling it queendom, at least there I would have had better work but then again perhaps I would have not been able to kill so much. We would reach the last town quite soon and beyond that were only a few villages but the one presumably hosting the leaders of the new territory was the most eastern and northern village in the entire fallen Kingdom.

This entire mission has been a disappointment. I don't understand why we would want to take over the land here there are no people left even the county capital was a ruined wreck with only 50 people left. I have heard that there are stronger forces out west, but I do not have to worry about them at least not yet and hopefully I will never be sent that way because I’m tired of running so much.

Our ruler will not have too much trouble conquering some of the stronger communities at least not towards here but keeping them under control will take a lot of men but then again there is a reason why I am an old scout. Never was that good in strategy.

I laid my eyes upon the town, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t mostly burnt down and even more impressive were the still-standing stone walls. If this town was occupied by a strong force, it would take a lot of men to take it down.

I ran through my detections abilities and found that there were only about 40 people inside and no one was truly strong although I will not be able to overpower them by myself. Making contact with them was necessary and hopefully, they will have some idea about the forces that are beyond here.

Currently, the only thing I know is that some nobles in the middle of the winter were making their way towards the north with an undead horde following them. My current theory is that they were able to defeat them and are the ones that are in command of the new territory.

It will still be a couple of hours before sunrise so we would have to wait until then before we approach otherwise it would be too suspicious. I will also have to ditch most of my weapons so we would look like refugees coming to find a new home. I looked back and was disappointed that my partner was still 10 minutes behind me, and I could see he was struggling to keep running.

I will let him take a small pause while I circle around the town to get a better angle on the walls so I can start collecting information for the report. The town itself was standard there were walls but they were badly maintained like everywhere else around here. I was glad to see some grainfields that were planted. These people will make good slaves. I can’t wait when I get my promised piece of land and slaves to get started. But until then I will need to work.

“Get up you lazy bastard we will keep going. We will soon reach the target territory and I want to know if there are any lookouts.” The groan that he made was amusing. I wonder how he would scream if I stick him with a knife. “Please stop looking at me like that it creeps me out.” He spoke. I snapped out of my momentary lapse of concentration when I heard his voice.

He was a bit innocent wasn’t he, but we will soon train that out of him. He will thank me later on. We all needed to be ruthless in our fucked-up world. At least my face made him move a bit faster but I slowed down quite a lot when we started to get close to the territory border. I checked the item again so I could locate the exact border location. There didn't seem to be anyone around and I didn’t get any sniff of any people being here for quite some time.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

If they haven’t posted someone here, then perhaps they have too few fighters to even cover the only road into their territory. There might not be anything to worry about up here which would be a pleasant surprise as usually, these kinds of missions don’t end well. My partner confirmed that he didn't detect anyone as well, so we moved forward. We got across the border and nothing happened, so we continued forward.

We had only gotten about 10 steps in before the hair on my neck stood up. I crouched down a bit ready to sprint off and hopefully I could get away from whoever was watching us. I tried to find them with all of my abilities but I was getting confusing results. I stopped my stupid partner from going forward because of course he didn’t feel anything. “Idiot someone is watching.”

At least now he was getting properly prepared. I moved a bit to get a better idea of what I was feeling and to my surprise for some reason the location from which I was being viewed from was just in front of me. I quickly threw two of my knives, but nothing happened. They just flew a bit and then fell back down. Then the feeling suddenly disappeared as if the person watching me went away.

My heart was beating way faster than it should have had but I now know that we weren’t in any immediate danger, but the danger was even worse than I suspected. They had someone who could monitor intruders.

This was something that I couldn’t overcome. Fuck, that meant that I had failed this mission. Perhaps the people in the town have more information. I pulled my idiot partner back and as soon as we were beyond the border I finally started to relax.

The bastard was still watching me. Must have backed off so as to not trigger most of my abilities. I didn’t feel his powers as we got past the border. That’s good knowledge to have but it also meant that we couldn't just stroll in we needed a better plan. Perhaps make up a refugee group and infiltrate that way.

I need to report back but before that, we needed all the information from the people here. Hopefully, they will know what's happening or who’s in control of the territory. At least this got interesting.

I explained everything to my partner and watching him shivering in fear was a bit less enjoyable than I wanted it to be as even I was feeling some fear. That was some powerful magic or an extremely rare ability. Whatever the case was I do not have to decide anything I just have to report my findings but hopefully, I won’t be punished by something that I can’t control. Perhaps it would have been better to just run away.

POV Rich Dirt

It took me quite a while to calm down even needing to meditate a bit. I had messed up so badly. It was the first engagement the first shuffling of the cards and I failed it miserably. One thing that helped me calm down was that they probably had no idea how intricate my ability was.

I am quite certain that these were the absolute front scouts perhaps not even for an army but just gathering information. They might test my ability some more but even more likely they will try to infiltrate by using other people as cover, but they don't know that that wouldn't work and that made me smile.

We needed to do something with that town we couldn't just leave it like that. Many ideas came to me, but I didn’t like them. Trying to take over the town or fortify it against an army just didn't feel right. I needed information on our enemies before I could come up with any ideas. It would take me a couple of hours to get there at my full speed but that would be good enough if something came up.

In a few hours, I will get to report everything but unfortunately, I will have to be the one to make the final decisions this time. No one else has the experience that I have and while the Knights are good at leading and fighting, they haven’t been taught to strategize as I have. This also helped me figure out a glaring problem. We didn't have any spies. I should have long ago planted a person in that town and that’s my failing.

The time went by fast and before I knew it the sun had risen. That snapped me out of my endless loop of scenarios, and I had to take a deep breath because I knew that I had to stop that. I didn’t have enough information and thinking up scenarios with so little information was just a waste of time.

Son of a bitch I will have to go scouting, won’t I? There are some other scouts that are good, but they aren't as fast or as strong as I am. But on the other side perhaps I can catch some of the scouts and get some information.

I really hope that it would have taken at least another week until anyone got to our border, that way I would have had my apprentices set up and have them knowledgeable enough to continue building their houses with little input on my part. Well, it seems like it’s going to be a busy season. I cracked my neck before I started to head towards the village it was time to start messing with the people who wanted to mess with us.