“We have to move! Loot quick or die! Kill the survivors, we can’t take them with us.” Mathew commanded. Everybody knew what loot quick meant. Grab all the shit and go. Some of the crew just bolted sacrificing whatever loot they might have gotten. The right wing stayed were Mathew was. However Simone wasn’t back yet. Mathew was a bit worried for multiple reasons, his mind racing around many different scenarios. He hadn’t been this worried, well ever, well maybe with Bob. That little snot nosed shit seemed to get into the worst trouble imaginable when he took him out on hunting trips. But that was worrying in itself because that meant he thought of these kids as his own family. That would cause problems when he needed to ditch em’ later.

“Kill them?” Asked a pale faced Michael. He had fought the bandits, mostly to the death, this whole time. But until now he didn’t have a chance to actually contemplate what he was doing. He started to go pale, and a strange smile went onto his face as he shivered with a worried expression. “Yes get to it! I want you kids on clean up. Kill any bandit and each one gets stabbed through the heart so that if they only look are [Dead] not [Feign Death]. Make sure that each bandit is [Dead] as [Dead] can be.” Mathew said.

“I, I don’t know if I can...” Said Michael, another kid just took the sword from his hands and stabbed a guy. He made a scream. The kid puked to the side, tears streaked down his face, and he moved on to the next one without stopping. Michael got his spine back then and grabbed his long knife. He started stabbing into the bandit’s chests, and it excited him to no end. Which scared the shit outa him, which caused him to puke, which would repeat in a never ending cycle. Another was apathetic, just mechanically stabbing the bandits. Only one kid couldn’t even do it and ran away while dropping his sword. “Leave a crippled one for Simone and Micky each.” Mathew said.

None of this stopped Mathew’s hands as they dug through the cloths of the bandits. He just grabbed everything and went. A bunch of naked bandits left in his wake. Bandits had a tendency to leave things in strange places so when he pulled the first valuable ring out of one, the crew looked at him strange. Till they saw it was an emerald ring. Then these bandits got chopped up and disemboweled. This made the process faster. Oddly, they each had one to three valuables on or in them. But they only had a few copper or at most silver on them.

The looting was quick and dirty. They grabbed the pile not worrying about what they had actually gotten. There was also some monster meat and badly skinned hides. These would need to be treated but they would have to do that one on the way. Most things were already bloody anyway, worrying about more blood and offal was like a drowning man worrying about more water.

Micky screamed as he woke up. “They got me, they got me!” He said holding his wound. Simone still wasn’t back yet but it shouldn’t be long, and if it was they were in even worse trouble. “Yup they got you. Look at that wound, I think we are going to have to amputate.” Mathew said.

“No you can’t do this to me! It’s fine I’ll be fine.” Micky said.

“Nope we’ve got to amputate that wound or it’ll get infected and you’ll die.” Mathew said.

“Can I do the amputation?” Simone asked a little to excitedly, amputation wasn’t something you were supposed to be so excited about.

“No, I’m fine! I swear! I’ll recover I promise! Please don’t take my arm!” Micky said, tears streaking down his face, they all laughed. Mathew took a look at his ‘wound’. It was a scratch about a finger long. He probably wouldn’t have noticed it except it was like a paper cut. Mathew never really respected the scholars so much until he got one of those dreaded wounds himself. Then his respect for them increased many-fold. He also gained a whole new level for the thousand cuts method of execution. This however, wouldn’t even leave a scar and likely wouldn’t take more than a few days to recover. He had probably gotten worse fighting [Monster]s but he was just scared from his first time fighting bandits.

Then Mathew became serious and handed Micky a blade. “Stab those bandits over there.” Micky looked at him. Still fuzzy after waking up and then finding out he was going to have his arm amputated, then finding out it was a joke. Now, now this wasn’t a joke, and it scared Micky. But this was something he had to do.

He got up to the last two alive bandits, they were already stripped and looted. “Just do it quick kid we ain’t got all day.” Said a wheezing bandit. “Yeah, I’ve got an appointment for tea time with the grim reaper, he is not a guy you wanna keep waiting.” Said the other, then the two laughed. Micky stabbed the first one to crack a joke when they were both finished.

“I love her, I want you to tell...” wheezed out the bandit before he [Dead]. Micky felt nothing, he wasn’t sad, or scared, or happy, or anything. No he specifically felt nothing, like there was a black hole sucking away his emotions. And that is what scared him. This emotionless state that was slowly draining his emotions, that was slowly draining who he was. This state was…

“Move over my turn.” Said Simone, as she took the knife from Micky. Her bandit was still laughing at some unknown joke.

“What’re you laughing at?” Said Simone.

“Ah, nothing, he just always said he wanted his last words to be ‘Tell her I love her’. Kid don’t worry, that guy never had a girlfriend in his life. He raped quite a few lasses and lads though. I’m sure he coulda loved one or two. But the only person that could tell them they loved em’ was a [Dead] person. Because we don’t leave those alive. We’re nice like that. Well lass what you waiting for, live by the dagger die by the blade. We all know that carrier bandits just die anyway. They only reason to live is for you to get a reward and for us to have a last word and a decent last meal. You know what mine was? Charred ROUS, it tasted terrible. It might have been worth the hanging for a decent meal. Instead I get a quick clean [Dead].” Said the bandit. That was an awful lot to not put on his tombstone.

Simone was quick and clean with the knife. Her class bonuses were in knives among other things. The bandit [Dead] as jovially as he was cracking a joke with his friend. Keeled over with a grin on his face. It made both Simone and Micky sick. The other kids were immune after all the kills they had racked up. But they still looked queasy, well, It was good they didn’t have anything in their stomach then.

“Alright let’s move, don’t engage any [Monster]s we can’t slow down, can’t hold back. Although you know I wish we could.” Mathew said. “There ain’t no rest for the wicked.” Said Simone. “Mmm.” Agreed Mathew.

They rushed back to the Mule to find the rest of the crew running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Two of them were trying to get the mule to move to no success. One was halfway down the road already, but he knew that running all the way down the road by himself would be a [Dead] sentence. So he was just wandering back and forth screaming at everybody to move.

Mathew wanted to put his head in his hands in that moment and cry. They were SO [Dead]. Mathew grabbed the rains of the mule. He was going to have it moving if he had to beat it to [Dead] to get there. Luckily the beast understood it was in it’s best interest. “Get your asses together! We need this mule and we need it moving. We’ll [Dead] If we don’t have the food and water in the cart. And we can’t be looking for more now that there ARE bandits after our asses.”

“So what did you find that sent the kids into a panic?” Said an adult, that was panicking.

“These were ‘official’ bandits.” Said Mathew.

“What the fuck does that mean?” spat one of the mothers.

“It means that we need to get the fuck out of here because the [Baron] isn’t going to stop them. Yes there are patrols, but they conspicuously miss these guys. Since we ran into em’ there won’t be a patrol to stop em’. So get your asses moving and keep orderly. We can’t fight [Monster]s now so lead em’ and lose em’.” Mathew said. He hadn’t wanted to do that till this point because that was the easiest and stupidest way to get injured. It was also the fastest way to travel.