“OY! Who da fack are you punk? What the hell happened here?” The largest of the men asked. He was about my height, maybe an inch or 2 shorter with a full black and silver beard and missing about half his teeth. I swore I could smell him from a dozen yards away and it was not a pleasant smell.

“I am just a guy out for a walk. I don’t know what happened here. I was just walking through when I heard a loud noise and the next thing I knew I was sprawled here on the ground.” I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell these thugs I was the one that ran through a bunch of trees and made all the noise. I think it is best if I just play dumb and innocent and try to talk my way out of this mess. “So do you guys know where there is a town or village? Maybe a city or hell, even a road I can find?”

“You ain't going anywhere until we get this figured out. Those are some fine-looking clothes you have on there. Are you some noble brat? That shirt looks like Spinweave Spiderkin silk and those boots are definitely wyvern hide. Why don’t you hand those clothes over and I will tell you where the nearest town is.” The apparent leader said.

“Jarvis, should we really be harassing him? He is walking through the Nightmare Wood by himself with no weapons. He doesn’t seem right to me.” Random thug #4 whispered thinking I couldn’t hear him. Nightmare Wood sounded like a bad place to be as someone pretty much brand new to this world.

“Hey, kid, what are you doing out here in the woods all by yourself? Don’t you know it's dangerous here?” The leader said after thinking through what his subordinate had just told him.

“Oh you know just on a stroll. It's not too dangerous though since the only thing I ran into was some Crocovile thing and it went down with no trouble.” I wasn’t sure if saying this would help me or hurt me but the truth was always the best I thought.

“A CROCOVILE?! They never come this far downriver and are at least level 80! You are talking out of your ass if you want me to believe a scrawny young kid like you killed a crocovile barehanded. You should have come up with a more believable creature that is actually native to this part of the forest and not one that lives nearly 10 hours walk upstream.” The leader seemed to think I was trying to scare them by exaggerating my accomplishments but I assumed the animal was a weakling based on our fight….

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“Ummm… ok well I guess I will just keep walking on my own then if you gentlemen don’t intend to give me directions.” With that, I got up and started to walk downstream again hoping against hope that they would just let me leave without further incident. Unfortunately, life was never that simple.

A blur passed by my head and I saw an arrow stuck in the tree in front of me. “Did I tell you you could leave? I said I want your clothes boy so either hand them over or I will take them.” I continued to walk even after hearing the leader's threat hoping he wouldn’t follow through and just let me leave. I was not so lucky as I felt a hand land on my shoulder. Turning my head the big leader was standing behind me with a smirk on his face. “Do you think we will let you escape? Don’t even try to get away, we are all level 30 or higher and will have no problem taking you down.”

Level 30? That Croc was 95 and he couldn’t even break my skin with his teeth. This whole thing seems to be completely nonsensical. These guys are acting like level 30 is some high-level badassery but if that is the case what level am I to destroy that Croc like that? “What is the highest level?” I asked hoping to get an answer despite us being at odds.

“You must really be at a low level if you don’t even know that.” The bandits all roared with laughter before the leader continued. “How can you not know the max level is 100? Were you raised by wolves? Born in a village so small in the lowest leveled area that you didn’t even learn about the basic leveling structure?” Rolling his eyes, the banding reached for my shirt to try and pull it off.

I stood there and watched as he attempted to move my arms to remove my shirt with no success. It felt like a toddler trying to maneuver me around. It was less than that even. I felt like even a toddler would have put up more effort into moving me than this huge muscular beast of a man before me. “Is there a problem Stinky? I thought you were going to take my clothes from me if I didn't give them to you?” I started to chuckle but in doing so I caught a bigger noseful of his stench and nearly gagged. “Dude you need to take a bath!” Saying that I grabbed his jerkin and tossed him into the stream. “Now make sure you wash behind your ears like momma always said.”

Looking at the other bandits I said “Follow me and die.” I turned and walked away hearing the bandit leader screaming that he couldn’t swim and that carnivorous fish were attacking him under the surface. I glanced back to make sure nobody was following me and saw the gang attempting to rescue their leader with a branch that had broken off when I decimated the trees in the area. Deciding it was a good idea to get scarce I tried to gently jog down the river this time and was much more successful at not causing mass deforestation. I felt completely rested still so I decided to run through the night until I found a town or city but before I made it more than a few hundred feet I found the bandits camp.