[Rose Vine]
Rose initiated her skill that made a whip out of grassy vines. She threw out one end of the whip, reaching one of the thief's throat pulling back with such velocity she was able to cleanly severe the person's head before anyone knew what happened.
Wayne didn't waste any time and immediately summoned
Wayne simply used [Shadow Void] to escape, but he noticed Rose wasn't moving fast enough, he wanted to save her but didn't want to risk his life for hers, the best thing he could do was get revenge for her.
Wayne went not too far from his previous location and looked back to see Rose was fine, he was slightly confused but just assumed she had an ability that could protect her.
A moment later, Wayne shot towards the group of three, throwing his fist out. The man in the middle saw this and cast his barrier again, and as Wayne's punch landed, the whole area reverberated from the hit. To Wayne's surprise, the barrier was still standing, and he could see the guy that was casting the barrier staring at him with a cocky smirk.
"Wrong move, buster," Wayne said with a grin of his own.
[Abyssal Nightmare]
The man's barrier went down while the other two were left shocked, wondering what was happening. Wayne only had three seconds to act, so following up after the barrier dropped, Wayne took a deep breath.
[Dark Flame]
Wayne released black flames from his mouth, engulfing the three assailants and turning them into nothing but ash.
The rest of the crew on the truck and Rose were left stunned, seeing the devastation happening.
After Wayne was done, he headed back towards the truck and gave Rose a gaze as she stood there, stunned.
"Looks like I won," Wayne said with a smirk as he headed back to his seat.
"Dude! You have fire ability as well!? I've never seen a fire like that before," Arctic said with big eyes as he always admired power. Celeste even perked, seeming to be interested in Wayne's skills as well.
Wayne just shook his head yes as he got to his seat and looked towards Arctic.
"A guys gotta have his secrets, right?"
By the time Waynes conversation started, the truck started heading out on its path again, as bandits appeared for the next five hours.
"Giving this a high-stakes mission, a lot of people seem to know our path, I know I said I wanted some action today, but this is ridiculous," Arctic griped as now it was nighttime, and they were still running into bandits.
"Yeah, I was under the impression not many people knew about this," Wayne said, sharing his concern with Arctic.
"I am just as concerned something doesn't feel right. Maybe a few of us should skip sleep to stay on watch," Celeste said with a pondering look on her face.
A moment later, they were finally able to stop and disembark from the truck to get settled.
"Maybe you're right, Celeste, I don't mind staying up tonight," Wayne suggested.
"If that's the case, I'll stay up with you," Celeste retorted.
"If you guys wanted alone time, you guys could have the tent," Arctic said with a devious smile.
"I'll kill you next if you say anything like that again," Celeste said, glaring at Arctic with malicious intent.
Arctic didn't say anything else and went inside his tent. Wayne sat atop the invisible truck, appearing to be sitting on nothing.
"Well, what made you stay up with me?" Wayne said as he saw Celeste approaching him.
"I wanted to ask you something," Celeste said, looking around to see if anyone could hear her.
Wayne thought her actions to be odd but didn't say anything and gestured for her to sit next to him.
"What's got you so spooked?" Wayne said in a whisper, playfully nudging Celeste.
"Have you noticed anything different about our trip?"
"Different? Different how?"
"Like the thieves on the road, even though we killed over forty of them today, it seemed like they kept coming back," Celeste said with worry on her face.
"Like they have a village around here just for us?" Wayne said, trying to understand what Celeste was trying to get at.
"No. The thieves, don't you think they all had similarities even though we killed them already?"
Wayne listened to what she said and thought about all the thieves they fought today and the similarities were definitely there if you were paying attention. There were six of them and they all had the same powers, we were just fighting different variations of them, not noticing what was going on.
Wayne understood what Celeste was so worried about now.
"Have you mentioned this to the others?" Wayne asked, trying to think if he could see an anomaly.
"No, I was afraid of sounding crazy."
"What kind of trap do you think this is?"
"I have no idea, but I know we must hurry and figure out what's going on."
Wayne looked up at all the tents the group was in and at Celeste.
"I'm going to see if I can find some answers, I'll be right back," Wayne said as he jumped off the truck and activated one of his skills.
[Shadow Stealth]
When Celeste went to protest with Wayne, she looked down and couldn't see him anywhere, as if he had vanished.
Meanwhile, Wayne was standing at the same spot he dropped down from, looking at Celeste to see if she would notice him, but to his liking, she was oblivious to his presence.
Wayne didn't know what to expect when he went searching the camp for clues, so he just searched the tents to see if anybody was doing anything suspicious. When he entered the tent, he saw that Arctic was sound alseep with his thumb in his mouth. Wayne gave a wry smile as the act was out of the ordinary for an adult.
He went to Higby's tent to see what was going on, but Wayne had to [Shadow Void] in cause the tent didn't have an entrance. When Wayne went inside, he was shocked to see Higby essentially had an entire house inside. He was currently passed out on a couch in front of a fireplace.
Wayne wondered how he got all this stuff in here, but it wasn't on his list of priorities.
Wayne then walked to the tent shared with Radio, Grim, and Rose. Wayne went inside and didn't expect to find anything, but when he looked at one of the beds, he was left confused and furrowed his eyebrows as his suspicions deepened.
He later walked out and joined Celeste on top of the truck, and as he sat down, he deactivated his [Shadow Stealth] skill startling Celeste and making it seem like he appeared out of thin air.
"Your just a bag full of tricks, huh?" Celeste said with a wry smile, trying to calm herself down.
Wayne didn't say anything and just had a questioning look.
"Is everything alright? Did you find something?"
"I think I did. I was just thinking how to go about it."
"Well, tell me, and maybe I can help you with it."
Wayne looked at Celeste as if pondering if he should tell her.
"Nah, you'll find out in the morning."
Celeste was frustrated as she wanted to know what was happening, but the morning was a few hours away, and she was always a patient girl.
Morning came, and Celeste looked at Wayne to see what he would do. Wayne just waited for everyone to get out of their tents, and then he would present the problem.
When everyone got out and tended to their areas, they headed to the truck to start the day, but Wayne stood by the truck in front of everyone.
"Before we start the day, I need everyone to know that we may have been tricked."
Wayne paused to see the suspect's reaction, and to his liking, they were playing along.
"That's fine. I can play too," Wayne thought as he reached into his bag and got his gun out, pointing it at someone.
"You got anything you want to share?" Wayne said with a smirk on his face.