Author's note: Hey, it's me again. I don't expect another chapter for at least the next 12 hours, but I can't promise anything ; ) Currently my writing speed is rather fast, if I may say so myself.

Thanks to the people who have subscribed or even farvorited my humble work, I appreciate it. It is kinda thrilling to see the views-counter go up as well, so thank you everyone who is currently reading my story, even the anonymous leechers (was one myself not too long ago, so yea... no offence intended)

I would be Really happy to get some feedback on the story to be honest. I am writing this only for fun, so I will continue to do so either way, but I am questioning some of my decisions.

What do you think about about the rather (overly) realistic approach regarding wounds, regeneration etc.?

No cheat inventory, good thing or not?

Slow progress (

Anyone found major holes in the "story"/world-system?

If anyone would give me their opinion it could help me out a lot. Of course I dont promise or even intend to please individual readers, but creating something is completely new to me and I feel a bit lost tbh. Perhaps so close to the trees that I cannot see the forest anymore.

Chapter 9: Exploring some more

The next day Marcus and Jonas headed back early in the morning. Marcus had left Paul 10 silver coins and advised him to stay at the inn they were previously staying at. He had arranged with the innkeeper to give Paul a small room with one bed for 10 nights at a rate of 3 silver.

Setting aside a generous amount of two silver coins for meals he was left with 5 silver as spending money, plus money he had secretly received from Jonas. It was in fact 4 silver and 50 copper plus a dirty copper ring, but it was enough.

Paul was excited at first, thinking that Jonas might have left him with a magical artefact by mistake, but after inspecting the ring several times and wearing it while observing his stats, it turned out to be a regular dirty copper ring.

After saying goodbye to the others at the town gate. Paul headed to the market square. He aimlessly wandered around the stalls until noon to get a better feeling for the products, but only purchased a small whetstone and some oiled, course linen that could be used as kindling.

They had passed by a store that was selling rather fancy looking items, and only rich people and servants seemed to frequent it. As they had no business there, he had not entered with Marcus, but now Paul wanted to see if he could find some items that were magical or interesting literature.

Paul had found out while he could obviously speak the local language, he could also read the letters. They looked like a mix of Latin and Korean symbols, so he was worried at first, but when he glanced over the notices posted at the central plaza, he found that the words were just popping up in his head while he read the symbols. It felt strange at first, but it was no different than before, so he got used to it rather quickly. Paul was confident that he could write in the language if he tried to, and confirmed so by drawing some symbols in the dirt, but he was fine with the English menu and notes as well.

After entering the store, he walked around browsing through the goods. Most of the items were behind glass and neatly sorted on shelves. There were gilded pottery and ceramics, silver tableware and heavy looking, fine robes. But there were also books and tools used for magic, some jewellery and, in the vitrine next to the store owner’s desk, a few items that looked like magic items.

The store owner was keeping an eye on him ever since he entered. He couldn’t really hold it against him, Paul’s attire didn’t match the other customers in their expensive outfits or the servants who mostly walked up straight to the desk to pick up an order or deliver payment. The store was not very frequented to begin with, so when there were no other customers around Paul spoke to the owner.

“Hello good Sir, would you mind answering me a few short questions?”

“Good day, what kind of questions do you have?” the owner was polite in his words, but showed an annoyed expression.

“I was interested in the items you are showing in this vitrine, and might be tempted to buy or borrow one of the books you have”

“First, I don’t lend out books, especially not to suspicious looking strangers. Go to a library if you want that kind of service” he was clearly not expecting Paul to buy anything. Paul kept a friendly smile, for now he was mostly interested in the kind of items that were available and especially the price range.

The store owner gave him a quick rundown of the prices. The prices of the books started at 30 silver for general topics, like travelling diaries of faraway places, a description of different magical beasts or cookbooks aimed at servants. Books dealing with magic were all priced above one gold, and those were only descriptions of the different schools of magic and their affiliated gods, or works on how to identify magic items and how those items are used.

Actual tomes for learning spells could only be purchased on order and the distribution was regulated, so only after being acknowledged by the magic association could one buy them. The price was dependent on the work and the owner did not go as far as telling Paul.

At also told him that the magic academy as well as the magic association’s headquarter was in the capital, and that there was no library around apart from the lord’s private one, but only a few merchants and distinguished citizen had access to it. The magic association had branches were they sold magic scrolls, but he didn’t say anything about the price or range of available spells.

The magic items on display were basic things, but extremely expensive as well.

The least expensive item was an ignition rod that could be used to start a fire and cost 1 gold and 50 silver. It was basically a lighter that ran on the user’s mana, but everyone could use it, magician or not. There were similar items that produced cold air or a crystal ball that supposedly changed colour depending on the weather within the next 24 hours, but nothing really impressive.

There was also a ring that increased the wearer’s stamina and a necklace that increased mana, but both cost over 10 gold and judging from the looks of them, there were not high grade. Paul was bothered by the fact that the item description from the menu did not show a lot of useful information.

When he focused on the stamina-ring, the information was very basic.

[Green-gemmed Band

Ring

Shows traces of magic. Base material is silver.]

He was expecting to get proper values, but it did not seem to be this way. He showed his own copper ring to the owner, and asked him for his professional opinion. The man took the ring, put on a pair of glasses and examined it.

“This is just a plain copper ring. And filthy on top of it. The design is somewhat OK, so I’ll pay you 5 copper coins.” He exclaimed after a short while.

“No, thank you then. It has some sentimental value, so I rather keep it for that price.” Paul was hoping for a reaction, but the store owner just shrugged and handed him back the ring. Paul decided to properly clean it and sell it at the next opportunity. At least he had a rough estimate on the price now.

After thanking the owner for the information he got and promising to come back and buy something in the future, he left the store. The store owner looked as annoyed as in the beginning, but at least he didn’t insult him or anything.

Paul wanted to buy a map somewhere, but he had forgotten to ask the store owner about it. They were probably as ridiculously priced as all the other items anyway. After taking a stroll around the parts of town he had not yet seen, he went back to the inn. Prozor itself was not very large, Paul estimated the population to be around 15 or 20 thousand at best. There was a guarded quarter on top of a hill were the lords castle was supposed to be, but the guards had looked at him strangely when he approached, so he just smiled at them and passed by. He had no business there anyway for now.

The eastern side of the city had the river as a natural border, and there was a small harbour as well. The river wasn’t that large though, perhaps 25 meters across, so naturally the harbour was rather small as well. There was nothing of note, so he left after a quick look around.

He did not find an adventurers’ guild or quest board or anything cliché like that and the tavern looked to be only frequented by drunkards at this time of the day.

He went to his room at the inn, put on his new armour, picked up his weapons and left. Marcus had left him with 10 arrows, so he should be fine for now. He had also bought a loaf of dark bread at the market as emergency rations, although he did not plan to leave the city for very long.

Paul’s goal was to walk around the vicinity of the town to get a feeling for the area. So close to town he did not expect any troublesome monsters or bandit to show up, and he should be able to even handle a wolf or two.

In fact, meeting a lonely robber seemed like a good way to gain some quick experience and loot, but he didn’t expect to get that lucky.

He left the village through the southern gate, where he had entered two days ago. He spoke to the guard if there are any rumours or if there were any rules regarding hunting. He did not want to be arrested as a poacher.

He learned that the area to the southwest was mostly farmland, and everything north to the town was in fact the private hunting ground of the lord. He could hunt freely along the road to the south, where he came from, or cross the river to the east and try his luck there. There was talk about goblins on the other side of the river though. The closest recent sighting was about a day away by foot, so it was still nowhere near the town.

Paul decided to go east. There was a large wooden bridge around twenty minutes walking distance from the town.

A group of guards was stationed here, but they looked mostly bored. One of the guards greeted him, it was one of Marcus’ old friends with whom he had drunk yesterday. Paul learned that they were stationed there only to look out for goblins, but they had not seen any and no one seriously believed that goblins would come this far. There was a rumour that some bandits had made camp not too far from the town, but the search parties haven’t found anything suspicious, apart from deserted rafts along the river, which may or may not have been used by bandits to cross it.

The guard seemed to welcome the opportunity to chat, so Paul made some small talk and crossed the bridge after getting twenty minutes worth of useless information.

Simon the dying bandit had told Paul that the hide out was located in an abandoned mine in the hills not too far, so he was tempted to check it out. He wanted to confirm any if there were any monsters along the way though, and did want to come up with a plan first. While the minimap gave him a tactical advantage, he did not expect to be able to face an unknown number of enemies head on on their home turf.

Paul climbed up a nearby hill and overlooked the landscape. It was a bit hilly, but he could see a few larger hills surrounded by forest a distance to the East. He suspected that this was where the hideout was located. There were also some more, larger hills to the North-East and what looked like a huge and dense forest to the South-east. The landscape was overall rather hilly, so most of what he could see was not that far away. The area between the bridge and the forest/hills to the East was covered by high grass with patches of large shrubbery and groups of trees.

He decided to just head straight to the place where he thought the hideout was located. If there was a lookout on top of the hill he would be spotted either way, so he could as well just zigzag there from this direction, pretending to be a hunter looking for game.

He doubted that the bandits would dispatch a large force to intercept a lone hunter in broad daylight, so relying on the minimap for an early warning, he headed out.

Occasionally there would be a bird flying over him, resulting in a fast moving yellow dot on the radar, but he was already used to it. He only found one hostile animal while in half an hour and it turned out to be a regular level 1 snake. He killed it with his spear, but just left the corpse behind.

After another half an hour of walking, he reached the edge of the forest surrounding the hills. He had deliberately taken detours to not arouse suspicion in case of an unseen observer. He had killed another snake, but nothing else noteworthy happened along the way. There were occasionally some yellow dots on the radar, but Paul did not bother to check them out.

While sticking to the edge of the forest, Paul walked north. He did not want to meet Bandits or even actively search for the hideout right now. He would do some basic surveillance of the surroundings and head back when it started to get dark.

The forest was dense for the most part, so Paul looked for signs of people passing through, like suspiciously broken twigs, trails or grass that was unnaturally bent in a certain direction, but he did not find anything. After an hour of walking, he started walking south, indicating that he had reached the end of the forest. He then went into the forest, heading back west. So close to the trees he could not see the hills anymore, but he suspected that he should come across the foot of the hill if he headed straight west through the forest from here.

The dense parts of the forest slowed him down considerably, so while it had taken him an hour on the forest edge to walk the distance, it had now taken him more than an hour to reach the hill, which was situated near the centre. There was nothing suspicious on the radar.

“Should have guessed so. If there was a mine here at some point, there would be a road or something like that leading to it. Even if it was old, there should be at least a trace of it left”

Paul was muttering to himself. While not planned to find any sign of the hideout, he had secretly hoped to stumble over a clue or something.

“How high is this hill? One hundred meters and then some?” Paul was wondering. Considering the 230 meter range of the minimap, he was hoping to be able to spot the bandits below the ground if he came close to the mine. The guard had said that there were search parties before, so they had probably looked around this area. The hideout was probably located within the mine, otherwise they should have been able to locate them.

“I hope that they would attack anyone on sight. If they show up as neutral on the map, there is a chance I will miss them.”

Paul decided to stick to his initial plan and head back to the town. He was considering climbing the hill, but the sun was already setting and he was not prepared to camp outside or walk back through a pitch black forest.

He headed back out of the forest and decided to go back a little to the south, to cover a bit more ground today. Perhaps there was something that would give him an idea on how to defeat the bandits once he found them.

It was starting to get dark by now, but he should have around half an hour of light left before night came. While wondering about trivial things, like how large a bug should have to be to show up on the radar, he suddenly noticed a red dot on the edge of the minimap. Then another one showed up, and another one. The enemies were more than 200 meters away, with a slope blocking the view.

Paul approached them for a bit, then waited behind the slope.

The dots were moving in a straight line at a constant speed, and they came from the West, heading to the East. Considering that they came from the location of the suspected hideout, it was nearly certain that they were bandits heading towards the river.

Paul carefully looked over the slope, making sure to stay hidden in the grass. When he focused on the place where he suspected the bandits, he noticed movement in the tall grass. There was a group of people walking slowly. Now that he had a visual on them, he carefully started following them, making sure to stay hidden behind shrubbery or slopes. He made sure to look back several times, but could not see anyone following.

Paul suspected the group to be perhaps a search party for the bandits they had killed two days earlier, or, if he was lucky, a group that was about to sell loot in town or buy supplies. In that case, he could expect some valuables if he could take them down.

While trying to come up with a plan, Paul realized how ill prepared he was. He had planned to buy a dyed cloak after he had scouted the surroundings, to give him some camouflage. He had also not yet shot a single arrow with his new bow, so he had no idea about range or handling. It was getting gradually darker now, and he had no idea about the particulars of the terrain, let alone the bandits’ target destination.

On the other hand, the darkness would negate the missing camouflage, as well as the unknown range of the bow. At a close distance, handling did not really matter much, and he was confident about the force of the bow. Light armour should not be a big problem, or so he assumed.

If it was dark, the minimap would give him a bigger advantage as well. If he let the bandits escape now, he could not be sure if he could find them again. Worst case, they would somehow find out that their friends are dead and get reinforcements, then Paul would have to face a larger group.

While thinking so, he started to hurry and close the distance. He had already decided to take them down some time ago.