When they first came through the door, I was ready for the bandits. I had used my illusion magic to make myself invisible, in the hopes that I could make a sneak attack on them.

It didn't work as I expected.

Two men came inside the door. One human and One Half-elf.

The human thought the room was empty, but the half-elf did not. He saw right through my illusion without even using magic.

Was I that bad at illusions? Probably not. The human didn't even see anything when he double checked the room.

I knew that my position had been compromised, so I decided that I had to attack now or never.

As with my illusion magic, the half-elf saw it coming.

My attack failed, and I lost my weapon while attacking.

The half-elf said that he and the human came here to rescue me. I did not believe him and continued trying to hit him.

Every attack I made, he dodged without even putting effort into it.

After some time of me purely attacking the half-elf, he grew tired of it and apprehends me. He holds my hands tight, and it almost hurts. I didn't show that though.

He again tries to convince me that he and the human are my saviors.

They are trying an awful lot to make me believe in their lies.

But what if they aren't lies.

What if they're telling the truth?

I look into the half-elf´s eyes, and he looks into mine. From another's perspective, this would look romantic in nature. But it wasn't. Each of us was looking into the other. I was searching his eyes for any lies, and he was searching mine looking for the unknown.

After quite a while, we stop our searching. I couldn't find any lies in his words.

I accept their offer of escape and begin walking out the door.

The human was standing at the door.

I study him for a few seconds, but I don't find anything malicious intent. Though, there was one other thing I found. An emotion, I should have expected from him. It disgusts me, but I couldn't deem him untrustworthy because of it, so I decided to ignore it.

I commented on his staring and watched him try to piece a sentence together.

It was kinda amusing looking at him trying.

Nevertheless, we needed to get moving, or their rescue would be a disaster.

When Eros and I walked out of the room, we realized something.

We had been a little too loud.

People from the outside had heard the noise and had come to investigate it. When they found a hole in the front door, they realized what had happened.

They were still at the front door while trying to wake the sleeping guy up, but they wouldn't be there for long.

“Elora, do you know any exits in the house except the front door? Maybe some secret exits?”, I whisper to Elora.

“I didn't know if there even was a front door. I've been in that room this whole time, and the only thing I could see out of was the windows”, she whispered to me.

The windows!

I around in the hallway, and see a window. It's on the opposite side of the house from where the front door is.

Perfect!

I silently go over to the window, and the others follow me. I try to open the window, but it won't even budge. Maybe, it would open, if there is enough strength.

“Eros, could you help me with this?”, I quietly whisper to Eros.

“Sure”, he whispers back and walks over to the window.

Instead of trying to open the window, he simply broke it. He took each side of the window and ripped it cleanly off. That is some shoddy craftsmanship.

Why hadn't I thought of that? Oh yeah, I don't have the strength of a dozen men.

The sound from the windows being broken could be heard by the people at the front door. We could hear them running into the house trying to find us.

“Let's go. We need to move silently”, I whisper to them.

Elora jumps down first. Then Eros. When it was my turn to jump, I looked back just be sure that we were not spotted by the people searching the people. Turns out that we were.

Some bandit was staring into my eyes five meters away.

“What the holdup?”, I could hear Elora say from the ground.

That put the bandit out of his stupor. He reached down to this horn, so I cast a Wind Slash on him before he even had a chance to blow it.

He fell down the stairs, and the other bandit began to shout.

Time to run.

I jumped down out of the window and landed a couple meters in front of them.

I looked back at them.

“We need to go now”, I said to them.

They both nodded and began to follow me. We moved as silently as we could. While they knew we were in the camp, they didn't know exactly where we were. With their numbers so few, they couldn't be everywhere.

20 seconds after we began to move, we heard a horn from behind us.

Looks like I jinxed it.

“Forget what I said about moving silently. We need to get the hell out of there”, I told them, as I began to pick up speed.

I briefly looked around. Almost every single tent showed movement. Every bandit in this whole base would be after us in two minutes.

We needed to hurry up.

Elora and I ran as fast as we could, while Eros would let us set the pace. He could move a lot faster than us, but it would be stupid to split up.

Bandits slowly began going out of their tents and began looking around. The ones close to us tried to grab us, but a hit to the head by Eros, or a spell from me, stopped them from slowing us down.

We were nearing the edge of their base, and I began thinking that we would make it without problems.

As last time, I jinxed it.

We heard a roar behind us, but we didn't stop running. Eros turned his head for a few moments to see what was making that noise.

“It seems that they left one of the elites at the base. He seems to be a melee fighter of some kind. He either is a mage with enhancement magic or he has been enhanced by one. I'm not sure if we can take him on. Jack, I need you to use those vines of yours to distract him”, Eros told us, with a calm voice.

I nod and begin channeling the spell to my hands, while still running. I know that one cast is not going to hold him, so I cast it five times over.

I slow down a little and look behind us.

I see a literal mass of muscle that is running towards us. He would reach us in about 30 seconds. I try and ignore how he looks, and just cast the spell on him.

I speed up again, not even waiting to see the results of the spell.

Though, from the lack of pain, I can figure out that I stopped him for a while.

We reached the edge of the base and ran into the forest.

When we finally reached the forest, our plan of escaping became a little different.

Due to the uneven ground of the forest, we couldn't run at full speed, so we had to slow down a little. We also did not know the forest area that well, so there was a couple of times where we would fall down on the ground due to small holes.

The bandits knew the forest area like the back of their hand, though.

It sort of became a game of cat and mouse.

We would try to run and hide while a group of bandits ran by. Sometimes we would be found, and I would have to cast Entangling vines on them. Other times we wouldn't be found, and we could just move along when they had run by.

After 20 minutes of doing this, we were forced to go into the road. The bandits had put many traps outside their base. They likely did this to control where people came in, and where people came out.

As you could guess, there was a big group of people there waiting for us. When they saw us, some of them blew their horns.

I multicasted Wind Slash on them, and we moved on. This time every bandit searching for us were running towards us, so we had to hurry. The road we were running on was still in a hilly area, so we could sometimes see them rushing towards us.

It amazed me how fit I was. We had been running for likely 30 minutes, but I was only slightly out of breath.

We finally reached the place where the dirt road split.

I looked behind us and almost felt despair.

Over 75 bandits were on our tail. They were about 200 meters away from us.

Are we going to make it to the city?

“Elora, how long to the city from here?”, I asked Elora.

“About 40 minutes if we run at full speed”, she answered.

That's when we heard a giant roar. The mountain of muscle was here.

We aren't going to make it… Unless.

“Eros”, I say.

“Yes?”, he asks.

“If I enhance you, do you think that you can reach the city in time while you lift us?”, I ask him.

He ponders about for a couple of seconds before answering.

“Probably. We don't have much of a choice, so we have to try”, he says.

I nod and begin enhancing him with all the enhancements. Even the General Enhancement. He shivers slightly when I cast them but doesn't say anything to it.

Before he lifts us, I turn around and begin to cast my biggest multicast that I have ever done.

I had to stop a giant mass of people from chasing us.

I multicast Greater Entangling Vines as many times as I could. At least two cast for each person, and 8 cast for the mountain of muscle.

Because of the massive multicast, I almost emptied out my whole mana reserve and is just holding myself from losing consciousness.

“Let's go”, I weakly say to Eros. He nods and picks us up.

He begins running, and I slowly lose consciousness.

I hope to god that this works.