“Where the fuck are those morons. They were supposed to gather for a 'collect call' three hours ago. They better not skip with loot or the boss’s gonna skin them, even worse make US watch the stupid bastards. I’ve had enough of that when Troy tried to skim his loot. Stupid fuck wouldn’t even faint through the whole thing. Still got nightmares from that."

“I swear they better be dead than stealing. Or I am going to kill them myself, better that than what is waiting for us at the base, listening to them mewl like animals is not what I want to spend my night doing.”

They walked up to the camp and only then did they start watching their surroundings. The two archers started looking for the tracks on the ground. The rogue was looking at their surroundings and the warrior finally bothered taking his shield from his back. Taking a semi-ready stance close by.

A group of over a dozen wasn’t that hard to track, even with the sky darkening almost completely at this point, making the forest seem spooky all of a sudden. Soon enough they found the trail leading to the farm.

Mark followed them silently until they reached the clearing, soon seeing the corpse of the wolf a little burned-out pile of wood, and a barn filled with half a dozen charred corpses they must have come to some conclusion.

The young man hadn’t followed them to the clearing seeing them raise their vigilance since seeing the wolf’s corpse, the farm was also too open to follow them easily without getting spotted. And he wanted them to go back with a report, not have to kill them here, he would have wasted the hour of waiting.

After discussing for a while the group picked up their pace and headed relatively in the direction they first arrived from.

On the way they changed directions multiple times in case someone was following them, too bad they were atrocious at counter-tracking. No one bothered hiding the tracks, and the general direction of their destination was way too easy to extrapolate. All in all, Mark was not impressed by the ability level of the Strangler Bandits he has met so far.

If he had to guess, the only reason they were organized together and using any bit of group tactics, as well as the reason they weren’t found out as of yet, could be attributed solely to their boss, whose ability to hold her bandit mates in check as a woman was starting to impress him.

He was also changing his plan of approaching her hastily. She seemed to be capable enough to hold her own against him, though probably not for long.

While he was thinking that, the back of his skull started to itch. He knew that feeling, it was always there when he was about to be discovered. Not changing his pace to not make any sudden disturbances in the forest around him, Mark silently went into Stealth starting to tread in the shadows, scanning his surroundings.

For a while, there was nothing but about fifteen minutes later he saw a branch to his left bend unnaturally against the direction of the gentle wind blowing through the forest. Looking at it directly, it looked as if nothing was there, but checking the path from just the corner of his vision he saw a slight discoloration to the shadow of the tree.

Paying attention he saw a slight shadowy mist in the shape of a female silhouette also following the bandits. It seemed that it wasn’t after him but the bandits.

He wondered who could it be. Could it be another adventurer from Pharia going after the reward? It could be, thinking that he decided to not do anything drastic and changed his path to go behind and to the left of the female rogue, though keeping his distance to not alert her of anything.

This way the three parties traveled through the forest for about half an hour or so, it was hard to judge time accurately in the forest at this hour, when he saw a narrow ravine in the ground. The bandits walked to one edge and suddenly vanished into the ground. Seeing that, the woman following them suddenly changed directions and walked to a different edge and also disappeared from his senses.

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Cautiously walking over to the edge he lay on the ground to not present a clear outline on the moon just behind him and peeked his head just so his eyes were over the boundary.

Beneath, he saw the ravine was very deep, going as far as three or four hundred meters. There were many cave mouths lining the walls, he could see that the ground was very rocky in this part of the forest with only about fifteen meters on the surface being dirt and everything below was solid rock. In the cave entrances, he could see many lights and many people milling about on rope bridges between them.

There were many more bandits than he had initially estimated. Just the people walking from cave to cave numbered between fifty to sixty. And those are only the people actively moving, how many more would there be guarding, watching the entrance, working in the kitchens and other facilities needed to maintain that number of people.

The place where the bandits walked down had a path made of stone leading down to the caves with a checkpoint at the bottom. Also, the whole path was visible to the people on the opposite side of the ravine, he guessed if they were attacked they could shoot at the attackers.

Of course, that would only work if the invaders didn’t have archers of their own, if so the bandit archers below would be at a very big disadvantage purely based on elevation. He thought so until something caught his attention on the other wall of the ravine. Looking closer he could see many very narrow slits in the opposite wall. He could recognize murder holes, no problem, and he instantly knew that to the unprepared attacker, it was a death sentence. It was an incredible feat of planning and strategy for what the bandits have shown him so far.

The side where the rogue went to was completely different, however. He had to directly walk over to the place where the girl disappeared to see what was going on. There you had to swing your way into a hole just beneath the dirt ledge into a small tunnel with a rope attached.

With this, he could exclude the notion of the woman being an adventurer. Only someone privy to the location could find it, and she went straight for this place, meaning she had to be working with the bandits. He couldn’t know though if she was the infamous leader Vesthia or only an underling. More likely an underling, why would the boss be sneaking behind a couple of her goons?

It gave him some information, it would seem that the bandit leader was not that stupid after all. She did not, in fact, believe the morons she had under her could keep the place of their hiding secret. The woman was becoming more and more of a threat in his mind.

Taking into consideration the number of groups she must be sending out daily it was impossible to guard all of them against stalkers with a single rogue. That would mean she most probably has a squad of very well-trained rogues under her making sure none of them are followed. Mark was becoming immensely impressed with this woman and developing a keen interest in her abilities.

From what he could tell so far she was incredibly ruthless, bold, was an amazing leader, and from the information in the guild she was also a fearsome fighter. Now she had a squad of trained assassins and was capable of building such a well-structured base right under the noses of the guards at Pharia. She could not be an ordinary person from a backwater.

Mark even started wondering if there was something more to this group of bandits. Was it something political, some noble backer, or a bigger underground organization from a bigger city? He hoped it was nothing like that, he had no intention of messing with the politicians.

Nothing good ever came from meddling with the politicians' schemes.

Knowing the location of the bandits' Mark decided to retreat for today and start his work tomorrow. He couldn't attack the base head-on, so he planned on taking out their squads one by one when they were divided for their operations during the day.

Though he would have to take care of their rogue followers first.

He stopped.

If all the groups had an overseer, then where was the one following the group that attacked the farm? He was disconcerted, but he was confident in his abilities, if someone was sneaking around that clearing, he would know. That could mean, the group, wasn't followed, or the guardian went back early. Maybe to report their activities.

But then the search group wouldn't have been sent, truly a bizarre event. He would try to get to the bottom of this. But it would have to wait till tomorrow.