The Archaic System

The seven humans that stepped into the clearing stared at the brown steel bear then stared at Valerian and me. They glared at the the two of us, a look of hatred and frustration showing on their faces.

I instantly knew, who they were and generally grasped the situation. These are the Yellow Wolf Bandits the bandit group that Alexander Morrow supports. They must have been sent specifically to hunt the brown steel bear because their equipment wasn't what a normal hunting party would have. They had two men carrying shields and short swords, two with long broadswords, one with a large battleaxe, one with two straight daggers, and one with a short-bow. If they were a normal hunting party they would have more archers and less sword and shield-bearers. They were clearly put together with a large powerful target in mind. This combined with the wounds the bear had when it arrived painted a clear picture.

They had just been chasing the bear and were all a little short of breath. After a moment the one with the large battleaxe stepped forward. He had a large muscular frame, his arms and chest almost bursting out of his leather armor. He had a rough stubble beard and short spiky black hair.

"Did you kill the bear?" He said with an authoritative tone.

He directed his question to me. He definitely isn't the brightest guy is he, I couldn't help thinking.

"Yes, WE killed it," I gestured towards Valerian. I know he hates being ignored.

The bandit looked at Valerian and scoffed, looking back towards me.

"That was our prey, how will you compensate us?" He sneered.

I already knew where this was headed. I don't like playing games and don't mind killing humans. It isn't the first time, it won't be the last and these aren't good people anyways. I won't lose a second of sleep over their deaths. I turned towards Valerian a murderous look in my eye, he returned the look. We were on the same page.

I looked back at the bandit a grin spreading across my face. He looked at me perplexed. Before he could blink I dashed in front of him. I switched the Twisted Serpent in my left hand to a reverse grip and swung my left arm at his neck. His head was cleanly separated and hit the ground with a thud.

"How's that for compensation?"

At the same time a purple vine shot from the ground and pierced the archer through the abdomen. The tactics I had taught Valerian seemed to be paying off, he knew to take out their ranged support first.

I then activated Snake King Aura and directed it towards the two bandits with shields. For a moment a look of fear overwhelmed their faces. Before another thought could enter their brains my daggers slid across their throats,like a hot knife through butter their necks opened up, blood gushed out in torrents.

By now the remaining two swordsmen and dagger wielder recognized the trouble they were in. However, Valerian had already began to use his vines to hinder their movements. Valerian leaped forward with a loud battle-cry his spear extending, simultaneously piercing the two swordsmen directly through the heart.Naturally I had explained to him the weak points of the human body.

The only one left was the dagger wielding bandit. I ran towards him quickly overcoming him due to Valerian's vines. Just as I was about to plunge a dagger into his back he spun deflecting it with his blade. However, he overestimated his weapon as it was shattered by the force and hardness of Twisted Serpent. A shocked look spread across his face. I was astonished as well, he shouldn't have been able to deflect my stab so easily. Regardless, I followed up by slashing through his neck and then plunging my other dagger into his eye. He breathed his last. I looked around, ten seconds hadn't passed and all seven of the bandits were dead.

I turned to Valerian, "Nice work, you've gotten much better."

"Better? Hmph, I was always this good!"

Maybe I shouldn't compliment him anymore.

We began to go through the corpses of the bandits looking for any items that may be useful. As we were doing this I explained the situation of Black Lion Village and the Yellow Wolf Bandits to Valerian. He was extremely displeased by the treatment of the natives and by the deviousness of Alexander Morrow, however, I convinced him to keep his cool. I explained that even if we were stronger we couldn't take on a whole village on our own. We kept going through the corpses.

Most of the bandits just had a few silver coins and some dried meat on them. As I checked the dagger wielding bandits equipment, I noticed a small worn manual tucked into his waistband. As I opened it the bold black words at the top caught my attention, Quicksilver Blade. It is a blade technique manual, it can be used with numerous kinds of short blades including daggers. It focuses on short instantaneous burst of speeds and flexible movements allowing you to strike and block from unusual positions. This must be how the bandit had blocked my strike earlier!

I couldn't wait to study the manual but we had to hurry as the Yellow Wolf Bandits might have more people nearby. We finished gathering what we could from the corpses. I thought it was a waste, but we had to leave the brown steel bear remains behind. It's fur makes excellent armor and it's meat would make an exquisite barbecue, but we don't have the time to take care of it here and it's too big to move.

We quickly rushed away from the scene of the fight. As we were running I added up the notifications from the bandits in my head. You gain essence even if you kill humans. In total I had gained 957 essence from killing four of them . Surprisingly the majority of essence came from the dagger wielding bandit and not the battleaxe bandit who appeared to be the leader.

An unspoken rule for humans in Agartha is to never reveal your level. If someone knows your level it makes it easier to gauge your strength. Generally, you only know someones level if you kill them. This is because the amount of essence they accumulated is absorbed by their killer. From this I could see that the battleaxe bandit and dagger wielding bandit were level 2 while the other two were only level 1. They never stood a chance against someone like me who is level 7, especially considering my fantastic armor and daggers. However, that made me want to start studying Quicksilver Blade even more because it allowed the bandit to block one of my strikes even though he was only a level 2.