The next area was dominated by a large lake in the centre of the map. If the scale of this map was the same as the one before, it should be several kilometres wide. There were a few smaller islands on the lake. Most of the area that wasn’t ‘lake’ was covered by forest. To the east there was a range of hills or mountains, which marked the edge of the map.

The road he was currently on went on north, then forked and went west and north-east, towards the lake. The part of the road that went west did so until the edge of the map, the road towards the lake naturally stopped at the water.

Markus toggled the ‘points of interest’ mode on the map. The lake was labelled [Lake Wris], the place where the road ended was [Wris Fishing Village].

Apart from that, there were a few other places with people. [Bale Farmstead], [Wris Logging Camp] and [Vrosa] were located along the road west. [Vrosa] was apparently a small town near the western end of the map, with a population in the higher hundreds. Markus wanted to check it out soon, but not today.

Searching the map for enemies above level 10, a large number showed up. The closest enemy was not too far away. Markus remembered that the search function was able to discern between different types of creatures if he searched for the name, so the map system had access to the information. He concentrated on the enemy he had singled out. It took him a second to focus his thoughts in the right way, but then a small window popped up next to the red dot.

[Brown Bear (16)]

He only had very basic information, but at least he knew what he was up against. He checked the information on a few other red dots.

[Alpha Wolf (15)]

[Brown Bear Matriarch (21)]

[Forest Troll (25)]

[Bronze Dragon (41)]

Most of these were rather far away on the other side of the lake, the dragon was a lone red dot in the mountains to the east. From the level Markus assumed it was one of the adolescent dragons that had already left the nest on its own after hatching.

One group of higher levelled enemies got his attention, mostly because they were in what seemed to be a camp in the woods.

On closer inspection, they turned out to be all named enemies. [Ryan (14)], [Buzz (15)] and half a dozen others were in a single spot within the forest. It was a little south of the main road, west of Markus’ current position.

He went to the location at full speed. Markus thought that it should take him around 10 minutes, but the forest was denser than the one to the south, slightly extending the time. He could still see the sun through the canopy, so he figured that he had still ample time left to make it back early enough.

When he got closer to the enemies, he went into sneaking mode. From the looks of it, it was a group of ragged looking people. Some were wearing bandanas, loosely wrapped around their necks, others wore hooded capes. All of them were pretty dirty. Staying hidden, Markus observed the situation for a while, thinking about what to do. He was frustrated with how little he understood this world. The information he didn’t have would fill a book, while the things he knew for sure were sparse.

Most members of the group were sitting around a campfire, with a pot hanging above it. Two medium sized tents were set up and a few crates were piled up beside them. He was looking for signs of the men being hunters or soldiers or anything other than just criminals, but there were none. In fact, the types of weapons they used and the clothes they were wearing screamed ‘bandits’.

Markus had made up his mind, this was a good enough opportunity.

Not wanting to waste time after having made his decision, Markus pulled out his dagger and approached them without sneaking. The dagger was a weak weapon, especially in its current state, but he wanted to use it to signal he was willing to fight. His plan was mostly based on intimidation, so acting friendly was only a waste time.

The first guy spotting him jumped up from his seating position and started shouting. “Hey! Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The other men turned around towards Markus and got up as well, some already brandishing weapons. Markus just continued to walk towards them.

“Sorry boy, but you walked into the wrong place.” The man who said that was bearded, tall and muscle packed. He was wearing pants and a cloak, but was showing his bare torso underneath. After needlessly taking off the cloak as well, he started charging at Markus, holding a mace overhead.

[Butch

Level 20

HP 100%]

That guy was a perfect target for Markus. It seemed like the others deemed him to be sufficient to deal with a single teenager, no one else was coming at him, but everyone was watching closely.

After evading his first swing effortlessly, Markus waited for the large man to raise his weapon again. Before Butch could take another swing, Markus dashed forwards and punched him in the chest, breaking his sternum with a loud crack.

Butch was pushed backwards and fell flat on his back, not moving. Markus looked at the other members of the group. They did not quite comprehend what just happened, obviously everyone had just expected the fight to end with Markus’ head getting bashed in immediately.

To further shock them, Markus grabbed the large man in front of him by his feet, then swung his body around, making his shoulders and chest collide with a tree trunk. After dropping the body, Butch’s blood-stained head wasn’t heading in a direction that a healthy neck would allow.

Taking a step further towards the camp, Markus created a large ice shard and shot it into the man in the centre of the group. He didn’t use too much force to shoot it, making the man collapse on the spot, the large ice lance sticking out prominently from his chest.

Afterwards, the ‘fight’ broke out for good. Most of the remaining men charged at Markus, while two turned around and ran away.

Markus sheathed his dagger and started to beat the men up regularly, while trying to avoid further deaths. He knocked out two right from the start by punching them in the solar plexus hard enough.

Markus accidentally killed one of the men with a blow to his face that not only shattered his jaw but also snapped the guy’s neck.

He grabbed the dominant arm of the second to last bandit, then started kicking around the last one while leading his friend by his arm. After the guy had collapsed, he squeezed the last man’s arm hard enough for it to make a visible cracking noise, then flung him to the ground next to his friend.

“If you run away, I will just catch you again and then break your legs, so stay in place.”

[Skill: Intimidation] learned.

With those parting words and a new skill, he chased after the two men who were fleeing. It slightly surprised Markus to see that their indicators had turned yellow. They had split up, but Markus managed to catch both of them very quickly. He just used force to take them with him. Running at breakneck speed back to the camp, dragging the men behind him, they didn’t even comprehend what was happening.

[Skill: Abduction] learned.

For now, Markus ignored the new skill.

Back at the camp, Markus saw that the guy he had thrown to the ground had actually stayed there. He then lined up the conscious bandits, having them kneel on the ground near the campfire. The unconscious bandits were lying nearby.

He used his rope to tie all of the men’s feet together to avoid them from getting the stupid idea of trying to run away. Utilizing a knot that didn’t use up much length, didn’t tighten when one pulled against the restraints and could be used on all the men one after the other with a single piece of rope, a message popped up.

[Skill: Bondage] learned.

Markus was a bit troubled, but ignored the weird feeling and put five points into the skill to make sure his knots didn’t come lose any time soon.

The eyes of his ‘prisoners’ were wandering from their dead comrades towards Markus, showing obvious fear. So far they had no idea of his intentions, who he was or why he was able to overwhelm them in the blink of an eye.

Markus went to take a look around the camp. The tents contained several bedrolls and some random belongings of the bandits, like tableware, clothes and even the lit for the pot outside, but nothing of special interest or value.

The contents of the crates were more interesting. One contained cured furs, probably from bears. They were pretty fluffy and of high quality, likely caught during winter and processed by someone who had the appropriate skill. Another one contained textiles of different colours, also of fairly high quality. Jars of honey, more cloth, a bag of salt the size of his head. Using his skill to get the rough value, Markus saw that the items were worth several gold coins in total. Going by the looks of the men, they were certainly not the type who would invest their money into something like this legally.

As the items didn’t look like they had to be smuggled, his initial guess of the men being bandits seemed spot on. A fancy, bright blue coat with golden embroidery inside a bag was the final nail in the coffin. It had a small hole in the chest area, from where a nasty and large blood stain spread out. The bandits had probably stripped it off the merchant after shooting him, but in its current state it was worthless, apart from being used as evidence against them.

“Does any of you guys want to bother explaining this to me?” Stepping in front of the men with the bloodied coat in his hand, Markus held it in front of them. The men just looked down, no one said anything. “No? Well, it’s plenty self-explanatory to me. I will just assume you are plain murderous robbers then… No objections?”

Markus put the coat on the ground a few meters in front of the men, then sat down on the still clean part of it.

“So, after we have established that much, let us play a little game. I will ask you questions and you will answer me. If you can answer more questions than your friends, you win and I will let you go. Sounds good?”

The men were looking at Markus.

“Let us just start. If you know the answer, raise your hand or make some other signal. Who of you guys knows what a ‘level-up’ is?”

The men had a somewhat doubtful look on their face, then all of them raised their hands. Markus pointed at the one who raised his hand the fastest. Markus had no intention of keeping track of the ‘points’ in the first place, it was just to motivate the men to talk.

“It-… It is strength, right? I mean, you get stronger over time, when you fight and get older. Then the soldiers use their table and magic and give you a level, right?” Another man interrupted him “That’s wrong. The soldiers don’t give you a level. My aunt could tell a person’s power level as well and she was just a farmer. People came to her all the time to find out if their level had gone up.”

Markus was pleased with the answer. “OK, sounds good. Both of you get a point then. Next question. How do you raise your level?”

All the men raised their hands again. After Markus appointed one, he spoke “Level goes up if you work hard and get older. It also gets up if you go to war, that’s what the soldiers said.”

“Yes, it goes up overtime and if you kill a strong enemy.” “My weak brother started to be a bear hunter, then he always beat me up, must have been from the level-ups.”

“OK, enough about that, all of you get a point. Next, what can you tell me about status points or skill points?”

None of them said anything.

“Status points to raise strength, wisdom, intellect? Or skill points to get better in your skills, like cooking or sword-fighting? Anyone?” Markus gave some keywords to find out whether or not they were able to freely spend points like he himself could. Looking into puzzled faces, he asked a new question.

“Well, fine. Who of you can tell my name or level? I give double points for the correct answer, but don’t guess.”

No hands were raised.

“Well, then how about this?” Markus stood up, then put the bodies of the three dead bandits into his inventory. Walking a bit to the side, he pulled them out of his inventory again, piling them up nearby.

“Have you ever seen put stuff away and pulled out again like this? Or heard of it?”

All the men’s faces eyes went wide in surprise, apparently they weren’t too attached to their late companions. “That was magic, right? I have never heard of someone ‘put stuff away’ with magic, but casters can do amazing things right?” “Idiot, raise your hand! And that wasn’t magic, he did not cast as spell. For magic spells you need to say something first or have a tool.”

[Skill: Interrogation] learned.

The questioning was going pretty well, and even while Markus was conducting it in a friendly atmosphere, the system gave him the interrogation skill. The bandits were eager to answer all of his question, especially as he didn’t ask anything related to their crimes. In the end he got a good amount of information out of them, not only about the game system but also when it came to politics and society. They were all more or less idiots, but the basic information they had was helpful.

What he learned about the game system so far:

- Apart from the levels, which were routinely used to determine someone’s power, the other aspects like attributes and skills were not common knowledge. Whether that was true for everyone remained to be seen.

- Everyone could use basic magic power for so-called ‘tools’, but chanting and casting spells was limited to a small percentage of the population.

- The menu and interface as well as all things related, like the map, inventory or item descriptions, were nothing the men had ever seen or heard about.

Markus also learned a bit about politics and society. The kingdom referred to as ‘Soba’ actually consisted of three small kingdoms, ruled by a High King. The High King also ruled his own kingdom, but there were two other ‘Kings’. Markus thought this sounded more like an empire, but the size of the whole ‘Soba’ union was barely comparable to the neighbouring kingdoms.

This union itself was more or less stable, with open disagreements among the kings extremely rare, but there were often quarrels among the lower nobles who tended to drag the general population into it.

The area with the dragon was the south-eastern border of Soba, belonging to the kingdom of one of the subordinate kings. Its local capital was a fair bit west, more than a week by foot, the main capital of the union was even further north-west. None of the bandits had ever been to the main capital and only a few had seen the regional capital.

Society was rather bleak. There was a sharp hierarchy between nobles and the common people, with villagers at the lowest level. They were deemed to live a life of back-breaking labour, always in danger of being drafted or forced to pay or work for reparations in case their local liege lost in a power struggle.

The only way out for a normal villager without any special skills was to join the standing army of either their liege or the federation, which was difficult because they had to have no prior convictions and often had to pay for their equipment themselves. The entry requirements in terms of physical ability were also quite steep.

Alternatively one could become an outlaw, living as a bandit or smuggler. Some criminal organizations existed, extorting money, kidnapping people and sometimes even fighting with nobles. Markus’ prisoners didn’t belong to any though, and had no connections.

Townspeople, merchants and skilled craftsmen were apparently better off, as were magicians. Outside all of this were groups of ‘adventurers’ or ‘travellers’, freelance magicians and mercenary bands, but one had to be quite capable to even consider such a life.

The nobles were a mixed bunch. Some were liked, others dreaded. While slavery was outlawed in Soba, at least on paper, they held full authority over the general population. As they also held legislative and executive power, they could order just about anything and their subjects had to follow suit. It sounded like slavery to Markus, just on a larger and less individual scale.

Markus was quite confident that just being ignorant about most things would not be that suspicious if he acted like a simple, travelling villager. Only after all of the bandits pooled together their collective knowledge he got an opaque picture of how this country and the basic mechanics worked. Common people were not expected to get a basic education for more than a few years, if at all.

If children were lucky a suitable person would act as a village teacher, teaching them basic reading and writing skills and a bit of maths. But any knowledge above could not be expected. Birth certificates weren’t a thing and records were only kept for the sake of taxation, limiting them to information about fields and expected yields, not necessarily people.

Most people only got into contact with the ‘identification table’ when entering a larger town or getting checked at a military post when passing by. Two of the bandits had told him they were orphans and spend most of their youth doing basic fieldwork and being construction helpers, getting relocated between villages whenever there was suitable work, in exchange for food and lodging. If Markus was ever asked, he would use a similar background.

He was satisfied with the results of his impromptu ‘quiz’, but running out of things to ask, he had to wrap it up now. It was already clear what he had to do. Letting the men go free might result in rumours about him getting spread, and they would probably continue to rob and kill people. Handing them over to the military was bound to have them interrogated, making Markus a person of interest, and afterwards they would probably be executed. There was only one choice from the very beginning.

Markus spoke up in a cheery tone. “Thank you for your cooperation. You are all winners! Congratulations! I will blindfold you now, to protect me while leaving. After I give the signal, count to one hundred before starting to move or talk. Failure to do so will result in harsh punishment.”

He cut the shirt of a dead bandit into small strips to use as blindfolds. After making sure the men could not see anything, he told them to start counting.

Standing behind the kneeling men, Markus started to cast. He felt bad about it, but he had shown them all of his abilities. He did not want to take any chances. Justifying his actions to himself, he released the ice shard he had been forming and shot the first guy into the back of his head.

He quickly went around and repeated the action, making sure to deliver clean headshots that killed his victims before they even hit the ground. The lieutenant’s and Boyd’s previous actions had shown him what bandits had to expect, so he just imitated that behaviour while blocking out his own emotions.

[New title: Executioner].

All of them died before realizing what was going on. After finishing the unconscious men off in a similar manner, Markus started collecting everything in the camp into his inventory, including the corpses.

The bandits had been helpful, so Markus considered to at least properly bury the bodies at some point in the future. He would certainly not use them as dragon food if it could be avoided.

The sun had already started setting by the time he left the forest, so Markus hurried back to Springkeep for his meeting with Clement.