All around Lucas silence reigned as he and his party approached the village that they were tasked to investigate, the night around here devoid of the usual chatter of wildlife, which in itself was a sign something was amiss, even without all the information they gathered in the previous village. Lucas was prepared for almost anything by now, his mind going through the possibilities, trying to remember all of the tidbits he heard from Bruce about the state of the world. When he stated his wonderings, Ted was the first to answer.

“It looks like a fairly standard story, especially in remote parts. One asshole or another decides he has “divine right to rule” or similar bullcrap, and stir up a lot of shit. The asshole usually dies, but he leaves a lot of smaller scale assholes, creating a never ending conflict”

“The trouble here is that this isn’t a remote part, at least not in usual meaning” Chen interjected “this here is close to the most of civilized places” he finished.

“Only thing that matters is System – approved citizenships, and even that is not a guarantee” Ted said, his voice closing to the whisper, which was so out of the character for him that Lucas could almost visibly see all the shit he and Maggie saw during their travels. Which begged another question, why where they lagging behind him when they met the first time, a question Lucas immediately asked.

“I don’t know, mate” Lucas said sincerely.

“The System is marching forward while we fight for scraps” Chen said darkly “we obviously weren’t ready for the change of this scale and we still fail to adapt to this new world we find ourselves in” he finished. With that, the conversation died down, leaving Lucas to ponder everything he heard, realizing how lucky he was to spend his youth in relative safety of Camp Hearth and starting to realize just how much a sanctioned System settlement is worth. Reluctantly, he made a mental note to further investigate the matter with Bruce, resigning himself to the fact he would have to receive a lecture about politics, which he usually avoided like the plague.

His thoughts were interrupted by Maggie’s signal, the one she used when there was unknown contact in their way. He noticed the other members of his party had also noticed, quickly and quietly reshuffling in battle formation. Rushing towards Maggie’s position, Lucas flared his Perception, trying to take in his whole surrounding. First thing he noticed was the terrible smell of charred wood mixed with other smells, sources of which Lucas doubted he would like to know. In the middle of burned down buildings stood few figures, too far away from Lucas to clearly see their features.

“What do you reckon?” Lucas asked Maggie who was still watching the figures intently.

“If I had to guess, they will be hostile. By the looks of it, looters” Maggie informed Lucas before falling back to her usual position in the formation.

“If we can, we should take them alive, at least one of them” Lucas whispered, starting carefully creeping towards the unsuspecting looters. Arriving at the striking distance, Maggie took out her crossbow and immediately firing her arrow, connecting with the knee of the nearest looter, causing the woman to scream in pain and her comrades to draw their weapons and prepare their skills while they were looking for the unseen attackers.

Lucas wasn’t willing to give them a chance to gather their wits, flaring “Aura severing” and finding the aura of one of the looter, severing the man from it and causing him to wordlessly fall to the ground, briefly stunned. That was enough to push the remaining two looters into panic and they started attacking blindly, most of the attacks not landing anywhere near the party, allowing Lucas the time he needed to flare his “Aura severing” and disabling another looter, allowing Maggie to activate her skill that allowed her to fire two arrows into quick succession, hitting both knees of the last standing looter.

“Damn, I guess we are definitely dead weight” Ted said, looking at the quick and efficient battle Lucas and Maggie just waged.

“Shut up and go smack them in the head so we can tie them up” Maggie said, her voice trembling a bit and her cheeks becoming a little red.

“Whoa, sis, no need to yell” Ted said laughing as he took the club and got to work, lightly smacking the downed looter one by one, knocking them unconscious while the rest prepared ropes to tie the looters up.

The looters secured, the party once again split, Maggie and Margaret going to scout a bit and help with any survivors, which Lucas very much doubted they would find. Chen and Ted decided to guard the looters and set up a camp in the meantime, leaving Lucas to go and search some of the buildings alone. The first few didn’t have anything of importance, but as soon as Lucas entered the biggest one, probably a house of the former village leader, he found signs of struggle and bodies, charred to the bone, spreading all over the blackened floors. Going deeper, Lucas could see the number of bodies getting bigger, concentrating on the right side of the room.

“So, the attackers entered here. The villagers rallied to defend, but they were unable to hold their ground before splitting up and being defeated” Lucas analyzed the situation, noting every corpse carried a weapon “so, neither attackers nor the defenders had any casters. That is in line with what I saw back in the village we just came from” Lucas finished his thoughts, realizing he wasn’t fully right. The village leader, one who told them all to come here was some kind of caster. He wondered if the situation was the same in this village.

“It is fair to presume they didn’t massacre the whole village, probably taking captives along the way. There is a high chance they took the leader from here as well” Lucas concluded, exiting the site of the battle and returning to what was now a fully formed camp, Maggie and Margaret also back, reporting finding no survivors, but also no further hostiles. Deciding they have been patient enough, Lucas started roughly shacking one of the looters, the woman who was first to be downed when Maggie engaged.

“Wake up” Lucas yelled when he spotted the woman slowly opening her eyes, hoping to shock her back into the conscious world. Smiling slightly as the woman squirmed and thrashed against the ropes, he was glad his strategy was vindicated.

“Stop that” he ordered with a raised voice, the woman immediately freezing “I would hate to be forced to hurt you more, but I will if I even suspect you are holding anything back from me” he warned the unfortunate woman, who was looking like she was on the verge of the panic attack.

“Who are you? What do you want? You can take anything from this miserable shithole, it doesn’t have much anyway” the woman went into rambling, forcing Lucas to once again stop her by yelling.

“Now, what happened here?” Lucas asked, hopeful the woman wasn’t going to test his patience further.

“Fuck me if I know. I just now we found some juicy targets in this area” the woman responded.

“Juicy how?” Lucas asked

“Rich fucks murdered in the woods, some merchant wagons scattered, stuff like that” the looter responded, her face carrying hope she would be able to get out successfully. She clearly decided Lucas was searching for riches just as she was and by spilling her guts, she would be free, maybe even with a chance to join them.

“Since when?” Lucas asked.

“Dunno, a month or so” the woman responded.

“You see, now I think you are not telling me the whole story” Lucas said menacingly, carefully measuring steps as he approached the woman.

“Wait, hold on. We are locals, we have left our villages to get rich and powerful” the woman confirmed what Lucas suspected “I still don’t know what was happening, but our villages were preparing for war and we took saw chances” she finished.

“And why are they preparing for war?” Lucas asked.

“I wasn’t lying, I don’t know. My village elders were not sharing that with the likes of me” the woman responded, the frustration and fear mixing in her voice.

“You are from the village that attacked here, correct?” Lucas asked, idea forming in his head.

“The three of us, yes. We found the useless sack of bones that is tied next to me after a week into the woods. He claims he comes from the village closest to that fucking dungeon” the woman responded, Lucas finding some note of jealousy in the woman voice. Asking for an explanation, Lucas learned that the village next to the dungeon had been the endpoint for adventurers, thus gaining a lot in terms of economics, leveraging that to unofficially rule over other villages, sometimes with a very heavy hand. That changed when they mysteriously lost their former village leader and cut themselves from the world, leaving Lucas a good guess why the village of the woman’s birth decided to use the chance to grow in strength, challenging their former master. His thoughts were interrupted by the notification from the System, the content of which signified Lucas was thinking in the right direction.

“Quest “Countryside tour” updated

The plot thickens. As your investigation continues, you learn that humans everywhere vie for power, often at the expense of their fellow humans, finding the background mechanisms that explains why have the villages start attacking each other recently.

Hidden awards updated

With that, Lucas left their prisoners, taking some of the food Chen had made for them and went to update his party on what he had learned.