“This is a mugging?” I stared at the group of people. A few stood up front—a woman and two men—while another dozen stood behind them, doing their best to look menacing.
One of the men shrugged. “Call it what you want.”
“We just need compensation. Compensation for your brutal attack on our companion.”
I frowned, staring at them. Why had they chosen us? What was going on? Did they seriously just pick up their companion from a rampage and then decide now was a perfect time to extort money from people? It felt like this was a practiced, standard operation for them, though. Like they’d hit a dozen people already. And the timing, middle of the night, nobody around…it was too perfect.
“Arlan,” I heard Index say, “look at the guy who attacked you.”
I glanced over. He was standing in the back of the group with some others, the people who’d helped him up. He met my eyes and scowled. “Just do what we say. Don’t want anyone to get hurt, huh?”
“He’s a Berserker, right?” Index said. “But if he was under Berserk when he attacked, how would he be okay now? You either have to wait out the timer on it, or run out of Stamina. I can tell you right now, neither of those things happened.”
“Oh,” I said aloud. “I get it.”
“Yeah, you get it,” the man in front said. “Just hand over money, valuables, anything on you. We don’t want to hurt you.”
“No, no, this whole thing is a setup. Your Berserker guy wasn’t under Berserk at all, right? That whole ‘random’ attack was carefully coordinated. To test us. He didn’t get me, but he tagged her with damage, right?” I nodded my head over at Erani. “Not enough to do much if she was extremely high-Level—high enough that you knew you’d lose in a fight—in that case, you could just wander off, play it like it really was a mistake with Berserk. But since you hit her, you get to know her Level. And now that you know she’s only a little above you…What? You think you can take us on? Intimidate us into giving you everything?”“You think you’re smart for figuring somethin’ out, boy?” The man shook his head. “Don’t matter how flamin’ smart you are. We got a lot more people than you. This won’t end well.”
“Hey,” Erani said, “listen. We don’t have anything. No money. All we have is the clothes on our back, and a few Gloomspur teeth. Nothing to give you. Let us go, and I promise we won’t report you.”
He laughed, gruff voice digging into my mind like an irritating earworm. “Well thanks, little lady. Your reassurance puts my heart at rest. I was gonna piss my pants with fear up ‘till now. But thank you so much for saying you won’t report us. And thank you for lying about how you’re piss-poor. Must’a gotten all of those Levels without ever makin a single eyt, huh?”
“We really don’t have any money,” I said. Then I took a step forward. “But even if we did, I wouldn’t give a single copper piece to you.”
“Arlan,” Erani gave me a look of warning.
The man laughed again. “Copper? You fellas are foreigners? Man, I don’t think I’d take your money even if you had it. Flamin’ Koinkarians, can’t defend your own country, so you come and muck up ours.”
“So, what, we just go our separate ways?” Erani asked.
“No,” the man laughed. “You still got some stuff on you. I’ll settle for those trophies you took from the Gloomspurs, anything Enchanted on you, and that fancy armor you’ve got on. Oh, and clean up that other pack of Gloomspurs for us, too. As a sign of respect.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said.
“Small price to pay for your lives, in my opinion.”
“And what makes you think the choice is binary?” I leaned forward. “What makes you think there isn’t a third option where we beat your asses into the ground?”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t delude yourself, boy. We outnumber you five to one. I don’t care what Level you are. If it’s even remotely near 20, you’ll die before you can even swing a weapon.”
“Exactly. You have no idea what I can do. And I suggest you don’t bother finding out.” It was sort of a bluff—I was sure I could take on one, maybe two Level-15s, possibly three depending on their builds, but yeah. Not fifteen. However, they didn’t know that. Ainash and I were wildcards here, me moreso because I never even tried subduing the Berserker. So I had to take advantage of that.
“Listen, kid. You’re really reaching here. I know you want to get out of this without a fight, but that’s not how it’s going to happen. Even if you’re some amazingly powerful Level 50 demigod we’ve somehow never heard of before, you’re not gonna do shit. And even if you could, your little sweetheart is Level 20. All we need is a few people and she’s done. What is she, a Magic-Type? Doubt she can take more than a few hits.”
Erani scowled at his words, and I took a step forward, so there was barely any space between me and the man. “You’re not going to hurt her.”
“Do you really want to take that risk? Who says we can’t kill a Level 20 who probably barely has any Health above 100?”
“Her, mainly,” I said, aware of how incorrect he was in his assumptions. The Bond raised her physicals high, and even if she didn’t have the Talents and Martial Arts of a Melee-Type to help her in close combat, I was certain she could hold herself in a fight for a while. “But also, even if you could…if you tried, I would kill you in an instant. And you can’t beat me. You can’t hurt me. In fact, I’d love to see you try. Please. Try to hurt me.”
I reached out and placed my hand on his arm calmly. He tensed when I touched him—I could even hear a couple people drawing their weapons—but nothing happened. He understood the threat, though. There were many Spells and abilities that could be activated upon contact with a person, a couple of which I personally had. But even if I didn’t have any, the threat was there; if they attacked, I’d hit this guy with a great deal of harm. And they still had no idea what form that harm would take. Ideally, the threat would buy us some time.
“Yeah, a very specific amount of time,” Index interrupted my thoughts. “Decent plan, though. Uh, lower your eyebrows some more, though. I’m looking at your face and…yeah, yeah, there you go. Makes you look more intimidating when looking through the eyeholes of your helmet.”
Thanks.
“Listen, bud,” the man said, looking into my eyes. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re about to have a rude awakening.”
“Just hit me. You’ve got a knife on your back, right? Under your shirt?” That little piece of information was thanks to Index scouting the people out while we’d been talking. But revealing I knew just planted a bit more fear into their minds. That was all this was about—if I could convince them that there was a possibility a fight with me would end badly, there was no way they’d try it just for some random equipment. “Take that knife and stab me with it. See how it goes.”
“Maybe you do need a knife through the eye, teach you a lesson.”
“You will die instantly.”
A moment of silence passed between us. The man grit his teeth, then yanked his arm away from my hand. But I grabbed on with my other hand just as he pulled away, not breaking contact between us.
“If you want to make it out of this alive,” I said, “you will turn around and walk away. Got it?”
He just scowled at me. I could tell I was making some progress here, though. After all, only an insane person would fight this hard to keep some random monster trophies not even worth enough to spend a night at an inn. Which, admittedly, I kind of was. But I wasn’t about to give away our hard-earned money to some random group coming to steal it off of us. And, while it would suck to lose out on a Stat from Recycled Loop, I did technically have a couple uses left for Time Loop; I could afford to take risks.
“Hey!” A voice yelled up from the back of the group. “Y’know, that monster pet of theirs, she seems pretty weird-lookin’. Think they have a license for it?”
Suddenly, the man in front looked back at me, confidence spreading across his face once again. I could hear Erani shifting her stance next to me, but I kept my eyes locked on him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I doubt you do. So, either you’re smuggling that thing into town, or you’re leaving her out here. If you’re smuggling it, well, we can always get into contact with law enforcement. And if you’re leaving it out here, defenseless…”
The person in the back laughed. “We’ll find her, tie her up, bring her to you, and kill her right in front of—”
An explosion rocked my senses, blowing up the entire group of people from where the speaker stood.
“You will not hurt her!” Erani screamed from beside me, and I realized she’d just hurled a Firebolt straight into the crowd of people.
At that moment, I knew I had to enact my plan, too. I’d been counting the seconds, and now was the perfect time. In the chaos, before the man I’d been holding onto for fifteen seconds could react, I cast Sanguine Bond.
You have cursed Level 17 Ranger with Sanguine Bond. For the next 10 seconds, or until Level 17 Ranger is further than 10 paces away from you, the following effects are true:
He loses 6.52 Health, 8.15 Stamina, and 9.78 Mana per second.
You gain 1.63 Health, 3.27 Stamina, and 4.88 Mana per second.
298 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 1017.
You have cursed Level 17 Ranger with Hypnotic Bond. For the next 10 seconds, or until Level 17 Ranger is further than 10 paces away from you or is damaged from a non-preexisting curse source, he is Hypnotized, and cannot move, think, or otherwise respond to external stimuli.
Instantly, the man went glassy-eyed as Hypnotic Bond took him over. He swayed where he stood, like his head had been emptied out, but his body still allowed him to stay standing. And then I watched for the perfect moment to enact step two.
The smoke cleared and I heard the unsheathing of weapons. Some people were on the ground, having been knocked back by the Firebolt Erani had thrown, but the rest had their weapons readied and were preparing to charge at us. But the moment they could see me, I placed my hand on the Hypnotized leader’s chest and pushed.
Without even trying to keep himself up—how could he, after all—the man instantly fell back to the ground, body thudding against the dirt. It’d only been a couple seconds by now, so I still had a decent bit of time with him unmoving.
As the man impacted the ground in front of me, I saw fear suddenly enter the eyes of the people standing against me. After all, I’d been talking quite a big game. And suddenly, in the split second they couldn’t see me, I’d somehow knocked out—or killed, as far as they knew—their leader. Certainly not something that’d make them eager to strike.
“What did you do to him?!” one of the people asked.
“Want me to show you?” I stepped over the man’s immobile body, armor clanking as I marched toward them.
Everyone backed away from me.
“Get out, and don’t you dare return!” Erani yelled from my side, hands out and practically crackling with the Firebolts she was no doubt prepared to cast. Honestly, I was kind of worried she was about to execute them all where they stood.
It was only once Ainash stepped in, swinging her flaming whip in a wide arc at the group of people, that they decided to cut their losses, turned, and ran off. The thumps of their feet stampeding over each other to get away from the bloodthirsty group of three that we made echoed into the night.
“Okay.” I sighed as I watched them retreat. “Ainash, can you tie this guy up?”
When Loik awoke from that damned Hypnosis condition, he found an armored face staring down at him. After a moment’s confusion, he suddenly felt the disorientating sensation of memories flooding into his mind. Memories of this man—the man he’d been trying to get some money out of—pushing him over and chasing the rest of Loik’s crew off.
He attempted to push himself to his feet, but found that his hands were restrained behind his back. Glancing around, he saw he was alone, save these three creepy individuals. That armor, it seemed to suck in any light around it, so Loik could only barely see the whites of the eyes of the man inside, despite his face being not even half a pace away. The woman, looking like some gray-skinned Ghoul walking around, and then the monster with the fire in its white eyes.
Seeing their appearances, thoughts flashed through Loik’s face of his fate. Would they kill him in some ritual sacrifice to a dead god? Would they eat him alive like the monsters they looked like? Would they torture him for their sick enjoyment? What the hell did these people have planned for him?!
Restrained and surrounded, he had absolutely no chance against them. Especially if he was alone. So, his voice involuntarily shaking, he swallowed and spoke, “W-what do you want from me?”
The armored man—actually, who even knew if it was a person in there? Loik could barely see inside. Maybe it was some monster occupying the—no. Loik tried to keep his mind from racing. These flamin’ sickos would probably enjoy seeing him afraid, the monsters, cultists, whatever they were. He forced his focus back on the man, who crouched and looked at Loik straight in the eyes, the stare sending shivers down his spine.
“Listen,” the man said. “You just tried to mug us. So, y’know. We want compensation.”