Chapter 4:

Checking his mobile phone, Markus noticed that he had overslept. After getting out of bed, he hastily ironed a shirt, dressed himself up, put on his wine red neck-tie and rushed to city hall, where he worked as a low-level civil servant.

Luckily he did not have to shave, because he did not really grow a beard yet.

Seeing the citizens waiting at the entrance making long faces because they did not really want to be here, greeting his co-workers who made long faces because they did not really want to be here, Markus thought that he didn’t really want to be here.

The first person coming to his counter made a terrible fuzz about having to get in line again after filling in the correct form, which Markus had just handed him.

After getting shoutet at for about a minute, Markus decided to evaporate the guy with a fireball. The resulting, violent explosion woke Markus up.

The first thing he noticed were the stiff shoulders he had gotten overnight from the hard surface he had slept on. Opening his eyes he was surprised by the low ceiling over his head before realizing that it was the underside of the desk he had chosen as his makeshift shelter.

Crawling out from underneath the table and putting away the two bags he had used as his bed, he for the first time admitted to himself that this world was most likely not a dream. The dream he just had woken up from had reminded him of what dreams were supposed to feel like.

Markus was not yet entirely convinced that he was not within a dream, but for now he was glad to have returned and decided to make the best of today.

Breakfast would be boar, once again and for that he had to get the fire going. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of roasting more meat and putting it into his inventory, but that couldn’t be changed.

Not wanting to destroy the fireplace, he went outside the house and starting up piling some pieces of wood. He would make the pile explode and then collect a burning piece to start the fire in the fireplace. Unfortunately the spell only acted like a flame after he released it, before it only radiated heat but didn’t actually burn anything.

When he invoked the fireball and looked at the tennis ball sized flaming sphere, he had an idea. Yesterday when he experimented with the spells, he had found that after pouring mana into the spell, he could pull it out again in case he had accidentally poured in to much.

Because a spell cost 1 mana point to invoke, he had not tried to reduce its power immediately, as that would just reduce efficiency. Still having the base cost of 1 MP and losing power was not tempting. If he could make the spell more practical by reducing the power however, it would still make sense to try though.

Putting this into practice, Markus pulled magic energy from the fireball. The fireball shrunk little by little, but then Markus got greedy, pulled the magic power out too quickly and the fireball vanished in the blink of an eye, cancelling the spell.

Encouraged by the promising beginning, Markus tried again. This time he patiently waited until the sphere shrunk to the size of a ping pong ball, then stopped manipulating its power and went into phase two. After slowly adding just enough magic power to consume 1 MP, Markus released the unusually small fireball towards the dry wood.

The explosion was much smaller than all those before, and the wood just scattered over a radius of less than a meter. Because of the less violent explosion, the spell even managed to ignite nearly all of the wood and they were still burning.

Markus kicked the burning wood into a pile and continued to train his spell control. After many attempts, he found out that reducing the sphere to less than the size of a pea would cancel the spell and that he could even reduce the velocity of the spell during the second phase further. At a minimal level, the spell was actually rather tame and could be used indoors without any trouble.

Repeating the same experiment using the ice shard spell was somehow much harder than with the fireball, but Markus finally managed to shoot a frozen projectile with the size of a cigarette stub.

After releasing the spell, a message popped up.

[Spell: Charge Control (Elemental Magic)] gained.

Markus immediately rose the skill to level 5 and tried it out using the fireball spell. The next attempts were even easier than before and he even managed to invoke the spell with the lowest level of power from the very beginning when he concentrated on it, eliminating the need to reduce the power afterwards altogether.

He added some wood to the fire he had already started and started cutting and grilling a bunch of boar meat. The plants he had collected yesterday still looked like when he had just plucked them, so it seemed that his inventory did not let things go bad. If it also kept the temperature of the meal, he might be able to eat freshly roasted boar whenever and wherever he felt like it.

While cooking, he took a look at his map. He still had no concrete plan for how to interact with the locals, but he wanted to meet them anyway. Markus had two options, he could either go west and leave the area he was currently in or go north towards [Springkeep]. As he already knew that there were people and a settlement to the North, he chose the latter.

After stuffing himself with meat for breakfast, he already felt a bit sick of the boar meat, but that did not dampen Markus’ mood.

There were some enemies along the road north, but as the goddess-girl had told him that he was not in danger of dying, he felt quite confident. Getting searched by the police or whoever wielded authority here should not be a problem either, because of the inventory. Even if they could somehow access it, all he did was kill a mighty dragon that had apparently terrorized and plundered the area, so they should be thankful rather than angry.

After having just eaten, Markus did not feel like running, so he took it slow and walked north while playing around with the menu and interface. He noticed a few things, first he could put the spells on his regular vision for quick access and he could create several ‘profiles’, making it possible to switch between different layouts or disable the augmented view altogether.

Most interestingly he discovered a tab on the character screen that he had not noticed before. He could switch between [Stats], the screen he had used before to spend his points and [Public], where he could change how his stats would be displayed. Markus did not know to what extend others could see his stats. As he could at least determine the level of creatures himself, it was fair to assume that others could do the same.

Pondering for a while, Markus decided to set his public level to level 10, with all stats distributed evenly according to his level. He chose to only display the skills [Cross-Country Movement] and [Construction], both with a skill level of 3. All of his titles were suspicious, especially the Crimson Pervert one, so he chose not to use any of them in public for now.

Walking along the road north, he went off-road to fight wild beasts several times. He defeated a couple of boars by shooting ice shards into their heads while evading their attacks first. After gaining some confidence in his skill and aim, he used the same method to hunt and eradicate a pack of wolves. Markus also experimented on that occasion with how much force he could use in unarmed melee to avoid carnage or even broken bones.

Although he collected the corpses, it was basically target practice. Markus then accelerated his pace and ran cross country, parallel to the road.

After crossing half the distance, he noticed several yellow dots intermixed with red dots on the road ahead.

Slowly approaching the group, Markus tried to make out what was going on from a distance. Squinting his eyes, he could vaguely make out a group of people fighting each other, with sunlight reflecting in their weapons and armour from time to time.

[Skill: Eagle-Eyes] gained.

Markus maxed the skill out immediately. Now he could clearly make out what was going on: a group of lightly armoured people was fighting against a group of soldiers in heavy armour. The lightly armoured group was wearing mismatched leather armour or no armour at all, with some covering their faces under hoods and bandanas and outnumbered the armoured group about 2:1. The other side was mostly sporting heavy iron armour that was shining in the sun while wearing matching helmets. All of the soldiers wore a tabard showing a blue castle with three towers on a yellow background.

Despite their numerical advantage, the scales weren’t tipping into either sides favour. Judging from the people lying on the ground, the fight had been going on for quite some time now and both sides had suffered casualties. Currently there were 4 soldiers still standing and facing off against 9 militia or bandits.

While Markus got closer, he saw one lightly armoured guy with a short bow who had taken position on a small slope next to the road taking aim at the soldiers who were engaging in melee with his fellow militia.

Before he could take the shot though, the one soldier who was standing in the back of the formation flung a fireball at him, which detonated on the militiaman’s chest and catapulted him onto the other side of the slope and out of view. The bow which was sent flying as well only touched the ground after the guy had already disappeared.

Markus decided to take a side and go against the militia in support of the soldiers. He was a newcomer to this country and gaining someone’s trust in battle seemed a reasonable approach to gain easier entry to places he might otherwise be barred from entering. Choosing between a castle and a bandit camp, Markus favoured the former.

Having made up his mind, Markus dashed towards the battlefield, staying out of view. He equipped his dagger, although he was not planning on going on a killing spree. If possible, he wanted to knock the enemies out without killing anyone.

When got close to the fight, Markus revealed himself. Two supposed bandits were standing on the road a fair bit behind the actual combat and aiming their bows towards the melee combat. With their allies between them and the enemy, they were waiting to take a shot. Markus had seen what happened to the guy who tried to get a clear line of sight, so he could understand why they were staying at their position.

He snuck behind one of the men, then elbowed him in the solar plexus while avoiding using too much force. The man fainted and even before he hit the ground or his friend got a clear idea of what was going on, Markus hit the second archers shoulder with the hilt of his dagger. He did not use a lot of strength, but the cracking sound testified to one or more of his bones breaking from the impact.

He would not shoot a bow anytime soon. Markus pushed him off to the side and sprinted towards the bandits engaging in melee. Using a somewhat normal speed, he reached the men before they noticed him. There were 6 lightly armoured fighters remaining.

One of the soldiers notices Markus and in between blows and parries signalled the knight in the back to turn his attention to him. This was also noted by one of the bandits, who immediately turned around to face Markus. As Markus had just knocked out his friends, the sides were clear.

Dashing at him with the sword raised, Markus avoided the blow at the last second by stepping to the left side. He wanted to avoid any overly flashy movements for now. When the man hit the ground with his sword, Markus kicked him against the chest with his shin. He did not hear any bones breaking, but the force of the kick knocked the guy over and he landed on his back.

Not wasting time Markus closed the distance towards the main battle. By now most of the participants were aware of Markus’ appearance. When one of the bandits slightly turned around towards him, the soldier he had been facing off against used the opportunity to stab his sword into his torso. Entering through the unprotected spot underneath the bandit’s arm, the sword penetrated deep and apparently killed the man instantly.

Now the numbers were even, not even counting Markus. While he knocked out one of the guys who had his back on him, two soldiers ganged up on one of the remaining militias and struck him down.

Facing two soldiers each at the same time, the two remaining bandits took a step back and dropped their swords, surrendering.

Without hesitating one of the soldiers stepped forward and knocked one of the guys down with a heavy blow to the head using the hilt of his sword. The other one got knocked out taking a different soldier’s shield to the face. They certainly weren’t taking any chances.

“You, identify yourself.” The soldier in the back was talking to him with a firm voice.

“I, I am a traveller. My name is Markus.” Markus felt intimidated by the unexpectedly aggressive tone and instinctively took half a step back.

“Why did you interfere in this fight?” The soldier continued to interrogate him.

“Well, I am a traveller. Bandits are the natural enemy of travellers, right?” He tried to crack a smile, but it felt awkward.

“Hmm.” The soldier took off his helmet and stepped forward. He was a middle-aged man with black hair that was already showing some grey. Taking a look behind Markus and confirming the three bandits on the ground, he started speaking again “My name is Lieutenant Devon Clements of the Soba Federal Guard, currently stationed at Springkeep. I appreciate your help, but unfortunately I cannot offer you a reward at this time.”

Markus had not helped for a monetary reward anyway. “No need for a reward…”

While he was thinking how to continue, he heard one of the other men shouting. “Lieutenant, Newman and Martin have been killed in battle. Guthrie is unconscious but not badly injured. I am worried about Wynn, she is gravely wounded…”

Turning his attention towards his squad, the Lieutenant turned around and walked towards a soldier on the ground, with Markus following behind. When one of the soldiers kneeling beside the person took the helmet off, Markus saw the face of a young woman. A small line of blood was running out of her mouth and she looked like she was in great pain. Her blond hair was dishevelled and tied into a knot behind her head.

When Markus looked for the injury from the side lines, he saw an arrow sticking out from her right flank, a short distance underneath her shoulder. One of the uninjured soldiers placed his hand on the arrow and was preparing to pull it out. Markus instinctively cried out. “Stop! Don’t pull that arrow out!”

The soldier looked up to Markus and asked “Why not? Are you a healer?” It wasn’t an accusation. It sounded like he was hoping for Markus to be a healer.

“Unfortunately not. But if you pull that arrow out right now, she will probably bleed to death immediately. She needs medical attention...” Markus responded, feeling sorry for both the woman and the other soldier. Checking the AR reading, the display told him

[Coraline Wynn

Level 13

HP 43%

(Bleeding)]

“Our healer is the dead guy Newman over there. I have only one health potion, but that won’t be enough for a wound of that kind.” Lieutenant Clements turned his view away from the dying woman. His look gave off the feeling that he had already decided that she couldn’t be saved under these circumstances.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Markus was asking the Lieutenant directly.

“You have already done enough. Given the circumstances, there is nothing we can do. Springwell is half a day away and there is nowhere else to go around here. We don’t have the means to transport two wounded, not even speaking of the dead or those scum.” He made a gesture towards the bandits lying on the ground. Markus had the feeling that the Lieutenant was not only talking to Markus, but also to his men.

One of the soldiers was walking around and checking the people on the floor, tying up those who were still alive by the hands and feet.

Checking his inventory, Markus could not find anything of help. Going over his skills, he had an idea. It might not work, but it was better than nothing.

“Lieutenant, would you mind if I try something? I will need to borrow some of the gear those men left behind.”

“Do what you must, I don’t mind if you take stuff from those guys. They probably stole it themselves. Just don’t try anything funny, or you might regret it.”

Markus headed off up the slope towards the edge of the forest. He did not really want to search for anything, but pull out stuff from his inventory. He pulled out the large bag and half a dozen long and rather sturdy branches he had collected the day before. Markus had initially planned to use them for making a spear or building a shelter or something, but they came in handy now.

He then cut the bag into long strips of cloth using the good sword, which was way sharper than his dagger. He then went back towards the road. Over the last few minutes the soldiers had tied up the surviving bandits and piled up most of the corpses. The dead soldiers were lying on the ground a bit to the side.

Not minding the other people around, Markus went towards the pile of dead bandits and stripped two of them of their pants, shirts and armour.

Using the long branches as a frame, the clothes and cloth strips as lining in between, he built a makeshift stretcher. He also borrowed some of the remaining rope from the soldiers. With his high woodworking and construction skills, he was done in less than ten minutes while still deeming it as stable enough to actually hold a person.

“Lieutenant, please take a look. Think you can utilize this?” He showed the stretcher to the Lieutenant. Clements carefully inspected the construction.

“Do you really think this will hold?”

“I am quite confident. I can’t guarantee it, but it should hold a person for a few hours at least. I am willing to help with carrying it as well.”

“Hmmm…. Well, do you think you could use some more rope?” The Lieutenant was showing a wry smile. Markus had a bad feeling about it, but answered honestly.

“With more rope I could either build a second stretcher or reinforce this one. I think this one is fine though.”

The Lieutenant turned towards one of the soldiers who were on standby. “Boyd!”

“Yes, Sir!” One of the soldiers stood at attention.

“Finish off the bandits. We won’t be able to take them with us. And collect the rope” Markus was shocked, but not overly so. Deep down he had understood what the Lieutenant had implicated with his question before.

“Yes, Sir!” The soldier drew his sword and walked towards the captured men. Only one of them was actually aware what was going on, the others were mostly unconscious. Before the guy could protest, the soldier, Boyd, had stabbed his throat with his sword. He then systematically finished off the other defenceless bandits in a similar manner. A second soldier came to help him untie and collect the pieces of rope.

Meanwhile Markus had silently started his work on the second stretcher.