Two Quests in One Part 2

Chapter 13

Two Quests in One Part 2

While I might have gone like a hero from the village, I quickly realized that I didn't know the exact location of the bandit camp.

My tactical mind, honed by years of studying under the generals of my father provided an easy solution.

I reared my horse to go in the direction of one of the villages where the bandits had struck in the last week. I also ate my lunch while going there, riding on my horse. Say what you will, the villagers sure know how to make good food even with little ingredients.

After a while, I could see familiar surroundings which confused me a little. Soon, an outline of the village appeared before my eyes.

'Isn't this the same village I went to for the first adventure? First Goblins and now bandits… Man talk about bad luck' I mused as I stopped just outside the village perimeter from where I walked with my horse to the village elder's house.

A few youths had already seen me and went away before I even entered the village. 'Probably to inform their elder of my arrival'

And I was proven correct when the village elder met me halfway to his house.

"Greetings, village elder"

"Greetings, noble adventurer"

We greeted each other.

"Come, sit" He beckoned me to the nearby house.

"Did you do what I asked you to do?" I asked coming to the point while we walked towards the chairs.

"We did" The elder replied as we sat down and motioned a man to speak.

The nondescript man came forward and started speaking.

"We foun' out that while it is a good enough substitute for, the goblin meat makes the pigs angry and a little hard to control. The bastards are always making a ruckus. They have also birthed a lot more from before as they are always ruttin" The man spoke

"Hmm" I mused at his coarse language. If my mother had heard him, she would have been horrified and disgusted, after which she would have persuaded my father, to teach all the villagers', the correct way to speak.

Still, I shook my head and pondered on what he told me.

'It looks like the monster meat gives some of their inherent behavior to the animals. It must be from the taint in the magic' I mused 'In any case, this would need further experimenting. I would need to give them different monster meat to eat and record their observations. Moreover, we could probably use the goblin parts to make potions which could make someone angry and horny, simultaneously, though making a potion for only a single emotion would be a lot difficult'

"I see. You did very well. But I am not here for only that. I took a bandit extermination quest from a nearby village. The village elder said that you also pooled the money" I said out loud and showed him the quest paper to which he was visibly surprised.

I, then asked a few questions like how many bandits were there, which direction did they came from, what did they took, which direction did they go, etc., etc.

Once he answered all of my questions, I took my leave and went to the other villages where the bandits struck.

I asked their village elders' the same questions and little by little, I realized the probable bandit's camp's location.

All of the villages struck by bandits formed a perimeter around a hill where an old mine used to be. The directions from which bandits came and went away also matched my theory.

After asking the last village elder, I was all but certain of their location. The current village where I was now didn't pool the money for the quest but I heard about the attack on them from the bandits in the last village.

Apparently, they came to this last village today morning. They even took a girl when they found out that the villagers had very little money and crops. Most of the men got injured when the fight occurred while one even died.

I healed the men who were injured the most. I couldn't do that for all the men as I could need my magical reserves for the fight. I didn't think I would need much but it was better to be cautious than dying for a simple reason.

'It was good that my magical reserves had filled out since morning' I mused

I also realized the reason why the bandits kidnapped a girl from this village when they didn't kidnap any girl from any other village.

This village was quite small, smaller than all the others. Judging by the numbers of the bandits, they wouldn't have won if they had pulled this stunt in the other villages. They would have been outnumbered there. They might have even won but they would have gotten hurt or even some of their fellow bandits would have been killed.

After healing the injuries of the village men, I promised them to save their village's girl and kill all the bandits.

Initially, I was going to knock them out and hand them over to the villages to do what they please with them, maybe even give them to the Water Town authorities. My reasoning was simple. They were the lesser evil compared to the monsters. They just extorted and stole while the monsters were a blight upon humanity. Monsters left death and destruction everywhere they went.

But seeing as the bandits killed one of the men and kidnapped a girl to rape, I decided to kill them all and be done with it. After all, in my eyes, they weren't different than the monsters. In fact, they were monsters in human skin.

And my philosophy is 'A good monster is a dead one'; the motto with which I live by.

I looked up to see that the sun had set.

'Damn! It took me a lot of time to go around all the villages. Even Blast looks tired' I thought as I looked at my horse.

"You did a good job today, buddy. Just rest here and recover your strength. I will take it from here" I said as I tied him to a tree.

After making sure, the knot was properly done; I flipped a copper coin to the man standing near me which he was able to catch haphazardly.

"For the food and all the other needs of my horse. Take good care of him. I will be back as soon as possible" I said as I walked away.

There was another reason for not taking Blast. I couldn't be sure if the bandits have lookouts or not. And Blast isn't remotely subtle. They would know of my arrival and could prepare for it. So, it was better to just walk there if I wanted to ambush the bandits.

I followed the tracks made by bandits which were thankfully still there. They too pointed their destination towards the mine in the hill.

....

It had been more than an hour since I departed the village. It took a little extra time than expected as I had to be extra silent and careful after reaching the base of the hill. After all, the bandits could have made some traps around their hideout.

From there, I remained in the shadows so that the lookouts don't suspect a thing. My black armor and the night time only added my chances of success with low visibility.

I also charmed my eyes to track heat sensing. The charm was quite easy to create in the free time during the last month since I got the idea on my first quest. It only consumed 5% of my magical reserves in 10 minutes. It was like having heat-sensing goggles without having them.

This allowed me to pinpoint the lookouts quite easily.

Fortunately, there was only one lookout. Either the bandits were confident in their hiding place or they were arrogant. I suspected it was the mix of both. I didn't wait to check their lookout schedule as I do with goblins. There was no reason to and a young girl was also waiting to be rescued.

With a swish of my wand, I spelled myself invisible, my steps silent, and my body smell, odorless. This spell is really proving to be a godsend spell. With this spell, my stealth ability increases exponentially. I have thus named this spell, Stealth Spell.

With that done, I slowly crept behind him and beheaded him with a single swipe of my sword. He didn't even realize that he had died. With a flick, my sword became clean and I returned it to its sheath.

I did just in time for my Stealth spell to break off. I intentionally applied minimum magic in the spell to conserve it. On the other hand, my heat-sensing charm on my eyes was still going strong which I deactivated for the next part.

I then looted his body of everything. I didn't even leave any clothes on him other than his small clothes as I didn't want to see him naked. Unfortunately, the guy wasn't carrying much. He only had his clothes, his bow and arrows, and some jerky to probably eat in between his shift. Now instead of him, I was eating that jerky.

After looting the guy, I stored everything in the ring that I brought with me for the very first time. I enchanted it in the last month to act as my inventory. This is another thing that my freedom allowed me to do. It now allowed me to experiment on my own in my free time. I didn't have to take permission from the court mages or needed them as my chaperone.

Still, it wasn't easy to write the small runes on the ring. I had to purchase a magnifying glass from a jeweler that cost me 5 gold coins. To inscribe the runes, I used a simple needle.

But this ring isn't the final product. It was still a prototype, my 13th prototype to be precise.

No matter what I tried, I couldn't fix one flaw and that is to take out a particular item from the ring according to my wish. If I had to take out anything, I had to empty it fully.

That was the reason why I now carried half a dozen of these rings with me. One ring was to store quest related things and the other to store what I didn't need for the quest. For example, I only needed to store the stolen items in the other ring for the villagers. The extra stuff could be stored in my first ring as my loot. The others were there in case I needed more space.

Another flaw of these rings was that they also couldn't hold infinite space. They could only hold 5x5 feet of space which to be the truth isn't much.

Still, the rings were far better than what the first prototype was. My first prototype was the ring made of steel which couldn't hold much. It also couldn't hold the enchantments for much longer. These rings, on the other hand, are of mithril, which can hold enchantments for a long time.

I didn't use mithril during my experiments. I only used it when I was sure that the enchantments were stabilized. After all, I didn't want to waste money by using mithril on experiments. Steel was a far better alternative as it was cheap and recyclable.

I shook my head of these thoughts and focused on the quest at hand. After looting the guy, I silently followed the trail left behind by the scout that led me directly to the entrance of the mine.

'It seems the scout was amateur at best. He didn't take a longer route. The guy didn't even make any effort in erasing his tracks' I thought with a mental scoff as I followed the trail.

Unfortunately, when I reached there, I found 2 bandits who were guarding the entrance of the mine. There were also more than half a dozen horses tied near them with a cart similar to what Trader used, lying beside them.

'They probably use them to carry the loot'

Anyway, once I found them, I deactivated the heat-sensing charm as I wouldn't need it for some time.

I could do it with my Stealth Spell. They won't even know what killed them'

In the end, I didn't want to take any chances so I applied my Stealth spell and silently crept sideways away from the horses and climbed up of the hill. From there, I climbed sideways and my destination was the place just above the bandits.

...

The next chapter will come in a couple of days.

Also, I have a Pat-re-on account. If anyone would like to donate, they could go there and donate. The donation would never be a factor in updating any of my stories. The ID is the same: Hit1903.