They started creeping out into the clearing trying their best to be discreet. They should be fine as most everyone in the camp should be asleep, especially because they were expecting the sentries to do their jobs. Little did they know.

  The Prisoners were asleep for sure however. They were sleeping in a rough pile of their three bodies trying to ward off the night chill, they hadn’t been given anything to keep them warm through the night.

  As they approached Bjorn had to stop Adriana. He had noticed something that she didn’t. There were piles of shit on the ground surrounding the tree, almost right at the 3 foot mark off the tree. Bjorn only spotted it because he could smell the excrement. These animals hadn’t even given the farmers the decency of untying them to let them use the bathroom. If he hadn’t made up his mind to kill the bandits before now he would have just then.

  Adriana made her way over to the farmers while Bjorn went over to the tree. She would wake them up one by one and try to make them understand that they needed to be quiet. Bjorn’s task on the other hand was to remove the bonds. An easy enough task, he just pulled out his serrated dagger that he got from Tayla and got to work cutting their bonds, as quietly as possible. It was impossible to cut the rope silently as the motion of dragging the dagger across the rope made a sound.

  The sound was loud as could be to Bjorn as he worked. However it was lost to all but the most perceptive in the night sounds. It put his nerves on edge as he worked on the bonds. He could hear the soft whispers of Adriana and the man she was talking to, but he paid them no mind. His entire focus was cutting them free from the tree, he didn’t even free their hands, not yet.

  When Bjorn finished cutting the last farmer from the tree Adriana was waking the last one, which was a man. He woke up with a start and muffled yells could be heard through Adriana’s hand. She tried her best to quiet him down as did the other two farmers but to no avail. Either he feared for his life or he wasn’t fully aware of what was around him.

  Bjorn paused and held his breath for one long second, then two. Finally something broke. “What’s going on over there?” A gruff voice still thick with sleep said. Their time was up.

  He turned to Adriana. “Run, take them all with you.”

  The other two farmers who had been woken up and filled in on the situation wasted no time at all and were on their feet running the short distance to the tree line, Adriana only a step behind them. The last man who was now shouting still lay on the ground thrashing. With a sigh and with super human strength he grabbed ahold of the mans bonds and with a mighty heave pulled the man onto his back. He stood the rest of the way and sprinted into the woods.

  “PRISONER ESCAPED! GET YOUR SORRY ASSES UP AND GO AFTER THEM. PRISONER ESCAPED!”

  Unperturbed by the yelling Bjorn carried the man to the tree line where we saw the retreating backs of the two farmers and Adriana. They paused just after they got out of sight of the clearing and waited for Bjorn to catch up.

  Unceremoniously he dropped the man to the ground. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes crumpling into a pile. “They are all awake because of fuck nugget here. You and you, can you carry him?” He was addressing the two farmers, they exchanged looks and gave a curt nod. “Good, I will try and slow down their pursuit. Adriana, stay close to them and lead them back to where the golem is. Keep an eye out as they will likely fan out in the forest and they might be able to get around me.”

  “But I can help.” She started to protest.

  “I know you can, that's why you need to keep them safe. We just went through all this effort trying to free them, I don’t want them to get captured again. Can you do that for me?”

  She looked like she wanted to protest some more but she closed her mouth and nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Good. Now for you three. She may look unthreatening due to her age but I promise you that she is a lot more deadly than any of you. If it was the three of you against her in a fight I would bet on her 100% of the time. So you need to listen to her otherwise you might die tonight. Do you got that?” She didn’t show it but pride welled in her chest at the compliment.

  The two who had their heads on straight looked at Bjorn and gave him a nod each.

  “I understand.”

  “Will do.”

  The man on the ground had pushed himself into a seated position and had stopped yelling. He didn’t say anything so Bjorn got down in his face. “You will not cause any more issues tonight. This entire situation is your fault. If something happens to Adriana tonight I will personally blame you and I will make sure you do not have a pleasant end to your life.”

  He looked up with a look of defiance in his eye for a moment before it crumbled. “I understand.” He said in a weak voice. It wasn’t fully submissive and it made Bjorn pause to look at the man. He didn’t have the time however. As he could hear shouts from the camp starting to organize, and they were about to enter the trees to search for the fleeing prisoners.

  Bjorn got to his feet and looked at Adriana. In the loudest voice he had spoken in tonight he addressed her. “There is something not right about this man. I want you to keep an eye on him, I doubt he is finished with his antics tonight. Now go.”

  “Stay safe.” She said back before she motioned to the other farmers to pick up their friend and then they started to haul him off into the woods. She paused briefly to look at Bjorn’s back and then she too disappeared into the woods.

  With his enhanced night vision he could see the bandits had made it to the edge of the forest and were starting to head into it. They were all in various states of dress with various weapons and armor on. They hadn’t taken the time to get fully prepared because they only thought they had to deal with 3 helpless farmers.

  Bjorn was fully geared up with everything that he had. A pair of armored boots that he bought in Blackrock Bay. A set of lightly armored pants and thick boiled leather jerkin that covered most of his body. He had the bracers that increased all of his farming activities on. Not the best for the situation but it was the best that he had. In one hand he held his bow and he had one of the moonstone arrows to the string. He was considerably more prepared for this fight.

  As they entered the forest they started to fan out so that they could hopefully find some sort of trail. The three farmers should make a fairly easy trail to follow as they barely ate for three days. All they needed to do was find that trail and follow it. All Bjorn had to do was lead them astray.

  For what felt like the millionth time Bjorn entered stealth disappearing for everyone but himself and he started moving through the forest after Adriana’s and the farmer’s path. There wasn’t much he could do to hide their trail as they were a bunch of bumbling idiots who didn’t know how to pass unseen in a forest. What he could do however was find a place where they didn’t suck too badly and make an obvious trail from there.

  Right before he found his opportunity to lead their pursuit astray he heard the sound of shouting off in the distance. They had found the trail. It was a little closer and sooner that he had hoped for but it would have to do.

  He found a small patch of ground that was open that had no obvious signs of passage and that was his opportunity. He moved through the brush and over to a tree on the west side of the small patch. He grabbed a hold of one of the lower limbs on the tree and put all of his weight on it. It gave a few small crackles before there was an audible snap and the limb broke free of the tree.

  This was accompanied but a few excited shouts from behind him. Bjorn had a small smile on his face as he pulled the dagger from where it sat strapped to his thigh. He placed it on his human palm and drew it across his skin. It took a surprising amount of force to cut through his skin, no doubt his natural armor that he got from Latent Potential was to blame for that. Once he cut his palm he wiped a little blood on the spot where the limb had broken.

  You have suffered a small slash. You take 1 point of physical damage.

  With his obvious trail started he walked off on the west side of the small patch. He stopped quite heavily on a few plants as he left to try and make it even more obvious as well as wiped some more blood. Once he finished with his work he pushed his palm into the edge of his shirt that was poking out of the bottom of his jerkin. After less than a minute his palm had already stopped bleeding. Got to love that insane health regeneration that he had.

  He waited just barely in view of the spot where he laid his false trail. He wanted to go ahead and start setting up a trap but there was a chance that they didn’t find his path and kept blundering forward. He couldn’t change that and had to wait. It took only a few minutes before one of the bandits stumbled into the clearing. After less than 10 seconds he called out.

  “Hey, I think I found their path. Everyone come here.” The man called out.

  Less than a minute later 7 of the 11 came into view.

  “It looks like they went that way.” One of the women said as she pointed in the direction that Bjorn was hidden.

  “No shit. Let’s spread out, leave no more than 40 feet between each other.”

  With that they started walking in Bjorn’s direction and they did just that, they slowly started to spread out to cover more ground as they went.

  They took the bait, now it was time to start picking them off one at a time. Bjorn began slinking off into the woods heading as far north as he could to try and pick off that one. He really hoped that they didn’t have the war leader skill. Otherwise this slowly picking them off one at a time wouldn't work at all. Like everything in life, it was a gamble.

  Bjorn slowly made his way to the north end of the wide line that they had made. Eventually he was a good 100 feet ahead and 20 feet further out of the man. They were being careful as they picked through the field. There were only a few of them that carried torches, of those that were most of them were closer to the center of their line.

  Once he knew roughly where the man would pass through Bjorn put his bow away and quickly mounted a tree that intersected directly with where he would walk. He climbed out onto one of the thick branches that was more of a log than a branch and pulled his bow back out of his bag of holding. All he had to do was wait.

  Not long after Bjorn was in position the man passed almost right under where Bjorn was hidden. He drew the bow back as quietly as he could. Sighted on the top of his head, right at the bald spot he had, and exhaled. Then he released

  The arrow rocketed forth from Bjorn’s bow and crossed the scant 10 feet in a split second. It slammed into the top of his head. The power behind the bow, the weight of the arrow, and Bjorn’s skill level in archery were more than enough to send the arrow through the skull. The arrow splintered the top of his skull and continued downwards into the brain, it then continued downwards out the bottom of the skull. It ended its path with the arrow sticking out of the man’s jaw. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. He got the kill notification prompt as well as the xp from the kill.

  Bjorn held his breath waiting to see if any kind of alarm had been raised. Thankfully nothing came, he had picked his ambush well. He attacked when the man would be out of sight of the others. On top of that they didn’t really know forest craft well and they were quite noisy as they moved through the brush.

  After a few tense moments Bjorn moved on to his next victim. The forest was old, and it had many large trees relatively close together. Close enough that Bjorn didn’t have to climb back down to ground level to continue stalking his prey. He nimbly and quietly moved from branch to branch unseen above the bandits heads.

  His next target was the next furthest out on the wing of their formation. He was positioning himself above the dwarf when his luck ran out. The dwarf looked up. Bjorn didn’t have time to prepare his bow; he only had a split second to react. He decided to jump down on the dwarf. By the time his feet left the branch and he was falling towards the dwarf his face screwed up in fear and his mouth opened.

  As he fell Bjorn wished that gravity broke its own rules for once. He didn’t actually know the acceleration rate here but he was pretty sure it wasn’t 9.8 meters per second squared. He could only fall so fast, luckily he had only been 20 feet up so his fall didn’t take too much time. It did however give the dwarf enough time to breath in to shout, Bjorn could do nothing but watch as his chest expanded.

  That was as far as the dwarf got before Bjorn’s body slammed into the dwarf. He had been wearing a chainmail shirt so when Bjorn’s armored boots came in contact with the metal of the dwarfs' chainmail a metallic ring echoed through the night. Not a moment later a cry of alarm sounded nearby.

  It didn’t matter for the dwarf however as with Bjorn’s inflated attributes his body had changed as well. He was tall, buff, and built like a brick. He looked like an Olympic athlete with a slender waist, built shoulders, and tree trunks for legs. All of this added up to him being barely anything more than muscle, bone, and skin. He was 230 lbs of pure killing machine. And having 230 lbs slam into your body at speed felt like you were getting hit by a truck.

  There was a crunch as Bjorn’s feet slammed into the top of the dwarf and both his arm, collar bone, and several ribs broke trying to absorb the impact. Bjorn’s body and weight bore the dwarf to the ground and left Bjorn slightly off balance. Luckily his new points in agility helped him keep his balance. The dwarf sucked in a quick breath in pain, an involuntary reaction and a mistake. His lungs were already inflated as he was about to call out for help, now however they over inflated. This led to his lung being punctured by his now jagged ribs that had caved inwards.

  Before the dwarf had a chance to so much as make a noise Bjorn’s hands shot forward light lightning and gripped the dwarfs head. Using one foot to keep his body in place Bjorn wrenched the head sideways. There was another crack as his vertebrae snapped and severed the soft nervous system that it was supposed to save. This killed the dwarf instantly. Even though the brain was still technically alive the dwarves' hp bottomed out.

  The dwarfs' friends were quick to respond and Bjorn could hear them crashing through the brush of the forest trying to come see what caused that metallic sound. Quickly as he came Bjorn slid back into the forest disappearing to all but the skilled. He moved a short distance away and waited, crouching down behind the limbs of a bush.

  As soon as the first bandit made it to the spot she started calling out. “Dolgram is dead. Something landed into him and then snapped his neck.” Her eyes started darting around the surrounding forest as she readied her weapon.

  One by one the rest of the bandits closed the distance. Each time one of them stumbled upon their fallen comrade they stopped and stared down in horror until they too readied their weapons. They didn’t move more than 10 feet away from one another.

  Finally the last Bandit joined them and looked down. “What happened?” She asked.

  “Something must have slammed into Dolgram and that was the sound that we heard. It must have been quick as he was dead before I got here and I didn’t see anything fleeing into the forest.”

  “Bloody hell. Wasn’t he level 9? What could kill him and get away that quickly? What is out here?”

  “Well it can’t be an animal. What animal do you know breaks necks and then leaves the body behind? No, it has to be something intelligent.”

  “So now we are being hunted?”

  “Fuck this, I say we go back to camp and wait till morning to try and find the prisoners.”

  The first one who spoke must have been their de facto leader as when she spoke the rest of the chatter stopped. “You know we can’t do that.”

  “Where is Stys?”

  That was the first time that they did a real head count and realized that a second one of their party was missing. Bjorn could actually feel the unease settle in the group. It was as if they were skittish prey finally understanding that there was a predator out there.

  “Fuck. Did none of you hear anything?”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  A chorus of no's echoed around the clearing.

  “The one who was closest and most likely to hear something was Dolgram, if he didn’t raise the alarm then none of us could have heard it.”

  “We should go back.” The human who had suggested it earlier was the one to suggest it again.

  “No we can’t,” Their leader said. “If we don’t find them they will likely go back to town and we will be found out. Ramsey and Luna will be pissed. More than that they will likely be found out and will have to flee town.”

  “If Luna hasn’t seduced half of the town by now.” One of the men said in a quiet voice.

  Their leader shot him a withering glare. “Need I remind you what they did to Gils? And that was just for injuring one of the slaves before they got home. What do you think they will do to all of us for letting the three of them go?”

  Her words of warning sent a shiver through the assembled crowd.

  “What if whatever killed Dolgram and Stys kills the slaves as well? Wouldn’t that solve all of our problems?”

  “Do you want to chance that?” She asked. “Because I don’t want to. I don’t want what happened to Gils to happen to me. Or whatever they come up with that will be worse.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We spread out again, stay closer together this time, no more than 20 feet. They can’t have gotten too far. They would have to stop and free themselves, they would leave some signs of passing behind.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t give a shit if you like it or not. Get to it or I will kill you myself.”

  With that the group spread out once again keeping no more than 20 feet between themselves. They now covered only 100 feet of forest, considerably less than they had before. It didn’t matter to Bjorn, he had a job to do, which was to take most of them out and try and capture one. Although there were likely 3 maybe 4 more somewhere out here in the forest. They might have come to help search or after they found all 3 of their sentries dead they might have decided to stay put. Bjorn hated having so little information.

  Bjorn slunk quietly back into the woods once again as he started making his way towards the end of the pack. He wanted to take out the group's little leader but she was in the middle of the group. Even with his enhanced attributes and increased size he didn’t want to chance taking 4 of them at once. Side and strength weren’t everything as was evident when fighting against the snatcher spiders. They brought down that superior creature with sheer numbers. Bjorn wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating them.

  He got out ahead of the group and found another place where he was pretty sure they would go across. He pulled out his bow again and set another moonstone arrow to the string and waited. Not 30 seconds later his target came into view.

  The one on the end was one of the two girls in the group. A small part of him felt bad killing this woman, but she was out here. She was some sort of worker, or servant of Kairon, she was just as guilty as everyone else out here.

  He hesitated for just a briefest of moments, which was a mistake, not that he knew it in the moment. He drew up his bow and pulled back the string sighting on the woman. She was unaware of the threat to take her life. Right before he released his arrow the clouds shifted ever so slightly and a small beam of light from the moon shot down and landed on the milky white arrow tip.

  In that same moment he was released. If he hadn’t hesitated the arrow wouldn’t have been illuminated. The arrow streaked off into the night, quickly crossing the distance between Bjorn and the woman. The arrow struck true, landing in her chest just to the right of her sternum. The arrowhead scraped off the edge of her rib before slipping past and into her heart, killing her as well.

  That brief moment of illumination was enough however for the rest of the group to spot Bjorn.

  “There it is! It’s a human. Get him!” One of the voices called out.

  There was a good chance for Bjorn to win in a straight up fight, he was better equipped, he had better armor, he had potions, he had magic. But like everything in the Eld nothing is ever certain. So instead of standing his ground he turned and fled through the forest. He stowed his bow into his bag of holding and began running and ducking between trees. The dense forest was enough that he wasn’t able to truly leverage his increased maximum running speed. So he managed to only stay slightly ahead of his pursuers.

  Tonight ended up not being his night for luck. As he ran he burst forth from the trees to find himself in a small clearing. And on all three sides of him were 30 foot tall stone cliffs. He could probably scale it, but not before they found him. If they had any ranged weapons at all he would be a sitting duck and they could easily pick him off.

  To make matters worse he could hear the 4 of them crashing through the brush behind him. The clearing was close to 40 feet across and 50 feet deep to the back wall. So there was no way out, he was cornered. His confidence wavered only slightly, he had never fought 4 humanoids who knew what they were doing, and were equipped with weapons, at the same time. It was time to put his ability to the test.

  He ran at top speed crossing the distance between the tree line and the far wall in a matter of seconds. When he reached the far side he turned and put his back to the wall. Once again he pulled his bow from his bag of holding and then he pulled an arrow he had prepared before tonight. It was a high steel arrow that it’s tip was coated in a thick sludge like liquid. Then he waited.

  Soon the 4 bandits entered the clearing and saw their prey standing alone in the clearing. It didn’t take long for their confidence to swell. This would be easy.

  Their leader stepped forward. “Who are you and why are you attacking us? And what have you done with our slaves?”

  Bjorn just laughed back. “I came to kill all of you. As to who I am, I am a man that your leader Kairon ran afoul of and I am systematically tearing down this little empire of his.” He saw sneers cross most of their faces, they obviously thought that Bjorn’s words were just bluster. “As to those you called slaves, they are not slaves. They are free people who just happened to cross your path. I freed them from you and sent them home. By now they should be halfway home.”

  “Even if you manage to temporarily free them, our true leaders will capture them again and you will be dead. All of your efforts tonight will be for nothing.” Her tone was mocking.

  “Your true leaders? You mean Ramsey and Luna?” He saw surprise cross the woman’s face. She hadn’t expected Bjorn to truly know who was in charge. “If you are worried about them, they are already dead. I killed both of them myself, last night actually. You wonder why they haven’t checked in? I tortured both of them for taking something precious from me, now they suffered a fate almost worse than death.” As he spoke he saw first shock, fear, then doubt, and finally acceptance cross the faces before him.

  “You lie. There is no way that Ramsey and Luna both would be bested by someone like you. Ramsey is an excellent swordsman, and Luna has powers over men that you wouldn’t be able to resist. It is impossible.”

  Bjorn tried to adopt a flippant tone when he spoke. “I can’t really say if Ramsey was a good swordsman. He couldn’t really hold a sword anymore after I cut the tendons in his limbs.”

  “THAT IS ENOUGH OF YOUR LIES!” She screamed at Bjorn. “You will die tonight and I will piss on your corpse. Attack.”

  Her word was what her three other men had been waiting for. They all started smiling and running forward trying to cross the distance between themselves and Bjorn. They weren’t dumb, they saw the bow in his hand, they knew that their best chance was to get close and not let Bjorn get more than 1 arrow of. The one was inevitable as he already had one arrow set to the string.

  However their little exchange served more than one purpose for Bjorn. It gave him some time to gloat over how helpless their situation was. It felt nice knowing something about their position that they didn’t. Gloating was secondary however. His real reason for talking was that it gave him just enough time to use W.A.I.L.A. on each of the bandits in front of him. His arrow was coated in poison and he needed to find out who the best target for it was.

  Of the 4 members standing in front of him their leader was level 10 and the other 3 were levels 7, 9, and 13. His target was the highest level, best to take them out of the fight early by letting the poison do the hard work for him.

  The level 13 was closing the distance fast so Bjorn didn’t have time for a properly aimed shot, besides it gave the man a chance to dodge the longer Bjorn aimed. So he drew the bow, sighted center mass and let go. Just as he expected the man had good reflexes and dodged out of the way of the arrow. However with the close conditions of the fight and the power of Bjorn’s bow he didn’t dodge completely out of the way of the shot.

  He tried to dodge to the right. He was able to get his torso out of the flight path easily enough, he wasn’t able to get his arm out of the way. The arrow slammed into his upper arm cutting cleanly through the man’s bicep. It had more than enough kinetic energy and it bore its way through the bicep and out the other side of his arm, slicing cleanly through carrying the shaft and fletching with it.

  It was only a flesh wound and not a debilitating wound. In this case the arrow had done its job. It was never meant to instantly kill someone, it was meant to deliver the poison that Bjorn made.

  Even though the man didn’t look at it yet he was dead. The constant poison damage would be more than enough to kill the man. At least that is what Bjorn expected. Based on the rate at which the man moved to get out of the way of the arrow he had to have invested in agility. He was obviously a melee fighter so he invested into strength and probably dexterity as well, he would be a fool to not put points into endurance. This all added up that he couldn’t have put more than 10 attribute points into constitution.

  But at the same time Bjorn had learned that the numbers that the item descriptions held were under ideal situations. If he had any earth resistances it would deal less damage, if the wound was to a minor part of the body it would deal less damage. However Bjorn’s confidence came from the fact that the arrow passed through the man’s left arm. The poison had less of a distance to travel before it made its way to his heart and then spread throughout the body.

  Though a dying man can still be a problem. Bjorn dropped his bow and drew the sword on his hip. Sure his bag of holding was amazing but it was still faster to draw a sword on his hip than to focus to withdraw a sword. It was a high steel sword, nothing fancy, but made of a good strong metal. More than enough to deal with the problem coming his way.

  He set his feet and met the falling blade of the man he shot. In the two or so seconds since he had been shot he had lost a decent amount of strength. This made the falling blade easy to sweep aside leaving him wide open for a follow up strike. Instead of taking the opening he turned to the next foe coming his way after he planted a powerful front kick to the poisoned man’s chest sending him flying backwards.

  He again deflected that swing leaving him open but he couldn’t capitalize on that. He had another person to worry about, as well as their leader. What followed was a surprisingly easy and difficult fight all at once. He had never faced so many intelligent foes at once. It was easy because his increased attributes and experience made it so he dominated each person easily in the fight. Hard because he didn’t dominate just enough and they kept narrowly getting away from death.

  He had been partially right about one thing. The poison that ran through the man’s veins was enough to almost kill him, he wouldn’t be a problem for the rest of the fight. It did enough to put him in critical condition.

  After a minute of fighting there hadn’t been any change in the status quo. This is where Bjorn’s superior gear really started to play a role in the fight. Each of his combatants had taken several non-serious wounds but the pain of several blows from Bjorn’s fists or his blade were starting to show as they were moving ever so slightly slower. Bjorn on the other hand had taken several small hits as well, most of them blocked by his armor and the damage he had taken was considerably lessened. Even those that went through his armor had a harder time getting past his natural armor. He was one tough nut to crack.

  Finally something changed. A lucky hit by some standards, and an eventuality by others. Bjorn’s blade finally slammed home as a heavy downward swing pushed one of the man’s sword downward, his arms weakened by several such blows. His arms finally gave out and his blade cut through muscle and bone alike, his blade traveling almost a foot into the man’s body before coming to rest.

  It had been enough to drain the man’s entire hp pool in one blow, killing him instantly. As he fell his body didn’t want to give up the blade that had ended his life. It pulled the blade downwards, Bjorn tried to pull his sword back out but it was too much, he couldn’t. The other two combatants tried to capitalize on the situation. This forced Bjorn to let go of his sword for now and take a step away to try and create some distance between him and his foes.

  “You're done for now.” The woman sneered. “I will make you pay for that.”

  Instead of replying, Bjorn's human fingers began weaving a complex pattern and they took on a glow. This was the first time he had cast a spell in this fight, he hadn’t the time or the concentration to do so.

  “Shit he is a caster.” The man said and he lunged forward trying to stop Bjorn in his tracks.

  The blue glow that had started to form on Bjorn’s hand froze in place as Bjorn had to do a dodge roll to avoid the lunge. Every other time that he was interrupted in the spell casting there had been a feed back into his mind as the uncast mana flooded back into his body. This felt like static on a radio but in his mind. This time however he felt a strain on his mental capabilities but the mana hadn’t flooded back into his body dissipating.

  He had assumed that Delayed Casting would only allow him to hold onto the spell at the end of his casting once the spell had finished forming, which was apparently wrong. It had allowed him to freeze the spell structure mid construction and resume when he finished.

  When he finished his dodge roll he continued forming the spell, it was one he had never cast before. A new one. Before when he cast spells there was a distinct different feel that always originated on him. This time the focus of the spell felt like it was the environment. The mana that he gathered was affecting the local mana of the environment and condensing it. Changing it to water attuned mana.

  As the spell formed exactly 1 gallon of fresh clean water rose out of his bag of holding. He hadn’t known if the spell would take material components from his bag, he had actually forgotten about the material component of this spell. It floated between him and the two bandits who were trying to hurry after Bjorn as he cast.

  As it floated there the crystal clear of the clean water began to darken. It rapidly turned opaque and took on a deep ocean blue color. On the 6th second of channeling Bjorn let the casting finish instead of keeping the channel going.

  The moment he cut off the supply of mana to the spell the 1 gallon sphere of dark blue water expanded to form a circle that was 5 feet across, rapidly thinning in the process. The edge of the circle took on a vibrant blue energy glow. The center of the circle became transparent and he could see through the circle, it didn’t lead to the other side of the forest. Instead it led to a plane of pure water. When he looked up he saw that the water became lighter in color, and when he looked down it grew darker in color. Off in the distance he could see sea creatures floating in the water. It was hard to tell sizes but from what he had to guess most of them were massive. At least 200 to 300 feet in length.

  An amorphous blob of thick congealed water spilled out of the portal slapping into the ground with a wet split sound. Once the blob moved through the portal it winked out of existence. The water that comprised its body slowly moved upward to create a slightly dog-like shape, its legs were too thick and body too thin, and it had too many, 7 in total.

  Bjorn felt a weak mental connection to the water elemental just like what he had with the golem. He really needed to come up with a name for it. As soon as the mental connection was formed with the elemental Bjorn felt a different kind of pressure in his mind. As if the elemental was fighting back, trying to break the connection between him and it. Bjorn had to assert his will to dominate the creature, to subdue its will and stop it from fighting back. It still struggled but it’s struggle was weak compared to before.

  All of this took only a matter of moments. The bandits were soon upon the elemental. The fight was now a 2 on 2. This would be an easy matter. Bjorn ordered the elemental to attack. He wanted to Identify it but that would come later, he had work to do.

  The elemental rushed forward to meet the bandits and it slammed into the body of the man sending him flying. It continued after him, Bjorn put that fight out of his mind for now, he would finish off their leader.

  As he walked forward towards their leader he began casting a second spell he hadn’t done before. Thick pale green strands of mana began collecting on his throat. His throat began to look distended and the mana began shining through his throat. This was the first time he cast a spell without some sort of somatic component and felt weird. As the mana collected his words became garbled. There wasn’t any feeling of instability so maybe that was intended for the spell.

  At the end of the three second cast time he opened his jaw and thick waves of green high pitched screeching sounds left his mouth and shot into the ax that the woman was holding. It was odd he knew that the spell he just cast created a loud high pitched sound but to his ears he heard nothing. The woman seemed to not hear it as well as she looked down at her ax in confusion.

  The sound waves slammed into the ax and it began to rapidly vibrate. The sheer loudness of the sound began tearing the item apart even though no one could near it. Over the course of the 3 second duration the item lost well over 250 points of durability. This was more than enough to overcome the item's remaining durability of 163. Its head shattered into a thousand small metal shards that shot away from the ax head. The wood that had made up the handle rapidly rotted and crumbled to dust.

  Her weapon was destroyed just at the same time Bjorn got to the woman. He pulled out Tayla’s trusty dagger and stabbed it into her stomach, once, twice, three times, and a fourth for good measure. He held her in place with his other arm. She might have been dead already but Bjorn didn’t want to take the chance. He slammed his dagger home into her neck. He roughly ripped it out and let her body fall to the ground lifeless.

  A look over his shoulder showed that the Elemental had won its fight as well. It had only 6 legs now and a stump. He briefly wondered why it just doesn’t shift some of its mass around and regrow the limb but that wasn’t important right now. It had knocked the man prone once again and got on top of him. It then used one of its legs to force its way into his mouth and down his throat. It then found the windpipe and shoved its way into his lungs drowning him in a matter of seconds.

  “Note to self, don’t piss off a water elemental.” To finish off the battle he withdrew his bow and shot the poisoned man once again ending his misery. Bjorn took stock of the situation as he retrieved all of his various weapons.

  There were without a doubt 3 more of the bandits left out here. One of which was the true leader of the group out here, he was no doubt the strongest of the bunch. He might pose a threat, but Bjorn was confident in a fight against 1 opponent his own level. The only reason he had to struggle here was that he wasn’t used to fighting multiple humanoid opponents at once. They could easily cover for each other’s shortcomings. These must have had training and fought together for a while due to their coordination without speaking.

  He was about to leave the clearing heading back the way he came when he had a thought. He used his Identify Ability on the water elemental.

  “Well you are an impressive little guy. Shall we finish off the last of them and see what we can find in the camp?” Bjorn spoke to the elemental. Unsurprisingly it didn’t answer. Bjorn shrugged and pulled out a stamina potion. After the last fight he had he was below 30% of his maximum stamina, he didn’t want to get into another fight without at least 50%. He drank the potion and left the clearing. A wet sloshing sound came from behind him as the water elemental followed after him.