It had been a few weeks since that incident with the ent, and Raccelline’s improvements could be called frightening or expected depending on who you asked. From almost accidentally kicking a rat into a bloody mist, she could now hit a bronze tier beast and only break a few bones in the process. Naturally, when this happened the whole group celebrated as she’d finally gathered how to control her power to a better degree, although her ability to judge the enemy’s power was questionable at best.

For the most part, she simply assumed size equaled strength… Which resulted in a bronze tier stone ogre finding its guts pulverised in a single punch as she wrongly assumed it to be around steel tier. At the very least, some of the ogre’s internals were still harvestable, most notably its ruby heart which made an excellent adornment for earth attribute staves.

Overall, the group held a rather large celebration for Raccelline’s improvements, and they felt she deserved it for all she’d been through.

In the matter of a week, the girl had lost her father, become a target for Great sages from an opposing race, been forced to venture into a scary world on her own, and now journeyed halfway across the continent on foot.

Jaren said during that celebratory camp, “Hey, Mala, you always say you journeyed a lot before meeting us. How did it compare?”

“You remember how we met, I’d just graduated. Sure the academy took students to competitions and stuff in quite a few places, but never like this. Certainly never these stakes too. Darak, didn’t you have to move around a lot?” Mala spoke briefly as the group heard most of those tales long ago, and she doubted that any wanted her to repeat them.

On the other hand, Darak’s past was far more relevant to the question from Jaren. And the kindly priest replied, “Yes, Manus ensures the loyalty and sanctity of his churches through constant excursions between them. And travelling is rather easy for us, but I mostly stuck to the southern shelf. Heat never has agreed with me.” While it sounded honourable, in reality most knew the excursions were just a method to reduce corruption internally as priests effectively reported ‘malaised’ churches to Manus for reckoning.

Every few years some information about a church losing all its priests would come about, and the method worked moderately well. Manus’ church was taken as an example of good management by other gods, although the different society structures in other races kept it from working perfectly.

Still, it didn’t change the fact that Darak indeed travelled a fair bit in the past. And after meeting Korridan, then Rebecca and Jaren, he found the prospects of a wider world quite exhilarating.

The safety he loved had grown into boredom after so many years.

And in a way, this summarised everyone’s reason for becoming an adventurer, at least within their group. Korridan was a rather successful captain for a town’s guard, but as he reached the limit of bronze rank, he began to question if that would be where he wished to stop.

Mala originally thought that the academy could provide all the knowledge and resources she needed to grow further, and in turn she’d provide the school with wealth… But the sheer scale had been completely underestimated by the naive wizard at that age. Not to mention, the school lacked any way to perfectly tailor a path of future growth for her, thus she began to venture outside for that method.

Rebecca… got bored. As she put it.

And then there was Jaren. He simply dreamed of being an exquisite hunter in the past, working to slay great beasts and present their bodies as the spoils of his effort. But, unsurprisingly, a small village would never allow him to flourish, and the years he forced himself to stay as a youth bred a strange cynicism in him.

An annoying one at times.

And then there was Raccelline. Where to even begin or end?

While she always appeared so cheerful and was the life of the group, it was her occasional silent marches in which the group almost forgot about her existence that worried them all.

Sure, they coddled her, told her it’d all be alright, that the dragon would help and they’d be fine…

But none of that got through to her.

And today was precisely one of those bad days. The group remained vigilant of the surrounding trees as they passed through an adventuers’ path carved through a forest, however, merchants opted to avoid this road due to bandits. Of course…

“Stop there! We have you surrounded! Take one step and we kill the girl!” A voice came from three points in the surrounding woods, each spoke a single sentence, and Mala instantly recognised each to be a separate spell.

The voice’s owner had not spoken up a single time.

However, the whole group could tell that the numbers nearby were far from small, just Korridan with his weaker senses noted a dozen people in the surroundings. All hidden behind the thick trunks or blended well into the ground, then there were more figures which revealed themselves eventually as they breathed.

He spoke out, “What do you scum want?”

“Leave all your bags and dimensional storages, then you may leave. Don’t think you can trick us by putting it on the girl too, that necklace clearly ain’t normal!” Once more, the voice came sentence by sentence from several points around them, routinely swapping places to hide where the source likely was. However, the necklace they spoke of, was the fancy one with a dulled amber gemstone in its pendant… Not the actual dimensional storage which was a far more compact green diamond-shaped gemstone on a simple necklace beneath.

Mala’s senses noted that nothing nearby released mana above what a Bronze ranked warrior should be capable of, and Rebecca quietly signalled the group about 36 bandits in her sights, however the existence of a few more remained possible.

If Raccelline was actually a normal girl, they’d likely have to give in or risk her death.

But her power wasn’t merely limited to strength, her defences also matched a gold ranked warrior, and that meant one obvious thing.

Korridan jumped backwards to shield Raccelline’s face. She could block whatever they fired at her body, but eyes and other orifices were a different matter altogether. At the same time. Rebecca fled into the woods, hiding in the foliage no different from the bandits, but invoking a level of stealth that they simply couldn’t match. All over, random archers hiding in the back fell to the ground one after the other, and nothing they did could stop her attacks,

Mala cast a spell without any warning. A thick darkness descended on the field in just seconds and blocked the sight of anyone nearby. Bronze ranks have some senses in the dark, but it could never compare to a steel ranked warrior’s.

The archers became blind, and fired wildly into the dark fog which now filled the road and part of the forest on either side. However, things already turned for the worse, and some figures who’d been hiding further away rushed over, jumping headfirst into the fog and immediately meeting the five who fought inside. One focused on Mala and Darak, knowing that a wizard and priest weren’t excellent in melee but should never be underestimated.

Meanwhile, another took on Korridan whilst Jaren was left to fend off almost a dozen bronze ranked warriors charging into the fog to slaughter them all.

At the very least, archer fire decreased noticeably.

Things appeared fine at first. Mala and Darak were no pushovers in melee, and the help of a magical tool kept the opposing steel ranked opponent on edge, meanwhile, the other who fought Korridan simply couldn’t break through the bulky man’s defences. When it came to skills, the two were evenly matched as well, and it seemed that the bandit’s only weakness was just that he still had to worry about the archer in the black fog at all times.

Even whilst a dozen troops were picked off, he had time to fire a few arrows towards the bandit’s eyes simply to force their momentum to slow, giving their team an important edge.

But, none expected a third steel rank bandit to enter the fray.

His target was none other than the small girl hidden behind Korridan the whole time, not exactly scared but clearly a bit confused and worried about her friends.

Before anyone even react, the bandit already had a blade across Raccelline’s throat and caused all of them to freeze for a second. Did they stop fighting, or risk that the man’s blade harmed her?

Well, obviously they couldn’t do the latter. So what did…

A fountain of blood exploded out of the black fog, everyone in the vicinity saw how flesh, bone, and blood rocketed upwards and outwards, forming a heavy mist in the sky before quickly raining down. Everyone was left in shock at the scene, stopping the battle for a few minutes until the voice came from the forest again, but it didn’t seem necessary as some bandits already began to run for their lives, especially the two other steel ranked warriors.

“It’s a transformed gold rank. Get away you fucking fools!” The voice cut off and Mala sensed the spells which emitted his voice explode. Every bandit nearby began to run wildly, and Mala lifted the black veil to reveal everyone in fine condition… On their side that is.

The bodies of at least 14 bronze ranked warriors littered the road, each with either one arrow debilitating or killing them outright. However, it was the headless corpse besides Raccelline which caught their attention, as well as the shower of blood all around her from where the fountain had fallen.

“I just punched lightly… Like you told me. I promise! It was only a weak one…” She whimpered to herself as though she’d made a mistake, the group’s silence certainly didn’t help that suggestion either. But after a few seconds, Mala went up to the young girl on the verge of tears to comfort her.

She held Raccelline’s bloodstained locks and hushed her with, “You did very well and it’s okay that you were frightened. You really saved us there too, so let's get you cleaned up and celebrate a bit. Sounds good?” Raccelline dug her head into Mala’s shoulder and nodded gently, her complete apathy to gore was almost astounding as is.

“Does the smell not bother you?” Out of curiosity, Jaren asked a question as they gathered anything of immediate value from the slain bandits, and Mala used a few water spells to clean off the group.

“Not really… I used to have issues smelling everything, but dad helped with that. Now it just smells a bit bad.” While she spoke shyly, her head popped up to look at the others’ reactions but mainly stared at the ground.

The others, having improved their sense of smell through evolutions, never really noticed this problem themselves. But for a young child who never trained in their life? It was no wonder her father kept her in a greenhouse effectively, with senses running rampant, ordinary life would’ve been hellish for her. Ordinary by what they imagined nobles and royalty to do, that is.

“There we go, all clean. You lot find anything good?” Mala frisked Raccelline’s silky hair a bit to check for any remaining ‘debris’ or stains, but found it clean as the day prior. Meanwhile, the group collected some Beginner skill books and even a couple Apprentice level ones from the steel rank that died.

But besides the weapon from the dead steel rank, nothing else really enticed the group, certainly not enough to haul it to the nearest city and go through the tedious process of selling it. To give an idea on why it’s tedious:

First, they had to report the weapons’ sources, then pay a tax on selling them in a city designed for civilians. From there, it took at least a day to get the weapons all appraised, on top of costing a fair bit, unless they purchased a sort of ‘package’ deal from one of various appraisers. They would then take a cut of any sales, normally 10-15% of the total deal, and then, on top of all that, they actually needed the weapons to sell.

The first few steps are fine, but that last one is the sole reason that adventurers never bothered mass selling the equipment of bandits. At best they could give such things to the city guard for some easy reputation, making entry and exit a lot easier.

So, they left the equipment in a pile by the roadside.

With everyone else’s stains cleaned up, and the bandit corpses burnt to ash in case something transformed them into undead or brought wild beasts to this road, they set off with the only marker of such a battle being some bloodstains in the forest left by Rebecca.

Not that this fight impacted the bandits too much. The increasing chaos meant more members were always recruitable, although the death of a steel tier did lead them to increasing caution, whether that was good or bad is probably a story those robbed in the future would tell…