Slavers.

As my journey to Orario continued and I practiced my Warp skill to the max, I made a few interesting discoveries.

The first being that every time I deplete my mana reserves, it recovers with a small bit more than originally. So If my spell casting limit before running dry was only 6 for Scan, then after a few rounds of casting and recovery, the limit had risen to 7. This was a result of both my mastery of Scan increasing, which in turn lowered the cost of casting the spell, and the natural growth of my mana through constant use of my reserves.

So I essentially raise my mana's growth rate by the constant use of my magic. A handy discovery. My natural mana regeneration is regrettably slower than I had hoped, but it should increase later on as I get stronger. Plus I'm not to stingy with my Med-Bag item limit, so my mana growth rate should be better if I spam 10 ethers a day. Unless I find some way to boost the speed of my mana's growth, then it is going to be slow as hell.

For the second discovery, I found that since it is my bounded weapon, I can actually wield that titan of a weapon, Dragon Slayer. The bad part of the discovery? Every time I swing it, every time I take a step with it on hand, I can feel the muscles in my body screaming in agony. The strain on my body is simply unbelievable even if I can wield the big bastard!

"Haa, haa, haa... So no swinging this big lug of iron around whenever I want" I say gasping for air after walking forward no more than 15 feet before having to sit down to rest, "Why even remove the weight when the pressure is still gonna pound into my body's muscles?"

I continue to rest for 10 minutes before getting back to my feet, but considering I still have Dragon Slayer in my hands, the leg muscles complain the whole way up. I smile wryly as I stare at my heaviest weapon and come to gain a useful idea.

"If I carry this around and swing it for training, and if I manage to survive, then perhaps I can use this to improve my physical abilities!" The idea definitely has merits, but I will only consider following through with it after arriving in Orario and setting up shop. Out here in the wildlands, where there are possibly monsters and bandits, I would think it to be unwise.

Speaking of bandits.....

##One Day's Walk to Orario.##

After helping myself to a small snack of some tasty wild berries. I continued westward towards the city of adventurers, yet I may have encountered some complications in the form of a camp full of bandits. They all mostly wore leather clothing, with a rare few decked out with some metal armor, mostly cheap and crude. I can count no less than 20 of the ugly bastards and at the center of the heavily guarded camp, trapped within cages, are many young boys and girls of different species, captured to be sold off into a life worst than death itself.

I had just stepped through some brush, without paying too much attention to my surroundings, reminiscing about a life I once lived and the one I now lead. After stepping through the brush I come face to face with the camp of uncivilized, foul, and unwashed slavers currently enjoying themselves to some ill gotten food and mead. I am surprised to have come across this band of lowlives. They themselves are surprised by my sudden, albeit accidental intrusion.

"Ah, goddamnit..." I curse bitterly and take a single step back slowly.

Getting out of their stupor one of the heaviest armed bandit near the center of the camp starts laughing loudly at the unfortunate young man that is me who stumbled upon their camp.

"Well, well, well! Our luck musta been good today boys!" The bandit says. His eyes glossing over me with a look of greed in his eyes. I do admit that my outfit does look high class and all but..... "Look is' clothes! This wee little brat must be loaded!"

"Yeah!" Another bandit shouts.

I just shake my head and smile nervously, "My apologies for the intrusion, but I must urgently take my leave." I go to step back but the leader shouts causing me to halt my step.

"Nah, nah! I must insist, stay and enjoy our 'hospitality' boy! Allow us to 'admire' your stuff." The bandit says trying to sound sophisticated, yet with his accent, it only comes off as making him sound as dumb as he was when he spoke.

I wave my hands and reply, "I must insist myself, this looks like an exclusive party. It would be awfully rude to intrude. Good day sirs!"

I try and continue my escape and I am interrupted once again by the leader, "Oh no! I definitely must insist! Come, join us! Cooperate and you might come out unharmed and sold to a more valuable client. Resist and I'm afraid we may have to sell you with a missing limb or two."

"Hehehe!" I Laughlin dryly. "I'll have to pass on your kind offer, but...." I call out my Gunblade and fling it back high up on a branch and warp to it, "I have no interest with becoming someone's property, nor do I have any interest in dealing with a bunch of barbarians."

The bandit is now livid at being called a barbarian and starts barking out orders to his subordinates.

"I don' know how the little fucker did that! But I want you all to split up and catch em!" He orders.

"But..." One of the subordinates goes the speak but stops. Then he continues, "Hows do we get em boss? He is up in da trees!"

"I don't care hows you do it!" The leader shouts, "Climb up there, chop the trees down, do whatever it takes! If he gets away, then the bastards from the city will send out adventurers for sure! We needs to catch the boy before our client arrives!"

"Aye!"

The bandit leader is spewing out his orders, while up in the tree I'm watching as a few bandits try and fail to climb up after me. Idiots, these trees are huge and you could barely get a good grip on them to properly climb. you'd never get up here unless you were able to fly..... or warp up like me. I can only watch on with amusement as they try and fail multiple times. I notice a few bandits carrying bows so I shift my position around out of their line of sight.

"Now what do I do?" I mumble to myself and think. "I can't just leave them be. There are prisoners in the cages, probably be sold to someone from the city as slaves. The males would be servants for some spoiled rich guy, the females..... probably a brothel."

I tap my chin with my index finger and think about it.

"Will I need to fight?" I ask myself, "I haven't learned any combat magic yet, plus I never studied the training manuals for the Gunblade. No way in hell will I try and use the Dragon Slayer, I'd be exhausted after the 3rd swing!"

I slump down and barely avoid an arrow aimed at my shoulder and shift my position in the tree once again leaving the sight of the archers. I focus my attention to the Tool Bag and go to think for a moment.

"The tool bag will allow me to draw consumable tools, but what kind of tool are we talking?" I open the bag and dig into the dark abyss that is the bag's open and reach around. "Please be a bomb, sleeping gas, flash bang..... Huh?" I feel a large, highly solid object appear in my palm. When I pull it from the bag I am greeted by...

"A turtle shell!?" A green turtle shell that I immediately recognized from the Super Mario series. I am shocked, also confused, but mostly shocked. "Seriously!?"

I can only lament my luck. I went in to draw something useful for this situation, but I came out with a turtle shell. What the hell will this do for me!?

The tree starts to shake and I look down to find that one of the idiot brigade started pounding against the tree with a large axe. If they can't shoot me down and climb up to get me, they might as well chop the tree down. Idiots should realize that if the tree falls, it will land in the middle of their camp.

I get annoyed by all of the shaking so I throw the Green Shell as hard as I can and watch as it slams into the axeman's head, ricochet off of him into another, before finally shattering over the head of a third bandit and disappearing and a burst of smoke.

"Well. That was more useful than I had expected. Nice!"

One of the bandits pointed at the downed three and shouts, "Holy shit! They's taken out by a turtle!"

I chuckle at their panicked reaction and dig into the tool bag once again and pull out...

"A fucking Pokéball this time?" In the palm of my hands is the familiar white and red ball with the button in the center. "If a turtle shell can hurt the idiot brigade then I guess a pokeball can too."

I throw the ball down and watch as it explodes into a blinding white light. When the light clears, what appeared is nothing what I was expecting.... or even hoping for.

"Fuck me...."

In the middle of the crowd of bandits lies a what I could only say resembles a pink marshmallow with hands and feet. Within it's hands is a microphone. It is looking around it's surroundings with curiosity in it's eyes, not aware of any threat that may harm it. Everyone, myself included, just stare at the ball of pink, before the leader of the bandits roar in laughter.

"Gahahahaha! The hell is that!? Is this all you can throw at us boy!?" He says mockingly as he points at the Jigglypuff. "A puffy pink ball of shit?" All of the bandits explode in laughter.

Me? I'm starting to get nervous, because while they are laughing and mocking the pink critter, the said critter is puffing up in anger, it's eyes flaming. It takes it's microphone, holds it up to it's mouth and..... starts singing. Gradually the bandit's laughter starts ceasing and for some reason they can feel their eyes getting heavier, they are feeling sleepy. One by one, the bandits start collapsing onto the ground, drifting into the land of dreams, as Jigglypuff's song echoes throughout the forest. It's singing is potent for sure, as there are even birds falling out of the sky after being put to sleep.

Me, since I was the once who summon the pokeball, is unaffected.

After singing it's song it looks around the area and huffs when it finds each and every bandit passed out from it's lullaby. It flips everyone off, don't ask me how, before exploding into a puff of smoke like the shell did. I climb down from my tree and glance around the area with an amused smile on my face.

"Well." I say, "I won't ever doubt you again my precious tool bag." I pat the tool bag affectionately. It seems that Smash Bros items count as tools too. That's good to know. "Now to relieve these morons of their ill gotten gains and free their prisoners. I should probably wake them up while I'm at it."

I proceed to awaken and free all of the captured prisoner, who then scatter and strip the slavers off all of their loot. One of the prisoners, a captured beast girl, happened to be an aspiring adventurer who was heading to Orario to join her sister in the Loki Familia. Out of anger for being jumped and capture, proceeded to bloodlessly execute the bandit.

"Yikes! These guys must have been hated to the extreme for her to crush all of their necks so mercilessly." I commented as I watch her do her thing. Never once did I see someone die before, yet for some odd reason it's not really bothering me. Perhaps my dance with death had liberated me from the fear of death, be it from me or my enemies? I do not know, but if there comes a time where I'm forced to end another human being's life, I hope it won't get in the way and endanger me or my friends.

After clearing out the camp of everything of value, all of the former prisoners all decide to head towards the city. Instead of in cages, they will enter the city on their own foot. The beast girl had offered to vouch for me to join the familia, but I politely rejected the offer.

My goal is to become stronger with my own power. Not with power loaned by the gods themselves.