“Don’t. Die” Eleniah insisted, emphasizing each word with a poke at his chest.

“I’ll do my absolute best.” Kay promised. It was time for his first job without Eleniah watching over him. The months in between his first job and now had cemented his new identity as an adventurer, at least to himself. What had started off being just what he had to do had quickly become, if not a calling, then certainly a job he enjoyed.

He’d completed a lot of jobs with Eleniah following along behind, just in case, and he’d only needed her twice. The first had come around because of his own idiocy, sadly. He’d gotten so used to tracking his enemies after getting some blood on them, he’d stopped paying as much attention to his regular senses. The snake monster that had ambushed him had almost bit him in the neck when Eleniah had suddenly appeared between them, and she’d blown it’s head off with one casual backhand. His teacher had been angry and she’d lectured him for hours about situational awareness, then trained him for a week on detecting ambushes and dodging attacks that you hadn’t seen coming.

The second had been a very different set of circumstances. As amazing as this world of fantasy was, there are always dark sides. At Eleniah’s insistence, he’d taken a job to hunt down a bandit that was attacking travelers between some of the small villages that supported Tumbling Rapids. When he'd been confronted with fighting and killing another person for the first time, Kay had froze. His teacher had stepped in and ended it in a single blow, then talked quietly with Kay about it afterward. Later, when Kay was picking his own jobs he decided to take a few more bandit hunting jobs. Kay wasn’t sure if it was something new he’d grown in the circumstances he’d found himself in, or something he’d had sleeping until it’d had time to arise, but he found that he wasn’t very conflicted about killing bandits. After getting tripped up the first time, he destroyed two other small bandit groups himself, with Eleniah watching on. The idea of letting evil continue without being stopped made him annoyed. That people would stoop to the depths of attacking and hurting others just to take from them was sickening and sad. So he stopped it, in the cases that he could. He was a little worried that he didn’t feel more conflicted about ending lives, but Eleniah reassured him that he was doing okay, and that he wouldn’t become some kind of psychopath.

He trusted her, so he let the subject drop.

Todays job, his first on his own, wasn’t bandit related. A noble family from Nelam had sent one of their younger sons to represent them during a business deal, and he’d gone missing. The people who had discovered the bodies of his guard and his wrecked carriage had described large bites taken out of the bodies, and large claw marks everywhere. The noble family wanted their sons body returned, if possible, and the monster killed. The reward for it was fantastic, so Kay was going to go check it out, and see if it was a monster he could beat. Even if it was beyond him to kill whatever it was, getting information on the monster and returning it to the Guild would net him a pretty good profit.

“Remember-!”

“Running away is always better than dying.” Kay finished her sentence. “I won’t be too stupid to leave if its the best thing to do.”

Eleniah nodded as she visually tried to suppress her worry.

Kay smiled and stepped forward to hug her.

She stiffened for a moment, then returned the hug, a little too tightly.

It took Kay about two hours to get to the site of the attack. The bodies had already been cleaned up, with only a number of pools of drying blood that were polluting the area with a now-familiar stench and the large rents in the earth by some kind of claws showed that there had been a battle of some kind here.

Which does make it fairly obvious. Kay thought to himself as he studied the scene.

He didn’t have any tracking skills, but he did his best to try and figure out which way the attacker had left. It took him half a Torotian hour, but he’d managed to find some faint remainders of tracks leading away from the scene. Without any real experience at it, he couldn’t tell who or what the tracks belonged to, but they looked about as old as the rest of the remains of the combat, and he didn’t think a survivor would go away from the road.

Slowly and carefully he followed what he hoped was a trail further and further north. In this area, the rolling, grassy plains of the region began to give way to flatter areas, and smaller forests that eventually became the massive unexplored Bleak Forest that marked the beginning of the uncontrolled wilderness area of the north. The continent of Diushul, which Kay was on, had wide swathes of land that were unexplored or unclaimed due to dangers of various kinds preventing expansion.

The trail led him into one of the smaller forests that dotted the local landscape, and he began to move even slower, constantly scanning for danger. It was in one of these forests, although one a little to the east, that had almost killed him with an ambush by a snake monster. He didn’t want that to happen a second time, Eleniah there or not, so he kept his wits about him. It had been three days since the attack had been reported, and Kay was beginning to worry that he wasn’t on the right trail. He decided to follow it for a little longer. Fifteen minutes later, he heard someone laugh loudly, and he froze in place.

Ever so slowly, using what Eleniah had taught him about stealth, he crept towards where the sound had come from. As he crept forward the sounds of people talking and the crackling of a fire grew louder, until he could see the glow said fire made. The small clearing had a few silhouettes outlined by the firelight moving around, and Kay started shifting to the side. The clearing had a slightly thicker collection of trees to one side, and Kay headed that direction, hoping for a better hiding spot. These could be a random group of travelers, camping in the woods, but he wasn’t going to chance it.

Peering into the camp form his hidden position among the trees, Kay watched the inhabitants.

“I’m bored,” A woman’s voice coming from someone across the fire from Kay’s position complained. “When are we going to do something?”

“You heard the boss. We’re waiting for some adventurers to come looking for Kem-kem, then we’ll move and go do some more raiding.” Another voice replied.

“Why would adventurers come look for Kem-kem?” The first woman asked.

With a sigh, the other person sat forward into the light, and Kay saw it was a goblin male. Goblins weren’t marauding monsters like his stories had told him, at least not in this world. They were people like everyone else. They were short and had green skin, but they varied in attractiveness like most humanoids. The butcher that Kay and Eleniah frequented had a goblin husband, and he was quite handsome. The stereotype of goblins living in tribes came from their clan based, tight-knit culture, and the concept of goblins being fecund creatures that kidnapped women to breed with didn’t exist in Torotia. As far as Kay could figure out, without outright asking about it, every humanoid being could mate with every other humanoid being for some unknown reason, which Kay just chalked up to magic again. Goblins had just as many women as men, although thanks to their clan-based and matriarchal society you weren’t likely to see many outside of their own clan lands. Wandering goblins were rare in general, and a female goblin leaving her clan was almost unheard of.

“We staged the place where we attacked the noble to make it look like a monster did it.” The goblin said very slowly, as if to a child.

“Right.”

“We used Kem-kem to do it.”

“Right.”

“Adventurers will think that theres only one monster to kill, but really there’s Kem-kem and all of us, so we’re going to ambush them.”

“Oh…” There was a long pause. “So we used Kem-kem to make a trap?”

“Right!” The goblin smiled happily.

“So… we’re waiting for some adventurers to come along for us to fight? Then we’ll go do things?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

There was a put upon sigh from across the fire. “Why can’t the adventurers come faster then? I’m bored!”

The goblin copied the put upon sigh.

With their own words as proof, Kay mentally labeled them as bandits, and the parties responsible for attacking the noble’s carriage and guards. As he watched, Kay counted a total of five members of this bandit troupe, plus the boss they mentioned but he hadn’t seen, and “Kem-kem” who he was guessing was a tamed beast or monster of some kind made six and seven. Kay had no plans to engage the bandits, he knew he wouldn’t be able to win a seven on one fight, but he stuck around to gather more info. Plus, as the day dragged on the bandits roamed around the area, making it hard for Kay to leave undetected.

A few hours into being stuck there, watching, a skinny half elven man and a large wolf walked into the camp from the opposite direction of him.

“Hey boss!” The goblin greeted them. “Where’ve you been?”

“Kem-kem and I trailed a herd of deer off that way and I thought we’d hunt some down. Make for good eating, and it’ll let us save some of that nice food we got from that noble.”

“You got it boss!” The goblin grabbed a small bow and some arrows from a pile of gear and slung them over the shoulder. “You want anyone else to come?”

The boss, the wolf, the goblin, and three other members ended up going hunting together, leaving just one to watch over the camp. Some time later, when the one remaining bandit had finally stopped hanging out by the remains of the fire, and in perfect position to see him if he moved, Kay started quietly moving out of the stand of trees.

Just as he made it to where he thought he could start walking out of there, he heard a surprised grunt to his left. He spun and saw the one bandit with his pants down, peeing on a tree.

Kay leapt forward as the man opened his mouth to shout, and plunged his punch dagger, the weapon he could draw the fastest, into his throat. The bandit got one wordless exclamation out before he started to gurgle and dropped to the ground.

“Danny!?”

Kay spun as he heard a shout a short distance behind him, followed by the sounds of hurried movement through the brush.

Shit! Kay took off running.

A scream of rage echoed through the trees as the bandit’s body was found, and Kay heard the sound of pursuit not far behind him as he ran. He flipped open his canteen and started collecting some blood to use, when he felt a different source of blood coming up behind him, fast. He rolled to one side and watched as the large wolf sailed past, blood-stained jaws open to bite where his shoulder had been not a second before.

His instincts trained from numerous sessions of Eleniah beating his ass, Kay slammed his punch dagger into the wolf’s side as it flew by, leaving a large gash in its side. The wolf hit the ground and tumbled with a pained yelp.

Two more faint sources of blood hit the edge of his range, and Kay realized he wasn’t going to get away without a fight.

Deciding to remove an enemy while he could, Kay formed some of his blood into a thick point that he slammed into the wolf’s throat. Through months of practice Kay had managed to grow his repertoire of blood based attacks beyond just slamming masses of it into enemies, although he hadn’t perfected it as much as he would have liked. The wolf died instantly, and Kay turned to face the next enemy headed his way.

A man and a woman rushed at him, the man wielding a broadsword while the woman had two daggers. Kay sent a wave of blood at them some of it in the form of bludgeoning spheres and the rest as spear-points. The man used the flat of his sword to block most, while the woman dodged in and out of the wave of attacks. It had managed to delay them momentarily though, which was what Kay was aiming for as he dropped his punch dagger and drew his sword.

Two on one wasn’t winning odds for Kay, but the pair lacked any ranged options and Kay’s blood attacks were enough to separate them so they didn’t both attack at once. Slowly, with his greater range, Kay managed to wear them down enough that an opening appeared.

The dagger wielding woman had dived out of the way of one of Kay’s barrage of blood spheres, right into the way of a down stroke of the man’s broadsword. He managed to angle the blade away from her and not hit her, but it left an opening that Kay ruthlessly exploited. He lunged forward and drove his blade through the man’s chest as far as he could. He drew the sword back out as he swung to face the woman, who snarled in rage and dove at him with her daggers. Kay managed to block the first, but the second slashed into his arm.

Kay kicked the bandit woman away from him, and she stumbled back. Her face was a mask of rage as she stared at him. She was so focused on him that she didn’t see the blood formed into a sharp point slam into her from behind, pulled by Kay from the wolf’s corpse.

Eleniah was right, practicing manipulating without moving my hands really does make me a better fighter.

Kay stood there, panting, waiting for the other three bandits to attack. He realized after a moment that he couldn’t hear anything. He glanced around at the bodies, then started running.

“What are you lot doing?” He heard someone shout from behind him, then, “Oi! Danny’s dead! Boss, Danny’s dead!”

Kay ran harder.

A few minutes passed as Kay ran for the edge of the forest and the road, and he saw it just up ahead. Hopefully once he got some distance he could lose the bandits and make his way back to the city-

An arrow shot by Kay’s face, clipping the tip of his nose as he ran. He dived for the ground and rolled as another arrow passed over him. He glanced in the direction that the arrows had come from and saw the goblin and the bandit’s boss drawing back on their bows for another shot, while the last bandit, a muscular beastkin woman, charged at him with a huge maul.

“You thought you could kill my people and my wolf and get away?” The boss shouted as he loosed another arrow. “These are my woods, and you die here!”

The large woman slowly picked up speed as she charged his way, and Kay couldn’t get out of the way as he continuously had to doge arrows or block them with his blood. He managed to get one attack off, but the bandit smashed aside the sphere with her maul.

Then, in what Kay saw as a miraculous moment forever more, she tripped.

The woman’s foot caught in a root and she slammed face first into the ground, unmoving. The other two bandits gaped at her for a moment, giving Kay an opportunity. Unable to outrun the arrows of the last two attackers, Kay took the fight to them.

The goblin was distracted by his comrade tripping for too long, and he took three spheres of blood, one to his face and two to his chest, knocking him out of the fight. The leader threw away his bow and drew a shortsword.

“What the hell is a Blood Mage doing here hunting us?” The bandit leader demanded as he traded blows with Kay.

Kay ignored him. There was no point in telling the bandit that he wasn’t a Blood Mage, and Kay wasn’t going to waste breath in a fight to the death.

Thankfully, the leader was not as good a swordsman as he was an archer, and Kay was taught by a tier five. Within a few blows Kay managed to get a lucky shot into the man’s leg with a magical attack, and he slashed the man’s neck as he faltered.

The bandit leader dropped to the ground, his head halfway off. Kay looked around for more enemies, but after a moment he slowly walked over to the goblin and made sure to finish him off. After doing the same to the unconscious woman, he found a good spot to sit down for a moment, and he began to bandage his arm.

After finishing Kay glanced around at the bodies, and sighed. “That was way too close. Eleniah’s going to tear me a new one."