Dwarven City Arc-2: More tongue-tied

I studied the man once more. His leather armor was well-made and thick. In the dark, I could still see that he had many pouches and trinkets, as well as the magically enchanted steel sword that was pointed at me. Undead night vision was truly convenient. Although he had a hood, he did not bother to cover his face, showing a shaven man in his thirties.

"We don't want trouble. So you want gold? I can give you gold," I said as I raised my hands. My companions sighed and formed formation as they understood what I was trying to do. I explained to the bandit that I had a large pouch of gold that would make them set for life.

The man moved his sight onto my waist. Surely enough, there was a pouch hanging by my belt. He licked his lips and ordered me to unstrap the pouch.

I slowly reached for the pouch and jiggled it, causing enough sound to notify the bandit that it was indeed a lot of coins.

"Now, throw that bag at me. Also your friends, tell your friends to give me their weapons and armor. They look very valuable to me," He said with a mischievous smile.

"Well, you asked for it," I said as I arched my back to prepare to throw for it. The bandit patiently awaited for me to throw the bag.

Well, since he wanted me to throw the bag at him, I did what he told me to do. I suddenly threw the bag of coins with great force. The bag flew so fast that the air it passed through was pushed away, leaving a small smoke trail. The bandit's object of greed slammed hard onto his face, and his body was thrown off balance, doing a flip in the air before kissing the ground.

His now-unconscious body stayed still onto the ground, face down on the coin pouch. It took a second for the other bandits to process what happened. Once they realized what was going on, they attacked.

Arrows got shot out of the bushes and shadowy figured leapt towards our camp. My companions blocked, deflected or dodged the arrows before engaging in melee with the intruders.

"Maven, protect Asha. I'll handle these ragtags," I said as I started my conductor-like hand movements once more. Random bright lights started to appear all over the camp, seemingly appearing from the ground.

"Stop that mage before he cast a spell!" One of the bandits ordered. A bandit ran through my companions, trying to get to me. I ignored my surroundings and continued to orchestrate my spell. I cleared the first phase of the spell, I scanned the area around the camp with my spell and found there's no one else but this group of bandits.

It seemed that when Asha mentioned that the bandits traveled in groups, she probably meant that they moved independently from each other. Perhaps Bloodied Rag could be called a guild of mixed-match bandits working together by agreeing not to kill each other?

In my thought, I did not realize that a bandit was behind me. But what could a mere bandit do to me? I decided to make imaginary bets, counting from stabbing me in the back to using a spell to blast me from behind.

Instead, everything went out of the window. The bandit grabbed my head and with a twist, she snapped my neck. It was all unexpected. The fighting suddenly stopped and everyone turned to us. Now that my head was fully turned towards my assailant, I could clearly see the bandit.

From the top was a typical black hood with a cloth covering the face. I could barely see the person's face, but I could see the beautiful green eyes. With narrows shoulders and thin waist, the person was clad in black armor. I could not tell what the material it was made from. But what I could tell was that this person was a woman.

On her left hand was a dagger. Why she opted to snap my neck, I wouldn't know. Perhaps she thought I was wearing armor and that she doesn't think she had enough time to figure out where the gaps are. She looked at me for a moment, then tried to gently push me with her fingers. She had probably expected that I would fall but I simply stood there.

"Hey. Stop touching my back," I warned her. She yelped and took some distance from me. My companions started to fight the bandits once more, and they slowly push the bandits around.

Eventually, the bandits were forced to give up their ground and our group managed to encircle them. I, with my head facing the wrong way, finished orchestrating my spell and snapped my fingers.

From the ground below the bandits, cracks appeared and hands made from stone spontaneously came out of the dirt then started to grab the bandits' feet. The bandits tried to destroy the hands, but it was all futile.

They were powerless and they started to panic among themselves as we encircled them. We started to look menacing. Wait, why does this look like we ambushed them instead of the other way around?

I fixed my head and tossed the first bandit with the rest of them and started my evil laugh. I did a pose by putting my hands on my hips and swaying my chin upwards, giving the impression that I was looking down on them triumphantly.

"I lied earlier. I wanted trouble. Let's start from the beginning - Let's make this as simple as we can." I laughed as I mocked the first bandit who was still knocked out. "Who is the leader among you?" I demanded.

The bandits all turned to the same person who assaulted me. The woman in black clicked her tongue and began speaking, "I am. What will you do to us? Kill us all? What do you want from us?"

I gave a low chuckle. "Even better, we're robbing you!" I declared.

Uno grabbed me and pulled him to me, "Wait, Boss. Are you serious? Shouldn't we kill them to avoid any problems in the future?"

"I don't know, I'll let my future me handle that. What could go wrong anyway? I'm a genius Archlich," I responded.

"You can't even learn the ABCs of a language commonly spoken by everyone," Sarjay responded back.

"Hey! I believe that the literacy rate isn't high enough for every peasant to be literate enough to write or else there would be mass production of information." I walked with Sarjay towards Asha.

"Hey, little girl, how is the literacy rate of the continent right now? Can the common man read and write?" I asked Asha.

"Forget about that, wasn't your neck twisted?!" Asha was erratically pointing at me, mostly at my neck. "I even heard a clear snap!"

Hmm...I pondered what sort of lie should I conjure this time. But I couldn't really think of a good lie right now. "It's neck magic." I shrugged.

Asha looked at me with doubt. She placed her hand at her chin. With a tilted head, she said, "I am neither an experienced mage, nor do I claim that I have an amazing background in magic. But what I do know is that you can't simply explain and do everything with magic."

I slowly turned my head to Sarjay but my face was stopped by his finger. "Don't turn to me," He warned. I started sweating hard. Was my jig up?

"Well, I suppose that you all are already extraordinary enough. I would guess that neck magic is just a very specific spell branch of healing magic." She sighed as she plopped down onto the grass to rest as she simply moaned, 'I simply can't understand these people!'

I went back up to the group of bandits to make my demands. Sarjay gave up trying to convince me to kill them so he decided to just go along with the flow, as his usual carefree self does.

"Once again, we are going to rob you," I declared to the bandits.

"So, you're demanding for our armors and weapons?" The leader of the bandits asked.

"Oh no, you all must have a temporary camp somewhere here, perhaps a hideout," I said. The bandit leader looked to her companions and had a silent discussion. Most of them nodded.

"We won't show you our hideout. Sorry to bust your dreams, but there's no way we could endanger our brothers-in-arms." She shook her head and asked, "How are you still alive after I snapped your neck? Are you an owlman?"

What the hell is an owlman? "I'm the one that questions and makes demands here. Know your place! If you won't tell me the location of your hideout, we can do this the hard way."

I signalled my spymaster forward. He was holding a jar with black liquid inside it. As he moved closer to the bandits, the black liquid in it jiggled hard. The bandits were trying to move backwards but to no avail. It seemed that they could sense the danger from what was inside the jar.

Maven ran up to me and whispered with a nervous tone at me, "Boss, is that what I think it is?! I thought my history was wiped out! How many more of those do you have?!"

The spymaster removed the lid and a foul stench burst from the jar. One of the bandits fell unconscious after smelling the odor.

Maven had guessed correctly; Inside the jar the spymaster was holding was one of Maven's 'histories'.

The spymaster, being the dick he was, tried to find a use out of everything to get answers. He could make a dragon spill the beans with a handful of dirt. But the scary part of him was that he was...a bit...sadistic.

He swiftly scooped the goo with a silver spoon and grabbed one of the bandit's faces. The bandit struggled with the sadistic monster, his hands were clawing at the gloves that clutched onto him and his body was shaking hard.

The spymaster forced the bandit's mouth open and turned the spoon, letting the goop drop. The goo touched the bandit's tongue and his eyes went wide. The spymaster made him swallow the vile thing and let go of him.

The bandit clenched his throat, coughing and hacking real hard as he attempted to flush out the horror product. Not only was the bandit crying, Maven was also crying on the dirt as the embarrassment was also stabbing her hard.

"Mama! Mama! Is...Is that you?!" The bandit gargled as foam started to appear on his mouth. His body was aching from every fiber within his body, his every breath was a coarse and ragged.

"Mama...mama….Forgive your son...a failure…"

Silence.