‘… up… Wake…! Ozzy! Wake up! WAKE UP ALREADY!’

‘Gah!’ I jumped up with a start. While I was getting up, I hit my skull hard on Jenna’s pedestal above me. I bent over in pain, clutching my head. I don’t think I felt any cracks in it. ‘That’s dangerous, you know? I wish you would be gentler when waking me up.’

‘I’ve been trying to wake you up for the past hour already! I don’t know how someone who literally does not need sleep manages to sleep for so long! It’s been eight hours already!’

‘Just eight hours? I could have slept for a good two or three more. Besides, I only sleep about every 4 or 5 days. I think that is entirely reasonable.’

‘As someone else who doesn’t need sleep, I disagree.’

Once I had my fill of banter, I asked, ‘So, what happened? What did I miss?’

‘Oh! We finally got another evolution! Some of the mice that live near the pond began eating bass eggs and eventually became Swimmer Rats.’

‘Did we get any variants?’ We managed to get two new species from just the mice, so I was surprised that we hadn’t managed to get a single variant yet, except for myself.

‘No… variance is exceedingly rare. Variance usually denotes an especially strong connection between an element that is not intrinsically associated with your species. Although, it isn’t unheard of for something like a water dwelling species with a water variance, but those types are often exceptionally powerful.’

‘So, it just happens that most things that could get a variance just evolve into that type of animal instead.’ It’s nice that Jenna is practically an encyclopedia.

‘That’s probably the case.’

Jenna and I were very focused on making the monsters stronger, acquiring new species, absorbing area. There was no structure to the dungeon so far. The expansive area gave us a maximum diameter of about 20 miles (32 km) of forest to work with, but it currently was just a fighting ground. It’s been about a week since we’ve obtain bobcats, and we haven’t received too many evolutions. A few monsters have gotten strong, but they were still at the level that they could get beaten by an amateur adventuring team.

The layout of the dungeon was simple. It essentially consisted of two rooms. One was the pond room, where the heart of the dungeon sat and it was home to various insect species, the bass, and the Swimmer Rats. The second room was the forest. The beginning of the dungeon was separated by a row of trees that were tightly packed together. The gave a semicircular lining to the dungeon so that its entrance was clear.

We have gained a few new species, but nothing entirely notable. There is nothing that can hunt, anyway. The majority of the new species were insects. I was especially thrilled to see spiders, but we’d have to devote too many resources to them for them to even be something close to usable, so I gave up on them for the moment.

‘Also, you know the birds we got a few days ago?’

‘Yes, what about them?’ A robin must have died within Jenna’s territory a few days ago, because robins suddenly appeared on the monster list one day. I had suggested using them as scouts, as they blend in to the environment when in small numbers.

‘They spotted a human caravan just outside of the dungeon walls.’

Every train of thought I had simultaneously crashed. I stared blankly at Jenna as I slowly tried to get things back on track. But it was a mess. I was about to get angry at Jenna, furious at how she should have told me earlier, but she suddenly added, ‘I would’ve told you an hour ago, when they were first spotted, but you slept too heavily. Who even were you before you became an undead?’

I slowly squatted down before asking, ‘Do you think we could win?’

‘In a direct fight? I don’t know what those guys were like that you fought the first time, but these guys look really strong. And there’s about 40 of them.’

I hung my skull. And then I began to think.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

What makes a bandit? The simple answer is crime. Commit enough crimes, and one automatically is thrust into the bandit profession. It doesn’t matter what type of crime, but if it is done “too much” the perpetrator becomes a bandit. Wherever this line lies, however, is anyone’s guess.

Becoming a bandit is a guaranteed destruction of one’s life. Most, if they can help it, would avoid this at all costs. Although bandits get better growth rates than the [Commoner] job, they also have much worse growth rates for any other job that follows. If all other things remained constant, but one person had a [Bandit Swordsman] job, as opposed to the [Swordsman] job, the Swordsman would by all accounts be significantly better at everything.

That is just the unfairness of life. After all, some people are required to become bandits to survive. Being poor is a sin.

As for me, I was born a street rat. My family and I lived in the dirt, and we never had enough to eat. My father had apparently borrowed money from the wrong sort of people when my mom fell ill while pregnant with me. They had managed to heal her, but the interest on that group’s “gift” left my father with nothing.

My old man apparently worked himself into the dirt, and I began thieving to make ends meet. Mom never fully recovered from her ailments after all. It’s a story you could hear anywhere.

My life of stealing eventually changed my job. Maybe it was three weeks in, maybe three months? I switched from [Commoner] to a level 1 [Bandit]. I had completely given up on my honest life anyways, so I didn’t feel that upset. The thought, “Oh finally, there it is,” just seemed to float through my mind.

Soon after, I found her.

As we slowly marched through the forest, I glanced towards her, the leader of the bandit company. Dignified, intelligent, and with a charisma one couldn’t deny, Selena Avella was our queen. She was not much older than the younger members of the group, at a low 24. However, Selena had been a bandit since she was about 7 or 8. At 12 years of age, she began gathering other street rats under her command.

I just happened to be the first that actually listened to her.

She had long auburn hair that reminded you of the tough, warm earth tied back into a ponytail. She was thin enough to look like a princess, but those who thought she was as strong as one were in for a wide awakening. She stood at an average height of about 5’7 (170 cm), but it felt impossible to look down on her, either. Her proudest possession hung prominently on her waist. Gently sheathed within its scabbard, a rapier of superior quality was kept securely next to her. Some say she stole it from a noble, others say she won it while gambling, but nobody really knows how she came to get it.

“This is simply taking too long,” Selena mumbled to me, “by the time we find those two, they’ll be long dead. Alex, can you speed this up?”

“Hm.” I grunted in reply. ‘She’s as caring as ever,’ I thought to myself. Ah, by the way, I’m Alex Ambran. Veteran bandit and experienced swordsman. We are searching for two of our scouts that went missing a week or two ago. We waited several days for their return, and when it appeared that they had gone MIA, we followed after them, to make sure that they were alright. They may have been punished, but they have been around for several years.

It isn’t uncommon that we pick up many young kids who either need to join bandit groups in order to survive, or ran away from home for the thrill of banditry. Several years back, we had two young ones join the group. They were six years younger than us.

I could tell that those two were not good people. Selena realized that as well, but hoped that they would eventually come to see the group like she does, one big family. Although everyone views her as their queen, she views them as her children. Some are just more inclined to be troublemakers than others.

Those two kids, Drake and Cruelty, had finally gained permission to conduct robberies by themselves this year. We often aim for merchants and farmers, taking tools, money, and food, so that we all can survive. The Bassion Kingdom, where we operated, are currently at war with another large nation, the Kartol Empire. As long as we didn’t draw their ire, the Kingdom wasn’t going to waste any manpower hunting down a bunch of bandits, and the farmers and merchants often didn’t have the money to put an extermination request for us in any Adventuring Guilds.

The two kids, after completing many successful missions, began to draw some notoriety because of their quick-to-murder inclinations. I had recommended to Selena that we take them off raiding missions as soon as possible. Bandits that make a name for themselves often don’t last long.

She had agreed, but then Drake made sure we could never stay in the area. I remember his big grin as he sauntered towards me during my training break. He bent over a little, put his face right in front of mine and gloated, “Alex, you wouldn’t believe what we managed to pull off today.”

“Hm?” I had responded.

“We hit a huge jackpot! We swiped tons of weapons from one of those tough convoys. I may have lost two or three of my men, but now we’re better armed than ever before, hehe. You better work hard, or that [Bandit Right Hand] spot will be as good as mine!”

“…” I stared at him in disbelief. He went straight for the military? A bounty for our group will be up in the morning. Or maybe a local squadron will come to do us in. Fairly numerous though we are, we weren’t trained soldiers, and we didn’t have any fortifications to speak of. Just a fence and a watchtower.

“Heeeeh? Worried, are you? I’ll soon be the strongest bandit in this whole group. I can’t wait until you begin calling me Mr. Knell, you know?”

I stood up with a start.

I ignored the buffoon and quickly made my way towards Selena. I communicated the situation, and a decision was quickly made. Drake and Cruelty were demoted for their foolishness, and the group had to leave.

So, we packed up and ran. We could no longer stay in the Bassion Kingdom. There was a region that split the Kingdom and the Empire, a circle of mountains with an expansive forest in the middle. This circle also bordered the ocean to the north, and to the south was where the Kingdom and Empire bordered each other. Well, a better picture would be that the two nations formed a ‘u’ shape, where they collided at the bottom, and the hole in the ‘u’ was Maklan Mountain Circlet. We were currently in this circlet, trying to covertly cross from the Bassion Kingdom to the Kartol Empire. It was a tough trip, but we had enough rations to pass through the mountains, and it wasn’t like we couldn’t hunt within the forest.

We were hoping to find an abandoned mining village to squat in for a while whilst we lay low. ‘What did they manage to find out here?’ I wondered. Both nations at one point had hoped to find something profitable in this area, but building a road was honestly a herculean effort, and there was evidently nothing in these mountains that merited building one in the first place. The sea was blocked off by mountains, too. The animals out here weren’t even that uncommon. Any other forest around rural villages would offer about the same selection. Squirrels, rabbits, birds, wildcats, wolves, and the odd goblin collective were all that this area had to offer.

Absolutely nothing of value should be here.

The axe I had been swinging with ease suddenly got stuck in a tree ahead of me. “Hm?” This tree was clearly harder than the rest. It shouldn’t take more than one swing to cut it. “Selena,” I called, turning around.

When I gazed upon the band, I saw them all looking with disbelief ahead of me. Did I get too absorbed into thinking again? I backed up a bit and noticed that all the trees ahead of me were tightly packed together, as if not letting anything through. They formed a sort of pseudo-wall and they stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction.

“…” I stared in confusion. There shouldn’t be anything here… right?

Selena turned to me, eyes sparkling, and said, “I think our duo of idiots really managed to find something amazing!”

When she looks like that, I can’t help but grin. I mumble in response, “I guess things are going to get enjoyable from here on, right?”

“Heeheehee! Right!”