Looking at the map and the dense marking spread out on it, Lucien realized that the information he requested was indeed the correct way to go.
Both out and in the imperial family, as long as you didn't want to be chased down and killed, killing without a reason is not the way. Killing a person openly in such a hierarchical society, meant you are lowering the workforce of someone up the ladder, at first it would be the superior of the victim coming, killing him would bring someone behind him and so on till you are over your head and running for your life.
For Lucien, looking for those loners with no power behind them, would be too time consuming as he has to investigate first, and even then getting exposed during the act would get himself a bad reputation and in a sticky situation with all the righteous fanatics. So what do you do when you can't beat them, you join them.
The idea was to just kill those people who deserved to die, according to the empire, the ones harming the economy and the commoners the most, bandits.
Nobody would care for bandits, especially the small weak groups, some of the stronger ones might be under some influential figure in the capital, using them as a dirty hand to finish some jobs. But the weak ones were not worth the risk, as the matter might leak.
So the information he requested was the locations of the bases of those groups and the strength of the strongest one in the group. From guard to guard gathering such information was not hard, especially on the weak groups.
The only reason they still existed was that, everyday a lot of bandits were born and killed, it was almost impossible to finish them off, since when there were benefits, there would be someone to collect them.
The bases marked were probably just assumed areas, where there is more bandit activity than other places, not actual bases.
There was a risk on this approach, wrong information. He might get himself killed, if there is a stronger bandit that was unknown till then.
But the risk was still better than entering Myriad Beast Mountain, as walking out when you are below Rank 3, is considered a miracle.
Looking at the map, Lucien drew crosses on all Rank 2 to filter them out, Rank 3 bandits were rarity and a guard wouldn't know about them anyway, most of the people after reaching Rank 3 are given enough benefits by one of the empires to join, enough to cut ties with the bandit world and become righteous.
After crossing out impossible areas, he focused on Rank 0s, as it would be more beneficial on the time-value ratio. And he would still be fine, if a Rank 1 popped out all of a sudden.
The closest one was more than a 1000 kilometers away, as staying near the capital was a bad move for a weak bandit group.
'My goal for this one year, should be 20 000 existence points, Darkness manual for Rank 2 and 100 Soul.'
'If an average commoner bandit is a 70kg or 140 existence points, it would take me almost 150 of them. This will be hard in the span of a year, as I have to travel between the marked areas as well.'
'If I include a Rank 0 bandit in the mix, 70kg is already 700 existence points as it is 5x more, so I would need to kill around 30 Rank 0 bandits to meet my goal.'
'I'll judge based on the situation, tomorrow I head towards the closes one and judge the feasibility.'
Lucien didn't think too much as he didn't have enough information on hand, seeing is the best proof.
The moon came and went, there was no accidents during the night.
As the first ray of sun showered the capital, Lucien had already walked out of the inn and the capital itself, he was already in the distance, heading towards the first point of interest.
As he had 10 Agility, his normal walking speed was already 10km/h, but as he was still too close to the eyes of his father, who probably knew how he looked disguised, he kept at walking at common speed, just in case.
As he drew away what he considered far enough, he sped up.
With his current speed and need to rest, Lucien would need about a week to reach his first bandit infested area, and he would need to cross one forest area, as the capital main road was going in another direction, and circling around the forest would take too long.
Since it was quite far from the Myriad Beast Mountain, it wouldn't contain strong beasts, probably Rank 1 would be highest, but most of the population would be wild common animals.
'I could have a snack along the way to get me going, before the main meal.'
'Still being cautious, is a must, accidents happen.'
'If I can get some existence points, I should look into some methods of using my strong Soul as an attack. It would be an useful trump card.'
As it was the main road going trough the whole country, it was guarded quite well, there were watch towers spread alongside and getting attacked by a beast or a bandit was just downright incredibly bad luck. Which bandit in their right mind would decide to plunder here, where the shipments of the exalted figures in the capital were going through, even the strong groups were not that stupid. So the occasional attack was by desperate group, which disappears not long after.
4 days later, Lucien reached the point where he had to go off the road and into the forest, on the other side of the forest was the area he was aiming for.
The forest was named Dusky Woods, and as he walked inside the atmosphere changed a bit, it was gloomier. The change startled Lucien a bit, but he didn't hesitate and proceeded cautiously.