Kelsey and the party of three adventurers were the only protection the caravan had, so they quickly decided that they would each take a six hour shift every day to be on watch. The rest of them would be able to sleep, eat, and relax inside the comfort of the closed caravan without having to worry about being on watch the whole time.
The caravan had over fifty members and was composed mostly of merchants traveling from Neim towards the southern border. Neim was a goldmine for a merchant because it was one of the few cities where Immortals lived outside of the Immortal cities. It was apparently incredibly profitable to travel to the outer reaches of Cardona to pick up a rare herb or spice, because some Immortal in Neim may pay ten thousand times what that spice was worth.
The caravan protection contract was mid-silver rank, but the main threat wasn’t the monsters, who were on average level 20 - 50 the whole way; It was the potential they had to be attacked by bandits. The entire trip was planned to take 17 days and they would be traveling through some sparsely populated areas off the main road where banditry was quite common. They wouldn't have to worry about that for at least another few days though.
So, Kelsey spent her time getting to know the trio better and spent each night with Lara in her tent. When she finally got some time, she explained to the group that she was an Otherworlder and had only been in Anoura for a few months. They were surprised at first, but none of them really made a big deal out of it. She explained that she was simply trying to keep a low-profile and didn't want any extra attention. They understood and things were back to normal quickly.
Kelsey also told the group that if anything were to happen, like being attacked by bandits, that they should let her focus on the offensive, and they should focus on defending the caravan. Without telling them any specifics, she explained that her magic was well suited for combat against people.
Lara and Kelsey got quite close over the next week and a half, but when they entered an area the locals called ‘Arrow Valley’, Kelsey offered to take the night shift, as that was when they were most likely to be attacked by bandits, and Kelsey wanted to make sure she was awake if something were to happen. Lara was somewhat disappointed by her decision but understood Kelsey's reasoning.
Kelsey was worried. She had heard from some of the merchants that were traveling in the caravan that ‘Arrow Valley’ was named such because bandits frequently staked out the side of mountains and waited for traveling merchants to cross their path before raining arrows onto them while they slept. It wasn’t the most creative name Kelsey had ever heard, but it certainly got the point across.
The biggest issue for Kelsey, is that the walls of the valley were higher than her domain could see, which meant that depending on where the bandits chose to attack, she may not see the attack coming until it was too late. She was able to mitigate this issue somewhat by placing her tent in the middle of camp. This way she was able to cover everybody in the caravan with her domain, as well as see roughly 70 more meters in every direction.
It was on the third night of camping inside the valley that Kelsey’s fears came true. Three hours into her watch, about an hour after midnight, she saw movement in her domain. An object fell from the sky and landed in the road on the other side of camp. It took her a few moments to realize what it was, but by the time she did, it was already too late. Like rain on a summer day, serrated arrows began falling from the sky hitting everything from tents, to horses, and unfortunately, people.
“Attack! Attack! Everyone up! Shields up! Bandits! Everyone, awake!” Kelsey began shouting as she activated her buffs and began pouring hundreds of mana into creating a large shield above the sleeping adventurers. If one of the adventurers got killed while waking up, this night would become a whole lot harder.
Once the shield was made, she tied it off with Telekinetic Creation, making a permanent object and then laid it over the roof. She then moved to start making shields for the other people in the caravan, trying her best to make sure as many people survived as possible. Unfortunately, one of the first arrows that hit the camp was lucky enough to strike one of the sleeping merchants directly in the throat.
He was dead by the time Kelsey finished making the shield for the adventurers.
“Alex! There are wounded in the third tent on the right, one of them was hit in an artery, they’ll bleed out soon if you don’t get in there!” she yelled as the trio of adventurers made their way out of the wagon. “Cassie, Lara, get as many people as you can grouped up and bring them here. I’m going to make us some protection.”
Without waiting for a response, Kelsey entered mediation and began making a huge square roof with a pillar connected to the ground on each corner. It was 4 meters tall, and the space was large enough to fit everyone in the camp relatively comfortably underneath.
During Meditation Kelsey was able to regenerate over 750 mana per second and she used every bit of it for over 2 minutes to make the fortified pavilion. She finished just as Lara and Cassie made their way back with the first group of people. “Okay, this should keep them safe from the arrows. No telling what else they have up their sleeves though. You stay here and protect them; I’m going to go pay these bandits a visit.” Kelsey said as she focused on her Meditation to regenerate as much mana as she could.
Lara and Cassie were saying something to her, but she didn’t hear them because she was meditating and completely focused on her next objective.
A few seconds later, she was finished regenerating mana and was ready to move out. She looked back at her new friends who were staring at her, dumbstruck.
“I’ll be back. Send a signal to the Guild to have them send some people out for prisoner retrieval.” she said as she activated her teleport and vanished.
Arriving about 100 meters up the side of the cliff, she could finally see the bandits. There were about twenty of them and they all had these very strange looking curved short bows made from a smooth fine wood.
Standing in front of them, arms behind his back, was a tall man with long hair that fell all the way down to the middle of his legs. The man was thin, and his ears were pointed sharply. Is that an elf?
The elf was wearing an incredibly intricate suit of light chain armor that would have taken a normal person years to make by hand.
How has no one mentioned that elves live in Anoura? Seriously, this is something Thadius should have mentioned at least once...
Kelsey didn't really have time to consider that question, so instead, she used her Telekinesis to cut each of the bowstrings that were being used by the bandits, then, before the bandits had time to react, she teleported behind them and, using her Eye of the Magus, identified them.
[Warrior - lvl 29]
[Archer - lvl 33]
[Archer - lvl 41]
…
[Warrior - lvl 22]
[Archer, - lvl 36]
[Warrior - lvl 82]
All of the bandits that were firing the arrows were teenagers or young adults, and low leveled, with the highest one being level 41, but the leader was a level 82 warrior. He could be a serious problem.
“Hey! Morons! You picked the wrong caravan. If you surrender now, I won't hurt any of you!” she yelled as the bandits were reacting to their bow strings being cut. “If any of you draw another weapon, I won't hesitate.” In order to appear as threatening as possible, she let her excess mana regeneration leak from her skin which made her appear like she was brimming with power to anyone with manasight active.
This plan worked, and over half of the bandits dropped to their knees and put their hands above their heads in surrender. The other half however were not so smart and drew their weapons. As they did, Kelsey moved.
She didn’t want to give anything away to her potential elven opponent, so she didn’t use any of her skills except Telekinetic Enhancement and her Armory. She quickly rushed to them and knocked each one of them out with a punch to the side of the head. Only one of the bandits was able to attack back, and the shortsword he swung at Kelsey simply slid off her Telekinetic Armory, doing nothing. Knocking out all 7 men took her roughly four seconds.
She then turned to look at their leader. “What about you? Are you going to surrender, or do we need to fight too?”
“Sadly, I cannot surrender. I am in need of something one of those merchants is in possession of. I am willing to negotiate, however. I will give you 300 gold pieces as well as my word that no one else will be harmed if you simply let me go down and retrieve the object I desire.” he said. His voice had an air of formality and regalness that set Kelsey on edge.
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“Sorry, I can’t let you do that. Even polite theft is still theft.”
“Shame. Well, I have no choice then.” he said as his body exploded with mana, and he rose into the air above her.
Flying actually exists!? I have got to figure that out…
Once he was in the air, a greatsword appeared in his outstretched hand and it became engulfed in wind mana.
Spatial magic? How did he summon that greatsword? I didn’t see him use any mana.
As Kelsey was distracted wondering how in the world he summoned a greatsword without using mana, he swung. A torrent of slicing winds exploded from the giant blade traveling directly at her in a furious wave.
Why does every greatsword person I fight have these magic ranged blade attacks!? She thought as she dodged and began firing telekinetic spears at the flying elf. The telekinetic projectiles launched from her hand like bullets, but as they neared the elf, they were buffeted by the winds surrounding him, sending them soaring off into the distance.
Okay, that’s not ideal.
Thinking quickly, she summoned her saber from her vault and began backing up into the woods behind her. Her idea was twofold, one, she wanted to make the elf come down closer to the ground, secondly, she wanted to move away from the helpless bandits. The last thing she wanted was a stray attack killing over a dozen people who were unconscious or had surrendered.
Once she got inside the woods, she waited patiently for the elf to follow her, but he didn’t. Instead, she saw him begin channeling wind mana into his blade in huge quantities. A few seconds later, she could tell he was ready as he launched himself at the ground using a powerful gust of wind. As he arrived, he swung his greatsword in a horizontal arc aimed directly at the treeline. A massive blade of wind ripped violently out of his sword and rushed directly towards the woods. Knowing that the trees would be little more than a mild inconvenience for an attack with that much mana, Kelsey launched herself into the air and let the blade pass below her. She saw through her domain as the blade of wind completely destroyed the entire swath of the woods that she had been standing in just moments ago.
However, her launching herself into the air was exactly what the elf was hoping she would do, and he was ready for it. As she found balance in the air, she saw that the elf had already charged another attack and had sent it directly at her as she reached the apex of her jump. The giant blade of air was aimed directly at her waist, and traveling much to quickly for her to dodge via a blast of telekinetic energy.
Not having any other choice, Kelsey activated her teleport and moved herself to the ground, easily dodging the attack. Without teleportation, I'd be in two pieces right now.
The elf didn’t know where Kelsey had gone, so she decided to take a page out of the elf’s playbook and began charging a large telekinetic blade attack originating from her saber like he had been doing. She found that channeling magic through her saber made the process of creating large telekinetic waves much faster and easier than trying to make the attacks freeform. Good to know. But why is it easier?
The moment her attack was ready, she activated her teleport, appearing in the air right in front of the elven man, and launched her telekinetic attack in a horizontal slash aimed directly at his waist. Thankfully, he noticed the attack in time and launched himself upwards, just like she had wanted him to do. Because, as the man flew higher, she teleported one more time above him and slammed her fist into his face as hard as she could, sending him down towards the ground like a shot fired from a cannon. He slammed into the ground with such force that his body made a crater as it impacted.
Knowing that the fight was not over, she used Telekinesis to hold herself in the air as long as possible and gripped a fallen tree with telekinetic wires. The moment the elven man stood up, she used the tree like a bat and slammed it into him with as much force as her magic could muster.
The tree exploded as it hit the bandit leader, sending all of the force directly into his body. The elf’s body broke as he was launched over 50 meters away, impacted the ground, and skipped across it before finally coming to rest a few meters away from the still cowering bandits.
Seeing her mana reserves were dangerously low from keeping herself in the air, Kelsey let herself drop and began walking towards the elf, careful to keep a close eye on him with her domain. Thankfully, it appeared that he was unconscious, but alive. As she arrived, she bent down, stored his greatsword, and summoned some rope to tie him up.
Five minutes later, she had him tied up securely and his men were looking at her in awe. “Hey, all of you that surrendered. Thanks for not running away. Chasing you down would have been a real hassle.”
“No worries, ma’am. I’m sure we were all thinkin it till you clocked the rest of them, but none of us wanna get hit like that, we swears.” one of them said as the rest of them nodded.
“Good. Now help me tie up the rest of the unconscious ones.” she said as she threw some rope down at the feet of the one who spoke to her.
Half an hour later, each and every bandit, including the ones that had surrendered, were all tied up. After her fight with their leader, they didn’t even bother complaining when she mentioned she wanted them tied too.
Kelsey then ordered all of the conscious bandits to follow her down the valley as she used her Telekinesis to carry the ones who were unconscious. She had gotten so much stronger recently that she didn’t even realize she could carry nine grown adults with telekinetic wires so easily until she tried. The most difficult part was arranging them in such a way so they wouldn’t be injured during the descent...
It took Kelsey and the group of bandits over an hour to get from the top of the cliff down to the valley where the caravan was camped. As she arrived, she saw the corpses of another 7 bandits that must have attacked while she was up dealing with the main group. Thankfully the other group of adventurers had been defending the caravan or this attack could have very easily ended in death for a majority of the merchants.
Arriving with her prisoners caused quite a commotion with the merchants who were still huddled under the telekinetic pavilion she made earlier. “This should be all the bandits.” Kelsey said as she looked at the adventuring party. “Did you send a signal to the Guild? We’re going to need some people for prisoner transfer.”
“We did. What they hell Kelsey, how did you take on this entire group by yourself!?” Alex asked, his voice loud with surprise.
“Sorry, I can’t say.” she said simply.
Without waiting to see how Alex would react to her statement, she turned to the merchants.
“Hey everybody, the fight is over, this is their leader” she said motioning to the tied-up elf. “You can go back to sleep now if you’d like, I will be awake to make sure nothing else happens.”
The next few hours of the night were spent convincing everyone to go back to sleep and to get at least some rest before the sun came up. They were understandably shaken after the attack, but she eventually convinced most of them to take her advice and get some shut eye. She also spent some time talking to the other adventuring party, explaining a bit of what happened on the cliffs above. She was careful not to talk too much about how she specifically accomplished her task, but by now they were aware of at least some of her skills. She also spent the time to unravel all of the Telekinetic Creations she had made so people wouldn’t be able to study them too closely.
About six hours after the fight, when the sun was just barely peeking over the horizon, the Guild Classers arrived on the scene. There were three of them and they were all Gold ranked, with one of them being level 217. She explained what happened, leaving out most of the specifics, and let the Classers take the prisoners with them.
She briefly tried questioning the elf about what object he was so interested in, but he didn’t give her any answers. He was probably the person she was most worried about knowing about her skills, but there was nothing she could do about that, short of killing him, which was something Kelsey was unwilling to do just to keep a secret.
It was late into the morning when the caravan began moving again, and by that point Kelsey was exhausted. The moment the caravan departed, she excused herself to the wagon and fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.
Later that day, around midafternoon, they left Arrow Valley and were officially only four days of traveling away from their destination: the town of Falknear.
The final four days of travel were very peaceful. After having left the valley, Kelsey and Lara once again spent their nights together and the merchants themselves were much less stressed during the day.
Thankfully, Alex, Cassie, and Lara didn’t press Kelsey too much on her class and skills, but they did ask some clearly leading questions which Kelsey was able to effectively evade.
Once the caravan reached Falknear, which was no more than a small mining town, the trio separated from Kelsey, they decided to take another caravan back to Neim now that the area was safe, and it would basically be free gold in their pockets. She wished them luck before saying a more personal goodbye to Lara. She wasn’t in love with the woman or anything, and they both knew their time together was going to be temporary, but they had still gotten quite close during the trip and Kelsey was going to miss her company while she was on the road.
She still had roughly 8 days of travel left until she reached The Trial, and she wasn’t planning on taking any more time than she needed, after her fight with the bandits, she realized that if she had been stronger, she might have seen the bandits earlier and had been able to stop anyone from dying. There was only one death from the entire caravan, but she still felt somewhat responsible. Worse was that she realized that if the bandits had been stronger, everyone would have died, including her. She didn’t even bother picking up her payment from Falknear before leaving. She knew that she could go to any Guild location for payment, so it wasn’t a big deal. She was much more concerned with leveling up now.
The next 8 days passed in a flash. Kelsey spent roughly 13 hours a day walking, spending the rest of the time either setting up camp, sleeping, or reading through her new books and practicing the skills within them. She had moved on to a book about the general skill [Minor Water Creation] because she thought it would have the most uses.
The book was a veritable treasure trove of information. It explained that all Minor Creation skills created temporary materials, and Minor Creation general skills were nearly completely useless in combat, but Minor Water Creation had one unique use case, and that was for drinking. If you drank water that was made with Minor Water Creation from a class skill, or general skill, the mana in your body would infuse the water and make it just as real as drinking water from a stream.
This meant that if she learned the skill, she would never have to worry about running out of water.
Around 10 am on the 7th day after leaving Falknear, she arrived at The Trial, a full day and a half earlier than she expected.