Back at the Dogslop Inn.

“So that’s all that happened”, Marcus finished explaining.

“How was the pay?” Logan asked.

“All in all, I got 8 silver”, Amalia informed as she drank from her tankard.

Taking the books out from his bag, Logan replied, “Good first quests’ worth, we’ll get you the rest later.”

“Is all that my homework?” Amalia asked with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, five skills. That’ll set you straight on the easier objectives.”

“It will take some time to learn them all. We do our reading at night before bed”, Marcus added with a smile.

“Right.”

“I also looked at some villager quests you can easily run through after we’re done with the trolls, if not, some better adventurer ones”, Logan added.

“I wager she’ll end up in the top 10% of seven-day survivors”, Marcus chuckled.

“Thanks for all of this, by the way”, Amalia added with a sincere smile.

“If I had this kind of guidance, I know my first few days would have been better”, Logan opened up.

“So, late night then?”

“For all of us, I got us all a room each. I’ll be reading, same as you. Marcus, you sparring with my elementals tonight?”

“That I am.”

Standing from the desk, Marcus left through the front door with the elementals, while Logan and Amalia retired for the night.

Logan’s bedtime reading was spent reading a tome he had picked up from Bobcu.

Adding a new skill to his repertoire, Logan was able to deal out more punishment with his at-hand mick, Force. Aside from the damage potential, it would affect all other micks. Waving his hand over the floor and chanting, “Clean”, had a wider area voided of dirt and grime. Light Ally produced farther-reaching illumination to boot.

Content with his improvement, Logan went to sleep.

Amalia burnt the night oil a bit longer than Logan, with many more books at hand to read.

While Marcus flipped over and smashed his staff into the elementals on the village's dirt streets. It wasn’t too late in the evening so he wasn’t annoying any of the villagers with the display. If anything it granted some amusement as the sun set in the distance.

With all elementals accounted for, and Marcus’s victory in hand, the Devout gained 760 experience for the sparring matches. It was a shame that Logan couldn’t benefit from the same tactic, and Amalia was far from strong enough to do it herself.

The next day arrived quickly for all parts of the party. Logan had done a lot of labour the day prior, while Marcus and Amalia did plenty of walking and questing.

Logan did his typical morning routine of summoning his extra elementals and absorbing their spells, within his room. While it was costing a bit more MP to bring in the new blood, the cleaning efforts after the fight with trolls would slowly bring them up to par.

Moving downstairs, the party ate their breakfast, a bit more stocky and oat-based than what they were used to in the capital, even more so for Amalia who had yet to dine on this world’s food. Full of grub, and explanations to Coach whose face was awash with surprise and confusion at the five elementals at Logan’s back, the group left the inn.

The group made a quest stop at the Tinte adventurer’s hall, Logan picking up some quests in the area they were going to. Mostly to clear out some monsters that had been spotted leaving the woods and making it hard to gather up herbs to restock supplies.

Leaving Tinte, Logan did the usual finger snap to use Echo Radar, increasing his mastery in it whilst checking for hostile threats. Surprisingly, Logan was able to notice two red dots hidden around a building’s corner. Asking Umbra to sneak around to the back, the shadowy elemental returned to state that two adventurers were eyeing up Logan’s party.

Thinking it to be the angered presence of those that Marcus had insulted the day previously, Logan whispered over to the Devout and Amalia about the situation.

Together, they agreed it would be best to deal with this away from the village, even cancelling any teleportation plans they had, just so the foes could follow them easier.

Walking for a half hour, Logan couldn’t track the ones tailing his group, but he had a tingling sensation at his neck, as if someone was watching him. It could have been paranoia if he didn’t notice them ahead of time.

“Let’s duck into the woods”, Logan spoke, the party heading into a thicket of trees to their right.

The southwestern dirt road didn’t lead to much in any short distance, so it was a sure thing that the adventurers following in their footsteps were either out on quests, or out to fight Marcus.

Planting a hand on Amalia, Logan teleported her atop a tree at quick speed before jumping back to the floor.

Next, Logan sent the elementals off into the forest, to show that they were used as a form of labour, and not defence, against the oncoming would-be-traitors. Leaving only Marcus and Logan at the base of a different tree.

The bait worked, as Logan’s Echo Radar picked up dots approaching him. Though another surprise to add to the pile was a mix of red and yellow dots, meaning some were hostile and some were counted as “neutral” until the situation changed to make them an enemy.

Exiting the safety of the trees, several adventurers made themselves known to the party. Twelve in total, Logan counted the trio from yesterday at the lead, though this time garbed in metallic armour and harbouring more weapons than before. The other nine were a hodgepodge of leathers and hides, with shoddy gear to say the least.

“Finally took a rest, did you? No wonder your stamina is in the shit, your coin goes towards hiring a damned porter mage!” the leader spat at Marcus.

“Isn’t that Logan?” one of the nine at the back asked another in a whisper.

“Since you’re being paid by this Devout, how about we pay you off doubly?” the leader asked Logan. He was going to continue before Logan took a step forward.

“Adventurers. I believe that lies have clouded your mind, and coin your hearts. This man no doubt has a grudge against Marcus here, though he started the confrontation”, Logan began and then pointed at his armband, “However, attacking hunters is a major offence, compounded with acting in a traitorous manner.”

“Hunter?” one of the nine whispered.

“Shit, that is Logan, wasn’t he only rank three?” another said in a hushed tone.

“I give you all the chance. Leave and go back to Tinte. They require classed aid more now than ever. If you attack either myself or Marcus, I shall use my authority as a hunter to dish out your punishment… I need not remind you that traitors are executed.”

The nine looked at one another, some immediately turning heel and walking away, others taking a few moments to think it over.

The leader turned his head around quickly as he saw his backup leave and shouted, “Where the below are you going?!”

“You’re on your own with this”, one replied as they walked off.

“I ain’t no traitor, sort yourself out”, another spoke down to the leader.

“I thought ‘we’ were going after traitors, fuck this”, one said as they skipped away.

In the end, it was just the trio and two extras who stayed with them. The leader looked back at Logan with anger across his face, “You got honey words alright. But you’re just a porter and summon salesman.”

“And you got no intelligence if you think you can take someone like that on”, Logan replied.

The five prepared their arms, a culmination of two-handed swords, dual-wielding daggers, and a sword and shield at the back.

Logan drew a single dagger and side-eyed Marcus, “You want the head honcho?”

“Do you need to ask?” Marcus replied sarcastically.

“Shut your trap!” the leader shouted as he rushed forwards, those behind him following suit.

Logan warped to his centre and appeared at the back, thrusting his Bowen dagger into the back of a traitor Rogue, and placing his hand on a traitor Knight to ignite them in flames as he chanted, “Flame Grasp.”

Two messages of Backstab floated upwards as Logan dealt 54 damage and 205 fire damage.

On the other side of the conflict, Marcus had his body glow grey before he parried the two-handed overhead swing of the leader with his dagger, and smashed the leader’s face with his staff.

Dropping the dagger to the floor, Marcus spun around and slapped the leader’s back, causing a spike of earth to erupt from his hand as he chanted, “Gaia Grasp”, the earth piercing the leader’s chest and forcing him to the floor.

As the leader fell to the floor, Marcus spun his staff around to block strikes from the two who charged at his back. Bolts came singing from the treetops into the aggressors, who failed to spot the hidden Amalia amongst the leaves.

Hitting into the wrist and arm of the woman who attacked him, Marcus disarmed one of the opponents and slammed his staff into the face of the other, sending them crashing to the floor.

Two follow-up blasts of grey energy hit the final two foes, Logan’s improved Force knocking both unconscious, ending the fight in quite a hasty manner.

Clicking his fingers, Logan gave the all-clear to his party. Amalia jumped from the tree, while Marcus pulled the unconscious bodies into a row on the ground. It was almost always more useful for Logan to absorb the foes rather than kill them straight away.

“Sorry you had to be a part of that, Amalia, but these things can be common here”, Logan apologised as he looked at Amalia.

“I’m used to knocking people out, or hitting them to the ground… just not shooting them with a crossbow”, Amalia replied a bit shakily.

“There’s no proper prison or cells in Tinte, it’d take too long to process these back in Gauntlet either”, Marcus assessed.

Logan looked around to confirm his Echo Radar findings of nothing before crouching down, “Amalia, feel free to look away. The penalty for traitors is death. For those three it’s possibly not their first time, especially the leader who roused this response after attacking Marcus yesterday.”

Amalia gulped but kept a steady gaze on Logan as his hand was placed on the leader’s chest, “Do it.”

Logan commanded in his head, “Essence Absorb”, causing black and dark-green lines to crawl over the body. Reaching the leader’s head, they turned blue and purple as the body was vortexed into Logan’s palm, leaving only the gear behind.

From the bodies, Logan gained 247, 220, 138, 97, and 66 experience. When compared to what he got from defeating the foes, it was quite a lot, but not when put against how much he needed to level up. He still wanted to do it, however, as there was always the chance a new development would occur that he was not aware of.

None of the traitors were casters, so he had no chance of improving any spells he had, but the gear that was left behind would help them in other ways. Putting it all into a bag, Logan handed it to Amalia.

“Your spoils, until you hit that 5 gold objective”, he said, knowing that anything the group had was of no use to either him or Marcus.

“Is it really fine to give me everything? It feels like I am taking a bit much.”

“System quest rewards are much better than what we’d gain normally. A legendary set of armour for you would last several levels ahead. And, if you quit, your quests won’t cause you too much issue… as far as I can tell.”

Marcus let out a sigh in the background, “I knew they were assholes, but to go this far.”

“At least most of the people they coaxed saw reason and left.”

“There is that. Pondress has set me hard tenets to follow.”

The group spent a few minutes cleaning up after the confrontation, but before long the elementals returned and they were ready to continue onwards. They were only counted in Logan’s experience reduction due to absorbing their spells, so sending them away allowed Amalia to get an almost full split.

Several hours of walking passed by for the party. Amalia was getting quite the toughening session on her second day, while Logan and Marcus hardly felt anything in the way of fatigue.

Not wanting to test fate with any ambushes or difficulties with the trolls, Logan kept the rest of his Dimensional Jaunts, of which he had five that wouldn’t take his stock of MP. He had experienced a few quests and dungeons morphing just because he was a PC. What would happen with two of them?

The party eventually found themselves before an even thicker forest than before. Tree trunks became the norm for their sight, with little gaps between each tree, the canopies a mess of green and brown above that darkened the interior of the forest.

With such a thick entry, they only heard the back end of chirps and yelps from within. Any monsters or animals that lay within were certainly protected from the outside, or intruding adventurers. With such a confined space it would be hard for anything larger than a dagger to be used.

“The trolls are in there?” Marcus asked, bemused.

“A thousand and some more feet in, yeah”, Logan replied as he scanned the tree wall.

“Didn’t you say they left this place before? Caused trouble for Tinte?” Amalia chirped in.

“Two months ago now”, Marcus replied as he also scanned the exterior, “there must be larger exits along the perimeter.”

“We wouldn’t want to enter through those”, Logan replied as he patted the trunk of the tree.

Marcus nodded, “You’re right. A large entrance means that we’re in the open for several beasts to charge us down. If this is a den of trolls, even with our spells we’d be putting you at risk”, he spoke towards Amalia.

“Identify”, Logan commanded in his head as he looked at the trees. “These trees are good at harbouring spellforce, great for weapons.”

“Trolls often use large trunks as clubs, they could have a form of monster crafting”, Marcus replied.

“We’ll look for a clearing then”, Logan spoke as he began to move between the trees.

Marcus, Amalia, and the summons all followed behind. The party had to turn every so often to work around the obstacles, it was lucky to find a space over 5’ wide in this forest.

Shuffling, squeezing, and hopping over trunks and branches, the party at long last found a modest clearing in the forest. It would have been more apt to call it a jungle, however, as the air became humid and sticky, alongside the tangled mess of its design.

Critters chirped and whistled around the wood and leaves, the floor completely grassed and mossy. Smells cascaded and flowed together, from damp moss to sweet honey.

Kicking the roots that amassed the floors had started to scratch and dent Amalia’s boots, while Marcus and Logan’s were completely resilient to such weak blows.

The party took a break as Logan continued to snap his fingers, creating a messy mini-map of mostly greys and smatterings of clear paths. Echo Radar was only working at a quarter proficiency due to all the obstacles.

“How close are we now?” Amalia asked as she sat at the base of a tree.

Logan looked at his wider map to see the red circle get smaller as they approached. “Hard to tell, probably only a few hundred feet, looking at the quest. You can look for yourself.”

Amalia opened her own map that was invisible to the two others and nodded.

“Marcus, you should go ahead and Enhance us all now”, Logan commanded.

Marcus nodded as he moved to the two and placed his hands on their shoulders, their bodies starting to glow grey as they prepared for the fight ahead.

--- *** ---