Joan was taking first watch and Luna woke up relaxed and full of energy. Joan was shaking her awake. “Luna, wake up. Your turn to keep watch!” Luna rubbed her eyes and rolled out of her comfy blanket. Sitting up she looked at the sky, wondering why she felt so awake while it was clearly still night.

“Ok Joan, I am up. Get some rest. I think my new Skill helps me with sleep, it is like I already had a full night’s sleep.”

With nothing better to do Luna climbed up on a roof and sat down, covering herself in her blanket. Now that they were in the base they were no longer lacking enough blankets to make the still cold nights bearable. Despite the fire she could see the surroundings clearly, her night vision not affected by the light. Keeping watch while fully awake was both better, because she did not have to fight against sleep, and worse because she was getting bored.

When the sun started creeping up the horizon Joan woke up to a prepared breakfast. Luna had rummaged around the big house and dug up the food stores. With enough time on her hands she had thrown together a stew with the pickled vegetables, beef jerky and an assortment of roots and herbs. After the last days of boring dry rations the smell was heavenly.

Luna had nearly forgotten about their other ‘guests’, but remembered in time to make a bigger pot. Nobody was stirring in any of the houses yet and they had time to eat in peace and quiet.

“Thank you for the warm breakfast Luna. I hate to rush you, but you have to get going. Travel directly to the capital and find Michelle. Take our mission writ with you, just in case the gate guards give you trouble.”

Luna quickly got up and dragged her backpack to a nearby house. She removed all the additional rations and only left enough for a week. Speed was most important now and the more she carried the more expensive her Windwalk Skill would be. After removing the unneeded weight she returned to Joan. “I have dropped most of the stuff right behind the door. But you will have to take my axe and a few knives. They weigh me down and I want to use Windwalk to travel fast. Are you sure you will be alright here, alone with them?”

Joan accepted the axe and knives and put them next to her backpack. “Don’t worry about me. I am a much higher level than those three and none of them have any survival skills for making it alone in the forests. Not that there are any beasts around,but those three would be completely lost. The base is the only place where they can be sure to survive. Now move out, you need to use every bit of daylight if you want to make it in a reasonable time.”

Luna nodded to Joan. “Alright, if you say so. I packed the Class Tablet at the bottom of my backpack. I will make sure to deliver it to Michelle. Don’t get hurt please.” Luna hugged the older woman and then turned to leave. The way south led her back the way they had come before, following the small stream out of the forest. On the way she remembered that they had not searched the dead bodies they had left in the woods, but she shrugged her shoulders and kept going. There was nothing she could do about that now.

When Luna left the forest and had clear ground ahead she activated Windwalk and started jogging and when the land started to fall off her speed started to increase even further. She estimated that she was tripling the speed they had been going at when following the group of bandits two days prior. The landscape rushed past her and Luna had to put all her concentration into watching the terrain and ground in front of her. Around noon she started to feel the strain of the Skill and had to drop her speed to a quick Windwalk boosted walk.

When evening drew near Luna had left the last outskirts of the hilly terrain behind and bushes, brush and trees had started to take over the land. Nobody was cultivating the land as the soil was not good enough to support the usual crops. She kept looking for a good spot to spend the night, but what she found was a huge herd of sheep being driven across her path south by a group of shepherds and guard dogs.

Luna decided to avoid making contact and turned east. By her estimate it took her two hours to make her way around the herd and night had fallen. She found a small brook and refilled her water skin and simply lay down on a soft patch of moss and with her blanket. The day of traveling at high speed caught up to her and she fell asleep quickly.

Luna again woke up completely refreshed while it was still dark. The Young Roots trait was doing serious work, supplying her with energy while asleep was a great boon to her now. With the brook nearby she drank her fill and had a quick breakfast of jerky, despite not feeling all that hungry. She had left everything but the jerky behind and was now seriously questioning that decision.

By the time the sun came up Luna already hit the road and turned to follow it east. Her Windwalk Skill and ability to travel through darkness had allowed her to travel the distance in just over a day and now on the road her speed increased further. Over the course of the day she met a few carts from Dreisen delivering food to the capital and she received more than just a few curious glances as she overtook them. Luna just waved as she sped by, not taking the time to talk with anyone. The only tense moment happened when she came across a kingdom patrol of guards on horseback. The lead guard raised a hand and Luna came to a stop, hastily disabling the Windwalk skill.

“Ho there. You are traveling mightily fast. I am sergeant Cooper. What business do you have?” he asked Luna, while the remaining men of the five guard patrol moved the horses closer.

[Cooper]

Level 42, Human

“Hello! Good to see you. I am Emiluna, of the Pathfinder Guild. I am traveling to the capital to deliver a message.” she replied nervously.

“A Pathfinder? You look a bit young for that. Do you have a mission writ?”

“Give me a second.” Luna replied and dropped her backpack to fish the writ from the top. She stepped up to the guards and handed it over to the sergeant. He accepted it and handed it back to her after a cursory inspection. “Everything seems to be in order. Any news you can share with us about the bandits?”

Luna stored the writ back in her backpack and slung it back on her shoulders. “I can tell you that I have good news, a few bandits won’t be around this season, but I may not report any details to anyone except my direct superior. I am sure you can understand that I have to follow my orders on that.”

Luna sighed in relief when the sergeant nodded. “Certainly. Orders are orders. Thank you for stopping and safe travels.” He made a small salute by raising his fist to his chest and then the group turned their horses and started moving again.

“Safe travels to you as well sergeant Cooper.” Luna hastily mimicked the salute and started moving again. Only when the guards were a few dozen meters away did she activate Windwalk again and picked up her pace.

When they had crossed through this area while in the coach Luna had not paid much attention to the surrounding. Now she realized that the area had many small farmsteads on the south side of the road, with the brown earth of tilled fields stretching a long distance behind them.

Seeing houses just standing in the open made Luna question the necessity for the wall around Creek Springs. Was it really that safe and peaceful around here? Luna went through her experience since they left the capital and realized that she failed to notice something obvious. She had barely seen any larger animals. A few deers here and there but not a single predator had crossed their path. If even the few dangerous animals had been driven away from this area then there really was nothing around that could threaten them, except other humans, but being so close to the capital and a road patrolled by the guard meant that was a very unlikely threat as well.

The rest of the day was a single long monoton stretch of jogging along the road until it got dark. Luna kept going until she found a nice little spot for the night, a small group of trees just a stone throw away from the road.

Luna had misjudged how long she had kept going the previous night. She woke up when the sun was already rising above the horizon. It took Luna another day and a half to finally reach the capital. The mission writ gained her swift access into the city and she rushed over to the Pathfinder Guild.

After ringing the now familiar bell at the gate she waited for Peter to appear, but instead the gate simply popped open for her and she walked in. Both Peter and Michelle were waiting for her at the manor.

“Where is Joan?” Michelle asked, concern clear in his voice, but Peter interrupted him before he could ask more questions. “Slow down. Let her come in first and I will get us a cup of tea.”

Luna waved in greeting. “Relax. Good news. We found the base!” Starting off with that turned out to be a bad idea, as Michelle instantly started bombarding her with questions again. “Where? How big? How many people? Is Joan watching it right now? Did you tell anyone else? What level are the bandits? How did you find it? And how did you get to level 18 so quick?”

Luna pushed her way past the man and followed Peter to their usual meeting room. She dropped the backpack, kicked off her boots and slouched into a chair, resting her feet on the table. “I am famished. I have been living on jerky for nearly 4 days now.”

“What? Four days? How close is this base? We need to alert the guard immediately.” Michelle made to leave the room, but Peter caught him and gently deposited Michelle in his own chair. “Calm down.” He told him.

Somehow Peter had summoned a simple sandwich for Luna and it tasted heavenly. Fresh bread, sliced meat and even some non-pickled vegetables. After swallowing her first bite Luna raised a finger and started to explain.

“First. No need to alert the guards to attack the base. They are all dead. Now let me finish this really quick, I’ll explain afterwards. Oh and get a map of the area between the capital and Middingfurt.”

Michelle rushed from the room to get the map before Peter could react and Luna finally finished her sandwich. She was sipping on her tea when Michelle stormed back in with a map. He unrolled in on the table, using Luna’s plate and other random items to weigh down the corners. Luna stood up to look down at the map and started retracing her steps. Since she had not come past the road to Dreisen, she was certain she knew where the bandit base was located.

Looking at the map she realized how close the base really was to the capital. While the grassland near the capital, especially close to the river, was heavily cultivated, the hills directly west of the capital were only used for grazing sheep and a few logging camps.

“Did you receive our report from Middinfurt?” Luna asked Michelle.

“Yes, it arrived two days ago. I know you went to Dreisen and had no luck there but found some leads in Middingfurt. Tell me what happened after you left the border town.”

Luna recounted their days after leaving the town until the day they listened in on the bandits conversation around the fire. “We got close enough to listen in on their conversation at night and Joan decided that we should ambush them when they were sleeping. We had confirmed that they had been smuggled into the country to join the bandits. They were so confident they did not even set a night watch.”

“What did they say?” Michelle wanted to know.

“Nevermind that. Where was I? Right. The ambush. We just slaughtered them. They didn't even get a chance to fight back. We had the high ground and just kept shooting until all but their leader were down. Joan had hit him in a leg, so he was not going anywhere. But that is where the bad news starts. Joan knew the guy, Jackson.”

When hearing the name Michelle sprang up and smashed his fist on the table. “Jackson! That traitorous weasel. What did you do with him?”

Luna had been caught by surprise by the emotional outburst and was looking at Michelle askane. “He did not tell us anything and then tried to go for his throwing knives. He gave me no choice, so I shot him.”

Michelle’s mood clearly brightened at that. “He is dead? That is the best news I had all year. So what next?”

Luna resumed her tale, how they searched and found the base, scouted out the area around it and found out that they had a Class Tablet and that a small group would be leaving on their first bandit outing of the year. “We used the same ambush tactic as before. This time we found someone more willing to talk and finally found out how many people there were in the base. The first group we killed with a total of nine people was the last expected to arrive. In total there were 23 people in the base, we just killed five which left us with 18 more. Apparently they had started kidnapping women this year and had brought two women over from Zollan to cook and clean for them.”

“What? 23 people already there and nine more coming? Thirty people in a base in the middle of nowhere is no mean feat. Without any farming going on they would have to bring in a lot of food, or steal it on the road. We had no reports of groups this large! Show me on the map where it is.”

Luna pointed out the location on the map, just a few days' travel away from the capital. “Right there. They talked about waylaying people on roads all around the hills and forest. Joan’s guess was that this was the single base they were operating from. Not many small groups scattered around, but a single location from where all of them set out. Well coordinated by a leader.”

Michelle was staring at the map. “Of course, with Jackson being part of this it all makes sense now. He would know that the area is practically unused and the forests near the hills are nomansland. And with a leader organizing who strikes where and when, they would just wait for guards to start looking in one area and move on to a less well guarded patch of road.”

“That is what Joan concluded as well. Now we knew how many people were left, but with killing the two groups it was all but certain that we did not have enough time to get help before the remaining people got suspicious and abandoned the base. And the women being held captive were another reason why we could not just leave. Joan thought it likely they would be killed.”

“You already said they were all dead. How did you do it?” Michelle asked her, hanging on her every word.

“It was easier than expected to be honest. We ambushed their logging operation and kept taking out small groups, we even got their leader, the fire mage. Joan decided it was time to check on the base and when we got there, they were having a full blown argument. All we had to do was shoot them from the sidelines and that was it. The last two missing people turned up a bit later trying to sneak up on us, but we saw them coming and that was it. The base was ours. The Class Tablet is at the bottom of my backpack.”

Michelle jumped up and grabbed Luna’s backpack. He quickly undid the latches and then simply dumped it’s content on the ground. He grabbed the Class Tablet and looked at it. “Interesting. Flawed Quality. Could be an old one, but it could also be a new one which would mean someone is not properly culling the dungeons before they grow bigger. The tablets only drop when a dungeon is more mature, which is something we do not let happen. Too dangerous.”

Peter was collecting Luna’s gear from the ground and putting it in her backpack. While doing that he addressed Michelle. “Who do you want me to inform? We need a squad of guards to travel there immediately to help Joan and then bring them back.”

Michelle nodded absentmindedly. “Right you are. But first there is another question that needs answering. Luna, why are you level 18?”