Did you know that after 6 hours of continuous walking, your body feels as if it's dying? I certainly did.

When we began walking, we quickly found out that this whole area was filled with hills. This damn dirt road crossed over every single one of them. My body hated me, and I hated it too. Why wouldn't it just shut up?!

The only man-made thing we had seen this entire time was this damn dirt road. Though we have caught glimpses of what we think were houses, when we looked again, we couldn't see anything but trees and hills.

Also, this whole time, we hadn't seen anyone.

That is, until now.

“Well, look what we have here”, A creepy voice said from behind us. It seemed to be male, but I wasn't sure.

I jumped a little when I heard the voice. Shouldn't we have seen him? Well, it makes sense we didn't notice him. Eros and I were both so tired that we really couldn't pay much attention to what was going on around us without falling.

“Bandits”, Eros whispered to me.

Shit. Bandits were not somebody I wanted to meet now. Or, any time, to be real.

The bandit wore a cloak, making it impossible to see their face.

“What do you want?”, I said to the bandit, with malice in my voice.

The bandit seemed unfazed by my tone and simply replied.

“It would please me very much if you would kindly give me all of your belongings”, he replied, with a polite voice.

That wasn't gonna happen.

I look around to see if there were more bandits. If there was only him, we could take him on. If there was a hundred, then not so much. I see a group of 15 people surrounding us. They try to hide, but my shoggoth eyes can easily see them.

“What happens if I don't?”, I ask him, my voice still filled with malice.

“If you don't, this will be your last day living”, he replied. I could almost see the grin on the person's face.

When he finished answering us, I hear the sound of 15 hidden bandits going out of their hiding spots. When I look around again, I see that I had missed a couple and there actually was 20 people surrounding us.

We could take them on. I think.

I probably shouldn't let them attack us, so let's attack first.

“Attack when my spell hits”, I whisper to Eros.

He doesn't say anything to it, but I know he heard me.

I attack first with a Wind Slash to my right. It hits two of them, but the others dodge in time. Meanwhile, Eros run towards the side I used wind slash on.

While Eros runs, I cast the enhancements on him.

Every bandit becomes alert, and races towards me.

Seems like they want to take out the mage first.

I multicast Greater entangling vines on a big part them, and watch as they fall face first into the ground. It works much better than before!

No time for watching! You didn't get all of them.

Of course.

This time, I try something.

I multicast a few Greater Earth strikes towards them, but instead of trying to hit them, I hit the ground right in front of them. It makes them fall in their tracks, and allow me to see how Eros is doing.

I look back at him and is surprised at how fast he is. It's almost like he is plowing through them with his battleax.

I look back at the bandits in the Entangling vines and become slightly surprised.

Not a single bandit has escaped the vines.

I then decide to use Entangling Vines on the rest of them. It gives me a little headache, but I can live with it.

We systematically plow down the rest of the bandits until we are down to the last one.

You kill everybody but one. While Eros readies himself for another swing with his battleax, the last one begins to shout.

“Wait! Don't kill me! I'll lead you to our base, just don't kill me!”, he shouted. It looks like has a pissed his pants.

Eros doesn't lower his ax but looks over at you.

“Let's spare him, for now. He can lead us to their hideout”, I said, with a calm voice.

“THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU”, the bandit shout at me.

“Shut up”, Eros said, with clear malice. The bandit winced at that, but. fortunately, didn't shit his pants.

“Of course”, the bandit said, in a low voice.

The bandit stood up and slowly started walking. We followed.

While Eros had lowered his ax, he didn't put it away.

While we were following the bandit to their hideout, we didn't talk in any way. Eros and I were both tired, and it would be bad if the bandit we are following got any vital info about us.

Although we were still tired, we constantly remained on high alert. There was still a small chance that the bandit had an ambush set up.

Not that it would work.

After 25 minutes of walking, we finally see something new.

The road split up in two.

There were no signs, so I didn't know what leads where.

“Where do these paths go”, I ask the bandit we were following. He flinched slightly when he heard my voice.

“The path to the left lead to the city. The path to the right leads to our base”, he explained, while trying, and failing, to keep his voice calm.

I can't really call it a hideout then if they have a road leading to them.

Maybe we should just go to the city. You are tired, and in no condition to fight. Go to the city, get some sleep, and go back here when you are rested.

No, I'll deal with this now, and who is saying that I'm going to be fighting? I will just be doing some recon before going to the city.

“Continue leading the way to your base”, I order the bandit. He sighs while continuing walking. He was probably hoping that we would go to the city.

After 10 more minutes of walking, we finally reached the edges of the base. Well, I wouldn't really call it a base. More like, a giant collection of what looked like tents and three houses clustered together.

Eros, the bandit, and I were hiding in the forest, about 125 meters from the nearest tents. Eros had threaténd the bandit with killing him if he tries to shout for help. The bandit came too close to shitting himself. Way too close.

We didn't risk getting close and risking getting caught, so we observed from a distance.

Ever since the roads split up, there was one thing I had been thinking about. A single thing in this whole mess that didn't make sense to me.

Why were the bandits out in the open so much? They had a road directly connected to the city. It couldn't be that the bandits were too strong for them. The city could just call in some reinforcement, and get the bandits dealt with. Why haven't they done anything to eradicate this threat?

My curiosity finally takes over me, and I ask the bandit.

“Hey, I got a question for you”, I say to him.

“Yes, sir. What is it?”, he asked.

“Why has the city not attacked you yet? They have the perfect opportunity to eradicate you”, I ask him.

“Oh, that's simple. Two months ago, we kidnapped the lord's daughter. We got the chance when she was out with her group. She had just awakened and needed some real experience, so the lord had finally allowed her to go out with minimum security. Some of our stronger guys simply went out, killed everybody that was with her, and forcefully brought her here. We locked her into one of our fortified houses. We then informed the lord about it, and basically blackmailed him. He can't do anything, because if he did, we will just kill his daughter”, he explained to us.

Oh, well, that explains it.

“Any more things that you think I should know?”, I ask him.

“Yes, actually. Almost all of our stronger people are out getting supplies this week. If they didn't, we wouldn't have any supplies, because other bandits raid us.”, he said to us.

A perfect opportunity.

I look over at Eros, and he looks over at me. Were thinking the same thing.

Time to save the lords daughter.