Micky woke up and tossed off the covers. He looked around and remembered last night. He had tried to get away from camp when Mags woke up, but Kux had followed him. He had tried to shoo her away but she completely ignored him. He had realized he was stuck with her and just gave in. So when it came to morning he just got up and put out the embers. He ate hardtack for breakfast and started to look around to see if he could pick up the trail of the spirit beast again. Micky was no tracker and though his tracking professioncy was picking up, and his village kid upbringing had given him the basic understanding he was pretty sure he lost his quarry.

“It went that way.” Pointed his shadow. Micky wanted to ignore her but he had no better indication. At this point the forest had even gotten rid of the previous trail as far as he could tell.

“It went this was but it was hurt. I don’t understand why, it looks like it was protecting something.” Said his shadow tracker.

Micky followed her indication, but made sure to look indignant about it. He wasn’t going to forgive being attacked or hurting Squishy lightly, and one mission reward he could fail with only some slight bruising to his class ranking wasn’t going to do much on that front.

His tracker chugged another stamina potion, it was her fifth since the morning. However, her wing arm was already looking halfway regrown. At the rate it was regrowing it wouldn’t even take two days to regrow an entire arm! Though she seemed to think that it would be slow going after too much longer. In addition, the biggest part was not actually regrowing the wing, but regrowing the muscle mass she had in it at the time. She would need to switch to her other hand as the dominant hand. But she was used to it, apparently, this happens often, and while not exactly ambidextrous switching dominant wings was a trait of her kind.

They followed the trail, until they didn’t. There was apparently a very large fight of some kind. They circled the trail’s end for a few times. From what the could tell some hominids had fought the spirit beast. Normally that would have been the end of the mission. He wouldn’t get the whole reward, but he would get full credit for finishing the mission, and then the adventurer’s society would rangle out some monetary compensation since the mission was ‘impossible’. It wasn’t like they put up the money to make the mission time sensitive or emergency pay. The guild could get kind of prissy with it’s fees sometimes.

They circled the trails of the hominids and found which direction they dragged off the spirit beast and whatever it had been protecting. This led them deeper into the forest. So, why would they not follow the trail of armed hominids deeper into the monster infested forest? It was the natural thing to do.

Together they made much better time than when Micky was trying and marginally succeeding at tracking. She didn’t seem to be that accomplished at tracking things outside of a city, but she could follow basic signs. Since, these people didn’t seem to be too warry of being tracked it wasn’t too hard for them to follow. The only real question was why were they heading in deeper? The only answer Micky could think of was, ‘nothing good’. So of course, they followed.

What they came upon was a small fortified cabin. Clearly, this was a bandit fort, as it was illegal to build anything inside of a monster farm. That meant they would have to stake the place out and figure out if it was too big for them to handle. If Micky turned around he would fail here, because encountering bandits was a possibility. However, if the danger was significantly more than the mission and Micky could prove that with his observations, then he could report the mission and receive full marks and a partial reward once the mission was completed. But it was just a small cabin, though Micky had flashbacks to the underground fortress that Prin’s father had.

Kux took the initiative to scout out the area. She first circled around the trails to find out what she could about the bandit’s group size, regular movement patterns, and what directions they generally moved in. This could even lead to finding out if they have a secret entrance somewhere else. After all, why use the exit that is far away from where you’re trying to go than the one that is right next to it, you know?

Kux didn’t find an indication that there was an underground complex with dozens of secret passages. What she did find was a secret escape tunnel that she scouted out before collapsing it. There was only the one, and while ever novel Micky had read, said to travel through the secret passage for the win, Kux was the infiltration expert. Kux told Micky that while it was true that secret passages were less guarded they were also usually in more visible areas, so unless you were prepared to go loud the moment you exited, the best way was still to try and secretly infiltrate from a different angle.

Kux had also found out what they were dealing with. It was just a small gang of theives at six members. They found the spirit beast and figured that it was their big payday. They were also trying to feed the beast monster meat, because they were brilliant ‘bandit lords’, and also too lazy to get the beast the real food it would need. This group of thieves also weren’t much. Even though they were full grown adults, and had been hunting for years, there weren’t much to write home about. Like most bandits they didn’t want to, or weren’t able to take over the family business. They then went out to make their fortune and failed miserably. So they decided to steal someone else’s fortune. Then they realized that wasn’t going to work either, since the ones that could do that out[Class]ed them so they decided to beat up poor people and steal their rags.

After discussing the plan, Micky gave Kux a three flame head start. The first flame was for positioning herself, that should take roughly fifty breaths of time. The second flame was for infiltrating. This would be shorter or longer depending but still around fifty to seventy breaths. The final flame was for her to set up a kill or two. Micky figured that when he charged the cabin he might get lucky and kill or disable a bandit with Mags. He could then easily crowd control. He also figured that they wouldn’t notice that they were down a member at the start of the fight, which would lead to another easy assassination. At that point they would figure out that Micky was not alone and charging to his doom.

This meant it was now time for him to charge. So that is exactly what he did, he did not yell or scream. The lookout already had a red slight through his throat so Micky didn’t bother with him, maybe they would get three kills out of the assassination.

Mags smashed down the door and there were a group of five inside. Micky Might’ve felt sorry for interrupting the two woman in the corner from their activities, but he had more important things to do. Namely killing them all. Mags smashed the lead bandit with her axe getting an early knockout. Micky couldn’t tell if he was alive, but he was out of the fight for the moment and that was all that matters. Squishy had been left behind since she was still healing.

There was a squeak from one of the two women in the corner but she quickly joined her partner as Kux silenced her as well. However, the two living bandits noticed it and one screamed, “Fuck there’s more of em’! Kill them all!” The other bandit promptly made the decision to dive down the open cellar door. As in a physical swan dive, it was beautiful. He then turned it into a roll as he went down the stairs.

The other bandit turned as Mags axe came towards him. He turned to dodge but Micky’s [Decelerate] prevented him from getting out of the way in time. He sputtered out “Fuck you, Mikey!” before he passed. Kux ran after the last bandit and Micky and mags soon joined her. Micky looked at the monster and the spirit beast that was down there before looking where the bandit had gone. He had released the monster and the spirit beast to slow them down but Micky wasn’t worried. This was because he was going in the direction of the collapsed escape hatch that Kux had taken care of beforehand.

The only problem was going to be the monster, however one look and the monster ran after the bandit. The spirit beast whined after him, she was apparently still stuck in one of the restraints. This only made the spirit beast run faster, like an escaped man that saw his freedom!

Micky made to chase down the bandit as well but then the spirit beast turned on him. She poinced on him and attacked his face! She licked him and sniffed at his cloths and then continued her vicous tongue attack at his face. Micky yelled “Ok, Ok stop that, ok stop, stop STOP! Stop. stop.” Finally, she obeyed and stopped after he glared at her enough. Then final bandit was brought back by Kux and the jet black wolf walked back like a convict that had given into fate. They went back upstairs to find one of the bandits missing but the rest of the bandits had long since expired. Micky gave chase only to find them crawling away. Micky was not about to let the bandit go so he took out his knife, cast [Weaken] on them and stabbed them to [Dead]. It was not quick, and they likely regretted having higher defensive stats than his physical ones, but the job was done.

Going back to the prisoner after looting the place Micky asked them a few questions. He would only answer after they ‘cut him a deal’ though. So they promised that they would make sure he walked away a free man if he told them everything he’d done, and the whole thing about the deal. After that was done, they told him he was an idiot, and that they didn’t actually have that power.