After three straight days with not much happening besides a gradual change in scenery to more hilly terrain, and the mountains in the distance slowly growing closer with every passing hour, Asher began to think they would make it all the way to Dormaul without any incident. They passed the occasional brazen merchant who dared to make the trip between cities with nothing more than a horse and wagon, trusting in their speed to get them out of any tight pinches that might arise rather than hire any sort of guard, but other than that, the roads were fairly bare. Unlike the stretch between Horntho and Whikoga, the trek between Whikoga and Dormaul just felt more dangerous, somehow.

For one, despite the fact that they were navigating around the marked areas, the main road still came dangerously close to a few different spawning grounds of zone monsters. Asher knew at this point that they were safe so long as they didn't set foot inside the zone, but based on the loud screeching and hungry howls they could hear coming from within the trees along the road, he was pretty sure they had to be traveling less than a few hundred feet away from the edge of some of these zones.

Each time they skirted a zone, Asher would tense up, his daggers at the ready as he waited for the screams of panic and sounds of combat to erupt from around the caravan. He knew Brant had a small handful of fighters he kept on his payroll, but Asher had never seen anyone from this world actually fight a monster just yet, and he had no idea how skilled these people were.

Ironically enough, when trouble finally did come, it wasn't actually on the behalf of monsters.

At least, not of the kind he'd been expecting.

It was while Asher was lounging around in their wagon, reading through some of the books he'd Incorporated from Whikoga's library as he waited for his energy to recover, when it happened. Brian was running around outside playing with that girl with the crossbow who he continued to adamantly tell them he hated, and Samantha was standing right beside him in the wagon, busy practicing her new skill. After borrowing a wide pail from one of the supply wagons, she'd filled it with water and was now precariously balancing atop the sloshing liquid with Water Walker. He could only imagine the core workout she was getting as she waved her hands about, struggling to maintain her balance upon the water as the movements of the wagon threatened to toss her to the side with each step the mogrants took. Just as Asher went to crack a joke and ask her if standing wouldn't be easier on dry land, the water stopped sloshing around, and Samantha blinked as her difficult exercise was suddenly as simple as merely standing on the ground. It didn't take either of them long to realize what that meant.

"We stopped?" Samantha asked, giving him a confused look. "I thought Brant said the mogrants would continue all the way to Dormaul. We're not there yet, right?"

"Definitely not," he said, getting up and peering out their small window. "We should have at least another day. The only reason I could think of for stopping would be…"

Asher's blood ran cold as he spotted the cause of the mogrants' sudden halt. Standing off to the side of the caravan were eight ragged and dirty looking men and women that definitely weren't part of the caravan. Based on their matted hair and torn clothes, they had to have been roughing it out in the forest for months.

And based on the knives they had pressed against the throats of two of their passengers, they weren't here to ask nicely for some supplies.

Immediately, Asher's eyes went to the hostages, and he let out a small sigh of relief when he confirmed neither of them were Brian. However, the girl Brian had been playing with all this time was one of the ones with a knife to her throat, along with her father.

"We've got a problem," he said, motioning for Samantha to come look out the window beside him. "From what I can tell, these guys are bad news."

His Identify had alerted him that all eight of their surprise guests had the 'bandit' class, and his Judgement made it quite clear that this wasn't the first time they'd done something like this. From their sickly yellow auras and jagged edges, it looked as though the bandits didn't always get what they wanted, and they made good on their threats when that was the case.

"Bandits?!" Samantha gasped, snatching her bow from her cot without even looking as her eyes searched for Brian. "I knew they were a threat of travel of course, but I never expected them to hit such a large caravan!"

"I bet they specifically target such caravans because they're the best payouts," Asher pointed out, thinking of all the different supplies they were carrying. "From what I can tell, this group is experienced. We need to be careful."

By now, the man he could only assume was in charge of the bandits was shouting something. He was the one holding the girl's poor father hostage, and based on how he smirked down at the shaking man and gestured toward his knife, Asher could only assume he was demanding Brant give them something in exchange for his life.

Unfortunately, the wagons were shockingly well insulated against sound coming in or out, which meant he had no idea what the head bandit was saying.

"I need to go find Brian!" Samantha said, heading to the door.

"Wait! He's safe!" Asher reassured her, gently grabbing her arm. "According to the mark I have on him, he's hiding by the back of the caravan, probably out of sight of these guys. I'm working on a way of taking these guys down, but I think I'm going to need your help. There are two hostages and only one of me. I can take out the leader holding the girl's father at knife point, but I can't rescue the girl at the same time."

If Asher hadn't been sure of this group's experience, the way one of the bandits held the girl hostage a good thirty feet back from the others was all the sign he needed. This way, rescuing both hostages at the same time would be next to impossible for any one powerful warrior, and most probably wouldn't risk a two-pronged attack in such a dire situation.

"The moment I take out the leader, I need you to snipe the woman in the back with the knife to the girl's throat," he said, gritting his teeth as he realized what he was asking of her. "I know you've never killed anyone before, and I'm sorry to even ask this-"

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"Asher, I love you, but if you think I'm going to hesitate even for a second to kill someone holding a child the same age as Brian against their will with a knife pressed to their throat, then clearly you don't know me as well as you think you do," Samantha said bluntly, grabbing an arrow and nocking it against her bow. "I'm certainly not going to miss, so you better not either."

"Yes, ma'am!" He grinned, seeing the fire burning in Samantha's eyes. He had no doubt she was imagining that the bandit had taken Brian hostage instead of the girl, which meant that poor bandit was as good as dead. Slipping into the astral, Asher ducked out of their wagon and hid behind it, carefully peeking around the corner as he tried to figure out his next move.

The bandits and their leader had clearly snatched the girl and her father near the edge of the woods, probably while the two of them were making a bathroom run, and they had only come a little bit closer to make their demands. There was a good sixty or seventy feet between Asher and them, which was far away enough that Distortion wouldn't even come close to cutting it, and he wouldn't be able to cross such a distance in a single go of Astral Dip, either.

He needed some way to close the distance without alerting them, and after brainstorming for a few seconds, he was struck by inspiration when he felt Brian move a few feet closer to the bandits all of a sudden.

Using Astral Dip to stealthily make his way down the wagon train, Asher popped up beside Brian, his heart reaching out to the poor kid when he saw the mix of fury and concern on his face. Based on the way he was crouching and leaning around the wagon with an arrow nocked and ready to fly, Brian looked as though he was waiting for an opportunity to shoot the bandit holding the girl hostage. But while Asher knew better than anyone Brian could hit a direct bullseye from only sixty feet away ninety nine percent of the time, the twelve-year-old was clearly terrified of missing and shooting the girl instead.

Gently tapping the wagon to get his attention, Asher ignored the bandit leader's list of demands he could finally hear as he motioned for Brian to come closer and told him his plan.

"Can you pull that off?" he asked, giving Brian a hard look. "I know I'm asking a lot of you, so don't just say 'yes' if you think you can't. Can you make the shot?"

"I can do it." Brian nodded, his concerned expression already replaced with one of determination. Risking hitting an innocent person was one thing, but what Asher had in mind was far simpler. "Leave it to me."

"Alright, whenever you're ready." Asher smiled, giving him a reassuring pat on the back as he hunkered down and watched, finally giving the bandit leader his attention.

"...whatever supplies you're carrying, and the shards of every single passenger here!" the bandit leader repeated, tugging the knife harder against the man's throat and finally breaking the skin. "This is not a negotiation! Keep me waiting any longer, and this man's death will be on your hands!"

"I told you, some of our supplies are critical for Dormaul!" Brant called back, his voice surprisingly calm for such a tense situation. Asher spotted four guards standing beside the caravan leader, each fighter with weapons at the ready, just waiting for Brant to give the order to charge in. "Please, let the two of them go and take me instead. You can ransom me back to the city in exchange for a far greater reward than anything you'd get from our little caravan."

"Too risky!" the bandit snapped, snarling at Brant's continued attempts to talk him down. "I guess you guys don't think we mean business, do you? Well, there's only one way I know to show we're not messing around. Remember, this is all because-"

"Let them go!" Brian shouted, stepping around the wagon and fully revealing himself to the bandits with an arrow nocked and ready in his bow. Despite the fact that there was practically a small clearing between them, Asher couldn't help but feel slightly concerned as the eyes of all eight bandits flickered toward Brian.

Brian stood there, quite literally shaking as he raised his bow far too high, as if compensating for such a vast distance. To any outside observer, Brian looked like a young kid who had grabbed a random bow and arrow and was desperate to do something to try and save the girl and her father. With a loud cry of anguish, he let his arrow fly, the projectile arcing up and all but hanging in the air for a moment before slowly coming back down. The bandit leader didn't even move as he watched the arrow's slow trajectory, and he let out a deep, booming laugh as the arrow embedded itself in the dirt about two feet to his right.

"Word of advice, kid! If you want to kill someone, maybe don't shout at them before you launch your sneak attack!" The bandit leader roared, and his fellow bandits laughed beside him as they nudged one another and pointed at the pathetic attack. "To think you actually had even a chance of hitting me-"

Asher's dagger sliced clean through the bandit leader's neck as he Recalled to the Eternal Mark he'd temporarily shifted from Brian to one of his arrows instead. The bandit leader was so busy laughing he didn't even react when Asher separated his head from his body. His eyes were wide with shock as his last moments were presumably spent wondering what the hell had just happened, but Asher didn't spare the bandit leader a second glance as his body crumpled to the ground.

"Go!" He shouted at the hostage, shoving him back toward the caravan. Before the other bandits could even react at this sudden turn of events, a glowing violet arrow came screaming out from one of the nearby wagons, blasting through the head of the distant bandit holding the girl hostage, the enchanted attack killing the bandit instantly.

"Attack!" Brant shouted, leading the charge to Asher's surprise. In a single bound, the caravan leader launched himself across the empty space between him and the bandits, landing amongst their midst and spinning. Asher thought he saw what looked like two ethereal mogrant trunks erupt from the man's hands, and he spun with such force that four of the remaining six bandits were sent flying, either their ribs or their spines shattered from Brant's flurry of strikes based on the sound.

Asher, Samantha, and Brant's attacks had all happened within seconds of one another. By the time the remaining two bandits even reacted, the battle was as good as done. One of them took off back toward the forest, while the other dropped their weapon and looked pleadingly at Asher and Brant.

"I surrender," he said, grinning at them with teeth matching his sickening yellow aura that reeked of innocent people dying. "I s-"

Asher's dagger caught him in the throat through a tunnel of distorted space, silencing him for good as his corpse tumbled to the ground. Brant threw him a hard look at the surprise attack, but didn't say anything. Just as Asher was about to start giving chase to the final fleeing bandit, another arrow shot across the clearing, this one lacking any magical enhancement but still more than enough to stop the bandit as it sank deep into their back.

It would seem Samantha wasn't of the mindset of letting these bandits take anyone else prisoner any more than he was.

While the girl ran to her mother and still-shaking father, the three of them crying as they embraced, Brant turned toward Asher and nodded his thanks.

"A tad risky for my taste, but a decent plan," he begrudgingly admitted. "Next time you want to put my passengers at risk, however, run it by me first."

Before Asher could even defend himself, Brant crouched down and leapt once more, landing atop the lead mogrant and leaning down to whisper in its ear. At once, the caravan began moving again, and everyone who had been watching the battle hurried to either get back in their wagons or start walking, lest they be left behind.

Shaking his head, Asher grabbed the shards of the eight bandits before returning to their wagon to find Samantha both scolding and praising Brian for his part in the plan. Knowing his turn would be up next, Asher could only grin as he lay back in his cot and went back to his reading.

At the very least, the whole ordeal was a nice chance to stretch his legs.

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