The Gang

The sun was slowly rising on the horizon, illuminating the picturesque forest landscape, and Bondrewd, accompanied by Ozen, was walking along it, trying to stick to the landmarks indicated in the bandit's letter.

The marks mentioned in the letter were left every 300 metres of the way, they were in the form of arrows framed in crookedly drawn skulls. There wasn't a soul around, which wasn't surprising, Ozen was suggestive, and had already scared the hell out of the neighbourhood squirrels and hares.

She had even captured a couple of them, and Bondrewd never tired of being amazed at her appetite; he had fed her first, and during his gathering at the camp she had managed to nibble several corpses almost whole. But she was still not enough. 

The man put away the rope, the beast felt him to be the leader of the pack and more importantly a guide to a free meal. So, he would not run away, at least not until the situation became critical.

It would take about an hour to get to the stone, so the Lord of Dawn decided to dig into the interface. When he opened it, he was pleasantly surprised to see that the accumulated curse was 9.54%, which was encouraging, as Bondrewd had estimated that it had dropped by about 10% overnight. But more encouraging, or rather surprising, was the value of the goodness points, with the number 13 on the counter. 

"So the extermination of dangerous fauna and bandit element is welcome here, we'll keep it in mind." 

And then an idea came into Bondrud's head, for he was still walking stupidly and doing nothing useful. The man fumbled for a ring with a black stone in his pocket and took it out. The ring felt slightly cold in his hand, ignoring the glove he wore. 

"System. Give me information on this item."

"Analysis... Information: Ring of unknown origin, properties - unknown, active skills unknown. Magical item."

The system finished outputting the text, Bondrewd had expected something like this, after all, to hope that the system would be able to recognise any object would be rather silly and dishonest to say the least. 

"I'll deal with him later." Bondrewd said and slipped the ring back into his pocket. 

The man and his companion came to a small hillside, where under the shade of a tree there stood, or better to say deliberately grown into the ground a large stone, about two human height.

"Well, here we are." Bondrewd approached the huge stone and began to search it for a drawing. He found it, by the way, quite quickly.

"It was painted on the liquid three, for such a canvas could have tried and better." The man said, looking at the roughly chiselled drawing of the reproductive organ on the stone.

Sitting down under the shade of a tree, the Lord of Dawn sipped from his flask and decided to give himself a ten-minute break, he wanted to think about his plans, but Ozen interfered with his marvellous plan. Then she lay down beside him and bared her teeth in his direction, clearly implying that she needed to be petted.

"What a fastidious specimen I have chosen for myself." Said Bondrewd, stroking his pet's stiff mane.

... 

The camp was near the creek.

The camp was bustling with life and it was not surprising, all the people, and by the way, they were about the same: all dirty, angry and with a terrible stench, but everyone was working in sweat, despite the headache and hot weather. The situation had become extremely acute. The capital was about to fall and there would be nothing left for them to do here. So, everyone packed their belongings and common utensils.

The leader of the gang, a bald man of about 30, wearing a new ringed shirt over which was worn an elegant, and in some places, slightly fancy leather waistcoat. He sat in the shade of a tree drinking brogue from a flask, watching the work of his subordinates with pleasure. The gang was ruled by the council, but the council had appointed him leader, even if he had to break a couple of fingers and part with a couple of three blood silver coins for the sake of it. But it was worth it, so he willingly accepted the role, for the good of the common cause and his own pocket. 

To the man's displeasure, a man in simple travelling clothes approached his pleasant rookery.

"Fuck, he's going to fuck me up again with his stupid questions." Said the leader, just so the right guy wouldn't hear.

"Dick, we'll have everything ready in an hour, but there's a problem, the Tarusa group hasn't returned, what are we going to do?"

Dick rolled his eyes theatrically, and taking another sip from his flask, said. "So we'll go without them, I don't fuck if they just abandoned us or died somewhere under a birch tree, and I don't give a shit, I know one thing we have to leave and as soon as possible, or do you have a different opinion Demir? "Dick finished his thoughts and stared at his interlocutor, Demir was an experienced poacher and second after him in the gang, his opinion was listened to, and additional fermentation in the gang was not allowed.

"What about the ring, we spent a lot of money catching those thieves all over the forest."

"Fuck it! I'm not going to wander through a forest full of undead and monsters for some strange artefact we don't even know the properties of."

"There was a generous customer for it." Demir parried.

"Your generous customer is either already dead or outrunning his own squealing is leaving the capital. And if he's still there... his fate is unenviable. So forget it, we're leaving tonight, in a couple of hours." Dick put a mental stop to their conversation, and for a few seconds there was an awkward silence, which was interrupted by the unceremonious rumbling of the leader's stomach.

"That's, well, I'll go downwind, you're in charge, see that these morons don't lose or forget anything." Dick said, and walked briskly towards the stream.

Demir looked at his companion until he was out of sight. "What an arsehole. If the customer survives, they'll be looking for us, how can this moron not realise that," the man exhaled nervously, and looked around the spacious clearing. The guys' work was coming to an end, the rest of their belongings were already being loaded into two small wagons.

"Fucking retard, where are you putting the tent poles, they won't fit!" Demir shouted loudly and wanted to go up to the hapless oaf and punch him in the gourd. But no, he heard something, his hearing had been honed like the sharpest blade during his years of poaching, 'on the right, about 30 paces behind.'

The man turned around sharply and a purple light came into view, emanating from a strange helmet that protruded slightly from the bushes.

"What the fuck are you?" The man asked and reached for the dagger hanging on his belt, but he didn't have time, a stream of air, raising a small mountain of leaves rushed to his throat. Before he could even realize it, he was lying on the ground with a deep cut on his neck.

The half-empty heads of the camp dwellers synchronously turned at the noise, a strange man in black armour was standing near the lying fellow. 

"Does anyone wish to surrender?" Shouted the intruder.

The bandits were clearly unwilling, and showed it with all their appearance, a few desperate ones were already running towards Bondrewd with naked weapons, others were frantically cowering in the carts.

"So there's no good way. Ozen, take it!" Just before the man could finish his sentence, a large, milky-pale carcass jumped out of the bushes at the hapless soldiers. The first bandit just saw it and wanted to turn back, but the air flow was faster and the attacker fell like a hamstring. 

"Mens, there are 2 of us, 12 of us, kill them!" The speech of one of the brigands had an effect, and a group of dirty and armed men began to encircle the intruders.

Bondrewd retreated a few paces to the side, and parried the blow of a spear, the assailant taking advantage of the length of his weapon quite skilfully, and at every action of the Lord of Dawn falling backwards. Just in time to be covered by his comrades, a couple of whom flanked Bondrewd from the rear. 

The man calmly evaded the attacks of the five of them, but he thought it was a good opportunity to practise his swordsmanship, and so he fought with only a third of his strength, glancing at Ozen from time to time.

The beast had already torn apart three of his attackers and was waiting for a new opportunity to attack by leaps and bounds. Bondrewd did not fight off the spear, but simply grabbed its shaft with his hand and pulled it towards him, along with its owner. He did not have time to react and fell on his belly right in front of Bondrud's feet. His comrades came to his aid, the big man with the two-handed axe was already swinging for a blow, and the two who came up behind him did not think to miss the moment. 

"The Lord of Dawn didn't think twice and simply spun round on his axis with his blade out in front of him. The effect was stunning, the entire attacking trio was cut in half, sprinkling the two surviving colleagues with their blood. The one with the spear, to his honour, was not afraid and rushed at Bondrewd with an out-of-nowhere knife and was immediately stopped by a straight blow to the face.

The last bandit did not pretend to be a hero and was already blazing his heels towards the horizon, the saving forest was so close. 20... 10... metres, his legs were shaking, his breath was hitching, and his eyes were dark with exertion. The fugitive didn't realise why until he saw the tip of a spear sticking out of his chest.

Looking around the battlefield Bondrewd smiled slightly, the battlefield was still behind them, Ozen was nowhere to be seen and shouts could be heard from the forest. "Lord of Dawn" was about to head in their direction, but a sense of danger made itself felt and he looked round. Thirty paces away from him, a bald man in chainmail came out of the bushes, armed with a strange-looking two-handed weapon without a hilt.

"Bitch, I just went for a shit, and you've wrecked my whole gang."

"Is it my fault it took you so long to shit?"