Note: This chapter has not gone to my editors and events may change before final release. The below is also unedited and in a raw non-polished form.

-----

Toaby walked back into the settlement toward the town hall. He stayed back to check the surrounding area for any more raiders and protect the townsfolk who looted the bodied. Hiro was standing outside the door of the town hall, waiting for Toaby. He nodded his head as Toaby approached.

“Has he said anything?” Questioned Toaby.

Hiro shook his head. “Nothing of value. He’s just been mumbling about how unfair the whole situation is and how he’s not a bad guy. I think he's scared.”

“Hmm… Be right back.” Toaby walked away. He went to the large cooking fire and grabbed a plate of cooked rabbit steak before returning.

“What’s that for?” Hiro pointed to the plate of food.

“I don’t want to torture someone, so I’m going to rely on the good cop routine.”

“And if he doesn’t cooperate?”

Toaby shrugged. “We’ll deal with that when and if we come to it. I also don’t want to kill somebody just because they’re a supposed enemy.” He scratched the back of his head with his free hand. “We could probably keep him captive for a while. At least until the other two would have respawned. That way he's not giving the Void any advance warning they weren’t going to get, anyway.”

“Want me to come in with you?”

“Nah. I got this. I’ll signal you if something goes wrong.” Toaby nodded and entered the building.

Jesse was sitting on the floor in the far corner. He was clenching his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth. He looked terrified.

“I brought you some food. In case you’re hungry.” Toaby placed the food on the desk. “You’re welcome to have it.”

Jesse’s head shot up to meet Toaby’s gaze. His face was stained with tears. “I should have known. You’re poisoning me, aren’t you?”

Toaby’s eyes went wide. “What!? No. Look.” He ripped off a corner of the rabbit steak and popped it into his mouth. “It’s actually pretty good and provides you a well-fed buff.”

Raising his head to get a peak at the food atop the table from his vantage point, Jesse slowly rose to his feet. “You’re sure I can have it?”

“Yeah. We had a good hunt this morning. There’s plenty to go around.” Toaby gestured for Jesse to take a seat at the desk. “Take a load off and eat.” Hesitantly, Jesse took a seat behind the desk and began picking at the food. “How is it?”

“Umm… good.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Now…”

Jesse interrupted. “Now you kill me? Let me guess, you’re going to torture me first?”

“What!? No, of course not.”

“Really?” Jesse read Toaby’s face for any tell of him lying. “You’re not going to hurt me?”

“Not unless you attack me or one of the settlers first. I actually wanted to ask you some questions about Max, the Void, and your time on Midgard in general.”

“What kind of questions?” Jesse went back to picking at the food.

“Well, for starters. Why are you so scared that were going to hurt you?”

“It’s what Max would do.” Jesse muttered between bites.

“Is it?” Toaby pondered.

“Yeah.” Jesse swallowed his mouth full of food. “That guys ruthless and insane. He tortures and kills everything he sees that irks him the wrong way. Even his own men. I saw him fillet Alex once just because he said good morning the wrong way.”

“He sounds like quite the character.”

“You have no idea. He’s completely wild.”

Toaby cocked his head. “Then why do people follow him?”

“Fear mostly. People who step out of line get killed over and over until the system sends them for rebirth somewhere far away. He gains experience every time one of them fights back, so he's gained a ton of levels. He uses that fact to keep others beneath him. Wouldn’t you rather take shit from him and serve him than be killed over and over?”

“That does sound pretty bad.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Him and his inner circle keep everything! We just get scraps and everything we earn for ourselves, he takes. Its ridiculous. Even when we went on our raids, he just keeps everything.” Jesse took another large bite.

“Hmm. Earlier you mentioned something about this visit not going as planned. What did you mean by that?” Toaby took a seat on the bench across the room.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Max and his inner circle have a schedule and details to each of their raids. They listed this group as broken, which means you don’t offer resistance. I hate fighting, so I volunteered to go with Alex on this raid. I don’t enjoy fighting and if I don’t raid at least once in a while my status will go from raider to slave.”

“Slave!?” Toaby stood from his seat. “He has slaves?”

Jesse nodded. “Yeah. Aside from his core raiders, he has a group of slaves and a group of…”

“Of what?”

“Of mistresses. Women he's captured and deemed… useful.” Unconsciously, Toaby had pulled his weapons from his inventory and was gripping them tightly. “I never visited the mistresses, I swear!” Jesse waved his arms around defensively.

Toaby followed Jesse’s eyes to notice the weapons in his hands. He sent them back to his inventory, took a deep breath and sat back down. “Sorry about that. I lost myself there for a second.”

“You’re not going to chop me up or something, are you?”

“No.”

“Just checking.”

Toaby coughed to clear his throat. “Let’s get back on subject. You said he has raiders, slaves and… mistresses. How many of each are there?”

Jesse looked down at his hands and used his fingers to count to himself. “There’s roughly twenty-five of us, maybe thirty.”

“That’s not as bad as I was expecting. Whats the breakdown? How many slaves vs raiders?”

“I think you misunderstood me. Theres roughly thirty raiders. There’s another twenty or so slaves and five mistresses.”

“So his entire group is about fifty people?”

Jesse looked up for a second in thought. “That seems about right, maybe sixty. I never really counted.”

“Wait. Why aren’t they all raiders? Why does he keep slaves in the first place?”

“The slaves do all the things Max doesn’t want to do. They hunt, build things, sort loot, and other manual labor related things. He has them fight each other from time to time for entertainment as well.”

“What’s the moral like at the camp? I can’t imagine its high.”

“The raiders are pretty happy, but yeah, everyone else is pretty miserable.” Jesse looked at his empty plate. “Do you mind if I get another one?”

Toaby walked over and grabbed the plate. “Sure. Stay here.” Exiting, Tom, Curtis and Hiro greeted him.

“So. What’s the scoop?” Tom questioned.

Toaby handed the plate over to Hiro. “Do you mind grabbing another? The foods keeping him talking.” After Hiro ran off, Toaby filled the others in on what he had learned.

“Slaves? They really have that many slaves?” Tom said shocked.

“Yeah.”

“How do you know he’s not lying just to save his own skin?” Asked Curtis.

“I’ll let you both in on something, but I want to keep it between us.” Toaby looked around to make sure no one was within earshot. “One of my arbiter abilities is tell when someone is lying. It’s called truth seeker. So far he hasn’t told any lies or at least anything he believes to be a lie. Sounds like Max keeps the lower level people in the dark.”

“Damn! Would have been nice to know about that ability before.” Curtis said as he crossed his arms.

“Hey, I don’t know all your abilities, do I?”

Curtis deflated a bit. “Fair.”

Tom waved his hand in the space between Curtis and Toaby. “Forget that for now. He says Max could have thirty raiders? How are we supposed to take out that many people?”

“I don’t know. I can try challenging Max to a trial by combat, but I need to learn more about him. If I can’t beat him, there isn’t much of a point.”

“Thats if he even accepts the challenge. I noticed how quickly that Alex character tossed away your proposal.” Curtis added.

“That’s right.” Tom stated. “We can’t bank on that. We’ll have to come up with something else.” Hiro came strolling up at that point and handed Toaby another plate of food. “Get back in there and get more information out of him while we try to come up with a plan.”

Toaby nodded and headed back inside. Jesse was waiting patiently behind the desk, his eyes looking greedily at the plate of food. Almost the instant after Toaby set it down, Jesse was digging face first into it.

“You might want to slow down so you don’t choke.” Jesse gave him a thumbs up. “What else can you tell me that could be useful? Where’s your camp?”

“It’s mobile. We pack up and move every week. Max says it's because he doesn’t want the demons to catch him.”

“The demons?”

“The guy's messed up, remember?”

Toaby wanted to chuckle, but the situation was too serious to afford it. “If he has so many people, how is he able to mobilize them so often?”

“He has slaves. They pack up the camp and move everything. If they complain, they get whipped. If they keep complaining, they get tortured and killed. Instead of killing them over and over, though, he usually recaptures them and breaks them. Everyone is so broken they don’t dare argue.”

“That’s no way to live. Especially an eternal life.”

Jesse nodded. “Now you know why I became a raider. At least I get table scraps and don’t get beat. The slaves just get enough food that they don’t starve to death.”

Toaby shook the anger away that was boiling up again. “Ok. What will he do once he finds out what we did?”

Jesse gulped. “He’ll come to kill you. All of you. Then he’ll probably spawn camp you. He doesn’t take disrespect lightly.”

“What level are he and his raiders?”

“I’m not sure of everyone’s exact level, but I know Max is almost ten. He keeps talking about a class advancement and being so close to double digits. The rest of them should be five or less. Max doesn’t like anyone getting even close to his level, so he makes sure we don’t level up too much. I’m only level two.”

Toaby stood to leave but turned back to ask one last question. “Based on what you saw today. Do we stand a chance at beating him?”

Jesse shrugged. “No idea, but even though I surrendered myself, I would put my bets on Max. He’s unpredictable, strong and fearsome. He won’t stop attacking you until you’re completely broken both inside and out.”

Toaby left the room. “We have a problem.”

“Is it bigger than thirty raiders who all want us dead?” Curtis asked curtly.

“I won’t be able to challenge Max to a trial by combat. He’s level nine or ten. There’s no way I could beat him one-on-one.”

“That is a problem.” Tom added.

“What have you all come up with? Anything?”

Tom shook his head. “Nothing beyond staying the course. We’re going to finish the gate leading in and widen the trench so its impossible to jump. Beyond that, were all ears.”

Toaby thought for a moment, but nothing came to mind. Then Hiro suggested, “What about the slaves?” Everyone looked confusedly back at him.

“What about them?” Tom asked.

“Why don’t we attempt to free them? If this individual can guide us to their camp, we could attempt to free the slaves.”

“And if we bring them back here, we could feed them and equip them with weapons. It would give us more fighters than they have raiders. It could work but Jesse, the guy inside, says the slaves are all broken. I’m not sure they would rebel.” Toaby finished as he caught on to Hiro’s plan.

“If the man responsible for enforcing the law were to entice them, I’m sure it would help.” Toaby’s face drooped as Tom continued to speak. “Listen. The notification of you coming to the system gave us all a lot of hope, and I’m sure the notification of an official settlement forming did just the same. If you, the arbiter, invite them back to the only relatively safe place in all of Midgard, they’ll likely buy in.”

“Yeah. You’re just forgetting some key details. This place isn’t all that safe and we’ll be asking them to fight. Not to mention we would need to find their camp, slip in undetected, and convince a large group of strangers to trust me.”

Tom waved his hand in the air, dismissing Toaby’s concerns. “Semantics. Thats all just semantics. We have faith in you, arbiter!” Tom gave Toaby a wide grin.

Ah dammit!