By the time Adra and Rai caught up to us, overall three days after our original exit from Neamov, Sigmir and I had thoroughly lost track of the score between us. Both of us had tried, and often succeeded, to come up with ways to catch or evade the other, while also breaking the tricks we had previously used. It was a game of cat and mouse that both of us thoroughly enjoyed, especially those short moments of playful gloating that we engaged in, whenever a round was won.

The training had been quite effective in another way, with a few skill-points gained by hard work. Both Ice- and Darkness-Magic gained a point each, while my Stealth-Skill went up by three and finally, my Dual-Blade Mastery went up by two points. Sadly, my Rune-Magic didn’t profit at all, but at the end of the day, I had hardly used it, simply because there was no time to actually cast spells with Sigmir coming after me. At most, I could instantly project a runic formation, with time and mental capacity limiting the effect I could achieve. More and more, I was forced to realise that Runic Magic was wonderful, a great ability, but only if you had time to carefully craft the runes and manipulate the result directly.

Ultimately, my best chances had been going airborne, moving through the trees in an attempt to abuse the larger size and higher weight of Sigmir. She simply couldn’t land on some branches I could use, the one time she had tried, my victory had been assured, the branch giving way with a resounding crack, sending her tumbling to the ground. Thus, most of the rounds turned into a game of getting into the trees without getting caught and using a combination of stealth and deception afterwards. The use of our unique connection was forbidden after the first time, as there simply was no way known to me to mask it. And even if there were, I wasn’t willing to meddle with that particular part of me, not unless I had a full and thorough understanding of the consequences.

Another thing I had tried to understand, again, these past days had been the ability to instantly move through shadows, It would be an incredible tool to escape, which had been the whole point of the exercise, but the skill continued to elude me. Part of me was beginning to wonder if I was going at things wrong, if I shouldn’t try to figure out how the skill worked but how I had been able to use the skill before. Analysing the known circumstances, instead of speculating and experimenting with the unknown. So far, however, I had come up empty.

“That is a surprise.” I had to admit, when Lenore warned us that the others were approaching. For some reason, Olivia was following behind the familiar forms of Ylva, Rai and Adra. For a moment, I felt myself balk at the fact that neither Sigmir nor I had been asked about letting her join our group going forward, but quickly pushed the feeling down, at least until I knew more. There might be some circumstances involved, especially given that they were a little late.

Sigmir and I had been on a short break anyway, so we both made sure that we were fully dressed, not necessarily a given with the warmth and our privacy, and moved towards the edge of the small forest.

By the time we got out of the woods, the others had reached us, with Lenore having already landed next to Ylva, sharing some closeness. It looked a little amusing, the giant wolf gently snuffling and nuzzling the reasonably large raven, while the raven rubbed against the wolves nose, an image one wouldn’t really expect, unless both parties had been brought up together. Which, in a way, the two of them had been, they had been together for most of their life, with shared experiences and trust.

“Good to see you again.” Adra greeted us, giving a short wave as she stopped in front of Sigmir and me.

“Yes, good to see you. Did everything work out well, no trouble?” Sigmir asked in response, while I looked the other two over.

“Eh, not really. We got mixed up in a bit of a scuffle with a couple of thugs but nothing really troublesome.” Adra replied, her eyes flickering to Olivia for just a moment.

“And I have to thank the two of you, for getting mixed up in that one. They got mixed up in the scuffle when some ruffians had designs on my pack. Fools, the whole lot of them, even if they managed to take my stuff, what would they gain? Do I look wealthy to you?” Olivia groused, in a way that made me chuckle. It seemed that she was a little offended at being seen as a worthwhile target to rob, while I; on the other hand, wondered why she hadn’t used her magic to keep herself safe. Before I could follow my curious nature and ask, I remembered the answer I had been given so often, when I had asked her about her magic, that it was the will of her deity. Not wanting to get that unsatisfying answer yet again, I decided to hold my tongue, instead curious why she had decided to follow along.

“So, how long will Trouble keep following us?” I asked, a little tongue in cheek, looking at Olivia.

“Trouble has been following you since long before even we met.” Adra threw in, before Olivia could react, causing me to snort in amusement. She wasn’t wrong about that, but it might have been my ability to attract trouble that made Sigmir stumble on me, all that time ago. If the trouble I attracted whenever entering cities was what I had to put up with, in exchange for that meeting, I was gladly paying that price.

“Now, now, children.” Olivia gently chided us, causing laughter all around. “When I heard that you are travelling West, I asked if they thought you’d mind if I continued my travels with you. As it happens, I’ll be continuing to travel in that direction, too, and, who knows, my knowledge of the region might prove useful.” she explained, before adding, “I even have a couple of contacts in some of the cities along the way, nobody of great importance, but I do know about good Inns and taverns, nice towns and even a few wonderful places off the beaten path.”

“Eh, why not.” I agreed, she had been a pleasant companion the time she had been with us. “The original agreement still applies, no doing harm to any of us and we are good.” I added, getting a nod in response, before putting the matter aside. I couldn’t see a disadvantage to having her with us, other than a peevishness at not being asked beforehand, while her defensive magical abilities in combination with her knowledge were big points in her favour.

“Did you find suitable quests in the city?” Sigmir asked, a few moments later, when it was obvious that I didn’t plan to add anything to the topic of Olivia.

“Kinda, most of the quests in the region are essentially being snatched up by the locals as soon as they are given, to keep outsiders from butting in. But there was an active quest to hunt down a bandit-group in the region, which can be turned in at any Adventurer’s Guild. We accepted that one.” she explained, handing me a sheet of paper. The moment I took the coarse paper, a blue window appeared in front of me.

Quest Alert!Bandits near Neamov.Quest Difficulty Easy Bandits are hiding within the forests near Neamov. Hunt down the Blood Rock Bandits, especially their Leader Delrau Ironfist.

Blood Rock Bandits killed 0/30

Delrau Ironfist killed 0/1Quest Reward 20 Gold Coin for killing the Bandits,

20 Gold Coins for killing Delrau

“That sounds troublesome.” Sigmir grumbled after thinking about it for a moment, and I had to agree. A quest like that, with the kind of intelligent enemies I had to expect in Mundus, was the worst kind of quest, especially when it was one that the locals avoided. To me, their avoidance meant one of two things, either the bandits were incredibly powerful, strong enough to make attacking them a risky proposition, or they were exceptionally good at hiding, maybe hiding and using traps and ambushes to their advantage. With the quest calling the difficulty ‘easy’, I could guess that their combat-power wasn’t too high, compared to ours. But that likely meant that finding them would be the problem. While Adra was a competent tracker and Ylva had her canine senses that gave her an edge, the rest of us were rather mediocre in that regard. The quest was simply not playing to our strengths.

“How about we take a few days to explore the area, and maybe try to follow that guy we saw on the first day?” I suggested, not quite convinced we should use too much time in the area. The reward was nice, but was it nice enough to take weeks to traipse through the local area, without any real hint where the bandits had their hideout?

Not in my opinion.