At first, there were a lot of other people traveling alongside their wagons. Most of the others traveled faster, since they were empty while leaving; the wagons headed the other way were even slower than they were, heaped to the top with things from outside the city.

What traveled to and from a city wasn’t something Serenity had paid much attention to in the past, so he spent some time watching, trying to guess what was in each wagon. Would it be more food or something more interesting, like dye or metal?

Most of the wagons held food, and most of the ones that didn’t hold food had other agricultural products like wood or yarn. Stone and metal were a distant third, while anything more valuable than that was probably in one of the lighter wagons that didn’t let Serenity peek into their contents simply by looking at the wagon. There were several times in the first three days where he felt something magical travel past the group on the way to the city.

Only one of the magic signatures was particularly identifiable. Even then, all he could tell was that it was a continuously-powered spell or Skill somehow related to his SpaceTime Affinity. It covered the entire storage area of the wagon it was in, making Serenity wonder if perhaps it was a spatial compression of some sort. He’d have liked to have the chance to get a better look at it, but he was only able to watch it for a few minutes.

For the first few days, they passed two or three small towns each day and stopped at one they reached at about dinnertime. Serenity was shocked by the towns; other than the first town they passed, which seemed to be mostly mining related, they were clearly all tiny agricultural towns. None seemed to have either walls or any particular concentration of fighting ability; in fact, Serenity was fairly confident some of the adults he saw were only Tier One even though they were clearly in their forties or fifties and should have advanced to a higher Tier no matter what Path they chose.

Had they chosen a Path that simply couldn’t progress at all with what they ended up doing? That could happen, but Serenity knew it wasn’t common enough to cause towns of people to become stuck. No, it had to be something else.

On the fourth travel day, while they were traveling through a lightly forested area well between villages, he decided to ask Xarx, since he was currently riding in the wagon Xarx was driving. “Why are there so many people in these towns stuck at mid-Tier One?”

Xarx looked over at Serenity and raised his eyebrows. “This part of the lowlands has a lot of people who follow the old Saktiin tradition. One of its tenets is that Tiers feed the formation of dungeons, so refusing to Tier up is an honorable choice, since it will help prevent the danger of a dungeon opening near you and your home.”

Xarx shook his head. “Mostly, it means that people who Tier up leave or are ostracized after the first time someone sees them doing something that can’t be done at Tier One. It’s somewhat accepted in strangers, since we’re only passing through, but it’s still better to avoid being blatant about it. There are some that won’t deal with strangers at all, but we’re on the main road so it should be fine.” He paused and a slight smile appeared on his face. “It’s good to know you can tell Tier and how far along they are.”

Serenity shrugged. “It’s not exactly difficult.”

Xarx chuckled. “There I’d disagree, but I know how much effort it took me. Did you have a teacher, or did you have to pick it up on your own?”

Serenity started to say he’d picked it up on his own, but before he’d gotten past the first “I-”, he stopped himself. It was true, but did he want to say that? He remembered learning it mostly on his own, but he couldn’t remember exactly when it happened. He’d learned it by Tier Three … hadn’t he? He suddenly wasn’t certain, so he probably shouldn’t talk about it. “I shouldn’t answer that.”

Xarx’s slight smile turned into a grin. “Of course. Don’t want to get into any family secrets, after all.”

Where did that come from? Serenity supposed it didn’t matter; “family secrets” was as good an explanation for why he didn’t want to talk about where and how he was trained as anything else.

Serenity leaned back and went back to the lowlevel spellwork he’d been practicing for the past few days whenever there wasn’t anything else to do. Categorizing his different spellform components and determining which ones used or could use essence was more complex than he’d expected. It turned out that most of the complex sections weren’t complex because they were affecting essence and even some of the simple sections did actually affect essence. It wasn’t as clear-cut as he’d thought.

When that became boring, he’d swap to working on his truly horrendous Essence Control. He wanted to eventually be able to build entire spellforms from essence, but so far that felt like a pipe dream. Admittedly, Serenity could remember the same feeling from back when he first started learning to make spellforms from mana.

It was less than an hour later when Xarx set a hand on Serenity’s knee to get his attention. “So what Tier are the people hiding in the bushes?”

Xarx was clearly keeping watch as he drove, which was the way it should be. When it was Serenity’s turn to drive, he’d keep an eye out for trouble as well.

Serenity pushed his aura out, making sure to keep it weak so it wouldn’t be all that noticeable. It extended quite a bit farther than he’d expected; it was notably larger than when he first returned to Earth. “Mostly Tier Two. The … no, three Tier Threes. One Tier Four, but the Tier feels hollow.”

The Tier Four had probably pushed himself up as quickly as possible, not taking the time to fill out his Attributes. It was popular, but Serenity didn’t like the Path. Sure, you could beat anyone else with the same number of Paths, but anyone else at your Tier would stomp all over you since you didn’t really have the attributes to back up your few high-Tier Skills. Worse, it tended to leave you weak elsewhere, since people who did that never took the time and practice to truly master their Tier.

“Take care of the Tier Four. If you can, back us up after that.” Xarx whispered as he slowed the erkal down. They didn’t have a good way to get a message to the other wagon, but slowing down was the agreed on signal to get their attention quietly.

Serenity whispered back, “Is there any reason to keep them alive?”

Xarx shook his head. “Not if they’re bandits.If they let us by without attacking then sure, but otherwise there’s no reason. It’s not worth trying to get them to a city where they’d just be hung anyway.”

Serenity nodded. That was about what he’d expected; few worlds had problems with people cleaning up whatever they ran into in the wilds on their own. The ones that did were usually very, very strict about it, however. There were worlds where even fighting in the middle of nowhere could get you in grave trouble.

Moments later, an arrow thudded into the wagon near Xarx. It was sooner than Serenity had hoped, but well within the range he’d expected.

The archer stepped onto the road from where he was “hidden” behind a tree. “Halt!”

Serenity tried to hide his grin. It wasn’t really appropriate. The archer was the one Tier Four ahead of them. This was going to be simple. Getting them to run would be enough; bandits would avoid prey that was too difficult unless the payoff was enough for it to be worth it, and two wagons simply wasn’t. While Xarx pulled the erkal pulling the wagon to a stop, Serenity leaned over. “Is getting them to run when I kill the Tier Four good enough?”

“If you can.” Xarx’s expression didn’t waver, but his doubt was clear even in a whisper.

Serenity couldn’t stop his grin at that. He was pretty confident he could.

“Get off your wagons and surrender!” The archer gestured and several other arches stepped out of their hiding spots.

Serenity didn’t bother to hide his grin, now. “I have a counteroffer.” The words were, if anything, louder than the bandit leader’s words. He wanted everyone to hear what he had to say next, so he shouted as he pulled his Incarnate into his aura. “RUN or DIE.” Serenity threw a Death Magebolt at the single Tier Four.

He wasn’t certain one would be enough; if the Tier Four had properly spent his time increasing his attributes and gained some resistance as he leveled, it shouldn’t be. With how hollow he felt, Serenity thought there was a decent chance one would be enough; two would certainly do it.

The bandit leader fell over, without even taking a step.

Serenity looked around. Everyone was frozen, both on his side and the bandits’. “I said RUN!”

That did it. The bandits that he could see turned and fled into the forest.

Serenity hopped off the wagon and went looking for more bandits. He could tell that there were some hiding nearby, probably still frozen. It took him a little time to get to all of them, but most of them ran.

Two of the Tier Threes attacked him as a pair. They were each better consolidated than the bandit leader. One of them skidded an arrow off of Serenity’s hidden armor, tearing the clothing he was wearing and revealing the dragonscales. Serenity threw a Death Magebolt at him and he staggered but didn’t go down.

Another Tier Three ran at Serenity; he must have thought that the archer bandit was keeping Serenity busy and that closing on the mage was a good choice. His technique was simple and showed a lack of training, so Serenity was able to simply sidestep the attempted stab, knock the man’s knifearm out of the way, then stab him with one of the duplicating knives.

A second arrow hit Serenity’s armor as the knife-wielding bandit fell. Serenity shook his head. “You should have run.”

He doubted the archer could even hear him.

A second Death Magebolt was all it took to put the Tier Three archer out. Serenity doubted he was dead, but that wouldn’t matter for long.

There weren’t any more bandits left in the nearby trees, so Serenity pulled his Incarnate, emotions, and presence back out of his noticeable aura. He thought he might have overdone it a bit. The two erkal were both still frozen as if they’d seen a larger predator; the three humans he was traveling with hadn’t left their seats yet either, even though he’d had plenty of time to shoo the bandits away. “It’s safe now.”

“A-are you sure? That was…” Andarit found her voice first. “I’m not sure what that was.”

“That was something I don’t want to fight.” Xarx wasn’t the first one to speak, but he seemed to be the first one to move. “You aren’t really Tier Three, are you? No Tier Three can do that.”

Serenity sighed. He was going to have to reveal one of his secrets here, wasn’t he? It was either that or leave them thinking he was a lot higher Tier than he was.

Well, Andarit already knew he was a dragon, which made that the easiest thing to reveal. He’d probably reveal it at some point anyway. He was terrible at keeping secrets. “That’s … not entirely true. It’s probably true that an ordinary Tier Three human couldn’t do that.”

“You’re saying that was a bloodline ability?” Xarx still sounded doubtful.

Serenity shook his head. “No, I’m saying I’m not human.” He glanced at the others. Ceney had turned to look, at least, even if she hadn’t moved. “I’m a dragon. Walking around as a dragon isn’t very convenient, so…” He shrugged. “I can show you this evening if you want. It’s a little embarrassing.”

Andarit started laughing at that. Serenity could feel himself flush, but he wasn’t going to explain. They’d understand when they saw him.