Chương 110: Chapter 108: A Cadre of bandits

We start walking alongside the road. El walks on one side, I walk on the other. Her tracking skill is pretty good. Mine is almost thirty, but hers is still respectable at twenty one. We walk with the road between us, keeping an eye out for any sign of movement nearby. We want to find the trail of at least one of the bandits, in the hopes that it will bring us back to the cadre's camp. Getting ambushed is one way to go, but this is much more proactive, and much more likely to work.

We still move pretty fast, and we pause to look around any time there's a small copse of trees or a sudden turn in the road. We basically try to think like bandits. Thinking like the enemy is a good way to track the enemy. I find something about the same time my tracking goes up to thirty. It's a small detail, and I think most people would've probably missed it. But it's a piece of fletching from an arrow, a bit of feather that fell while someone was walking.

It's not enough to get a full trail, but it at least lets me know I'm on the right track. I keep searching in the area, trying to find enough detail to be able to use Find Path. We can wipe out the bandits, I'm sure of it. All we have to do is find them. But the quest is only worth forty thousand experience points, so I don't expect the resistance to be that intense. I don't expect them to be able to be that much of a threat to the three of us. It does bother me that I can't find any clear foot prints.

It means that they know what they're doing when they move around. It means that they're not only sneaky, but careful. They're probably careful trying to avoid exactly what we're doing. Bandit camps are rarely well fortified. They rely mostly on secrecy for their protection. We know that the camp is at least a mile away from the road. Any closer than that and there are places you'd be able to see it, or least be able to see the plumes of smoke from a campfire. It's probably more than a mile.

Maybe as many as five miles away. They need a safe place to sleep and to store their ill gotten goods. But it can't be too far, or they wouldn't be able to transport what they take from the road to their camp. That settles it for me. I don't need to look for foot prints. I need to look for wheel tracks. Unless they leave the carts abandoned on the road, they have to do something with them. If they take a cart full of materials and trade goods, then they probably have to get it to their camp somehow.

It's unrealistic to think that they carry it or something like that. So either there is a trail leading away from the road that is made up of the wheel marks from a wagon, or there should be an empty wagon just sitting around somewhere. Probably still off the road. Maybe they take it apart to avoid it being seen. Maybe they cover it up. The answer turns out to be that they cover it up. We find a small hill just off the road that turns out to not be a hill at all.

It's a wagon, covered in tarps that themselves are covered in grass, camouflaging the whole thing to look like a small hill. The bandits might not be near here right now, but they were at some point. We pull away the tarp, and I find what I most wanted to find: footprints. Enough footprints that I can use Find Trail, and we can start moving towards the bandit encampment. We cut away from the road and move quickly and quietly along the trail.

I notice that most of the highlighted footsteps that I follow are placed over patches of thick grass or onto stones along the way. They walked carefully, trying to minimize the amount of tracks that they left. And they probably traveled single file. Not to hide their numbers, but to minimize the amount of trail that they left behind. About two miles away from the road, the path becomes a lot more clear.

They stop traveling in single file and stop being quite so careful about the placement of their feet when they walk. From what we can see, the bandits are working in groups of at least ten, possibly more. That tells me that there are at least thirty of them in the camp. That's a pretty big group. If they're as low level as the other bandits we've seen, they still won't be a problem, but I've got my doubts that they are low level.

All the evidence suggests that these bandits are much more efficient than the ones in and around Elmspire. They're more careful, more skillful, and more dangerous. They have to be higher level. About four miles from the road, I spot my first sign of the bandits. It's a pair of guards walking through the brush, looking around and actually on guard. That's also different from the other bandits. And then I get confirmation, when I take a closer look. Demon bandit. Very rare elite humanoid, level 30.

HP: 15, 000/15, 000. Thirty of those are going to be difficult to defeat. Mab's Rage can still take them all out, but we have to make sure that they're all within range before I start the spell. And then we have to hope that none of them run off. This may be another case where we want them to surround us. I'm the only one of the group who has fewer hit points than the enemy does, and that only by about a thousand points. I still think we can take them, and I don't think it's going to be that difficult.

But it will still have its challenges. This just seems like something about right for our level of ability, our capacity for causing mayhem. We're going to win, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. I look over at El and Ash, crouched in the grass nearby, and tell them what I just saw of the two who are walking.

"They're too tough for us to kill them in stealth," I say. I might possibly be able to take out someone with that much health if they were alone and I could get off all of my arrow abilities without them being able to call for help. But no way I can take out two of them that way. Stolen novel; please report.

"So we play it loud," Ash says.

"We walk right into their camp, get them to surround us, and then kill them."

"We could always try to talk to them," I say.

"See if maybe we can convince them to just go somewhere else, or give up their banditry ways, or something like that."

"Did you say they're demons?" El asks.

"Not demon blooded, but actual demons?" I hadn't noticed that. But yeah, they're actual demons.

"What difference does that make?" I ask.

"Won't some of them have magic?" I hadn't considered that either. Magic could be the great equalizer here. They won't just be attacking us with swords and bows. They'll be casting magic on us. Maybe one of them will have something like Mab's Rage too. If they can do something like that, something that does that kind of damage, then we're going to be in much more serious trouble. I don't know how high Ash and El have put their awareness, so I don't know how good their magic resistances are.

I think El has a pretty high awareness; she hates magic and wants to be immune to it. But I don't know if that's going to help enough.

"I still think going in visible and loud is the right answer," Ash says.

"If they let us come talk, then great; you can take care of convincing them to do whatever. But more likely they'll start attacking us as soon as they see us, and we'll have to fight our way into their camp."

"No problem with that," El says, smirking and drawing her axes.

"Just be ready," I say, looking at El.

"If they don't attack us, don't attack them first. If there's a way to handle this through words, I'd like to."

"Wuss," El says. But she smiles at me.

"I'll walk between the two of you," I say.

"Play it defensive as much as you can. That way, I can still use my bow. It does a lot more damage."

"Not as much as Mab's Rage," Ash points out.

"That will only help us if I can get a lot of them in the range," I say.

"Granted, my range for the spell is close to the range of most bows, but we still need to make sure we get as many of them in the radius as possible before I cast it."

"So stick together," Ash says. She looks at El.

"That means no charging forward into the fight."

"Not until the spell starts," El agrees. We break stealth and start walking towards the guards and the camp beyond them. They spot us almost immediately, which doesn't surprise me. One of them races back to the camp while the other draws his arrow back and lets it fly without a word. The arrow arches through the air and comes soaring down at us. It's not even moving that fast. I reach up and catch the arrow, wondering if it's going to explode or something like that.

It doesn't do anything, and I slide the arrow into my quiver. I'll shoot it back eventually. The bandit is one of the Veka, and I can almost see the anger glowing in his eyes after I catch his arrow. He draws another one from his quiver and takes a much more direct shot. It's got some serious power to it, and I'm pretty sure it's infused with an ability. The arrow hits me and deals 354 damage. Whatever ability that was, it's an impressive shot. I take aim and fire a Sniper Shot back at him.

Mine deals 1, 960, which seems to make the bandit a bit worried. He turns and runs back to the camp, the arrow still sticking out of his shoulder. We pick up the pace, running towards the camp. We don't want them to have too much time to get organized, but we also don't want to run forward without thinking. There might be traps in the way, or they might have an ambush set up right outside their camp. There are traps. I spot them as we're going.

They're not exactly obvious, but they're not all that well hidden either. Maybe at night they'd be invisible, but right now it's practically noon, and they really show. I lead the others around the pits and keep heading towards the camp. A volley of arrows comes flying at us. Ash ducks behind her shield. I duck behind Ash, and El huddles up with us. Only three of the arrows hit anything besides Ash's shield. One of them hits me for a measly 109 damage, and the other two hit El for probably a similar amount.

Once the arrows land, we start moving again, flowing towards the camp and moving a bit more quickly, darting back and forth to make it harder to aim at us. They don't do that much damage with just the volleys of arrows, but it will still weaken us as we get closer if we're not careful. The bandits don't seem to want to talk. They just keep lobbing arrows at us, trying to nickel and dime their way through our Shells. But it'll take a lot more than that to really make a difference.

Sure enough, there are at least thirty of them. And they're all different types of demons, too. Some of them look like Ash, others look like the red skinned demons of lore, complete with the goat like lower bodies. There are a few that are big enough that I'd consider them giants, twelve feet tall and about six feet across at the shoulders. All of them look dangerous, and all of them look ready to deal with three adventurers charging at their camp.

They do come out to meet us, apparently not wanting the battle to happen in their actual camp. Maybe they're afraid that we'd destroy some of their tents or maybe they just don't want to get blood where they sleep, but they meet us about thirty feet outside their camp. I fire off a Rapid Shot and a Power Shot, then go looking for whoever might be in charge.

I'm going to use Killing Blow, but I want to make sure that I'm using it on someone who deserves it, someone whose death is most likely to cause actual problems for them. I know there isn't much chance of the ability actually going off and killing the target, but I still want to pick the target as if it's going to work. It doesn't work, because of course it doesn't. But it does help me identify their leader. He's one of the big ones, and he's wielding a two handed sword that is at least as tall as I am.

The sword is jagged and wicked looking, and I am not looking forward to being hit by it. I shoot him again with another Sniper Shot, then put my bow away and draw my sword. While I've been doing that, Ash and El have been fighting off the group that has rapidly moved to surround us. There weren't any orders to do that coming from the leader demon, and least not that I heard. The bandits are just well organized and well trained. Makes sense at their level, I guess.

I look around and see that everyone is within the range of Mab's Rage. I cast the spell, and instantly the cold wind picks up and the shards of ice start to pick at the demons all around us. As soon as that happens, El roars and starts plowing through the demons, whirling around and attacking everything that comes into range, her battle rage taking over. I hope she's paying enough attention to notice when her Shell goes down. If not, I'll try to remind her.

Mab's Rage does 150 points of damage per second, and lasts for two and a half minutes. That's good for 22, 500 damage, which is more than any of them, except maybe the leader demon, have. All we have to do is stay alive for two and a half minutes, and we'll wipe them all out. That shouldn't be hard to do at all.