Chapter 164.1: Town
PART 1/2
The man, after some prodding, handed over his valuables. It felt nice, turning a mugging around on the robbers, even though he didn’t actually have much coin on him. Well, not much objectively. But to us, the five one-hundred-eyt coins he put in my hand almost doubled our haul from tonight. Plus, the satisfaction Ainash had when she stared down at the coins gave me the impression she saw them as not only a resource to use, but also a trophy from defeating the “mean guys,” as she called them. So I supposed that was a plus.
Once we took everything off of the man, I looked back over at him, restrained and on the ground. “You know the deal, right?”
“I never made no deal with you,” he spat.
“Oh, but you did. See, when you were alone and vulnerable, lying on the ground—like you are right now—and I decided not to kill you, that was us making a deal. A deal where, in exchange for you fucking off forever, you get your life.”
He scowled. “Fine. We’ll leave you be. No revenge. Now can you let me go?”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m asking you to do. I’m not just saying ‘no revenge.’ That’s something you’ll do anyway if you value your lives. I’m saying that you do not interact with us. You do not talk to us. You do not look at us. You do not interact with law enforcement regarding us. If you see us hunting out here, you run off back to whatever hole you crawled out of. If we’re walking toward each other on the street, you cross to the other side. And especially, you do not mug, rob, extort anyone, ever again. And I know you probably won’t listen to me, and you’ll go out and get your coin from the pockets of newbie adventurers. I get that. But I do want you to be afraid every single moment while you do so. Because if we ever see you even speaking to another adventurer in any sort of adversarial way, we will not hesitate to execute you where you stand. This is your one chance.”
“Alright, fine, I get it.” He averted his eyes from me.
“I still don’t think you do. If you ever try to kill any of us, whether it's some ambush as a group, or tracking a single person down and targeting them while they’re isolated, we will not hesitate to find and kill every last person in your group. I will track down your homes, your families, and end them. I don’t care if they’re innocent. I will do it just to fuck you over. If a single one of us dies—for any reason—you are all dead. Got it?”
He took a shaky breath. “Look, I’m really sorry we tried to hit you. W-we didn’t know who you were. I-I dunno if you’re some famous adventurer from the kingdom or something, but I swear we didn’t know.”
“I don’t give a shit about what you knew. Now you know that if I ever catch you breaking any sort of law, be it murder or fucking tax fraud, you are dead. So, y’know. Move with caution.”
He nodded over and over, as though each nod had a better chance at reassuring me.
“Okay. Now go find your little group. Tell them what I told you. And be absolutely sure they understand the weight of my promises. Because when I make them, I keep them.”
I sent a message to Ainash asking her to take off the bindings around his wrists, and the moment they were off, he pushed himself to his feet and scampered off.
Erani watched him leave alongside me. “You sure you didn’t go too far with the whole threatening their families thing? Also, I do hope you realize I’m definitely not going out and killing random children if you die.”
“Oh, yeah, it was a total bluff,” I said. “But I’m not taking any chances. Obviously, I don’t want them to try and assassinate any of us or whatever, but I also don’t want to get involved with any sort of law enforcement. That’s just asking for trouble, when it comes to tracking our identities if we come forward as witnesses, or something. So I thought being as intimidating as possible would be the best way to keep them silent. Plus, if they stop trying to mug people, that’s definitely a bonus.”
“Yes, I’m sure they’re totally reformed,” Erani rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, sorry for taking over that whole thing,” I said. “Didn’t really give you any chances to say anything you wanted to say. I kinda got into the role, y’know?”
“Oh, no worries, it was fun to watch you work. I would’ve gotten Ainash to message you if I needed to say anything.”
I chuckled. “Well, at least now we know how we’re doing things if we ever need to threaten more peoples’ families. Roles have been assigned. I’m the talking one, and you’re the muscle who stands in the back of the room menacingly.”
“Ideally we won’t need to fall back into those roles.”
“Hey, it’s always good to be prepared.”
Once we were sure none of the bandits were following us—which was somewhat easy, given the open nature of the surrounding fields—we got back onto the road back to the town of Salvation.
“Do you think we should stay outside with Ainash for tonight?” Erani asked as we walked. “I don’t want her to end up ambushed by those bandits.”
“Hm, that might be smart,” I said. “I tried my best to keep them from trying something stupid like that, but it’s still definitely a possibility. Maybe we should just run in to grab some food and supplies before coming back out here with her. Safety in numbers and all that.”
“Do not need to do that!” Ainash interjected. “I will be fine.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean, if they decide to come after you…”
“Mean guys will not find me if want to kill me. I am very sneaky. Will go far far away from them, to other side of Human territory, and will be very careful to not be followed. Also, if mean guys decide to try kill me, that means they are bad guys! And I will kill bad guys. So if they become bad guys, I will kill them anyway.”
I sighed. Aside from her assertion that she’d just kill all of them, she did make a good point. As a native creature of the forest, she certainly had an advantage when it came to moving without being noticed. So maybe the danger wasn’t as bad as I thought.
“It’s still a risk I don’t want to take,” Erani said. “If you need help, it’ll take way too long for us to get to you.”
“That is why you need focus on getting me into Human settlement, not protecting me while I am out of it. Protecting me is only making problem not as bad, but putting me into settlement gets rid of problem totally! So should spend time trying to do that. I will be okay for now, because those Humans are stupid and weak. But if smart, strong Humans decide to become bad guys, then we should be together inside of protected settlement. So put me in there!”
Erani pursed her lips at that.
“I kind of agree with her,” I offered. “I mean, in the long term, it is kind of a waste of effort to spend all of our time out here protecting her from some random thugs that she’s most likely able to handle on her own. But if the Demons are able to infiltrate the empire and come after us, that’s when she’s going to be really vulnerable. We all need to be in a city—preferably some place with a good military—when that happens. Not still out here worried about bandits. If we spend the night in town, we can make sure we get an early morning start and head down to whatever place we need to go to in order to get that license to let her in, instead of spending all morning walking there.”
Erani nodded. “I suppose. But be sure to stay safe while you’re out here, alright?”
“I will!”
“Good,” she sighed.
As we walked, I suddenly got an unexpected notification.
Time Loop has refreshed its uses.
Recycled Loop has activated. Due to 2 uses being leftover, you have gained the following Stats:
+1 Strength, +1 Endurance
8 Stats remain until you must Level up.
“Oh, hey, there it is,” I said.
“There what is?”
“It just turned to midnight, so I got my uses of Time Loop back. And the other two got recycled into Stats.”
“Right, I forgot about that,” Erani nodded. “So, if you got two today, that means you can get eight more before you have to Level up?”
“Yep. Probably gonna stick with the plan of getting another Spell Crystal use from those guards tomorrow, too. So I’ll get another two then.”
“I’m sure you’re excited,” Erani laughed. “I need to get Spell Crystals for my Spell Upgrades, too. Just about locked out of practicing by now, since Firebolt is nearing 20.”
“That’ll probably be what we save up for soon, then,” I nodded. “Or maybe we’ll find some bandits with a couple of them on hand when we counter-rob them.”
Erani laughed. “Great idea. We should just rely on stealing from bandits to make all our money from now on.”
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