Tim paced around the area as the horses were being exchanged. Not only were there four fresh horses for the carriage, but they also had two extras that would be tethered to the back of the carriage. All three of the guards got fresh horses, but Reggie stayed on his own mount. That seemed to make sense as the brute was monstrous and probably specially bred and trained for combat.

The prior experience had been too weird, so Tim didn’t attempt to dominate another animal. It was clearly something he would have to practice in the future. The skill seemed useful, but he decided that doing anything more that made him stick out was not a good idea, not when he was trying to ingratiate himself into this team.

He still kept his night vision active, and with that came the incessant chatter of the surrounding animals. He could hear the varied and inane thought processes as they went about the activities of their lives. There was even a nest of rabbits nearby where he could tell the youngins were anxious for their mother to return and feed them.

The more he focused on using his own eyes, the more he tried to blot out the thoughts of the surrounding creatures. That was when it all went silent. As if on cue, almost all the creatures except a few to the south seemed to go quiet, like they had all gotten the same memo.

One thought kept pressing through their minds. It was the same one that they had when his group had first appeared, an unfettered and instinctual fear. It wasn’t a fear of being eaten. That was a paralyzing fear. No, this was the fear of a being different from them, different from their predators. This was the fear that man inspired in these lesser beasts.

No sooner did he realize this than he whirled around and saw a glint of metal just at the crest of a low hill, maybe five or six hundred feet away. He sensed the firing of a crossbow through the thoughts of the small creatures trembling near the attackers. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as he realized it wasn’t just one, but three crossbows that had been fired.

Later, with some testing, he realized it was because he had expected the speed of a bullet that would have crossed the distance in less than a third of a second. Whereas the crossbow bolts took over four seconds to reach their targets. It was a length of time that both felt like an eternity and yet was all too short a span in the light of things.

With only a shouted warning, Tim pushed Armon off the carriage and triggered Explosive Leap. Sure enough, the description of the skill was accurate. His skill carried him the twenty feet from where he was standing atop the front of the carriage to where Reggie was astride his warhorse in a fraction of a second.

Thinking quickly, Tim wrapped his arms around the guardian’s middle section as his body impacted the plate mail in the air. From there he rolled as they were launched together off of the back of the warhorse. He hit the ground with a thud and saw a red (-12) flash before his eyes.

“What the hell…” Reggie began but didn’t even finish the words as his mind processed the sound of the crossbow bolts flying overhead.

The two men rolled up and both drew weapons. It was completely new to Tim, yet he possessed the muscle memories of having done these things a dozen times before. In an instant, his sword was in hand, and his shield was on his left arm. He spared a quick glance to see that Reggie had done the same. Instead of a sword, he had a much larger shield and a war hammer in his dominant hand.

The crestline of the hill was bathed in sleet and ice a moment later. Reggie said, “Armon is softening them up for us. Now, we need to take them out.”

“What about, Decima? The crucial point isn’t killing the enemy but protecting her, right? Escort quest after all,” Tim asked.

“That is Armon and Lacinia’s job now.” Then the big man was running up the hill.

Tim took quick stock of his mana. He was sitting at almost full, his regeneration going fast enough to have refilled him from the earlier domination. For now, he just rushed but kept that knowledge at the ready. His enhanced sight gave him an unobstructed view. Three men were reloading crossbows while there were nine others with spears at the ready and one who looked to be their commander.

He must be crazy charging thirteen armed men. Yes, they were all extremely distracted and mostly focusing on trying to hold their shields up to protect them from the baseball-sized pieces of ice raining down on them. Whatever Armon was doing, the spell was highly effective. Tim didn’t even think that they realized they were about to be attacked.

Then Reggie knocked his hammer against the side of his shield, and a loud ringing sound went out. Instantly, the ice storm stopped, but the men on the hill looked up, hesitating to drop their shields for a second longer. That second was all that it took for Reggie to lower his shoulder, raise his shield, and burst forward faster than a race car, slamming into a group of four of their attackers.

The enemy was sent bowling, and it was clear from the snapping sounds that there were multiple broken bones. Reggie was a whirlwind then, waylaying each of the surrounding men who were within reach of his hammer. Tim saw the threat as one of the three crossbowmen, the only still standing, raised his reloaded weapon.

Tim thought, Not on my watch, as he burst forward with an Explosive Leap. This time he aimed it into a tactical strike. With a skill that he knew he possessed but had never truly earned, Tim directed his blade so that the forward momentum empowered a slice, and the archer’s head left his shoulders.

The guardian didn’t seem to be having any trouble with the others. His shield was always in place to block a spear thrust, and every blow of his hammer shattered a kneecap, caved in a chest, or crushed a skull. The only enemy not engaging was the swordsman. Instead, he had climbed onto the back of a horse and was starting to speed away.

Tim made the quick decision to take him out, trusting that Reggie would be okay. He triggered another Explosive Leap, but this time he angled it, so it was at a forty-five-degree angle. Once again, in a fraction of a second, he crossed the sixty feet between him and the fleeing horseman.

He came down against the man’s back with his shield in front and his body braced for the impact. Tim felt the jarring impact, and his arm went numb, but the man flew off the back of the horse and hit the ground. As Tim landed, he shook out his numb arm while swinging his sword to the ready in case the man got up. He figured, if possible, it would be better to question him about the reasons for this attack.

The enemy didn’t so much as move on the ground, so Tim walked up and poked him in the back of the thigh with his sword tip, hard enough to draw blood. There was no response. As he looked closer, it was clear that the man’s back had been caved in. If he had to guess, Tim thought that his back was probably shattered. He had probably died even before hitting the ground.

He glanced back and saw that Reggie was just fine. He was the only one standing, so Tim walked back, dragging the corpse with him. When he got closer, he saw that the big man was bleeding in a couple of spots.

“Where’d you go? You left me to fight all of them by myself.” The tone was almost accusatory, and Tim found he didn’t like it.

“You can just say thank you. I saved you from being shot by a crossbow bolt down there when you were on your horse, I saved you from another one up here, and then I killed the one that was trying to get away. Besides, you looked like you had everything well in hand,” Tim replied. His tone was just as hard as Reggie’s had been.

The guardian glared at him for a second. “Fine, you’re right. I just got tense. We need to find out if any of these guys know anything.”

After a quick run through the attackers, it was determined that only two of them were left alive. They both had knee injuries that made their legs bend in a way that they weren’t supposed to. Just looking at it made Tim cringe, but he still helped with searching them for weapons, stripping off their leather jerkins, and then binding their hands behind their backs.

He cringed again when Reggie started dragging both men down towards the camp. This was a brutal world, obviously, and Tim realized he was gonna have to get used to it—especially if he didn’t want to end up on the other side of treatment such as that. Reggie stopped for a moment and looked back. “Look, I’m sorry. I know you are new, and you are right, you did your part. I shouldn’t have snapped at you earlier. It is just hard when I am used to fighting in rhythm with people that can finish my sentences for me.”

“No, I get it. It’s no fun being part of a pickup group either. I’m just the odd man out everywhere I go now,” Tim said.

“Give it time. Now, do you think you could strip off their gear? Store what you can in your soul bag, and bring anything you can’t down here to us. Oh, and yeah, I’m trusting you to do it, but it isn’t that big of a deal. The entire party will get a list of the loot that is collected.”

Tim nodded and bent down to begin the unpleasant task of stripping gear off corpses. He would have to take everything to know what was valuable. Then it occurred to him he could just activate his Assess skill. Since it was master level, that should tell him what was worth keeping.

Behind him, he heard a stifled laugh. Looking back, Reggie was still there. He said, “You really are a first gen, aren’t you.” Then he shook his head and walked back up. Holding his hand out over one of the corpses, he said, “Loot corpse.”

Instantly, all the man’s gear was stripped off him, leaving a body with nothing but some dirty clothing on it. Reggie smiled and said, “It all gets automatically sorted into my soul bag based on my pre-set guidelines. In this case, you can see I didn’t take their clothing as I have it set not to take low-value clothing or similar items that will be more trouble to clean than they are worth. No one's gonna want this guy's skivvies that, by the smell of things, he crapped in when he died. If your soul bag is ever too full to take the items, they will appear on the ground next to you.”

“So, if that is all we have to do for loot, then why didn’t we just do that with those two?” Tim asked as he jerked his thumb at the two bound and moaning prisoners.

“They are still alive. You can only use the loot command on dead bodies or inanimate objects not in the area of influence of a living person.”

“Area of influence? Tim asked.

“For flats like these, it is anything on their person or within a foot of them. The range increases as you level up. So, any object that you have touched that is within nineteen feet of you would not be lootable as long as you are alive,” Reggie replied. He stared at Tim for a second before he added, “Do you see what I mean now about the difference between us and flats?”

Tim nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t really fair. There were thirteen of them, and they didn’t have a chance at all. I mean, unless they got off a lucky crossbow shot or something.”

Reggie smiled again while shaking his head. “Nope, not even then. I mean, I don’t want to minimize what you did by saving me from being shot. A couple feet of a steel rod through the gut never feels good—heck, through the head is even worse—but if you didn’t know already, a Sojourner is a magical creature. We can’t die until our hit points are dropped to zero. Technically, even if you cut off my head, I wouldn’t be dead until the persistent damage bottomed out my health.”

“Wow,” was all that Tim could say. “That doesn’t even seem possible.”

“I’m not pulling your leg, not that I suggest you fight recklessly, but most of these guys here had, like, maybe fifteen hit points. Twenty if they were particularly strong. With my gear, I'm over five hundred hit points, so they weren’t really much of a threat to me,” Reggie said.

“So, we are basically gods?”

“Some think of us as demi-gods, but first off, wounds still hurt. It can be far worse because you can survive some pretty horrific injuries and be left to suffer much longer. Although we also heal at a greatly enhanced rate. But, anyway, we have a mission to complete. I will fill you in on more later,” Reggie said and turned to leave.