Chapter 77

The bandits weren’t prepared for Luke in any way, shape, or form. They probably should have been, considering he’d already killed a few of them, but he caught them by surprise. Two of them died in the first second of combat, one of them without ever even so much as turning around and seeing Luke’s approach.

After that, the forest became a noisy place. Screams and curses filled the air, punctuated by the sound of crunching wood and bodies slamming into the ground. The bandits were furious and panicked in equal measure, and Luke tore through them like paper. Precisely one of them managed to do anything besides run, and even then, the only reason he lived that long was that he was wearing a nice, sturdy breastplate that protected him from Luke’s first blow.

The bandit, wheezing in pain, tried to stab Luke with a long, thin sword that looked like it would snap if it was jabbed at anything harder than soft pine. Luke easily swatted it aside and killed the bandit.

[You have slain 5 creatures between levels 8-12. 482 XP awarded.]

Luke dismissed the notification and eyed up the breastplate. It was damaged from being struck, and the guy who’d been wearing it was a lot smaller than Luke. It might have fit, just barely, before he’d hit it, but he didn’t think it was worth much to him now. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for anyone closer to his size wearing armor, so that he could kill them without damaging it.

He made his way back to the tree Zea was sheltering under and pulled aside the branches hiding her from sight. “It’s safe now,” he said. “For a little bit, at least.”

She didn’t look happy with him, and that was an understatement. “Why didn’t you just stay here?” she demanded, springing on him and pulling him all the way under the tree.

“They were too close. Couldn’t risk them finding you.”

“But it’s fine to risk yourself?”

Luke shrugged. It wasn’t much of a risk, not really. He could feel their XP, and all of them had been relatively weak. There was a bandit he’d spotted when he was scouting the camp at level 15, and he was by far the strongest. The only thing Luke wasn’t sure about was the location of a second camp. He hadn’t seen anything that looked like it might be loot, so either these bandits sucked at their jobs, or they were stashing that somewhere else. Considering how much road they were apparently trying to cover, his guess was that there were more of them in a more permanent base deeper in the woods.

“The bandits need to go. It’s low risk for me, and we could use the supplies and hopefully money from raiding their camp. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sleep at an inn every night? To just buy passage on a ship when we finally get there and not have to worry about scraping together coin? To get you some equipment and supplies for your enchanting?”

“Sure, that would all be great, but I’m not keen on you risking your life fighting ten or twelve people at a time.”

“There are maybe half that left at the camp I found, and I just fought five-on-one and finished the battle without a scratch in less than thirty seconds. I appreciate the concern, but you’re worrying too much.”

“No, you idiot! You’re not worrying enough! Earlier this week you got captured by inquisitors and almost died, or worse. You have no idea how close that was. If you hadn’t had that feather, which by the way where even the fuck did that come from, and they hadn’t sent that monster after you, then you threw the core away, where I found it! Do you have any idea how lucky you were?”

“I mean… yeah, you’re right. In my defense though, if not for that monster blindsiding me, I wouldn’t have been in that predicament to begin with. So I kind of feel like it’s a wash.”

“Okay, but what if I hadn’t been there? What if I didn’t know how to modify enchantments? Then what?”

Luke sighed and sat down. “You’re right. I know it was close. I know you saved my ass, okay? I’m not doing this on a whim. We need the resources these bandits have, and I have to figure karma’s got my back on this one. Has there ever been a group of assholes that deserved to get robbed more than a bunch of bandits?”

“Probably. Have you ever met a nobleman?” Zea said dryly. “I’m not arguing that they don’t deserve it. I’m worried that you’re overextending yourself. We should at least go together.”

Luke sucked in a breath and said, “Yeah… um. I don’t know how to say this nicely, so I’ll just say it. You’re not there yet. You don’t have a combat build, your raw stats are low, you don’t have any way to heal from injuries, and you’re not well-equipped. I’m sorry, but you’re a liability in this scenario.”

“I, that is, you- I mean, it’s not like-”

Luke let her sputter for a bit before he cut her off. “You are an amazing woman with many amazing talents. You’re smarter than I am, by a lot. But you’re being kind of dumb right now. This right here is what I’m good at. I’m a big, dumb thug with a big, heavy, metal stick.”

“Come on, that’s… not true.”

“It is a little bit,” Luke said. “I know I’m not that smart. I made peace with that a long time ago. Stuff doesn’t usually come easy to me, and it seems like everyone else is always running past me to the answers while I’m still trying to figure out what the problem is. That’s just how it is. This though? This I’m good at. This I can do. So, I’m going to go do it. And when I come back, I’m going to have money and supplies and this is one stretch of the road that won’t have bandit problems for a little while.”

Zea tried to hug him, but Luke held her back. “Come on, I’m already soaked. No reason for you to be all wet too.” She just stared at him, so Luke grinned and said, “Not going to make the obvious joke?”

“No. No I’m not. Go on then. But you’d better not die and leave me all alone out here.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

* * *

Luke decided that the rain was a good thing. He was a lot better at spotting things than he was at hiding, and the weather helped him hide from the bandits. They were all huddled up in their tents in the camp, two men to a tent except for the big one in the middle. There were seven of them, all within twenty feet of each other and none visible thanks to the heavy oil-treated canvas.

It felt like someone making a living by finding and murdering travelers for their stuff would have a high perception, but that did not seem to be the case. Then again, it only took one spotter to alert the rest of the crew that they had a mark coming down the road. The ones he’d run into so far were better at tracking than anything, which could be explained by a few different skills, and the fact that it was raining so hard made footprints really obvious in the mud.

He thought he could accurately target all of them even without being able to see them, but it did put a damper on his plans to loot some new armor, and he was less than confident in his ability to kill a bandit in one hit when he had a rough guess of where to aim. He’d just have to do the best he could.

There probably wasn’t much point in trying to use [Stealth]when it did fuck all to hide his XP from the bandits, but it didn’t hurt anything to try anyway, and it might let him get a few steps closer before someone noticed him. The only decision he had left to make was which tent he wanted to strike first, and it was a toss-up between the closest one where he thought he had good odds of taking out two bandits before anyone reacted, or going for the leader’s tent, where he could both get rid of the highest level enemy and possibly leave them without any group cohesion if they didn’t already have any procedures in place for what to do without any orders from a commanding officer. Somehow, he doubted they were that disciplined.

Luke stalked around the outer perimeter of the camp to line himself up with the big tent’s back side. Whoever was in there was about as far from the entrance as he could get, though admittedly with it only being about seven feet across, that wasn’t that far. Once he had his course set, he dashed forward, mace raised. Mud splattered with each step while [Stealth]screamed at him to slow down, keep a measured pace, and stay behind cover. Luke ignored that.

His mace connected with the canvas and tore the tent stakes out of the ground. An instant later, it hit the body on the other side of that canvas and blasted the bandit leader off his feet. Luke tore himself free of the collapsing tent and leaped sideways to attack the next closest one. His mace came down twice and struck both people inside. One of them spasmed and then fell still, but the other fought his way free, cursing and screaming the whole time.

Luke caught a glimpse of a man with a shattered leg dragging himself upright and hopping towards the trees before the other four bandits ran out into the rain, weapons drawn and ready to fight. The captain wasn’t among them, but Luke also hadn’t gotten any notification dings to let him know that anyone was dead yet.

Fighting in the mud and rain was difficult, but the bandits had far more troubles with it than he did. Just judging by some of the things they yelled back and forth, some of them were having a hard time even keeping track of where he was. Luke circled the camp and finished off the one trying to limp away, which in hindsight might have been the wrong move.

It gave the rest of them a bit of time to organize around their leader, who’d finally clawed his way free of his tent and was bellowing orders. The remaining bandits were lining up, grabbing bows and trying to sight Luke down. Once again, the rain and the darkness combined with his overall speed helped keep him safe. Luke darted forward, arrows and crossbow bolts went flying in various directions, none of them close to hitting him, and he crashed into the line like a wrecking ball.

In short order, two more bandits were dead, one was on his back wheezing and gasping out his last breaths, and it was just the lamed captain and a single bandit who’d abandoned his bow and drawn a sword left. Both were eyeing him warily, neither willing to make the first move.

“You take the left side, I got right,” the leader growled out.

“No problem,” the bandit said, his eyes never leaving Luke.

Luke raised an eyebrow at them. He supposed in their shoes, he would have tried some sort of strategy too, but that didn’t seem too likely to work. All it really did was give some cover to the leader’s lamed leg, which would maybe buy them an extra few seconds. The whole fight kind of felt like bullying little kids. They just couldn’t keep up with him.

They advanced together and struck at the same time. Some sort of skill activated between the two of them, and Luke found himself on the back foot as their attacks played off each other. Unfortunately for them, it was relatively easy to simply step off to the side and break their formation. If they’d been a bit farther spread apart, it might have been more of a problem, but as it was, he charged up a [Power Strike], drove the captain straight into the mud, then finished off the swordsman with an almost casual backhanded strike.

“Yeah, so, I have some questions,” Luke said, leaning over the captain and pinning his hand down with his foot.