Convincing the girlfriend's family was a little bit more difficult. Her father was a shrewd individual, and could see through what Will was saying. He was also wise enough to know he didn’t have much of a choice. He was a cobbler, an even greater win in Will’s book. His store had been targeted by a noble who felt that the father was too much competition for the store he had invested in. It was normal bullshit that the man had weathered before, but the refugee crisis had hit at exactly the wrong time. With their resources depleted from being targeted by the noble, he had barely been able to keep his family from starving. They were all painfully thin, none of them filling out their clothes the way they should be.

Will felt for them, and was glad to be able to help in this situation at least. It certainly didn’t hurt that he would get an enchanter and a skilled cobbler. And the cobbler’s wife was even a skilled, if not professional seamstress. They were sad to leave their home, where they had lived through a number of hard times, but when Will laid a feast out on their table, they could hardly refuse. He could see the pride in the cobbler’s eyes warring with him as he slowly ate, but he said nothing, quietly accepting the charity.

His children, the girlfriend of the enchanter’s apprentice being the oldest, all dug in ferociously, barely remembering their manners. There were four of them in all, and Will could see why the man was having such a hard time feeding them. The mother gave out weak reprimands, telling the children to be more polite, but Will could tell she didn’t have it in her to restrain them. After their meal they worked to get their house packed up. They needed to get at least one cart filled so that it wouldn’t look odd when they left town. Will took the cobbler’s collection of tools and forms into his inventory, along with all of his extra stock. They loaded up the cart with free pieces of their furniture to make a good show of them leaving, and Will took the rest. Then they headed out. Will was reflecting on the fact that his inventory was looking pretty full these days, having also cleared out the enchanting shop of all Isaac’s tools and inventory.

Will snickered when he remembered the apprentice offering him the shop’s contents in exchange for the opportunity Will was giving him. Will was looking forward to seeing his face when he saw Isaac again. Will wondered how long he would let the now happy boy roast before pulling him out of the fire.

The cobbler and his family had many goodbyes to make, and so Will left them to make their way to the gate in a manner that would be less suspicious. For his part he went to the market to buy whatever he could get his hands on. Food was of course horribly overpriced, but he was able to get a fair amount of different things with the large amount of coin he had. As soon as he was done, he left Stinsburough to find the family making their slow way down the road. At which point he loaded the rest of their possessions into his inventory. When they complained about leaving their cart behind, Will decided to try again to store it. Their cart was on the small side, and with both his concept and his boosting enchantment, he managed to get it off the ground. Once it left the ground, it slid into his inventory with ease. That only left their horse which would surely bolt at the first sign of Koma.

It got Will thinking, and laying his hand on the horse, he attempted to pull it into his inventory. He knew he had tried it before, but couldn’t remember when. All he remembered was the notification that popped up.

Living creatures may not be placed in inventory.

Which was complete bullshit. Will didn’t know how it calculated what was alive or not, but stuff had been decaying quite nicely in his inventory. There were even bugs in the slot that held all the compostables. It was just a lockout that was enforced by the system, not a requirement of the inventory itself. Will started to spam pickup requests, attempting to overload the system, and suddenly the horse disappeared.

Will felt a weight in his very soul. It felt like he had eaten a two ton weight and had it sitting in his stomach, except the feeling was in his soul. Maybe there was something to the lockout after all. He whistled to Koma, forgetting to tell them not to be alarmed as a giant white dire wolf jumped out on the road behind him. Will eventually calmed them down in fits and starts, as he was feeling something like indigestion. Koma then laid down and they were all able to climb on. They all set off at a good clip, slower than before, which Will was certainly regretting as the pain got worse and worse as time went on.

The moment they got near to the fortress, Will fell off of Koma, and immediately removed the slightly panicked horse from his inventory. The horse stomped around a bit until the cobbler got down and calmed it. It handled being near Koma surprisingly well, all things considered, but maybe it was just in shock from being in the inventory. If it was as bad for the horse as it was for Will…

They made the rest of the way to the fortress without issue, and Will got them settled into one of the unclaimed houses. He then went to the castle with the apprentice in tow. And finding Isaac was everything Will was hoping for.

Will watched the carnage unfold, stepping in at the last moment before Isaac found out about his apprentice's betrayal. Will presented the man his store stock and personal possessions, and while Isaac grumbled, he did finally accept the situation.

All of this meant that while Will had more mouths to feed, he was also in a better position overall. He had not one but two enchanters, as well as some seven men who could fight. He would need to increase that number, hopefully increasing his fighting capacity without bringing a whole family along as well.

Will spent the rest of the day getting the last of his men their concepts. The other adventurers had tried awakening concepts, but since they couldn’t fill the spirit map it went poorly. Even when Will healed the men’s spirit maps, the other adventurers still couldn’t do it. It left Will with a tedious task and nobody to help him. It was annoying, but Will found it a good time to get some reading done about enchanting. With all the right tools, they would be moving on to making simple magic items soon, and Will wanted to be ready.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A few days passed and it was time for another ambush. With seven men as well as the adventurers that were willing to help, they might be able to press a smaller group into giving up their goods without a fight. They might even be able to get some recruits if they played their cards right.

The group headed out a full 12 strong. Will and Emerys led the band toward one of the roads as before, sending out scouts to find a group of travelers. They were not going for one of the big caravans this time. This time they were looking for something small.

A scout came back with a perfect report. A farmer and his sons. They were all armed protecting their cart full of their midsummer harvest. They were coming in an odd direction, as most of the farmland was along the coast, and this road was inland by quite a way. But Will wasn’t going to question his luck. They set up their ambush, and jumped out, surrounding the cart.

“Hand over your goods and nobody will get hurt.” Will shouted.

“You see ned? The farmer driving the cart said, his voice thick with a country accent. “I told you so. I told you so!” then the accent dropped completely. “Bandit bait always works.”

In a second all the men were armored, their farm tools replaced by weapons that looked deadly in practiced hands.

Bounty hunters. Fucking bounty hunters. How did this happen so quickly? They had done two strikes, with days in between. The worst part was that they were equipped for a fight far better than Will and his team. Seeing no other choice, Will yelled.

“Retreat!” and he whistled.

“Oh you're not getting away that easily.” A heavily armored assailant rushed at Will. Emerys intercepted him, and the two became locked in a deadly exchange of mace blows. Will rushed forward to try to flank the tank, but he was attacked by a light warrior of some sort. The man wielded a longsword but wore minimal armor and his speed showed it. Will frantically parried three attacks before he could get in a strike of his own, but it was parried in turn. Meanwhile his men were being harried by an archer and a mage. Their concepts made them far hardier, but one man was already struggling to limp away after he got an arrow to the lower leg. It would heal, but they were still so low level the healing would be slow.

“Koma, Where are you?” Will yelled, following it up with a sharp whistle and a jab through their connection. He felt Koma jump on the other side and start running. Only two seconds later Koma burst through the trees and growled. But those two seconds had gone bad for the bandits. Three of the bandits were down, and the archer and mage were eyeing Will and Koma. The fifth party member was nowhere to be seen until Will felt a tearing burning pain in his back. A rogue. Will barely kept his feet, frantically parrying a suddenly furious set of attacks from the light warrior.

Will grabbed ahold of his Inferno of the Tumultuous Mind, channeling all the energy he could into his aura, which burst out with searing heat. It staggered all the fighters in range as Koma finally arrived. The mage died in a single chomp, not expecting a wolf the size of a semi truck to appear out of nowhere. The archer tried to flee, but a claw severed it in two. And then the cold descended. Koma’s own concept blanketed the battlefield, creating air so turbulent where his concept and Will’s concept met, it felled the light warrior instantly. The rogue and the tank tried to run, but Koma was faster than any of them.

Will noticed that Koma didn’t attempt to eat any of them, which Will appreciated. Their corpses needed to be looted after all. Will turned off his aura, putting Inferno of the Tumultuous Mind back in its box. He then approached the people who had caught them in the counter ambush.

Would you like to loot the inventory?

Y/N

Will looked to Emerys who seemed to have recovered already.

“How do these people have inventories if they are not gods?” Will asked. “I didn’t feel any sort of divine aura coming from them.”

Emerys simply shrugged.

“There are different ways to get the same effect as the system provides. In this case it is probably a piece of jewelry, but permanent access to a true inventory is not out of the question. When you loot them you will either get a spatial device or you won't.” And with that Will looted the corpses. When he looted them, the valuables they were wearing came too, which made it somewhat awkward in the case of the mage, who had been wearing only his robe.

Will got a smattering of things from the bounty hunters. Various camping supplies, old or replacement gear, and food. A very surprising amount of food. After remembering to check on his men, and finding out they were ok, he looked in the cart to find it was indeed full of vegetables. They had more of those very vegetables in their inventories.

Will’s heart sank when he found their adventurer tags, as well as the contract they were on. Transport. They had been on a transport mission bringing food imported from Kilmore from one of the coastal cities. It gave no indication why it wasn’t shipped directly to Stinburough, as Stinburough was a coastal city, but it also didn’t indicate they were supposed to take the more inland monster and bandit infested roads. It seemed that the adventurers had just been fishing for more experience and loot, luring in bandits to take out while doing a boring transport quest.

Will had their tags, which he would have to keep in his inventory. They could be tracked otherwise, and if found would reveal Will to have been the culprit behind their deaths. Will snarled in rage. He hadn’t wanted to kill adventurers. Killing adventurers was bad business. It meant that they would be tracked down sooner rather than later. Still, the amount of food they had found meant that they would not need to do another ambush for a week or two. Fortunately, he did find five spatial bags, which he gave to Emerys to hand out as he would. He simply told Emerys that one had to go to the kitchen ladies to help store the food.

In the meantime, they dug graves for the adventurers deep in the forest. They were not about to allow their bodies to be found, at least not easily. The mule that had pulled the cart had died, and Will simply stored that in his compost slot, while lifting the cart into another slot. All that was left were blood stains, but there was little Will could do.

Arnold had different ideas however, and easily skimmed off the top layer of the soil, carrying the blood away with it and burying it away from the road. It left a noticeable mark on the road, but one that would fade quickly with any sort of weather.