It was quick, but David did have a mission lined up that he wanted to bring Harlan along for.

Bandits, not work that was too often given to what were still generally considered children, but not exactly rare. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that Harlan would be involved with a mission like this.

“Was I really needed for this?”

“You’re good at splitter warmagic, between the two of us and Shelly in the trees, they won’t know what hit them. Just a flash of darkness and they are done.”

“Hostages?”

“That is the other reason. You have invisibility, and whatever it is that lets you see people though walls with a frightening level of accuracy.”

“Alright. Let’s find the bandit camp and get out of here.”

There was one thing that Harlan really did enjoy about the frontier, the great forests full of trees with branches so large that you could, and some people did, build towns off the forest floor.

Though today, their use was to block the vision of any lookouts down below.

Harlan raised his hand, warning of guards in the trees.

He lazily floated to the men and then lowered himself.

“Fuck, why is is so cold up here.”

“The northern mountains start in about 200 miles, we are just getting the downwind of it. Don’t be such a fucking pansy about it, I tell you, I served up there for a year ya know, whole place is so cold it’d freeze the tits off a wyvern.”

“Do wyverns have tits?”

The older man pushed the younger a little.

“It’s a turn of phrase, northmen have a million of the damn things. Besides, think, we get first pick after the boss is done with the girls for sitting up in some cold trees for a day, think of that warmth if you’re so damn cold.”

Harlan heard what he needed to hear.

The men did not have an active aura, so Harlan simply crushed their heads, catching each drop of blood.

It was hard to call this a bandit camp, they had high walls, artillery, and couldn't be anything less than 500 men down there.

Harlan thought about just turning the men to dust with void, but he had a better idea.

But before he went back to the group, he wanted to get a closer look.

So long as he didn’t make loud noises or cast magic, his invisibility would hold, at least he hoped so, since he had been upgrading it as much as he could since he was given the component spells.

Just running a rough headcount, there were exactly 529 people, with a 20 to 1 gender split.

There was an underground area where Harlan felt a lot of fear and hate, which is where he believed the hostages were, and then another 5 were in a large cabin.

It wasn’t good, Harlan could watch, hope that they all end up in the same spot, but that was a waste of time.

“Step away, calm down.”

He hadn’t realized that he began charging a nova.

“I know that it hurts to deal with hostages, but think about this logically. What defenses have we already seen? Nothing against earth magic really, they haven’t broken your stealth, their weapons and formations are clearly designed to hold off army detachments, not highly skilled mages.”

“Why hasn’t this place been turned into a crater yet?”

“Maybe corrupt nobles, maybe corrupt commanders. This place isn’t huge, patrols probably aren’t common. Maybe the few that did find this place got paid off or killed.”

When he got back to Shelly and the others the two men, minus their heads, were following behind.

“They have hostages. Women, plural, I didn’t torture the men for information, I just overheard them before I killed them. This also isn’t some small group, I counted over 500 bandits, they have walls, guns, artillery.”

“Shit. The request said we were looking at 40, 50 men in a temporary camp. Shelly, is this where we were supposed to go?”

She cast a few spells to determine their location.

“I must’ve gotten turned around somewhere, we are about 2 miles off where we should be.”

“The request must’ve been for a forward base, the women are probably from a recent raid, bandits like to rotate out the women to avoid dealing with births. We retreat for today, put in a request for the local noble to have his men look at the place, decide how many people they need for this kinda job.”

Harlan’s eyes went black.

“How long do those women have?”

“2 weeks, though most will lose the will to live in far less time.”

“How long for the nobles army?”

“A week of bickering about whose responsibility it is because the camp is right on the border of 4 barons. Then 2 weeks of preparations. Then another 2 weeks for the real army to arrive because the baron will fail.”

“I’m going to handle this.”

“Do what you wish, I am only to provide context for your own choices.”

“Thank you.”

Harlan sharply inhaled as he woke back up.

“Go. I’m staying.”

“What, no, Harlan, come back with us. You can’t-”

“I can’t stand by while the bickering and incompetence of nobles gets these women killed after they are already wishing for death. As I said, go back if you want, I’m not abandoning them.”

“You aren’t abandoning them, you can’t save anyone if you are dead.”

“I am death to men like this, see you soon.”

Harlan stepped off the tree, vanishing into thin air.

The bodies in the tree simply stood there.

As much as the others might’ve wanted to stay and assist, their parents had rules that the academy must follow, and in the case of a mission going too far beyond the parameters of the original request, they were to be pulled back by force if needed. Shelly broke the nose of one man before David stepped in and dragged her through the gate kicking and screaming.

Harlan killed animals, bandits, whatever he needed to.

They were organic mass which he needed.

As much as it drove him mad, he waited. If the patrols went missing, they might get suspicious, lockdown, kill the hostages or put them under heavier guard.

Harlan needed information on the leader.

He was middle aged, tall, well built, more the image of a knight than a soldier turned bandit.

The man glanced in his direction more than once, setting off Harlan’s sixth sense.

If Harlan had to guess, whatever this mystic force was, it clashed between the two of them and while both of them could tell something was wrong, they didn’t actually know what it was.

For Harlan, there were very few people he met which caused a reaction like this.

Breken jumped to his mind, he hadn’t met the man in months, perhaps he was stronger, perhaps he wasn’t.

But if that man was on a level not unlike him, then he needed to be careful. He still remembered that man who nearly killed him, he was barely a mage, likely only ever used magic for the sake of cycling mana through his body to strengthen it. Harlan had lost, the man had died, but Harlan considered it a failure that he didn’t kill him soon enough to save that other boy.

That night, a very fortunate event took place. The leader had passed out after too much drinking and unspeakable acts, and one of the women made a run for it, well, not a run per say, rather she snuck out as quietly as she could.

Harlan got close, using his empathy to lower the desire of these men to investigate what that shadow that passed near them was more than a few times.

Then she got to the gate and realized there was no way out, no 4 guards were split between 2 towers.

Harlan couldn’t cast magic from stealth other than a few exceptions.

Telekinesis was the only somewhat ranged magic that didn’t interfere with the delicate balance required for his invisibility to remain active.

Hover and imbibing were both considered body magic, which meant that they would affect him closely enough that it didn’t break the spell.

Harlan morphed his rod into a thin and wide disc then gave it a toss with telekinesis before he broke his stealth with wind magic that let the disc change its path and cut the men down.

Because of height discrepancies the men were not all perfectly decapitated, but they were cut in a way to avoid them being able to scream or cast magic, the chances of any of them being good enough to let off anything Harlan couldn’t snuff out while their bodies were cut apart was low.

Harlan cracked open the gate, hoping there wasn’t some mundane alarm stuck to the thing at night that he missed, and waved to the woman.

Though she would normally avoid doing so, Harlan lowered her fear of him specifically to get here outside.

Once they were outside Harlan put her to sleep and hid her under a veil while he gathered the bodies of the men he killed.

Everyone was safely tucked away in a den Harlan made at the base of one of the trees, so he finally woke the women up after he gave her a check up and cleaned her somewhat.

She screamed at first, seeing the bodies and then Harlan in his full armor.

“You are safe now. I got you out of that camp.”

“Fuck that, I got myself out.”

The woman was well toned and her will seemed strong.

Though he believed it was little more than a mix of adrenaline and shock forcing her to ignore what had happened and focus on vengeance instead.

“Were you a soldier?”

“I am a soldier, and as soon as I get out I’m going to go back and cut that bastard's cock off.”

“You talk like a soldier.”

“Are you from the local nobles house? Fuck, finally they send some back up, the village I was guarding is gone, looted down to the nails. How many men do we have? Do you have spare equipment?”

“You have me, and you are not fighting. Stay here, I attack at dawn, I can’t let them tighten their security before my plan goes into action.”

“You should’ve just left me, I can handle some abuse if it gets the rest of the women out with a better plan. I’m going back in, attack when you have everything perfect.”

She staggered to her feet, the moment she made it clear that she was a liability Harlan started with a sleep spell.

He let the cold facade drop, there was nobody but deadmen to see his hands shake and his eyes mist with tears.

It was too late, he was too late, had he been stronger, he could’ve done this faster, had an army on standby and the power to cast a voidgate, he could’ve had this done in less than an hour instead of a day and a half.

“Stop blaming yourself, you are just a kid.”

“I’m not a… no, I said I would stop pretending. Be honest, do you think my plan is going to work?”

“You can’t know until you try, you haven’t made something like this before and you are only going off of stories of these things.”

“Do you think I should risk another day.”

“As a soldier, yes, it isn’t worth the risk. You barely know anything about the enemy strength, you barely prepared, and you are just one person who is going to need to work through the night with less material than you wanted.”

“And as my friend?”

“Make a fucking example of them.”

Harlan was ready to go out to the first den he dug out; he had sent flesh golems into the woods to gather materials, though he didn’t know exactly what all they would find.

When he was about to leave however, his amulet lit up.

There were plenty of people that this could be.

“Archmage Changeling, I wish I had called earlier, but I didn’t want to risk revealing your location, and I had a lot of work to go through. I’m told that you have refused to return to us and let a larger force be assembled.”

“I will handle this. Thank you for your concern, Headmaster Selvis.”

“I believe that you will, yet I do want to ask you, is this really the best thing you can do? Come back, spend a day and a night making golems here, and we can have them gated in.”

Harlan had reached the first den, and saw what had been gathered.

“I have everything that I need here. I’m going to attack the bandits at dawn, if you manage to convince anyone to come, warn them beforehand that monsters will be at the battle.”

“Flesh Golems?”

“Goodnight, Headmaster Selvis.”

Harlan cut off the connection and began patting the head of what was once a boar, that was before the modifications.

“How did you find something like this? And here I thought my luck was bad.”

Fucking gate guards, easiest job in the camp and all of them got eaten by monsters or something, left nothing but blood behind, then they let one of the whores get away as well. If they were alive, I’d skin them.

“Shank, did we ever find the guys who disappeared in the trees either?”

“No luck, didn’t even find blood. Think it’s wyrmlings again?”

“Maybe, they are messy eaters, fast too. Make sure that everyone is aware we might have a problem.”

“Nightstalkers?”

“The men in the tree disappeared during the day, probably grabbed by some giant bird.”

“Hell of a coincidence, losing 6 men to predators outside of breeding season.”

“There are no coincidences in the frontier, something has the taste for humans. And get that doctor here, I think one of the women slipped something into my drink last night, can’t get rid of this hangover.”

“Uh, boss, you seeing that, or did they slip something in my drink too.”

I would’ve called it a Lindwurm, but it was like someone created one out of spare parts after having only been described one and then had that thing fuck a centipede.

“GET THE ARTILLERY.”

It crawled up the trees and started picking men off with precise bolts of acid.