Darius takes just under ten minutes to get to the area the homestead he had been told about is in and find it. He looks over the homestead, finding that the area looks to have been cleaned of underbrush recently. He can also see a light on in one of the buildings. ‘Looks like it’s not as abandoned as they thought, I figured as much.’

Darius blinks closer, before blinking up to a roof of one of the buildings, laying down on it quickly. He looks around a little, trying to get a count of how many people there are in the area. Darius counts 7 people who are around level 24 outside of the buildings. He nods a little with a frown before he slowly stands up on the roof.

“Bandits, thieves, and other assorted criminals. I have come to give you a choice. If you surrender now I give my word on all that is good that I won’t harm you, I’ll even give you a place you can live, as long as you give up your banditry. However, if you decide to fight me, well, let’s just say that is an awful idea.” Darius shouts from where he stands on the roof.

The bandits that are outside all look up at Darius, grabbing their weapons as he speaks. They start to laugh as he finishes, while one of them says “You’re only level 17, what could you possibly do to us?”

Darius sighs as he shakes his head, raising a hand as he starts to overcast a firebolt. He looks down at the bandits as the firebolt appears above his hand, being a dark red flaming ball that’s about 2 metres across. “Does this answer your question?” Darius asks as he looks down at the bandit that had talked.

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The bandits all start to go pale as they see the flaming sphere before the one that had spoken before says “Come on men, he can’t have enough mana to use that more than once, let’s get him.” A few of the bandits rush towards the building Darius is on, while a couple grab bows and aim towards Darius.

Darius frowns as he aims down towards the lead bandit, chucking the overcharged firebolt at him. It lazily sails through the air, hitting right behind the lead bandit, before exploding into a large fireball, blasting most of the bandits off their feet killing 4 of them.

The doors on some of the buildings open, with 8 more bandits leaving the buildings. Darius shakes his head again while he overcasts another firebolt. “Now, are you lot going to be calmer about this? Or do I have to kill all of you?”

The surviving bandits look towards the highest level bandit who is level 30. The bandit frowns as he looks around at the men who died, before looking towards Darius and saying “How do we know you will keep your word?” “You’ll just have to trust me, and the fact that I actually came in here giving you an option should tell you that I don’t want to kill everyone here.”

“Well, that much is true, alright, where is this safe place?” The bandit leader asks as he looks up at Darius. “Good choice, I’m not going to tell you directly where it is, I will tell you of a place that we will meet up so I can take you to it instead. After all, you are still bandits, I don’t trust you.” Darius says with a nod.

The bandit laughs with a nod saying “That’s probably a good choice, very well, where do you want us to go?” Darius tells them to go into the forest, sending them to the river he had found back when he first came here.

Darius then sits on the roof and waits as the bandits start to run around and gather their things. It takes a few hours, but the bandits manage to gather all of their things, and soon leave towards the forest a few of them have their families with them.

Once they have left Darius sighs and drops down to the ground, going and exploring the buildings for anything interesting. He doesn’t find anything in the first three buildings but in the fourth, as he walks through it he finds an area of the floor that sounds different from the rest.

Darius looks down at the floor, before leaning down and grabbing onto a loose board, finding that it’s a disguised trap door. “Now this is interesting” he mutters as he looks down into the darkness of the basement.