I got up and wiped my eyes and got myself together. I looked at the dead body next to me and of course my first thought was to make her into a shadowsoul undead. I hesitated for a second before reasoning that she was already dead and me fretting over a corpse was not going to change that fact, that she was a corpse. So with a sigh I set to work making the body into a shadowsoul undead.

After the process I stored the new shadowsoul in my inventory and head back to the village from a roundabout path, checking for pursuers. I already had one person tail me so I was very cautious this time, checking with mana sense every so often. Once I was 100% sure no one followed me to my knowledge, I head back to the village from relatively the same direction I left from. I entered the village and heard several people talking and some armed guards patrolling, all on high alert for any trouble. I saw Ronia and asked her what was up even though I guessed what the answer was.

The answer still surprised me somewhat as the truth had been spun far beyond what I expected it to be. Ronia's eyes lit up and she called out to me and then said "Zane! How's it going? Oh the patrols? Yeah we heard from a patrol that there was a person who was assaulting a child, but it turned out to be more than that! They found a medallion that fell from the girls pocket! Look!" She pointed at a medallion the elder had placed on a table and was inspecting. It looked like a grey circle with 2 horns on the top with the Demonic Hand's symbol on it. I sat there surprised that something like this existed. The girl didn't have anything of value on her when I checked, so it must've fallen out during out chase possibly.

Ronia interrupted my thoughts and continued her explanation. "The elder identified it as the symbol of a nefarious group called the Demonic Hand that recently came to light. You probably heard of it right? I mean we saw the fight of one of their members back at Namph so theres that." She paused to look at the medallion and Ray spoke up.

"The patrol explained what happened to the elder and together they came to the conclusion that the mysterious person hunting the girl was in fact attacking her because of her being a member of the Demonic Hand. One of the patrol members heard some of the conversation going on and it seemed like she was confessing to being a member of the cult, they were too far away to hear the full conversation and only heard snippets though , so we are missing some information, but the information we have seems to be enough."

I just sat there wondering how this turned out this way, I was expecting a full manhunt for me to be going on, due to them thinking I was a bandit or something, but they somehow spun the facts in way that I was now hunting members of the Demonic Hand. I shook my head as I just let it go. I couldn't change what they thought at this point so there was no point in bothering with it. I was just glad they weren't out for blood, mine to be specific.

Sadly, as if she heard my thoughts, Ronia chimed in with a cheery tune, saying "Oh don't get me wrong, we will still look for that hunter, its just we won't kill them at first, but will question them on what they know and what their motive is etc. The elder can be very convincing sometimes." She shuddered as if she remembered something she would rather not have, and her smile vanished for a second before she went back to cheery.

We wandered the village and helped out with whatever was needed at that time, mainly repairs, maintenance and patrolling. The information from the captured bandits was sort of helpful but not entirely. They knew where the temporary camp was but not the main base of the bandit group. It seemed the bandits we caught were relatively new and didn't know much information. Still, that was enough for the elves as they had started preparing to attack the camp by checking their weapons and armour, planning, as well as scouting the area they were told for traps and the bandits in question.

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It took another 2 hours for the group to completely get ready and make plans and by then, the sun had gone down, making way for the night. The scouts had confirmed that indeed the bandits were still there but it appeared some had left already or were gone somewhere, but the villagers that had been taken were there for the most part. The plan was to head out at night and perform a night raid on the camp. Moon elves were unhindered by darkness as they could see in the dark but us humans, aka me, Ray, and Herold couldn't. Ronia could see in the dark even though she wasn't a moon elf. Or was she? I mean she never specified what kind of elf she was, and even though she didn't have the tattoo like markings or other characteristics of moon elves, she may very well be a moon elf. Ah more questions without answers.

We set out shortly after the elder held a briefing with the elves and made sure to clear up any questions. He gave our group a set of potions that would let us see in the dark. We took them and downed 1 each, and stored the extra's away. The dark shadows of the night retreated as everything became clearer and brighter. It felt as if the moon was the sun and it was daytime. I could see everything so clearly. I got used to the feeling of the potion's tingly feeling on my eyes but Herold didn't like that feeling too much.

"Gah! What in the name of the Goddess is this! My eyes!" He clamped his hands on his eyes as he writhed in agony. Ronia and several moon elves laughed at his expense and that lightened the mood up a bit. Everyone was tense with the upcoming battle in everyone's mind. People relaxed a bit and once Herold was done being in agony we set off 2 minutes later.

I walked with Ronia and co as we head towards the encampment. The elves were very swift and it took a lot of effort to keep pace with them. They nimbly dodged the few magical traps that were set about the forest near the encampment. The scouts had found that there were over 70 bandits, but most of them wore leather armour and had rather worn equipment. There were only a few bandits that looked decently armed and they were the ones in charge was what it looked like. The scouts had said that just a few hours ago there were over 2 dozen well equipped bandits but when they checked recently there was only a few left.

My guess was that the bandits with terrible equipment were either new, or just grunts. This seemed far more like the work of an organization than mere bandits the more we found out. The whole slaver thing was probably spot on, and these guys were just slavers disguised as bandits. I didn't say this out loud but the elves all seemed to think the same thing from the looks of it. I heard one person mutter about how he was going to tear someone a new one in vivid detail. I tuned out after the 1 minute mark, focusing on staying with the group.

We made it to the bandit camp after a solid 10 minutes of travelling at this rapid pace. I was panting along with Ray but Herold was dying of asphyxiation was what it looked like. He collapsed after we stopped and sat there heaving. We were within eyesight of the camp and the elder whispered to everyone that we had 2 minutes to do final checks on gear and prepare. Some elves checked their weapons while others sat down and meditated and others just stared at the camp, looking for any signs of us being found out.

Ronia fiddled with her weapon and so I decided to check my own. This was going to be one hell of a night. With it ending in either us rescuing a village worth of people, or us losing them. Either way it didn't matter to me. This was an unrelated situation to me but the elder and all of the elves here had decided that we were going to rescue them for whatever reason, so my opinion didn't really matter. All that mattered was coming out of this with a net gain. For me that was the dead people. The more that died the better for me. Human corpses were hard to come by, and I had an army of shadowsoul undead to create with them.