Yet another bandit party obliviously skirted by while Sorath crouched at a trickling creek.

Soap lathered on an uneven criss-crossing weave, washing away slime. The Tailor who had crafted this tattered cloak evidently wasn’t high-level, but it was equipable and Sorath had neither a Tailor’s Workbench nor a spool of high-quality silk to repair his own. He rinsed thrice, then wrung the fabric dry almost to the point of ripping. He sniffed.

A whiff of decaying flesh remained.

He emptied the bucket over his shoulder, scooped fresh water, and plucked another cube of Normal-Quality Animal Fat Soap from his pouch. He scrubbed more vigorously, careful to not damage Mother’s old washing brush, one of the few items she had left behind. Like her, he had developed an unhealthy habit of storing too many items in his soul inventory. All twenty slots fully-stacked, the combined mass could tax stamina and mana regeneration by up to fifty percent.

Rinse, wring, sniff, and the cloak was stench-free. He threw it over his head and shoulders, tied its strings loosely. His mana reacted with the fabric, his Vitality stat gaining two points. Every point mattered.

With an irritated damp neck, Sorath ran downstream under the thinning canopy for twenty minutes, passing a bandit party traveling in the opposite direction. They kept to a dirt path, and no verbalized thoughts drifted over, although they conversed in steady boredom. Their minds were normal. That loopy person from the last hour had been an anomaly—a mental disease?

It didn’t matter what her uniqueness was. She wasn’t a psionic.

Abruptly the forest ended before a crop of wheat plants taller than Sorath by two forearms. Their stalks were twice thicker than regular wheat and spotted with a poisonous shade of blue, their heads ready for harvest. Maybe they tasted better than they looked. Or was this a trap for rival gangs?

Sorath retreated a dozen strides, jimmied up a tree, and unpouched an Enchanted Mahogany Telescope that Royal Guards had allowed. The rubber eye piece was oily. Chicken grease. He wiped it and looked through gaps between leaves.

These farms were less than a square league in area. This ring of giant wheat made for a respectable improvised outer wall, protecting an impressively neat patchwork of paddocks and vegetable crops. Someone with high Intelligence must have planned this layout, but buildings around the main river were the same stone cubes placed without foresight. Two windmills doubled as scouting towers. The inner wall was a temporary wooden palisade.

What he saw next gave him second thoughts.

Children.

Bandit children and young teenagers, two dozen boys and girls, were playing kick-ball on a dirt clearing, smiling, laughing, shouting in friendly competition. Sure, those shabby clothes didn’t fit half of them, and the other half were so skinny that their parents should be questioned for child mistreatment, but the proof was in the potion—these children were happy. Free. They were not slaves.

They were not criminals under Cyesten’s laws; how could they be at their ages?

These children were not the bandits that had repeatedly raided Greenwood’s farms for over a decade. They were simply children. Innocent clean slates.

Of course they had children. Put men and women together for long enough and soon babies appear. That was nature. The law of beasts.

And under a big White Oak, an aging woman sat on a rocking chair, rapidly knitting wool with glowing needles and hands, crafting. She glanced at the children as their ball rolled to her. A loving smile curled her lips. She said something to a young boy, patted his shoulder. He picked up the ball, ran back, then shouted good news. Perhaps high-quality steak pies for lunch. Or chocolate-chip cookies and milk. They had someway cultivated cacao trees in this climate.

Sorath’s grip tightened on his telescope as Hyera’s words echoed from the past.

What do you think will happen at such a raid? People would die! Good, hard-working people who have families to care for, children to raise.

Was this the true reason for his reluctance to send raid parties? No doubt, Hyera knew Freya’s gang wasn’t just a pack full of rabid and tribute-evading wolves that had fled Cyesten. Yet he was specifically targeting their food supply. These children would starve in the coming winter. Even by Sorath’s judgment, they didn’t deserve death.

There were two possible stories: Hyera was planning to rescue these children and had sent Sorath to witness the difficult truth for himself. Or Hyera didn’t care that Freya’s innocents would be hurt by friendly fire in the burning of their apparently functional society—a faction in the making.

A rival threat to King Desiric.

That was why. An all-powerful king would never share territory, control, and tribute gold. Maybe the soil here was suited for growing high-quality cacao. People rumored that the King loved sweets. And salts. After a lot of White Oak planting, these plains could be made into one massive farm for the entire faction. Food prices would plummet. No more tough winters.

But did that justify starving these children?

The answer was a resounding no. The right thing to do here was to leave their farms intact and instead hunt for specific bounty targets on List A and B.

For the next hour, Sorath watched their peaceful community but saw no familiar or suspicious faces other than a party of vicious-looking men taking livestock up the path—toward a new settlement? Annoyance simmered their mana. They passed without speaking out loud or in their thoughts.

Sorry to say, following them was the only way to find out.

Jaw rolling, Sorath considered choice 5 (+15 ranks to Telepathy), bringing the passive skill up to master 3, skipping advanced ranks altogether. The bonuses may include the ability to read unverbalized thoughts. Or it may be stupidly inconsequential numerical modifiers. It was a gamble with odds that he didn’t want to bet a dark skill gem on. The market for them was nonexistent, and he had already activated it anyway. This was a once in a decade chance.

What a painful decision!

His mental back and forth restarted like lions fighting over a kill.

Then an agitated mind ran into Telepathy’s range for a fraction of a second. A cloaked man was pursuing another, their boots destroying cabbages. The distance between them shrank to a dozen strides, and the chaser’s body collapsed to a point, blinking. He tackled the other man. Fists swung. They rolled downhill. Watermelons and pumpkins burst, at which point Farmers noticed and intervened. The chaser’s hood was thrown back.

Sandy hair. Square skull. An ogre’s brow. Theo Eleric.

Sorath read their lips.

“Come on!” Theo hollered. “We were playing round. He doesn’t even have a broken nose.”

A bald, muscled Farmer yelled, “Take a look at my crops!”

Theo laughed. “It’s just a few pumpkins.”

The Farmer said something that Sorath couldn’t read.

Theo offered open palms. “Calm down. You can have half my salt allowance next week.”

The Farmer was placated. He spat on the ground and walked back to his broccoli field.

Theo exchanged words with a couple others, then swaggered through the palisade gate as though he were the settlement’s lord. He yelled at the children.

Some objected, but most stopped playing kick-ball and jogged out the gate. They began harvesting tomatoes, helping Farmers, not shocking to Sorath by any means. Their combined unskilled hands was the equivalent of two or three low-level Farmers. Winter was near. Why not have the useless children help?

Theo kept walking with a raised nose. He pulled a man to a stop by the arm, said something, and shoved him away. He walked behind a long building, then down an alley between rows of cubes. He banged on a door, and a lean man answered. A conversation heated over a minute. Theo punched the man in the nose, kneed his stomach, and spat six words. While the bleeding man clutched his stomach, Theo straightened his cloak, then walked down the street, turned right into the settlement center.

The Settlement Hall was a cross-shaped structure, an oblong wedged between two cubes. A Guard in rusty chainmail armor saluted Bandit Lord Eleric, who was guilty of multiple assaults, incitement of regicide, tribute evasion, and murder of a Town Guard. Worth 18000G.

Sorath judged that the innocent, hard-working people here could do without him.

Nightfall was at hand.

Three leagues north of location three, Sorath meditated under a small waterfall, mindfully breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Latent mana in the spring water mixed with his own, the excess converting into pure experience, less than a tenth of a point per second.

But his mind drifted to tonight’s mission, and the empowering flow ceased. Irritation blew ripples on his mana pool. He refocused on breathing. Eight breaths filled his lungs before the ripples settled and his experience tally increased by one to 29,014/205,000. Then four breaths for another point.

A month of this easy training from dawn to night would bring him to the threshold. A year would be the level cap. Level 50.

The debate restarted, one inner voice leading, if only I had the time, if my days were longer. Like the effect of a certain passive skill…

He had long dismissed choice 5. Fifteen additional ranks to Telepathy was a poor choice. The skill would inevitably gain those ranks on its own, and there was no pressing need for master rank. Only impatience had urged him. The remaining contenders were Feedback, Twinpoint Lance, and Temporal Haste Aura, of which all three he may not see again for years if not decades. An extra damage-dealing skill was crucial tonight while a 5% speedup helped meagerly. This was a decision of success or death.

Success or greed.

He was greedy by not considering to retreat. He already had twelve thousand gold banked, enough to last through winter. Theo and his companions weren’t going anywhere. Madrog’s son was probably dead. And although Hyera was expecting news of starving children, Sorath wasn’t beholden to the Royal Guard, certainly not to this order. The people of Greenwood would riot if they knew.

It was settled.

Sorath picked up the dark cube. “Final choice: six.” Glassy gemstone dissolved to dust, the mana inside vaporizing into odorless miasma rushing up his nostrils. Suddenly he had an intuitive grasp over the skill. Indigo words were scribbled.

You have been granted a new toggleable passive skill: Temporal Haste Aura (Beginner 1)

Mentally flicking, he toggled it on. The mana pool in his chest shrank in reservation, then his head’s jelly immediately adapted; his body quickened speed was the new baseline, everything else slowing in his perception. Both falling water and the side-to-side rustle of leaves decelerated.

Done. No turning back. No regrets. This was now his great secret advantage.

He toweled off, changed into fresh linen undergarments, re-equipped his gear, then ran southward. Rodents and birds fled from his approach, but their reactions to him were noticeably slower. Dust that his boots kicked up billowed for longer. Sounds were lower in pitch. He wasn’t a scholar studying the mechanisms of time and space, but this felt more than 5%, maybe 10% or 15%. His mind was surely exaggerating the effect, as though under the effect of a misbrewed potion.

As the sun fell behind Greenwood Spine and clouds hid the moon, temptation made him turn back to check their night time security. He sipped apple syrup, running and backstabbing for twenty minutes. He climbed a tree, telescope in hand. The wind chilled to freezing. His blood warmed in excitement, because unlike the scouting outpost at location seven, hundreds of unlit crystal lamps were scattered throughout the settlement. This would otherwise be an impenetrable night defense.

Their night-duty Settlement Guards were lazy.

Lazy but not irredeemably incompetent. They patrolled in parties, a healer and tank combo in each. There was constant Guard presence on the four main paths in the compass directions, like bright spokes of a wheat wheel. Between the spokes were patchwork slices. Being mostly paddocks, the northern two slices were brighter with Farmers herding livestock. Southern slices were in relative darkness. Central structures, however, were decently lit, though housing blocks were dim.

Sorath indecisively weighed risk to reward while waiting for Farmers to finish up. For an hour. When the last Farmers were done, half a dozen Guard parties also jogged to the northern palisade gate. Glowing dots dispersed into housing blocks, and with fewer bandits on patrol, the number of lit crystal lamps further dwindled. On the far side, large swaths were pitch black.

Greed won.

Refusing to touch any of this unharvested blue wheat, Sorath approached the eastern path. Surprise pulled him to a stop. Two finger-lengths underground, spots of intricately woven mana (like knotted chains) were waiting for fools. Alarm enchantments.

All low-quality though—the chains were cracked and rusty. Tiny trigger radius.

He backed up. Then sprinted. Telenka. He leaped two dozen strides, missed the final alarm by a safe margin. He tucked and rolled behind a White Oak, telekinesis rendering his movements silent. Guards patrolling fruit trees at the edge of Telepathy’s range were clueless.

Sorath gulped apple syrup and sneaked to the cacao trees. A frown pinched his face. Dense leafy mana was guiding their growth, not Farmer magic, something which he had never felt before. He picked a high-quality pod, held it to his head. A fickle emotion radiated. Loopy like that abnormal person’s.

A unique affinity?

Nose wrinkling, Sorath shook off the distraction, picked a dozen pods for future chocolate deserts, and ran to the next White Oak by a tomato crop. Then to a regular Brown Oak. At the start of three hundred strides without tree cover, he waited for two Guard parties to diverge away from him. As he dashed forth, a mole dug into his sense. His heart stuttered with a loud drum. His bootfalls were blacksmiths at work. Guards somehow didn’t hear.

But one person apparently did, rousing from shallow sleep.

Sorath swallowed a mouthful of apple syrup and jumped. Telenka. He carried himself mid air for eighty strides through an apple orchard, his stamina draining by a thousand per second. Brackia. He popped behind the fat man, covering his mouth. Hexus. Dagger blade two inches through the ribs.

The Farmer didn’t even scream, drunk on apple cider, his clothes drenched. The fumes were dizzying. He groaned, “Marrgraah? Whaaat aaarree yoouu doooiing? Uhhh. Myyy baaaack huuurts.”

“So I found out,” Sorath whispered in his best womanly voice, “that you’re on King Desiric’s bounty list. What do you have to say?”

“Huuuuuh? I’m noooot. Wheeeree diiiid yooou—” A hiccup jolted him. “Yooou heeaard wrrooong. I haaaveeen’t dooone aaanyythiiing wrooong.”

Discerning if someone’s lies while drunk was difficult. In this case, the man seemed honest enough. Sorath asked, “Do you swear on your life?”

“Yeeeah, yeeaah. I swear.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Giiive meee aaa heeaalth pot. I hurt my back.”

Most gently, Sorath pulled out his dagger, dribbled a third of a vial into the man’s mouth. “Now go to sleep. You have work tomorrow.”

“Thank you, honey,” the man mumbled, rolling onto his side. Like a fat baby, he was asleep in seconds.

And Sorath was already out the orchard toward the next White Oak. For five hundred strides he dashed unimpeded from tree to tree, then ran through the east palisade gate without sensing more alarm enchantments—lazy Guard work at its worst. Avoiding an oncoming party, he went into a back alley that smelled of human excrement. Mice squeaked in fright. He strangled three with Telekinesis, waiting for the Guards to pass. They sure loved to stroll sluggishly.

“I think I heard something,” a man gruffly said, stopping at the alley’s mouth. His mana sloshed in disgust. “Nevermind. Just rats.”

“Who’s in charge of sanitation here?” a whinier male voice asked.

“Lady Carena, who else? But it’s going to be that idiot and his pals for a while.”

“Who?” a calmer male voice asked.

A woman snorted and said, “Theo Eleric, the half-ogre kid. He thinks he’s tough shit because he killed a Town Guard at Greenwood. I’d like to see him cry.”

The calm man asked, “Him? The one who brawled in the farm?”

“Who else?”

“How long has he been with us?”

The gruff man said, “Only a couple years.”

“Then why’s he in charge?”

“Ask Lady Carena, though I doubt you’d get an answ…” His voice faded as they walked down the palisade.

So Theo was only Temporary Bandit Lord Eleric. It made no difference. He was about to die either way.

Sorath hurried toward the cleaner cube blocks, weaving in and out of alleys and increasingly nicer parks and sharper curbs. Windows were all made of thin wood and didn’t block Telepathy. Nine out of ten minds were asleep. The remainder were either reading or doing other nighttime activities that Sorath blocked out. Just like life back at Greenwood. He couldn’t wait to sleep in a cozy crevice in the wilderness.

First up was Anton Lory’s cube. Sorath picked the mechanical (not magical) lock, the pins clicking into place within a minute. The door swung open without a creak. The single room was full of trash, and on an abysmal-quality wool couch slept Anton, a spindly guy with a long face and receding hair at eighteen. Theo’s right hand man since Tutorial School. His best bud. Worth 12500G like Cardon.

Psycha-Cres. In a single, fluid motion, Sorath drew his shortsword and chopped like chopping a turnip. Red turnip juice splattered. He bagged and pouched the head.

And not to forget, he mouthed, “Extrierra.” He reached in and found only high-quality salt and smoked beef strips. He turned on his heel. The door softly closed behind him.

Next door lived Fenon Rin. His lock had a similar pin arrangement, but his room was neat and trash-free—apart from the pudgy pile of trash on the bedroll. If Anton was Theo’s right hand, then Fenon was Theo’s appendix organ. No one had wanted to include Fenon in their group, so he had followed Theo as an attack dog, except the frailest attack dog would give Fenon a tough fight. The fact that Fenon’s head was worth 7000G was a wonder in itself. Multiple assaults, tribute evasion, and incitement of regicide.

Psycha-Cres. Electricity crackled. Sorath reaped the bounty and looted more salt and smoked beef.

Across the alley lived the man himself, and despite his life-long arrogance, his door had a sliding bar lock in addition to a key hole. These pins were more sensitive, taking five minutes to pick, but simple Telekinesis moved the bar out of the way. The door hinge wasn’t oiled, smartly; it creaked though not loud enough to wake someone.

Theo’s room was messily passable for a settlement’s leader. He had a nightstand, two drawers, three fancy chairs, and a king-sized bed. Those potted plants were pleasant. So was the statue of a naked angel in the corner. His ceiling crystal was a smooth oval, glowing very dimly, also smart of him. However, he slept on his stomach, which would negatively impact his Vitality stat in his later years.

Sorath stood in place, ready to chop. Mellow animosity roiled his mana. Psycha-Cres.

Blood dyed the sheets. Theo’s eyes snapped wide in fear and fury. His jaw and tongue moved without sound. He roared in his thoughts, You fucking coward, Bubble Head!

Sorath whispered, “Out of everyone, you were probably my biggest tormentor, but you were like that to most people, weren’t you?”

Fuck you!

“Headmaster Yassemir told me it was because you had a terribly unlucky childhood. Kind of like me. I guess we’re alike, Theo. I can’t say I’m doing this because I want to protect innocents, so I’m sorry I had to chop your reign short on behalf of King Desiric. I hope you have a fair afterlife. Goodbye.” Sorath bagged the head, took a deep breath, and—

A hooded cloak stood in the doorway with a full body bubble enchantment. The figure was thin and curvy with a medium-sized bosom. The cloak had a Greater Shadow enchantment, shrouding her face and hands in a black void. She held a straight thirteen-inch bone wand.

Brackia, Sorath choked, his books squeaking behind her. Hexu—

Sage-green mana exploded in an unreal Wave of Force, knocking Sorath off his feet. Solid mana bands crunched his arms against his ribs. Then a hot spike stabbed into his back, missed his heart by a finger width and pierced a major artery. His health bar appeared, flashing red, points draining through the wound. He gasped for breath. His sight vignetted.

The figure said whimsically: “Oooo, I caught a delightful silver-eyed boy. I name you… Hmm, I can’t think of a name right now.” The voice belonged to the abnormal loopy mind.

He wheezed, “And who has the honor of being my killer?” He lost grip on life before she answered. He knew should’ve picked something other than Temporal Haste Aura. God damn.