Andric continued down the road, but he presumptively cast a defensive spell on his body. The spell would break after being hit with one projectile, but Andric was confident in it being able to stop a crossbow bolt or a powerful arrow. With his defense spell, he wouldn’t be instantly killed by a bandit shooting him from inside the forest.

The pile of dead bodies scared Andric. At the same time, he couldn’t believe what he was getting frightened over. It was only six bodies; he had seen - and caused - much worse in the previous life. Still, every time he remembered the partially decomposed bodies, he shivered.

‘Fifteen years of peace has made me weak,’ he thought. His time in Einburg had made him value human life, and he wanted to change that.

He still wore his plain clothes and golden ring. As evening grew closer, Andric slid his straw hat onto his back and continued walking. After a few hours, he stopped at the side of the road to replenish his energy, then kept going.

At night, Andric used a spell to supplement his need for sleep, then used another spell to fly into the forest. A continuous-type spell kept him flying, another spell raised a barrier around him to prevent air resistance from affecting him, a third spell eliminated noise around him, and his last spell detected nearby lines of sight. The third spell made it so Andric couldn’t hear anything, but he didn’t need his hearing when he had the fourth spell.

Andric operated under the cover of darkness. He moved very quickly, and he cast his detection spell every few seconds. If nobody was looking at him, he could also rely on himself seeing those who were around him. There were other detection spells Andric could use to quickly find someone, but he had no way to know if the person he found was a real bandit or an innocent traveler, or if they were five miles away or five hundred miles away. Instead, he opted to travel at night and troll during the day.

Andric didn’t need to fly for long. Only a few hours after he began flying inside the forest, his eyesight detection spell shot out four rays of light. Andric quickly followed the rays of light, and they led him to a small clearing deeper within the forest. At the clearing, ten-or-so bandits were standing around a smoking fire pit. The fire pit was dug so that the flame’s light wouldn’t get out, and Andric could only see it when he was much closer. He landed a few dozen feet away from the bandits and canceled his spells.

“What is this red light?” a bandit asked, patting his clothes. Andric’s eyesight detection spell surrounded several of the bandits with red glows, but there were several others who didn’t have red glows around them.

“You must’ve been marked by whatever you saw. What I don’t understand is why it marked your four but nobody else,” one of the bandits without a red glow said. He was under the impression that his fellow bandits had seen a beast in the forest, and that beast had somehow targeted them.

Several of the bandits raised their weapons and looked into the forest, but none of them could see Andric. The red rays of light had temporarily blinded the bandits who were looking in Andric’s direction, and he was able to use that moment to hide. While leaning against a thick tree, he cast a spell on himself, making his body invisible. The spell cost a lot of mana, and it would deactivate for minor reasons, but it would work fine as long as he stayed still.

Andric couldn’t personally determine what martial realm the bandits around the tree from him were at, but he had heard in the merchant caravan that most bandits were at the Human realm or Novice realm. If there was an Apprentice realm bandit, they were likely the leader of a large group and wouldn’t be in the middle of the forest with only a few underlings.

“I told you we should’ve gone back to the fort. If we have to fight some territorial spirit beast, I’m making you go first,” one of the bandits said while angrily staring at a fellow bandit.

“This red light is probably some kind of killing intent. If a spirit beast is able to mark its prey with killing intent, we’ll all need to fight it, together,” the leader of the bandits said, looking in the direction that Andric was originally spotted. Just by the sound of his voice, Andric could tell that he was much older than the bandits who had already spoken.

Andric ran through a few simulations in his mind, then decided on a plan of attack. He formed a spell in his hand, then tossed it aside. It flew toward the gaggle of bandits and burst while in their midst, sending mana out for several yards.

When the spell burst, a strong suction force appeared at the center of the group of bandits. The suction forced pulled up the fire, the stones around it, and most of the dirt on the ground. It pulled heavier and further objects, including sticks, stones, and a fallen log. Finally, it pulled in the bandits who were watching the strange scene. None of them had ever seen magic in their life, but they knew about martial techniques. However, they had never seen something with the effect of Andric’s spell, and they were too slow to react to it. Of the ten-or-so bandits that were standing around the fire, nine of them were taken in by the suction force.

The suction force continued to pull the bandits toward its center, regardless of how much mass had already been pulled in. The bandits tried pushing away from the force, but they were unable to overcome the power of Andric’s spell. The weaker ones were the first to fall, as their flesh and bones were broken and molded around the suction force. Andric didn’t know exactly how strong his spell was, compared to martialists, but it had enough power to kill an ordinary human, and all Human realm martialists were unable to escape it.

After ten agonizing seconds, the suction force died down, and a bolder made from foliage, dirt, and crushed human bodies fell to the ground. Now that the suction force was gone, the blood from the human bodies could flow out, and a thick stench of it filled the nearby air.

“What?” the bandit leader shouted and backed up. He survived thanks to his cultivation, and he looked over the other survivors. Besides him, there were only two others left. One was at the Novice realm, like himself, and the other was at the Human realm but was standing outside the spell’s range.

Andric walked out of the cover of the tree he was hiding behind, and his invisibility spell broke. He looked at the surviving bandits, then at the ball of gore between them. He raised his hands and flung casual spell from them, which zoomed toward their targets. He made a third spell and targeted the last bandit.

The two Novice realm bandits saw Andric’s spells and attempted to dodge them, but Andric’s spells turned mid-flight and still hit them. The Human realm bandit was too slow, and he was hit outright. All three of them suffered their head popping off, followed by a torrential outflow of blood.

‘Damn, I need to do this a little cleaner,’ Andric thought as he watched the three spouts of blood shooting into the air. The bodies fell over a second later, and the forest was quiet except for a gentle sound of flowing liquid.

Andric cast an eyesight detecting spell, determined the coast was clear, and started to loot the bodies. Ordinarily, Andric would’ve felt around the bandits’ clothes for anything valuable, but he didn’t have the stomach to do so with the bandits who were integrated with the sphere of rubble. Instead, he cast a spell into the air.

The spell activated in the area around Andric, and it disintegrated everything around him that was below a certain density. Dirt, wood, plants, clothes, and flesh were all disintegrated. They blew away like smoke, leaving only rock and metal behind. Various weapons, armor pieces, and valuables dropped from where corpses used to be. Once they were separated from their owner, Andric cast a light spell above him and collected the spoils.

Andric picked up a hefty amount of silver, copper, and jewelry. From killing nearly a dozen bandits, he had more than he could fit in his pockets, so he had to unroll his roll of clothes and put the coins and jewelry inside his extra pair of shoes. He didn’t like any of the armor the bandits had worn, but he did find the sword the leader of the bandits used to be attractive, so he switched out his old sword for the bandit leader’s.

Andric didn’t know very much about swords, but he didn’t need to choose his sword based on its killing ability. He looked for one with a better appearance, and those with fancier appearances tended to be better swords. Unless the sword was a spirit weapon, Andric could create a better one with his magic. Andric analyzed the sword in his hand for a few seconds, but he didn’t have any way to determine if a sword was actually a spirit sword. In the end, he took it solely because of its looks.

Andric couldn’t guess how many coins the jewelry he acquired would be worth, but he could count the number of coins be picked up from the bandit corpses. In total, he had more than fifty silver coins and a few hundred copper coins. The copper coins were a bit heavy, but he placed them in a shoe in his roll of clothes, making them easier to carry.

Only about twenty-five hours had passed since Andric left the merchant caravan, and he already had more than triple the amount of coins that were paid for his fare. Now, the few coins he could’ve gotten from the wagon driver seemed like nothing. For a second, he felt bad about destroying the wagon driver’s wagon in a few weeks, but he didn’t allow himself to get too beat up about it. After all, the wagon driver still deserved it, no matter what kind of fortune Andric encountered afterward.

Andric checked around for any loot that he might’ve missed, then deactivated his light spell and walked away. From the tiny amount of conversation he had heard, the bandits were close enough to their main base to make an argument for traveling there before the night fully set in. If so, the base couldn’t be too far, especially if Andric was using the superior traveling method of flight. To the bandits, the base might’ve been a couple hours away, but it would only be a few minutes away for Andric.

He paced back and forth a few times, then cast a spell to detect nearby humans. He was prepared for ambiguous results, but the reaction from the spell indicated that a large group of people were in one direction, and there was nobody in the other directions. Either the spell had found a settlement, or had it found the base of the bandits.

Andric began to fly, then headed toward where his spell said a large amount of people were at. He stayed low, flew quickly, and nullified all the sound his fight created. His invisibility spell couldn’t be used due to its high level of volatility, but he could use a different spell to cover his body with a shadow.

He flew like a hawk, silent in the night, zeroing in on its prey.