Chapter 76

It only took a few hours of traveling before they left the grasslands behind and found themselves once again heading into the forests. Luke considered that to be good news, since they hadn’t found anything worth any real XP around the town, and they needed a lot of XP if they were going to execute their plan to turn Zea into a ritual master.

Zea was less than impressed with the idea, not only because it was hard to overcome a lifetime of conditioning that too much XP was bad, but also because it likely meant another night of sleeping outdoors. She’d had enough of that over the last few years to last her the rest of her life, but unfortunately, it didn’t look like they’d be regularly sleeping indoors anytime soon.

They stuck close to the road when they could, if only to make sure they kept going in the right direction. Occasionally, Luke would detour into the deeper woods in search of some walking XP. Once, that backfired on him and he ran into some sort of giant lizard thing with six legs that was at least level 30. He thought he might have been able to kill it, but there were plenty of softer targets around, so he simply scooped Zea up in his arms and fled.

“That? That thing right there! That’s why people stay on the roads and why we have Guardians,” she said after he set her down on her feet about five miles away from the lizard.

“I’ll be sure to let them know where to go about finding it,” he said. “Whew, scary fucker though, wasn’t he? Did you see all those teeth?”

“Yeah, I saw the fucking teeth!” Zea said. “Wouldn’t even need to open his mouth all the way to eat me in one bite.”

“Another good reason not to tangle with that guy. We’ll find something a little smaller to pick on.”

Zea huffed and crossed her arms. “I must have been crazy to follow you out here.”

Luke sighed and flopped down onto a nearby log. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish it could have been different.”

“Hey, no, come on. I’m just joking. I know you didn’t want this to happen, that you’re trying your best.”

She sat down next to him and leaned over to put an arm around his lower back. Luke shifted in place and put his arm around her too. “I know, and I know it’s not my fault, but I’m still sorry. You had enough on your plate without dealing with my problems too.”

“I’m an adult too, you know? I could have walked away. I could have turned you in and maybe collected a little reward money if they didn’t kill me too. I made a decision to keep working with you. And honestly? I don’t really regret that. I’m not thrilled with sleeping in the woods. I’m not thrilled with grinding out more XP, even though I know why and that we can fix it at the end. It’s the worry about whether we actually get to the end that weighs on me. But I don’t regret spending my time with you. I like you.”

“I like you too, even if you are getting all sappy on me.”

“Oh, fuck all the way off.” Zea gave him a shove. Luke blinked down at her, and she scowled back up when he didn’t move. She shoved again, then muttered, “Stupid high stats. What’dya need them to be that high for anyway?”

“So I can do this!” Luke shouted, sweeping her up in one arm while she shrieked in mock surprise. Luke spun them both around several times before leaping ten feet straight into the air. He kissed her at the apex of the jump, then landed on the ground so smoothly that their lips didn’t even break contact. Luke’s legs flexed to absorb the shock, and when he let her go, her own feet easily reached the ground.

“Okay, that’s a pretty good reason,” she admitted. “But come on, let’s get going. I keep thinking that lizard is going to come crashing through the trees and attack us.”

“I won’t let it eat you,” Luke promised.

“What if it eats you instead? What do I do then?”

Luke shrugged. “Tell it off?”

“Oh, sure, that’ll definitely work. Come on, let’s go. Maybe we can find a small town and rent a room for the night. It looks like it’s going to rain.”

Luke regarded the clouds overhead and shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Okay, let’s go.”

* * *

Zea was a bit nervous about waiting in the forest for Luke to get back, but on the other hand, she’d been right about the rain. He was the one out there getting soaked while she stayed relatively dry huddled under a tree. Her cloak had been worked over with an oil that made it shed water, which also helped a lot.

Suddenly the branches were pulled aside and a man was standing there. She kept herself from shrieking by dint of sheer willpower, and after a second, she recognized Luke. “Holy crap, knock or something,” she said.

“Sorry. It’s… it’s bad. Pretty much what I thought,” Luke said as he slipped between the branches and let them settle back around them.

“How many?”

“At least ten. Maybe twenty? They’ve got a camp a few miles from the road, but I think there’s another, bigger one somewhere farther back. Their trail leads deeper into the woods, and there are four other trails that run between the base camp and the road. They’re watching at least three or four miles for travelers to rob.”

That was less than ideal. Bandits weren’t all that common around here, if only because the Powers That Be took a dim view on a bunch of people leveling up that high. The welfare of locals and merchants might or might not have been a concern, but an armed force pushing up into the 30s or 40s was definitely something that would get stamped out.

“It’s not the end of the world. We’ll just bypass that section of the road and let people know in the next town. Somebody will send out some soldiers to take care of them quickly.”

“Yeah, um, about that. I may have sort of gotten caught by a few of them while I was snooping around.”

Zea’s eye twitched. “What did you do?”

“Look, it’s not my fault! They must have sensed my XP. [Stealth]told me I was completely hidden.”

“Isn’t that only at rank 1?” Zea asked.

“Well, yeah, but like… I had other things I needed to spend the AP on.”

“Okay, well, obviously you got away someh- ah fuck, you killed them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Luke didn’t sound happy about it, which was honestly one of the things she liked about him. He was very willing to resort to violence when the situation called for it, but it wasn’t his go-to response when dealing with other people. He always seemed to feel bad about it later too. Even those church inquisitors who’d been after him weighed on him.

Sometimes she wished she still felt like that when she had to kill someone.

“So we need to either stand our ground or make a run for it then. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that I could get away clean just by outrunning them, but you can’t. So if we run, there’s a chance they’ll catch up to us, or even get ahead and lay out an ambush. I also don’t think there’s anything we could do to build a fortified position before they find us, not one that will hold against that many people.”

“You want to take the fight back to them?” she asked, surprised.

“Someone is going to kill them sooner or later anyway, and we need the XP. We could save some poor guy from pushing himself closer to an early grave, not to mention all the people they’re going to attack before anyone shows up to deal with them. Besides, they’ve got a lot of stuff, and we could use some of it.”

Those were good reasons, she supposed. She certainly wouldn’t shed any tears if a bandit group met a grisly end. They might have good reasons for what they were doing, but she doubted it. The last few years had been relatively peaceful, with good harvests. It didn’t seem likely that there were any starving farmer types among the bandits. They were probably more along the lines of bored and lazy soldiers who’d decided they’d make more money killing people than they did fighting off monsters.

What she objected to was the recklessness of it. If Luke was right and there were twenty more bandits out there, that was not a fight she thought he could win. Even if they were all under level 10, she’d be concerned about him. More than that, even if he came back alive, he would almost certainly be injured, and she wasn’t sure how hard it would be for him to cope with the fact that not only had he killed more people, but this time he’d gone out of his way to do it.

“This isn’t a fight you have to take on,” she told him. “We can make a run for it. I’m sure we’ll get away. Let other people handle it.”

Luke’s head snapped around and he stared out through the tree branches. “Might not have much of a choice,” he whispered harshly. “Stay here.”

Then he slipped out through the branches into the rain. Zea tried to snag his shirt and stop him, but he was gone before she even raised her hand. “Damn it,” she said. “You idiot. Don’t you dare fucking die on me.”

* * *

Luke could hear them approaching, following the trail he’d left when he’d rushed off after killing the first three bandits. It didn’t really surprise him that they’d found his trail. No doubt anyone willing to perform banditry for fun and profit would have excellent outdoorsman skills. He just hadn’t expected them to catch up to him so fast.

There were five of them in this group, fully half of what he’d guessed at based on the number of tents in that little camp of theirs. Five bad people who were capable of killing others for the chance at some pocket change, who had probably already done it many times. Hell, they’d tried to kill him once already.

His grip tightened on his mace and he closed his eyes. They were about two hundred feet in front of him, the noise of their approach partially covered by the rain. Otherwise he would have heard them coming from a lot farther off. Well, that worked both ways. They’d have an instant’s warning when they felt his XP coming at them.

Before he moved to attack though, he wanted to make sure there weren’t other bandits coming in from behind. Zea wasn’t strong enough for a fight like this yet, and she didn’t have a magic feather to keep her hidden while she fought anymore.

Nothing. All he could hear was the rain drizzling down through the treetops, the sounds of the bandits breathing, the occasional scuff of their clothes or shoes rubbing against something. All he could smell was water and mud and a patch of nearby flowers. Luke opened his eyes.

The bandits weren’t visible through the trees yet. They would be soon, he was sure, but by then it would be too late. He plotted out his route, left first to avoid a bramble patch, and then a straight jump up a small chest-high ridge. They’d see him at that point, but there were plenty of trees for him to weave through and the underbrush was light there. They wouldn’t get more than two or three seconds and he’d be behind cover for most of that.

It was time to do some work.