Meandering down the main road out of the city, they followed Vincent’s directions to his friend, only known as Hammy. Using the same trick from their fight with Grace, Adam pulled along a radiant burst that Matilda had cast alongside them to act as a light source. He kept it floating above their heads as it was the most comfortable position, illuminating the road in front of them without hurting their eyes from the brightness.
They continued to chain yawns off of one another as they walked down the road.
“We should have just camped in the forest for the night or something, I feel like we won’t even make it to this guys house before we crash out from exhaustion.” Brian complained.
“I was hoping my healing would somehow cure my exhaustion as well but it seems you can’t heal away your need of sleep” Matilda yawned.
“We are only a bit over an hour away if Vincent was accurate in his directions. Push through.” Adam was as determined as always to make progress, he was yawning as well, but in his mind he knew he would have no issues staying awake and was still feeling alert after their encounter with Grace, his mind raced with theories and ideas, just like when the Refined first showed up to Earth.
“Yeah, yeah” The other two muttered as they marched.
Adam heard some people speaking up ahead on the road, he couldn’t yet see who they were but they were close based on the noise of their drunken yelling. He lowered their radiant burst lantern to the ground to lessen any suspicion. As the group entered into the illuminated part of the road, Adam instantly had a gut feeling they weren’t good news. A man approached in an oversized coat, in front of the rest of his acquaintances.
“Well well, what do we have here? Three lonesome travellers with no horses, you can have your lives if we get all of your belongings. Hand them over, I’m sure you have some coin too.”
Bonus Objective- Defeat the bandits! These bandits often patrol the main roads out of the city of Oak to accumulate money and goods to later sell.
“What are those boxes coming out of your wrists, what are you?” Adam felt a little silly as he realised their hiker menus could give away their position, after his wasted thought on moving the light around to hide the fact they had a floating light ball.
Adam tried to walk past the man without a care “We are in a rush, leave us be.”
The man laughed as he stopped Adam by placing his hand on his shoulder “That’s a new one, doesn’t work like that I’m afraid.”
Adam threw multiple threads of kinetic force at the man, one each for his eyes to disorient him, a few stronger ones at his feet to trip him and a more explosive blast at his torso to push him back. This process still took about ten seconds for him to cast, even with his new cast speed increasing Idol, but it’s not like the man could tell what was about to hit him. The man hit the ground with a thud.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Another voice come from a little further down the road from a portly, balding man who now approached.
“What is the issue Jicky? A few randoms giving you trouble?” He chuckled. His laughter stopped when he saw Jicky laying on the ground, breathing heavily. He brandished a hatchet.
“You guys are in the wrong time and wrong place.”
His hatchet went flying out of his hands and off near the forest to the side of the road as Brian smashed it out of his hands with his one remaining axe from the city blacksmith.
“We have bigger things to deal with than some thieves” Brian muttered.
Matilda shouted at them as she caught up from behind “No messy fight, let’s get out of here.”
The man in the coat that had first spoken to Adam lunged at Matilda who cast a radiant burst purely out of reaction. The left and right casts that had cleaved off from her triple cast passive flew off into the forests on each side of the road while the central burst hit the man in the face, he stumbled back, blinded and cursing in pain. While still being completely blind he raised his voice “Men, these ones die.”
“You really need to stop getting into messy situations like this.” A third man came into view on the dark road, entering the illuminated area. He carried a large sword on his back.
Adam didn’t want them all to exert themselves even further fighting these three off.
“What is your deepest fear?”
The swordsman was angry “Who are you to ask us a weird question like that, your deepest fear should be the fact that you’re about to lose your own life.”
Jicky, the leader of this bandit crew strained, trying to fight off the strange compulsion he was feeling, while he continued rubbing his eyes from the blinding effect the burst had on him.
“Being alone, that my friends here will leave me when it suits them, just like my parents did.”
Matilda and Brian both looked at Adam straight away.
“I don’t know that it sits right with me when you do this.” Matilda said plainly.
“I don’t like it either, sometimes it feels like I have to.”
“You’re the one who chose the ability on your skill tree.” Brian bounced his axe up and down on the dirt road.
“You didn’t see this Abbey character, I chose it in a panic while I thought she was about to crush us.”
“Yeah, well you haven’t seen Fargo.” He replied.
“What are you three talking about, why are you making me say strange things, complete lies they are.” The bandit in command was squinting out of his eyes now, able to barely see again, he had walked up to Adam with his chest puffed out.
“Are you scared?” Adam asked, walking past the three bandits. “Let’s get to this farm everyone.”
“I’m terrified. I’ve heard tales of people like you, magical people, we don’t go into the city but we are told there is one living there now as well. I’m worried you are going to kill us.”
“Boss, what are you saying, why are you scared of these pathetic kids?” The stout man coughed out in confusion.
“What do we do Jicky? It’s okay if you think we have to move on.” The sworsdman asked, obviously confused.
“This is rubbish, he is feeding me lies and making me say things!” The man screamed, terrified at this point, turning and pointing at Adam who was still walking further down the road, away from the bandits at this point.
“Is it true, you are scared we will leave you?” The larger bandit friend asked Jicky.
“I trust your judgement completely, let them be and let’s keep going.” The swordsman added.
“Thanks guys, I don’t know what’s up with me, those lot are bad news we can find easier targets.”
The bandits continued down the road towards the city while Adam, Matilda and Brian continued on the find Hammy’s farm.
“I think I helped them bond” Adam chuckled as the bandits disappeared into the darkness.
The other two laughed with him.
“It’s so nice, a few levels and skills and now we don’t have to put up with stuff like that.” Brian said with a big grin on his face.
“Well, we are strong enough that we don’t have to be scared about a few random bandits but we know what else is out there as well.” Matilda said, dropping the mood back down.
Brian stifled another laugh.
“What’s so funny now?” Matilda asked raising an eyebrow.
“That cleric” He laughed through his own words.
“That cleric, Grace, she dived into that pool with my damn axe. I wanted it back.”
Adam laughed with him, they were probably feeling a bit delirious at their own lack of sleep at this point but they couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe it was a coping mechanism for all of the life and death situations they were running into.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
They carried on laughing and having a good time, in what felt like the first time since they had all met back before they got on the ship. It was nice to have friends and bond with them Adam thought.
It was now dawn, the sun was rising and giving a nice view of orange streaks through the sky.
They now could see a gap in the forest to the sides of the road, with a lighter dirt path forking off to the side to what appeared to be farmland. According to Vincent, this was where Hammy’s farm and house were. They travelled down the path, eventually finding a small house at the end of it. It was a small cottage that was very plain and simple in design.
“I suppose we just knock at the door, I know it’s a bad time but we can’t just stand around” Adam was starting to feel a little nervous, if he knew Vincent he wasn’t going to be some random guy, he could be a threat, he could be another Hiker, who knows?
“You have about five seconds before I kill all three of you, what do you want? Why are you here at my farm so early?” They heard from behind them, how had they been followed like that and not been able to sense a person there, when did he get there right behind them?
“Uhh, I’m sorry, I uhh” Adam stammered in fear.
“Hammy” Matilda said loudly over the top of Adam’s babbling.
“How do you know that name?” The man walked around from behind them to in front of them at the door to his cottage.
“We know Vincent, he sent us here and told us to use that name so you know it’s really him.” She continued to explain, Adam was really glad to have Matilda as part of their group, she really helped with some of his common sense issues like this.
“Well, that does make a tiny bit of sense now, thank you. I was pretty close to vaporizing your friend here.” He said nodding towards Adam.
“I haven’t heard from Vincent in something like ten years now, how is the old guy?”
“Hey, should we just call you Hammy?” Brian asked “You aren’t that far from Vincent, how come you haven’t talked in so long?”
“For now Hammy is good. I don’t go into the city as a rule, ever. He doesn’t come here, or hasn’t for ten years at least. The last time he came here was when Oak had the first hints of becoming sick, he asked for help but I didn’t give it.”
“Well, he is doing pretty well I’d say. He is married, not that we met his wife yet. It sounded like peaceful healer work for him until we showed up” Matilda continued to explain, she seemed to have built the best first impression with him.
His eyes widened and the man laughed, holding his large belly. Adam thought that Hammy did look fairly dishevelled, was he some kind of hermit out here?
“I can’t believe he got married, wow. I thought he was going to die a widower for sure.” Hammy scratched behind his ears as he spoke, stopping to look at the gunk he picked out from there.
“His first wife died?” Adam spoke up now.
“So you do know how to speak, good. Yeah, Vincent, his wife Janice and I were a group, the team of Hikers, as you three are.”
Target: ‘Hammy’
Class: Barbarian
Level: 18
Their menus popped up as they had with Grace.
“Level eighteen!” Brian exclaimed.
“How is it we never had a pop up like that for Vincent?” Adam asked, hoping to get more knowledge on their situation.
“It can be hidden if one wishes, I was hiding it from you lot until I allowed the signal to go out to you, you’ll be able to do it eventually but it will come later for newbies like you lot. Anyway, what brings you here, must be pretty bad if Vincent is reaching out to me.”
They moved inside to his cottage and sat down on lounge chairs that he had set up. Adam was surprised the guy had furniture.
He was surprisingly nice after the original death threat. He served them tea and heard out their story. They told him of the Oak, the church and their encounter with Grace, including the tree leeches they saw before they left.
“Very dire indeed, sounds like this planet is about to hit turmoil.” He said wiping his hands on his ill-fitting shirt that exposed his gut.
Brian had already fallen asleep in his armchair at this point. Matilda was staying awake, trying to speak with the man but was drifting in and out of sleep herself. Adam kept up lively discussion with the man, not even wanting to sleep.
“Well, I can tell all three of you haven’t slept for at least a full day if not more, plus everything that you have been through, for now you hide out here and get some rest, you are beyond useless in your current state of exhaustion.” He escorted the three of them to the one spare room he had in the cottage. The entire home really was empty outside of some minimum furniture, it didn’t really feel like ‘home’ as such. There wasn’t anything that seemed personal to Hammy here. It wasn’t lived in. This all rushed through Adam’s mind as he fell asleep in another chair that was in the spare room.
Waking up in the morning, Hammy served them breakfast and asked them to help him with some outstanding jobs on the farm that would be helped with multiple sets of hands. They were happy to oblige although Adam continued to pester him and his team about the dire situation with Oak. What good was a farm if the tree died, the city fell and society collapsed under the church after all? But he did try to play nice. Matilda and Brian spent most of the day together doing the assigned jobs from Hammy while Adam helped Hammy directly, split from the others. At least he got a chance to speak to a high level hiker.
“Any tips for the three of us levelling up?”
“Well, you’re level three, so you just need more levels as a first goal. Don’t take risks, safe experience is free experience, from what you told me last night, you’ve almost lost your life multiple times over and you have just barely begun. But you have got this far pretty quick as well, so good job there.” He seemed encouraging which was a nice change of pace from Vincent’s constant warnings and pacifism.
“There’s not much to say, you just need intuition of your own abilities and own situation when choosing the right skills, also I’ve never even heard of your class, Psion? I can give Brian some barbarian tips for sure though.” Hammy seemed happy to have anyone to talk to really, about anything.
“Yeah, it seems like no one has heard of my class. Vincent or Abbey.”
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, because in all likelihood it’s just an uncommon class that a few people you met are unfamiliar with. But in general, the rarer a class, the more potential it has. Though they tend to be kind of odd-ball classes that can struggle in the earlier levels as well. There are also legends of classes above all others, called Paragons that are unique to just one person in the entire multiverse. Not that you’re one of those, you’ve only had a few people take a look, and the last time we even had a rumour of a paragon was hundreds of years ago. It’s getting to the point now where most people don’t believe it’s a real thing.”
“But you do.”
“Aye, I looked into it, it made sense to me, the multiverse is a big place, I just think it’s very rare is all. I’d love to see one in my lifetime though. Not that I have many more decades left.”
“What happened to Janice? Vincent’s wife.” He asked as Adam cleaned out some muck from a stables area, this seemed more like work he didn’t want to do, rather than work that specifically required multiple sets of hands.