Chương 4: Murder Island

LANCE looked to the sky. His father was there, somewhere. Invisible but watching.

"Okay. I'm by myself, now," he spoke to himself, voice low.

"But I have a mission... a deadly, deadly mission." He wanted to open his menu and dump all of his Boon Points into his stats, but he remembered what his father told him: 'acclimate to his opponent, then allocate points.' It was solid advice. There was no point in becoming a one-man-wrecking crew if that came without martial technique. The strongest adversaries in existence would need more than raw power to overcome. Lance took a deep breath and cast [Search]. Ahead by half-a-mile was a small bandit enclosure.

He doubted there would be even a few of the cretins, but that was exactly what he needed. As a fifth level Paladin, he could handle himself in a brawl. But against multiple attackers? That was a different story. When he arrived at the bandit outpost, he breathed a sigh of relief: the bandits were all armed with basic weapons. Their armor nothing more than janky leather jerkins and chainmail cobbled together from whatever they could steal from Gods-fearing merchants. He took a deep breath in, held it, then released.

He repeated this several times, preparing himself for the carnage to come. By now, his dad would have ripped the spines out of each of these low lives; the fact was, though, he was not his dad. He couldn't massacre without care.

"Lance," he heard in his head. His father.

"Do you think we are here on a hit and run mission? Use your healing factor to your benefit. Allow it to compensate for your lack of experience! Or do you wish me to pluck you up now and drag you to the Shadowlands for some real grinding?" Grunting, he obeyed his dad and drew his sword. He guessed this was part of his training — learning to think on his feet.

He approached the bandits, all of whom were sitting around a dying fire drinking some foul-smelling booze and declared, in accordance with his holy oath: "Gentlemen! I have come to offer you salvation! Repent for your weary ways and I will spare your lives. Resist salvation and I will be forced to end your miserable existence right here and right now!" The bandits, drunk, smirked when they saw him.

One of them, the clear leader with a series of bones in their helmet, woozily stood up and slurred hateful words at him.

"Let's string this baby-lover up and ram him a new one!" Bandits weren't known for their refinement, but Lance had to admit, that one had a vulgar tongue in him. No matter. The die had been cast. The other bandits wobbled to their feet, each smiling as cruel as their leader, each likely imagining what perverse desecrations to enact upon his slaughtered body. How shameful it would be for them to be the victims, here.

Having done his required duty as a paladin in asking his foes to repent, he activated a [Power Charge] and skewered the bandit group leader with his sword. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The bandit coughed blood, then died with a shocked look on his face. [Bandit Killed: XP Gained!] Lance withdrew his sword, readied his shield, and prepared to fight. With a thud, the last of the bandits fell to the ground, dead.

He hadn't gained a level up, but that was fine and expected. Such lowly trash was not bound to give any System-aligned Champion much experience. The battle had gone about as he expected: the bandits' crude armor and shields were no match for his blade, which cut through their defenses with only a moderate push from his arms. One attack to deal with their shields, another attack to break their swords, and a third attack to finish their life. Lance took no pride in killing.

Even done with the best of intentions against foes who deserved judgement, killing was a nasty affair that weighed on his soul. And yet, the denizens of Murder Island had lived up to their name. His first encounter and his moral sensibility was shaken by their vileness. He again cast [Search]. Another bandit den was located. He ran to the den, about a couple miles off, and ignored a System notification informing him of gaining XP for his protracted running.

Such notifications were a shine-a-dozen and never gave much experience. When he arrived at the bandit den, he was winded but had to slow himself anyway. He paused and crouched low to catch his breath and observe. Another few bandits. Each looked armed in about the same quality gear as the first group. It would be an easy battle. Before he engaged the enemy, however, he decided now was the right time to invest some of his Boon Points. He had twenty-five points to spend.

He was not going to spend them all, of course, but just a few to augment his fighting style; he invested two points into Stamina. That would hopefully let him run a greater distance without being so winded; next, he put five whole points into his Martial Prowess. He looked at his Magical Prowess stat and considered putting a couple of points there but thought against it. His skills were mostly physical in nature. Magic would only be of such a help to him.

Satisfied with his allotment, he closed his HUD and approached the second group of bandits. On his approach, he shouted the same call for salvation at the bandits as he had the first time. As expected, the bandits sneered, jostled each other for the first crack at him, and charged him without regard for their safety. Big mistake! The first bandit to charge him he horizontally slashed.

It was a gruesome result, made possible with the fearsome power bestowed upon him by his five-point Martial Prowess increase: the result, part of the bandit's arm got severed, along with a deep gouge left in his chest. The bandit fell to the ground. He wasn't dead — not yet — but Lance knew he would be soon. If this had been a regular engagement, he would have offered the man a mercy killing to end his suffering. Alas the bandit's cohorts were hot on him, and he couldn't afford such mercies in the thick of battle.

Lance would have figured the bandits buddies would've seen their friend get dispatched so easily and ran for the hills. But they did not. Maybe the bandits here were drunk, or stupid, or just so full of themselves that they thought Lance had gotten lucky.

Whatever the case, the bandits charged him and met the same fate as the first bandit: Lance shoved his closest attacker with his shield and knew he had cracked a bone when the man had been shoved several feet back and yelped for help; as that bandit was shoved back, another had already closed the gap and was on him, to which, he ended with a quick couple of stabs to the man's gut and lungs.

The Third bandit, frenzied, perhaps from some kind of drug, literally threw himself on Lance and actually managed to stab him a couple of times with a rusty dagger — agony, yes, but not one he felt much in battle's heat. Lance ended the engaged by rearing his legs under him and kicking the man into the air; in the same motion, Lance brought himself to a kneeling stance with his sword and stabbed the man from the anus up as the bandit fell back to the ground. A nasty way to die!

The altercation ended soon after with Lance placing well-earned blows against his remaining prone enemies. Covered in blood, but only somewhat tired, Lance again thanked the Gods, and his father, for pushing him to become better than he had been.