Eli POV

___________________________

It was a cool morning as I moved quietly through the forest. Well, moved through the top of the forest. The wind magic along with my vine suits magical boosters allowed me to do jumps, that to scale, whereas large as crickets. Landing on a tree branch, especially one of the smaller ones in the good hundred feet height I was bouncing through, after a jump of several dozen-plus yards was a terrible idea so I engaged the latch function of one of my suits arms.

The firm vines extended out from the folds inside the suit and wrapped around the trunk of the tree. Having extended, it lashed around the trunk and distributed the sudden pull around my body instead of putting it all in my arm. Air enchantments in the back of my suit also used the bubble design of the crafting pods to deaden the sound of my impact against the tree. The leaf-covered head wrap still allowed me enough vision for all of my needed tasks. As I used my legs to push against the tree I looked around through the holes in my rough cloth headcover until I saw them.

Below me was the target, a group of several men in poorly maintained leather armor. I had been stalking these men for a few hours as they moved through the forest and now they were finally returning to camp on a hill below a large boulder. After a quick inspection of the surrounding area, I decided to make my move.

After putting down several tripwires, I aimed the 2-foot barrel at the end of my right arm at the archer standing watch on top of the boulder. The air pumps on my back engaged and filled the small canister at the other end of the barrel near my elbow. A small bullet-shaped stone was summoned and then shot out of the barrel when I activated the trigger at its base.

The man's head had a hole blown in it as he fell backward over the boulder. But my air gun was whisper silent so the men just heard a soft whoosh that was different enough from an arrow that they didn't know how to react. The camp of about ten remaining men scrambled around but they were ill-disciplined and clearly had poor leadership as seven charged my general direction and three others ran away. The cries of two men from the direction they fled told me I would still need to hunt the third down.

The others charged through the forest haphazardly. Three ran into the trip wires and had the small wooden blocks the string was attached to activate. These shot small stone arrows in an upward v formation from both sides, skewering their victims like a pin cushion.

I swiftly moved over the forest tops, looping and occasionally lashing around a tree until I had moved several yards away from my original position. From there I shot two more men in the back. By now the already shambling charge broke completely as the two remaining men fled in terror. But I was moving at speeds that a deer wouldn't be able to imitate and the men had no real chance to get away as I shot them in the back.

Then I sprinted over the camp looking for the one who had managed to escape. After a few minutes, I saw a pudgy man leaning against a tree with the same filthy leather armor as the bandits. I needed some information from him so I decided I would keep him alive for a little while longer. But as I came up to him I saw the complete stillness of his form.

I jumped over but I was already too late. His neck had been punctured by a stone pin right in the windpipe. Despite my self, I was rather impressed that he had managed to get so far with such an injury.

After bashing his skull with a hammer-shaped piece of summoned rock, I immediately went back to the camp. Then I took arrows from the archer I killed and stuck them through the heads that I didn't pulverize. Over the past few days, I had seen the aftermath of several raids by the orcs and I replicated their tactics here.

Hitting from afar first using small darts and arrows to pincushion them before moving in with hammers and swords. By the time I was done I had made it look sort of like an orc attack. There were no orc corpses around and the stone darts would disappear but this was the best I could do. Now if this had been one of the more official gangs that probably wouldn't fly as their compatriots would definitely look it over but who knows when or if ever this new graveyard will be found.

As I rummaged around their mini cave I thought on the oddness of the situation here. It had taken me a good two days to finish my mobile generator, the small box on my back still having its internal wheel inside its container spinning, and put together the air gun. I hadn't intended to use air guns at first but this new power source meant I didn't need to carry around high-pressure containers everywhere.

But while the gun parts were getting shaped I did some preliminary scouting the day after finishing out my house. The bandits in the east and south were more typically poor, like these men I had decided to conduct my first live-fire exercise on. But in the more northern part, they got a lot more interesting. Sure most were still just poorly maintained foot soldiers, but the officers had access to magical weapons and then there were the casters.

They would follow the bandit groups around like a shadow. Whenever the orcs tried to raid them, the bandits would take the initial brunt of the attack before the casters moved in and devastated the charge. I had seen several attempts by the orcs to change up the formations, order of attacks, the weapons used, etc. But at the end of the day, their whole premise of combat was hitting first and hitting hard, and when the casters moved out of the grass covers or holes in the ground as they wasted their surprise on easily replaced fodder, that style of fighting went straight into the crapper.

The mages disguises were pretty good too. They must have some sort of plant mage in their ranks because the grass covers were of far too intricate of a make to not be made by magic. But that was another problem and right now my task for today was not yet complete. From the bag of holding on my back, I produced several orc axes, shields, and arrows. The weapons were damaged and the arrows were convincingly stuffed through the holes I had left in the men.

The past few days this group had been trying for a few carriages but had let two of them get away and a third actually ran over and killed one of their members. Over the course of voicing their frustrations, they had discussed several gangs and their general locations as well as the prospect of joining them, behind their leaders back of course.

When it came out they didn't know where several of the large gangs were, the one I needed to know in particular was outside of their scope, it was time to perform pest control. I was going to kill all of them eventually, so I might as well start the job on the ones that wouldn't be missed. Fortunately, I wasn't flying completely blind, so I may not have to confine myself to just these small fry soon.

The men who had attacked me at night had their bodies long burned, but the guards' report, a report that I had only gotten to see by using a tunnel and my metal magic at midnight to break-in to their rather lax section of the station. Apparently, they didn't consider solved case records important.

It said they had an elongated jaw getting ready to bite down tattooed on their right shoulders. The local authorities dropped it after that on account of it leading to the gangs up north. I didn't know why that meant it was automatically dropped but the last note mentioned something about 'bitchy bureaucrats'.

Once the last bullet hole was stuffed with an arrow, I collected my goodies. The good thing about using magically summoned stone for a bullet or a trap was that all the ammo was readily available so the trip wires were the only things I had to pick up.

Sitting on top of the chests in their cave, I rummaged through the various bits and baubles I pillaged from the bandits. It mostly consisted of a few wood carvings and bits of leather drawings. No bandit letters or correspondence so this expedition was a waste as far as my main goal was concerned.

The jumps I could now perform were so absurd I made my trip back home in less than 10 minutes, something that would take me an hour or two plus on foot. When I was coming up on that peak of the jump it felt almost like something akin to flying and this was the only time I could really push the jumps to their greatest heights. With the huge size of the trees and my own leaf and vine suit, I could easily blend in, even if someone could see me all the way up here.

Eventually, I came onto the river about midday.

Slipping into the cool water, I let up the small tube of interwoven leaves float to the surface. That, with the face cover embedded with wind enchantments that pushed air in and out, allowed me to come down the river unnoticed with nothing but a small pile of leaves and twigs floating on the river surface. When I came onto the big rock on the left side of the river marking my destination, I bent over and felt my way through the muddy water until I grasped the hatch. Pulling it up and disengaging the tube to allow the top to float downstream while the rest retracted I began moving into the hole.

Going down then moving upward I came into my own little grotto of rough stone. In the middle of the large room was a stone pillar, its mana crystal lanterns dangling off the side providing a soft glow to the rest of the space. It would look like a cave if not for the smooth stone floor and odd bits of furniture. My magnet making table was to my left with the generator and piston set up on the far side, the small hallway leading to a secret exit in the woods to its right. The walls were roughly gouged out with sharp edges and deep reds from the clay. On my right was a staircase leading up to the main floor.

Coming up the staircase I opened the hatch and was now on the main floor. The rotted wood floor was replaced with dark oak boards and the moldy, dilapidated stone was now smooth brickwork of large grey bricks that were smooth to the touch. I closed the hatch door behind me and the secret entrance then seamlessly blended into the floor as it slammed shut.

The walls grey brickwork was a continuous flow around the four walls except for the door facing the town and one former window facing the river. To the wall right of the door was the hammock while the wall left of the door was the window, now completely sealed with stone. It was the wall opposite the door that I stuffed all my non-secretive worldly possessions, my money, school and casual clothes. The crossbow leaned on the wall to the right of the chests.

The 'tower' was clearly not designed with security in mind as the staircase to get on the roof was on the outside to the left of the entrance. I decided to leave the exterior in its pitiful state as that would require mana for something that was not needed for the structural soundness of my home. The roof was a smooth stone circle, in the middle of it was the wooden stumps of what had been the wooden watch post of the tower, having long since collapsed and rotted in a pile a few yards from its stone foundation.

My biggest task for the day completed, I strapped on my leather armor and proceeded to do the big leaps towards the town. If I had used the new design that I had in the vine suit I would have made it in a third of the time. But no mages deigned to give me any more mana constructs to provide me the needed explanation for where I got them from and my bridges with the scions had been pretty much burned.

The only bright spot was that most of the local peasants didn't buy the trials propaganda so I could at least walk around the town in peace.

The academy was another story.

People would spit on me with no hesitation, food would be knocked out of my hands in the cafeteria so regularly that I just decided to leave after classes to just get a meal, to a constant stream of men mocking me and getting in my face to impress the women around them, it was a little piece of hell all my own. I made sure to remember each and every one of their faces. All of my abilities, from the quad element casting, my inventions, and probably even my internal mana generation, were going to get discovered eventually. Either I would have to use them to save my life or the necromancers would finally be done with, but it was all going to come out eventually and I had so much nose rubbing to do in the future it might very well take months.

As for the three scions... well I wasn't sure about them. Andrew seems to have made up his mind about me, although he at least just avoided me rather than make trouble for me. But I didn't bother seeking out the other two. It wouldn't get me anything and it would just...

It just wouldn't do anything.

But I made a lot more progress on my equipment so I guess I had that going for me.

I ate my lunch and went back to my house. Coming back into the workshop, now much roomier than what I had been working with previously, I put the finishing touches on the final piece of my suit. The deer head now had its skull hollowed out and the horns were jutting forward so as to not catch on anything.

The biggest improvement was in the tips of the horns. These had enchantments running along the two points on each side that worked similar to the design that I had been intending to do for Andrew's equipment. The tips were hollow with several focusing triangles at the outermost points that would focus the flames into an almost laser-like line and give them bits of stone to turn into molten slag as they fired into the poor fool on the receiving end.

My final task complete I headed out for some night time scouting. I had no classes tomorrow and decided I could just sleep in the workshop late into the morning to make up the deficit in sleep.