How do I learn?

following the young adventurers to the cave without getting noticed is not a problem. They try to keep a watch around them, but I am better at hiding that they are at noticing.

I then decide to carefully follow them into the dungeon to try to watch how they do. Hiding in there is even easier, I can just stay in the dark just outside their light. I do not need to worry about being attacked by the monsters and can just focus on where I put my feet and not being seen. This is my territory and here I am in control.

One of the young ones surprises me by rising his hand, saying some hard to hear words and then making a ball of light form above him. He is dressed like a farmer except the silly hat on his head.

"Nice Aric, did you learn that from your master?"

One of the kids seems to be especially impressed of the magic. I can not fault him for that, I feel the same. Then a wolf comes out from the shadows and attacks the boy named Alric. It makes a fast attack at him, bites him in the calf and then disappear back into the shadows. Right when The group starts to turn around in reaction to that, my wolf runs past me and drive them deeper into the cave wile biting at their legs. One of the older kids takes leadership.

"Keep together, Emil you guard Alric. Wilkin you and me takes the front. You others keep an eye for the wolves. We can do this if we work together."

His word calm the others down well, the wolf disappears back into the shadows to the again attack a short while later. They have now wised up and do not get much damage from the two wolves. Only the boy named Alric is limping bad.

While all this is happening I have forgotten where I am and are trying to repeat what the boy did. If I can figure out how to make light magic my dwindling stack of torches will not worry me as much. Of course I fail, did not really expect to succeed that easy. Then I remember where I am and that drawing their notice by making sounds is helping me sneaking on them.

I can hear that they have found the chest by the pit. Time to get out of here in case they come running out. Those soldiers is more of a danger than a bunch of kids anyway.

While sneaking back into the forest I can feel a lot more energy flowing to me, seems like one of the kids died in the spike pit. Turning around I do not see them come running out. So they must have been ready for losses. Shit this is really desperate and horrid world I live in, young kids risking their lives and expecting their friends to die just to get a few coins and proving them self. This really makes me feel like the villain. I know they risk their lives willingly, but I am still the one that kill them. That pit is easy to circumvent as long as you let go of your greed. In the future they should wise up and I need to change it. I do not want anything to be directly deadly unless their greed makes them take the risk.

I keep trying to use the light magic the boy Alric used, maybe I need to use some kind of power? or is it in the words? Hm I heard over and over that you can get magic from a dungeon, not just from teachers. What does that mean? Well nothing more that keep trying, not like I am leaving the dungeon. Heh.

Getting close to the camp again I stop trying to not show my self. I then find Harn and whisper to him.

"Anything?"

Harn brings me away from the camp for almost a hundred steps before he answers.

"Soldiers almost noticed me. They keep high alert, mostly against the adventurers. Think they´r waiting"

Harn has a better eye for this than me so I trust him. We need to keep a longer distance to the camp from now on.

"Harn, what do you know about magic?"

He just shakes his head as an answer. So no help there, I really hope that kid survives, maybe I can ask him about it in a couple of days.

Now it is just a waiting game, it will also be hard to feel if anything happens now when I got enough power to feel fine. I can even stay by the bandit camp without much more than an ache now.

About an hour later the small group of adventurers come back. Now they are one less, you can see booth grief and happiness in their eyes. Seems that only plundered the first chest and did not dare try with the two in the late room. maybe the next group will do that.

Seems like the wolves gave them a real hard time, they are all bloody. A larger group of stone ranked adventurers is were my little dungeon is perfect for it seams. That just makes me worry about the soldiers more. Why are they here? they are still not fucking moving. A few coins change hands and it seems like the first group is selling the information about their experience to the others, even one of the soldiers pays for it.

The real winner is the merchant, the now tired group is spending most of their earnings with him on alcohol it seems. How did he even get that up the mountain?

So the only thing to do now is just wait for anything to happen. We take turns watching the camp and going to the dungeon to check it. I fish up the items left in the pit, happy that I do not need to see the corpse of a young kid impaled on the spikes. The few coins I found ends up in the chest, same with the dagger, no armor of any kind. I also decide to put some herbs to facilitate healing in the chest.

The time I have nothing else to do I keep trying to use Alrics light spell. But I have a feeling I am doing something wrong. Dungeons gives magic, that should be the key to this. But what does it mean?