Gorey didn’t know what was happening, just fifteen minutes ago they were hiding in their camp. He just had some fun with his recent acquisitions and he was sitting around a campfire with his buddies. They were eating roasted meat, drinking beer, and telling stories of their conquests. Everything was going just fine, it was the first time they got a little free time in a while. He was always waiting for this time of the month.
But while they were relaxing and enjoying their free time, suddenly a hail of arrows fell on their camp, followed by a malevolent spirit flitting from shadow to shadow, with every pass harvesting the lives of his friends.
After they got over their shock over the sudden attack they quickly rallied and threw themselves at the shadow, trying to surround it and obstruct its movements. But the moment they finally encircled it, it just vanished, appearing behind a man just to Gorey’s right, Rowan, and slashing his throat apart. Then he ran along their circle, slashing their throats one by one, before they realized what was happening again, another three bodies hit the floor.
All semblance of fighting spirit was gone from them, with horrified faces they scattered and started escaping in all directions. After all, the one they were hunting was some magical ghost that could appear and disappear at will, they all knew, they didn't stand a chance.
Gorey quickly looked behind, scared that the ghost would be following him, but all he saw was the bodies of his comrades, and friends slowly collapsing to the ground. He felt a small trickle of piss running down his right leg, but he ignored it. Terrified he turned ahead intending to quicken his pace, to escape this hellscape, but the moment his eyes once again turned ahead of him he saw it, HIM.
Before him stood a silhouette of a man, wearing black and gray mottled leather armor, with a short cloak, slowly fluttering behind him, his face completely obscured by a hood and a metal mask covering his identity. Only his eyes were visible, lit up with a blue flame, sending chills down Gorey’s spine, feeling like he was instantly transported to the Land of Dead as if Kariam himself was looking at him.
“No, no, no, please, let me go. I will never do this again. I will give you anything you want. I swear, just please let me…”
He did not finish, he could not finish, only sad, quiet gurgles escaped his throat as a dagger flashed before him. Walking up to the body, the spirit, or rather man, started looking through his pockets, taking his coin purse and a couple more valuable pieces of jewelry from him, leaving the body as is, he moved on to the others.
Mark had to admit, the ability to teleport was invaluable during combat. At first, it was hard to grasp the control needed to use it effectively, given the extreme feeling of vertigo whenever he used it, but it is almost indispensable now.
From the treeline not far from him Donny, still holding a bow, walked out and also started searching the bodies. Soon, they were finished with the people and moved towards the only wooden building in the clearing, amidst about a dozen tents spread around it. Walking in, the house was pretty shabby.
A small table, a wardrobe, two big chests along the wall to the right, and the centerpiece, a huge double bed in the middle of the room. Laying atop it were two badly beaten, bruised, and cut-apart women, they were scrawny, lacerations covered their bodies, especially in their nether regions, and still, their chests slowly rose and fell, barely breathing.
Mark could only sigh, he did not care enough to take care of them, especially since they were both already at death's doors, and taking them out of here would be almost impossible in their current condition.
Walking up to them, he gently woke them from their unconsciousness. Their eyes opened, and they twitched in horror, for what was to come for them.
“Do you wish to die?”
That was all Mark could do for them, give them a swift death, and end their nightmare. Their eyes lit up with light again. For a couple of seconds, they struggled, not able to make a sound. Then almost indistinguishable from the wind whistling through the cracks in the wood a quiet “please” rang out.
Mark nodded his head and bending over he pierced their brain from the back, through the center, to quickly kill the cortex and insula responsible for the feeling of pain, quickly killing them, without them knowing when it even happened. Turning around he saw Donny, looking at this with his fists clenched and eyes filled with guilt.
He must be remembering his family again, even though the weight of vengeance has already fallen from his shoulders it did not mean, seeing things like this would be easier all of a sudden. It was already the sixth night of their journey from Pharia, and they have already encountered three such groups of bandits on their night patrols around the caravan.
All of them were nowhere near the numbers or power of Vesthia’s camp, mostly ranging around a dozen bandits, all with a fairly low level of combat prowess. Still, they were a good source of exp and training.
They have found many kidnapped and enslaved people, most of them in fairly good condition, just lightly beaten up, though they did not find any women up until now. Most of those people could walk by themselves so with some directions, some of them were allowed to follow along with the caravan, while some of them coming from villages nearby, decided to return home.
Mark was slowly but surely closing in on level twenty, from what he learned there would be another choice there to upgrade his class, once again with choices depending on what he used his current class for. He would see how it worked now, and depending on what appeared he would have to start tailoring his actions to narrow the choices to his liking.
Along with the experience and skills they have also gained a fair bit of wealth, there was a fair bit of gold, counting altogether, as well as some valuable jewelry, and even some books, which Mark immediately took over intending to find out as much as possible.
With his current level of knowledge about the world surrounding him, even children’s fairy tale books would be useful for him. Many of those were based on the very fundamental ideas and truths about the world surrounding them, containing the common knowledge, so trivial, and inconsequential to the adults.
Also, he was looking for more treasure books. After he read the book given to him by Mayor Dunwall, he found out it was actually a training manual, telling you the exact way of gaining a skill. It was a little flawed, and maybe not that helpful to normal people, seeing as it did not say anything about Stamina Control, mostly describing the state of mind and body exercises that will help in forming the skill.
Apparently after enough training and attaining the right state of mind, you would gain the skill “Protection”, it was also specified to not lose heart as it could take even a year or two to gain it. After following the exercises Mark found that they moved his Stamina in a particular way, though by almost a minuscule amount, deciding to help it a bit he was able to move it along many times faster, and only after about two days he gained another skill.
Protection
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Decreases the incoming impact.
LVL 1 EXP 13/20
It was fairly good, though, at the current level, he could say it didn’t help much. It neutralized at most a couple percent of the force behind incoming strikes, and for now, it took a lot of Stamina to cover his whole body, but if he raised the level enough it could be one of his aces in the sleeve, and he was already working on making the protection partial, covering only a part of his body.
It would take much less Stamina to use it this way, though for now, he had no idea how to do it. No matter what he tried, the skill resisted his manipulation, switching off the moment he took back Stamina from any part of his body.
But since gaining this skill, he never looked at any book the same way, though he was conscious of the fact that they were probably incredibly precious and valuable, and not a commodity available to just anyone. That was why he was even more happy he managed to get unrestricted access to the Library of Tirdram, he was sure it had at least some books like this.
Having finished with the girls, Mark walked over to the chests near the wall, opening them he found one was mostly filled with junk. Some bloody torture tools, small weapons, and utensils, as well as some chains, shackles, and collars, he guessed it was the private ‘fun stash’ of the leader of those idiots.
The other chest was much more fruitful, containing a couple of big pouches with coins, even though it was mostly copper, and some silver, a few much smaller pouches with precious gems, and some other miscellaneous baubles. All in all, it was a pretty good harvest.
They put their loot into two bigger bags and placed them next to the house, then they gathered the bandits' bodies and hauled them over into the house. getting some more firewood the guys here prepared for their campfires, thy chucked that into the house as well, then they set it all on fire
“Okay, time to go, it's getting late. We will be reaching Gauther in about two days. I am guessing there shouldn’t be any more bandits any closer to the city, we will focus on training from now on. When we get to the city, we can trade in most of this stuff, and exchange the coins for a higher denomination, it really is a bother to haul around all this copper.”
“Mhm” Donny didn’t answer much, still looking into the flames, then he turned, hauled one of the bags, and started walking behind Mark.