Return to Jorgaldur Volume I: the battle mage

Bandits (I)

"Shit!" the boss exclaimed when he heard the agonizing screams from his subordinates. "Forget the caravan and kill the intruder!"

About twenty bandits left their posts and ran towards Eldi, who turned around and hid behind a trunk, taking refuge from the arrows.

"Surround him! Don't let him escape!"

The bandits advanced in two groups, one on each side of the tree. He waited for them to be close enough, and cast a Sandstorm.

"What's this!?"

"I can't see anything!"

Surprised, the bandits took a few seconds to react, but a few seconds may be too long. Eldi approached just after casting the spell, using several Burning Blasts to kill almost all bandits. He finished the rest with Boomerang, Shred and Decapitate.

"I should've left one alive," he lamented in front of the lifeless bodies.

He had no qualms about taking those bandits' possessions, like in the game, although there was nothing especially interesting. The weapons weren't exceptional, but neither of too poor quality. And the boss even had a ring that provided an increase in strength, of much lower quality than the jewelry he owned.

Indecisive of whether he should leave the corpses there, he kept them in his virtual space and watched the caravan. They had seen strange movements in the forest, so were very attentive to what might threaten them, not venturing to investigate. Rather, they accelerated to get out from that dangerous area as soon as possible.

Eldi had saved them, but he had no interest in taking the credit. He preferred to go as unnoticed as possible, the fewer problems the better, but his job wasn't over. So, when the caravan disappeared, he returned to where he had first seen the bandits, and followed their tracks.

It was hard to find the place. The bandits had walked through a small creek as they left their lair, in addition to approaching it from a rocky path in which no visible traces were left, thus preventing them from being found. He spent several hours searching for a clue, and only luck helped him find it.

Having decided to rest, and after activating Sleepyhead's Shield, a small group of bandits came close enough to hear them. They were very cautious, alternately activating their life detection spells to prevent anyone from discovering them, but the Shield inhibited the detection.

"There's no trace of them. Something may have happened."

"We'll wait another day. If not, we'll switch to the second base. We'll double the patrols, just in case."

Eldi followed them, once again relying on Sharpening Senses, maintaining the distance and hoping that their detection skill didn't have enough range to reach him. If it were Goldmi's, he wouldn't have been able to escape its detection, but, in the game, most NPCs' detection spells were of a much smaller range.

Anyway, he had no choice but to take a risk if he didn't want to lose them, being especially attentive to any sound that might suggest that he had been discovered. In fact, he feared that it had been that way when they stopped, but, after hiding for a while inside Sleepyhead's Shield, he decided to approach, discovering that he had been wrong. In front of him, there was a cave that was surely the bandits' hideout, although from the outside there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary.

However, he was convinced that they were watching from within, and that there could even be traps. If Gjaki had been with him, it would have been much simpler. And he suspected that his children could also have been very useful there. But, once again, he was alone and had to make a decision.

It was midnight when he finally got a kind of carnivorous rat, level 18 and two meters high, to bite the ant meat bait. It was the seventh animal that had done it, but none of them had seemed the right choice.

He came out of the Sleepyhead's Shield's protection, using Gravity on the rat so it wouldn't be too fast. Upon detecting an enemy that tripled it in level, it immediately fled, desperately running, without enough clarity to realize that its escape route was led by strange Earthen Walls.

They soon arrived at their destination, since he hadn't set the trap too far away from it, and the rat didn't hesitate to enter the cave, terrified of who was chasing it. Eldi entered behind, slowing his pace and with great caution. Shortly after, he heard the rat screaming a few times, some fighting noises and several voices.

"It's the third time this month that we get a hard meat beast. Couldn't a wild boar get in?"

"Stop complaining and bring a couple of slaves to skin it. You four, check that nothing else has entered. We don't know if it was running away from something, or came in to hunt or sleep. There may be a snake, they eat these rats."

"Ok, ok, I'm going. Fuck! Now that it was my turn for the kitty."

Once again, Eldi raised Sleepyhead's Shield and waited. He didn't know how many were inside, so he needed to make as little noise as possible.

It wasn't long until the four people in charge of checking the area appeared. Eldi created a new Sleepyhead's Shield, larger than the previous one to cover the newcomers, preventing the noise they could make from reaching the outside.

"What's going on here!?"

But that was all he could say, as a spear with the Perforating Impact skill pierced him, ending his life.

"Alert, they're attacking us!" another one shouted, but no one outside the shield could hear him.

After attacking from the first Shield, it immediately disappeared, and the three bandits met a man who was wearing an armor with the colors of a military uniform used for camouflage. In the past, the game's interface allowed him to change the armor's colors, with certain limitations, and he could still do it with game clothes, or the ones created by him, so he had applied it to his black armor.

Using at the same time Abyss, so that they couldn't escape, and Burning Blasts, along with some Double Edge, he finished the remaining three.