The next day Jen and Sam left the city early in the morning. Sam was continually increasing the output and dunking his arms in water. It was taking him all day to run his experiments because of the amount of mana he had to infuse in his arms. Unlike his space rings which simply stored and released wind that was naturally collected, the enchantment runes on Sam’s arms required massive amounts of mana to actually create the wind and force.

“It’s getting late, after this test we need to go back in the city before the gates close. I think my body enchantments are almost half full with mana this time,” Sam said, as he prepared to launch twin columns of air at the nearest trees. The trees were as thick as a man, but the air power from his enchantments blew them so far over, they almost snapped. “Thankfully, there’s no recoil with spells like there is with shotguns and most other projectile weapons,” Sam said to Jen while they readied to leave.

As they were heading back to the city, Jen thought towards Sam, “Heads up, there are three men in front of us about a mile out, with three more behind us about the same distance.”

“Man, her psych skill is getting crazy powerful,” Sam thought, as he looked at Jen with admiration.

Jen ordered Sam, “Power up your spells, but don’t push more power than we practiced. We can handle this without doing something crazy. Get ready to pull your rifle from your ring. I want you to turn around and start walking towards the men behind us, while I flank them.”

“Jen, why don’t we just lose them with my forgetme charms?” Sam asked.

“I’ve intercepted their coms, one of them has a skill that allows them to watch people from extremely far away. He was up in a tree watching us this afternoon, and they’ve prepared an ambush while waiting for us to leave. They want to kidnap us for your or my powers; they aren’t sure which of us was blasting trees over, and they want to take us back to their bandit gang. We can’t let them live with what they know, and how they would use that knowledge.” Jen explained, as Sam nodded his head in agreement.

They both powered up their forgetme charms for the confusion it would cause. Sam moved directly towards the three men in the rear, while Jen flanked them.

Jen was getting closer to the three men; the men were about 1/4 mile away when she was able to hack their character sheets and get a full sense of their levels and skills. “They are level 10, 10, and 11 brute fighters with their highest stat being strength at 13; they haven’t spotted us yet. Don’t fire your rifle unless you have to. I’m going to jam their coms when we get closer, so they can’t alert the other three,” Jen sent to Sam.

“Jen, I’ve spotted them, and I’ve dropped into position. I have them in my crosshairs, waiting on your signal,” Sam sent to Jen.

“Stay in place and only engage if you have to,” Jen replied.

Sam watched with stunned amazement as Jen moved with her full agility and Ninja skill; she was so fast he had to use his overclock ability to follow her movement.

“Tamako has trained you; don’t hesitate. Make your every move and strike count,” Jen thought to herself.

The men were just walking next to each other, and Jen could sense their thoughts of rape and torture. Jen blurred up behind them and used two katana swords enchanted by Sam with sharpness, strength, and poison to swiftly decapitate all three of the bandits. She then blurred out of range, just in case one of them had some hidden reflection skill that might work automatically even after their death. No, they were all dead without a sound. Jen looted the bodies, but it was just junk.

Sam and Jen turned towards the men in the other direction. It was rinse and repeat.

As they walked back toward the city gates, Jen could see that Sam was worried about her. He was usually quiet after shit like this, but she wanted to reassure him and explained, “Sam, those men were evil; they were definitely going to rape and torture us, and they clearly had raped, tortured, and killed others before. I didn’t just Log them or bombard them with arrows because I need to get real world training with my Ninja skills. I’m going to be OK.”

Sam nodded at Jen. It did make him feel better that she wasn’t going all serial killer on him and that she also wasn’t going to let the violence crush her with regret. He changed the subject, “Tamako has definitely paid us in full for opening those mana channels; she has brought your Ninja skills up to another level. However, I really need to fix the enchantment on your swords. I just don’t understand why the poison enchantment starts to glow when you swing them at top speed.”

“Tamako says it’s better to have the poison and the glow, than no poison. She also thinks the strange glow might scare away some attackers.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Jen’s response, and she relented with the truth, “O.K. she really said to get rid of the stupid glow no matter how cool it looks.”

Sam chuckled at Jen and pulled her close into a side hug, “It does look pretty bad-ass when you use them.”

As they approached the City gates, Slim came up behind them and said, “Why do you get to kill the bandits, but I don’t?”

Jen thought about his request a moment and said, “If you know where their main bandit camp is, and you want to dish out some justice, go ahead, just don’t hurt any innocent people.”

As he bounded off, Slim replied, “I’m not really sure ‘justice’ is motivating me, but whatever you want to call it. See you in a couple of days, but I’m not splitting the loot with anyone!”

Jen groaned, not sure what she just unleashed on the bandits, but the rape and torture she had seen in their minds kept her from calling out and stopping him.