James got up from the bench of carriage and paced back and forth. His nervousness only grew more and more as time went one. He was thinking about every possible dilemma Galahad could be facing with each passing second. James was so caught up in the idea of a killer cow coming to kill him next, he didn't even realize Galahad was walking over the hill and back at the carts.
"Hey James."
"GAAHHHH!" James shrieked and nearly jumped out of his skin when Galahad spoke right next to him. He nearly gave himself a heart attack and leaned against the wooden cart for support.
'Good gods. It's no wonder he kept himself trapped in the library. I just thought this guy was too awkward to socialize with friends.' Galahad thought while waiting for Disark's breathing room steady.
"Sorry, you startled me." He managed to push out before straightening himself up. "How everything go with Arma? Did any monsters attack?"
"Yes actually." Galahad blatantly lied. "A couple of weaker fire salamanders were roaming around and scared the horses into tipping the cart. I got rid of them after a while, the farmer let me use this sword he got from an adventurer not too long ago."
Galahad showed off the newer and less trashed sword. James looked at it, but he didn't have an eye for the worth of weapons, so he didn't think too much of it.
"Oh I see. . . Um, I don't mean to be rude, but what happened with your face?" James asked after finally realizing the wounds were gone from Galahad's face and neck, not even any scar tissue remained on his exposed skin.
Galahad simply smiled and continued on the trail of lies. "I gave the mana orbs from the fire salamanders to the farmer and his son. They looked a little worse for wear and I won quite a bit just the other day from Tekko, figured it would do them good.
Anyway, the farmer wanted to consider it a trade as a thanks for saving them and the orbs, so he gave me a little bit of this magic paste after letting me keep the sword. I don't know what it was, but the little bottle seems to have done its job well. It's unfortunate that there wasn't enough for the rest of me."
Galahad pretended to be disappointed as he gestured at the bandages still wrapped around his arm. Hints of Tekko's blood still smeared across the elbow and now dirt caked quite a bit of the rest.
"Well I'm glad it all ended well." James sighed in relief. "Can we get back on the road, I don't wanna be camped close to a place that's near where monsters are roaming.
"Yeah, we have quite a lot to do." Galahad said while his mind wandered to the direction he saw Arma run.
*****
Back at the Fangs of Nyt's camp.
Dante was sitting in a much smaller tent compared to the pavilion tent. This one only had enough room for him and Arma to sit in two chairs and a table. The larger man appeared to be comforting the boy as he seemed very disheveled and worried about what he just said. The boy just stared blankly at the canteen of water in his hands.
"You're sure that all of them were killed?"
The boy looked up like a lost animal.
"It was, I swear. Croten made us turn back and I saw the whole cliff had fallen down."
Arma pretended the canteen was the cliff as he knocked it over, causing the candle to flicker on the table. He made the noise of 'splat!' To emphasize.
"Croten said he could smell everyone beneath the rocks, and I saw blood pooling out."
Dante could not argue with that point, he just couldn't understand how the lone man managed to get the drop on his eight to do such a thing. Sure they weren't his top team of fighters, but still the lowest level amongst them was twenty-five.
"Hmm, well you were wise to return back to camp. What of the man they had trapped? Surely Croten could find his smell beneath the rubble as well."
Arma shook his violently. "He said it the only thing that remained was the mixed smells of demons and everybody's blood."
Before Arma could elaborate any further, another person stepped into the tent. A hooded figure, wearing a black cloak with elaborate white trims along the seams. The thinly framed figure had bursted in without warning, clearly irritating Dante.
"We need to talk." Commanded the authoritative, female voice beneath the cloak. Her tone and actions clearly expressed a lack of respect towards Dante, something very few might get away with.
Dante gave the woman a nasty look before turning back to Arma. "I need you to stay and rest. When you have a moment, I'll give you a new task for nightfall."
Arma seemed to appreciate Dante's consideration and nodded affirmatively at his leader. The man smirked at the young boy's hardly hidden emotions before exited the tent.
"What do you want?" Dante's voice became rough and less empathic than when he was in the tent.
"What do you think you imbecile? The supplies and weapons you promised my boss should have been shipped out three days ago. Why is it your men are still out trying to complete the request? You just said the other day you'd make your men leave by this morning.
I should not be waiting out in the middle for nowhere if you can't hold up to your end of the deal." She had a growing amount of spite throughout her rant.
Her anger seemed to clash heavily with her accent, indicating she was from one of Etherite's neighboring countries and not native.
Dante kept walking head on with little interest in the concerns of his business partner. Had he known the whole ordeal was going to be this annoying, he'd have stuck to the normal means of selling his stolen goods on the black market.
"Simply asking the Fangs of Nyt for purchasing our plunders will not mean you will get everything you want on a timed schedule. If you want your weapons in a orderly manner, start obtaining your gear from the legal market. I am not your servant." He stopped and turned to the female. He bearded face was clearly frowning at hidden one.
"The Royals of New will not tolerate disrespect Mr. Dante. I had only hoped to find your little group in high working order for our queen, instead all I see is this." She waved her hand at a few drunkards sitting on a packaged tent, too drunk to carry on in the middle of the day.
"Perhaps I should take control." She said as the hand pointing at men and women started glowing with a greyish light. Tendrils of light started stretching from her hand and towards them with an ominous look.
Before the tendrils made it farther than a few feet, Dante grabbed her wrist tightly. His actions caused cloaked woman to lose focus and the mana dispersed back into the air.
"Do not think for a moment that this is a place that allows your disgusting cult. I can gladly tell your queen that misfortune befell you on our journey if you act that ever again. Be wary in a camp filled with greed and not loyalists." Dante's voice sounded calm, but his eyes were alight with rage and fire.
She stared at him from the shadows of her hood in silence. The women only shoved off his arm and walked further into the camp.
*****
Galahad drove the rest of the day, until night nearly fell. Him and James finally set up a camp involving a campfire and sleeping bags to rest in.
James took nearly an hour to fall asleep, Galahad watched him jolt up and twitch in the corner of his vision. The poor guy was so scared of something attacking their convoy's campfire, that he could only fall asleep after exhausting himself with stress and staying up almost all of the previous night.
Once Galahad heard James snoring, he was up and walking in the direction the boy Arma fled. He ventured off the trail and waited till he couldn't see the carriage anymore before running.
After leveling up to nine, Galahad felt himself fully liberated from the pain he had been experiencing for so long. The damage that remained across his neck and face was gone, he no longer had pain stretching across his left side. A pressing weight seemed to have been suffocating him for so long before. The only reason he kept the bandages on his arm were to fool James with his lie.
'It's one thing for me to get a new sword and my face fixed, too much goodwill can seem eerie. Additionally, I don't need him suspicious of the fact I committed murder. . . Although that was technically self defense.'
Galahad had felt something in him stir in his emotions after watching the bandits die from his bursting of mana orbs. It was concern at first, but then he realized something as he brought his blade down on Ashatey's throat.
'Someone in this world who is willing to take the lives of others; should be aware that others will have no problem doing the same back at them.' Galahad let the moral dilemma come and go faster than one of his father's belches.
Galahad didn't even mention the loot of credits and gear stuffed now in his bag. He figured if James somehow saw it, he could play it off as his own stuff he brought with him. He still had no intention of showing him though.
Galahad earned himself very little credits and mana orbs from the bodies, making him assume there was a camp in the first place. The bandits would have stashed all their previous earnings in a more secure spot. If not, he simply killed a group of rookie bandits and he'd have searched all night for profitable no reason.
Right after Galahad finished looting, he realized the melted bodies and placement would leave a strange scenario he could be tied to in the future. So he activated his berserker strength slammed his enhanced fists on the cliffside until enough rocks and dirt came tumbling down on the melted bodies to change the idea about cause of death.
'Figure if someone ever finds these guys, they can chop up the casualties to an accident climbing up or down the cliffside.
Back in the present Galahad was putting some distance between him and the carriage. The farther he was, the quicker he seemed to travel. Each stride was covering over ten feet without fully exerting to his full sprint. Soon he was moving fast enough to kick up dirt as he flew across the ground.
One of the moons was partially eclipsed and the other was fully exposing its light from the black night above. The two white moons lit the open wildlands enough that Galahad didn't need a light crystal to see. Nothing was hindering his search for wherever Arma went.
Galahad picked up on Gigan's angry spout at Arma before the boy ran. The whole group of bandits were using the cliff side created a nearby trap, that meant they had to have been there before, but must have been camped elsewhere. Galahad wanted to find that camp and set a bit of his own ambush against them.
'I can only hope that boy made a beeline straight for the camp. I'm not gonna have a lot of time to take and run.'
Galahad wanted to see what kind of goods the bandit camp had and if he could possibly steal all their orbs. Leveling up was his biggest priority.
'They use these roads as hunting grounds, my guess is they rotate between various roads to keep off guards and earn decent keep by outnumbering their victims. I'm mean how else would they manage to be so weak, yet carry such nice gear.'
Sure enough Galahad was right on all accounts, the intuition of his more combat based thinking had seemed to be dialed up to maximum power. He hoped that feeling never stopped.
After an hour of running through the night. Galahad made it to a summit view that looked for miles out in every direction. He found himself a vantage point to search for the bandit camp, hoping they were confident enough to light fires for a source of light.
Sure enough, Galahad spotted flickering lights in the northern valleys. The camp had sandwiched itself between a steep hill and a river, giving only two points of entry to guard. The front and back of the camp were his only spots of infiltration.
'Huh clever, leaving only two spots means either one turns into an exit if the other is attacked. These guys certainly know how to use the terrain to their advantage.'
Galahad crawled through the grass and made his way to an entrance with the river facing his left side. Once he was only twenty meters away, he saw two men standing as sentries. Both looked very displeased at the fact they were sober.
Occasionally either one of the two would look back at the camp and sigh at the sight of the others being drunk and merrily singing at the fires. Many were off tune or too drunk to even sing the right song, leaving a loud clutter of noises in the air.
'Good gods, they extremely confident about their hiding spot. Too bad irony is about to end that reign of cockiness.' Galahad thought as he darted at the guards, waiting to strike as the familiar song hit its peak note.
He managed to end their lives without a single drunken idiot knowing. Galahad had begun his siege.