It only took me an hour to reach the next station and I felt several pairs of eyes on me. They knew I was coming and I was sure that they were going to be prepared for me.

“Have you ever charged an enchantment before?” I asked and the healer shook her head. I took off my pack and dug out the wooden pendant that Victoria had worn previously. “It's not necessary to know exactly what it does for it to work. It has two levels, one for repulsing men when you charge it a little and the next for concealing yourself from sight when its charged a lot.”

“Excuse me?” The healer asked and looked at the simple wooden coin in my hand. “It does what?”

“The second station has been warned that I was coming and they are waiting for me. You are in danger and I can't allow that.”

The healer gave me an odd look as she took it. “Will this repulse you as well?”

“Yes, since I'm a man.” I said and brought the boat to a stop in the middle of the canal. “Please wait until I dive into the water before you use a bit of healing magic on the pendant.”

She watched me with wide eyes as I stripped off my adventuring outfit and tucked it into my pack. I put it at the back of the boat and sealed it with number ten potion while also securing the pack to the boat. I still wore my underwear, bandoleer, and knife sheath.

“What are you going to do?” She asked me, concern in her voice.

“I'm going to hope that they didn't convince the station commander to help.” I said and used the pole to probe the water within twenty feet. Nothing moved, so it was relatively safe. I would still need to be careful once I was in the water.

“You can't just leave me here.” She said, worried. “How will I get back?”

“I'll take you when I'm done, of course.” I said and dove into the water. I went deep to see how far down the canal was and it was quite deep. Luckily, it was freshly churned and I grabbed handfuls of the dirt and grime to rub on my body and face. It felt like I was finally home now and I swam back to the surface.

“AHH!” The healer gasped and jumped back from the edge of the boat.

“It's just me. I'm covered in dirt and mud.” I said and she let out a sigh as she covered her heart with a hand. “Go ahead and heal the pendant.”

“Are you sure it'll work?” She asked.

“Just focus on a minor injury.” I said and she put her hand on it to make it glow. I felt the desire to get away from her and nodded. I swam over to the side of the canal and climbed out as I made sure that I was still covered and that the water hadn't washed anything off. I waved to her and she waved back, then I slipped into the underbrush and disappeared from her sight.

I activated my own pendant and made my way to the first set of eyes that had lost sight of me. I found the scout hunkered down beside a felled tree beside the canal a hundred feet away from where my boat was. I pulled my knife and didn't charge it as I jumped on him and slit his throat while I covered his mouth to stop his screams.

I stayed there for a couple of minutes before I felt his blood stop pumping and searched him. I gained a compass, some silver coins, a little spyglass that extended to show farther distances, and one of the beacon things that the mage in the sending station had. I crushed it to stop it from working or making a noise and shoved the scout's body under some debris.

I moved on and followed his trail back to another scout. He was kind of in the open, so I needed to be careful. I went around him to make sure that no one was within either sight or hearing, then I crept up on him from behind. He looked around as he felt the pendant's power that made him want to move away. Just like the last scout, he successfully ignored that feeling, so it was easy to pounce on him and dispatch him.

I brought him over to the other scout's body and left it there, partially concealed, and continued on. It didn't take long for me to find the ambush site that wasn't very far from the second relay station. They had two dozen crossbowmen prepped and ready to fire in two rows of twelve, with backup weapons ready with another shot at their feet. A dozen mages waited behind them to take their own shots when appropriate or given an opportunity.

It was a standard skirmishing line and I almost laughed at their perfect execution of the flawed strategy. Something like that only worked well when confronting another group of enemies of at least five or more, which was not the case this time.

Against a lone target, it would have been more effective if they had set up crossing fields of fire to cut off any dodging or escape, then fired the crossbows in a staggered pattern to keep me pinned and not moving while the mages converged and finished me off. At least, that's what my old instructor would have ordered.

She was a smart one and I had learned a lot of things from her, two of the main ones were to keep discipline and to never exceed the scope of your orders. My current orders were to remove the thieves from my lands, so that's what I was going to do.

I used Sense Magic and nearly everyone lit up slightly, which meant they all had some kind of defensive magic around them. My direct attack might not work, so I would have to try diversion and separation instead. I had to concentrate and move a little closer for it to work, so I was very careful and slunk through the underbrush until I had them all within the short range of my vigilance technique.

It took me a minute before I could focus on all of the crossbows and started using the heating spell on them. They weren't designed for it, so it took a few more minutes before they became warmer than they should have been normally.

“Hey, the wood on my weapon is warm.” One of the men commented.

“Mine seems warmer, too.” Another said and they all started to check their crossbows.

I switched spells and cast Lather on their hands and nearly all of them let out startled yells as they fumbled their weapons from the magic soap. Most dropped them and two of them went off. They missed the people around them, though.

“What the hell are you doing?” One of the mages looked at the chaos of the soldiers trying, and failing, to pick their weapons back up. “Get those weapons under control!”

I turned and cast the fire starting spell on several of the dry trees and grasses near the canal and that got everyone's attention.

“He's here!” One of the other mages said and they started to chant.

I held in my laugh as I used the smoke manipulation spell that Tabitha showed me for moving the chimney smoke out of the room and up the chimney to create a draft for the fire to burn higher. I quickly moved the smoke over to the soldiers and mages, which made them cough and choke. Their spoken spells were useless now and I cast the lather spells on their open mouths.

The results were hilarious and quite effective.

Most of them gagged, some threw up as they swallowed involuntarily, and nearly all of them completely forgot what they were there for as they tried to stop whatever was going on instead.

It was easy pickings for me as I held my breath and took out all of the mages first. They were a priority, since they were the easiest to deal with. Once they were all dead and bleeding on the ground, I moved on to the soldiers. They were a bit more difficult because of their better training in close combat and the armor they wore.

Even visually and physically impaired like they were, their close combat reflexes were far superior to that of mages. Also, my pendant made them want to avoid me, so they were a bit harder to dispatch than they should have been. Being ignored was worth the extra bit of running I had to do to catch them all.

With them all dead and no feeling of eyes looking at me or around me, I extinguished the flames I had started and pushed the smoke away. I checked all of the bodies and the soldiers didn't have anything except a combat dagger each and their crossbows, which were now heat warped because of my spell. They would never fire straight again.

The mages gave me two surprises, because two of them had magic weapons on them. One was a foot long blade that didn't have any markings on it whatsoever and the other was a split dagger. It was the normal shape of a dagger, except that it had about half an inch missing in the middle, all the way down the spine of the metal, which was something I had never seen before.

I looked down at my underwear, which was all I had on besides my bandoleer and knife sheath, and sighed. I couldn't tie the foot long blade to my waist and there wasn't an extra tie for me to put it on my thigh. I quickly tried to look for something else to use and let out another sigh, because there was nothing to easily tie it off with.

I chose a mage robe and cut a piece of fabric off, tied it around the whole scabbard and then tied the cloth around my chest on the opposite side of my bandoleer. With it secured, I slipped the split dagger into the slot in my bandoleer that my knife used to occupy and moved on.

I quickly came across the second relay station and there wasn't anyone around. I had to assume that most of them I had already killed, so I went to the mage guild building first. After a quick search that gave me nothing, I broke the fire suppression enchantments and then lit the place on fire. I walked over to the main building and entered it, to see a terrified woman staring at me as she huddled behind her desk.

“Is the station commander in?” I asked, even though I knew they were, and she shook her head. “Lying won't help.” I walked by her and stepped to the side of the door and opened it.

A crossbow bolt shot out through the space and made a thump sound as it stuck into the wall.

“That could have been your secretary.” I said and there was no response.

I made a 'shh' gesture to the secretary and ducked to almost lay down, then I crawled as close to the floor as possible and slid into the next room. There wasn't another shot, so I crawled across the office and peered around the edge of the desk's leg. A man knelt behind the desk with another loaded crossbow aimed at the door. I moved a bit closer and he edged away from me.

I smiled and leapt up from my crawling position and backhanded the crossbow out of his hand. He let out a yelp of pain and jumped back from the desk, only to have his eyes not show him anything.

“What's going on?” The man asked and drew a knife.

“You listened to the wrong people.” I whispered and grabbed his hand.

“ARRHHHHHH!” He yelled as the enchantment took full effect and I held on to let him fall unconscious. When his screaming stopped, I sat him in his chair and searched him for valuables before I searched the desk for information. Inside the top drawer of the desk were two written messages. One stating my ultimatum to retreat or suffer and the other was a bribe from the mage at the station to have me killed by accident.

I chuckled and treated both notes with fortifying waterproof potion after I found a dagger on him and a sword at the side of the room, then I used both. I used the dagger to pin my warning note to his chest on the left side, which made his breathing stagger as the blade pierced his lung. I then used the sword to pin the bribe note through his heart. Neither note absorbed any of the blood and weren't ruined, except for the cut the blades did.

I walked out of the office and both smelled and saw that the secretary had peed on the floor. “Did you recommend that he take the bribe?” I asked and she shook her head. “What did you tell him to do?”

She didn't say anything and I took a step towards her. “AH! I said to ignore it! It was a joke! No one can own public land! It's all unclaimed!” She said loudly and then covered her head to wait for me to do something to her.

“Where are the valuables?” I asked.

“I don't know what you mean.” She said immediately.

“Each relay station has a strong box installed for army pay. It's delivered every month for their salaries.”

“You can't take that! It's army property and...”

“Where?” I asked and took another step towards her.

“It's under the commander's desk!”

“Thank you.” I said and walked back into the office and took out my knife. I charged it up and sliced the top and front of the desk in half. The two pieces fell to the sides and I looked at the trap door under the commander's feet. I opened it and inside was the strong box.

“You can't open it. The sides are reinforced heavy metal and the lock can't be picked.” The secretary said with a bit of satisfaction. “I don't know where he kept the key, either.”

I used my knife to lop off the two visible hinges and the box now opened the other way. I pulled with my hands to bend the lock, which was the only thing holding the top on, and I took out two large sacks of money and a file folder. Inside the folder were the plans to expand the route even more to claim even more of the lands, which pissed me off.

I was going to have to do something to stop all of them and not just the ones disobeying my order. My eyes dropped to my wooden medallion and I had to smile. It's going to cost them a lot of lives to complete this plan. I thought and tied the money bags to my bandoleer before I walked out of the office.

“W-wait!” The secretary said and I stopped beside her. “What are you going to do now?”

“I'm going to protect my lands from you.” I said with a tooth bearing smile. “You really should have listened to my warning.”

My hand flashed out with my charged knife and I severed her head to give her a quicker death than bleeding out would.

“The senior mage gave you my information and you knew it wasn't a joke.” I said to her dead eyes that were still staring up at me. I broke the fire suppression enchantments and lit the place on fire. I checked her desk on a whim and found a dozen canvas bags, several knives, and a bag of raisins.

I took everything and left the building as I set the outside on fire, too.