Second Village

Once the sun had risen they resumed their journey to the second village. Fortunately, throughout the night there had been no mishaps. Even the bandits had been well behaved. The only thing odd about them was how calm they were about their current situation.

Not once had they talked since their capture, not even amongst themselves. From start to finish, all they did was walk and sleep.. While the party hadn’t fed them, they at least gave them water to drink. Even then they would quietly accept the water with zero resistance or outbursts.

Mateo felt unnerved as he watched how the captives acted. It was like looking at his own class, those trained as soldiers. Now that he thought about it, even the bandits from the ambush never begged for their lives. They had quietly accepted their fate.

After a couple more hours of travel, they finally reached the second village. This time Mateo didn’t spot any movement. They cautiously made their way over to the ruined village. As they approached they quickly spotted traces of others having been here previously. The traces appeared to be recent and Mateo assumed they belonged to even more bandits.

Rather than investigating the surroundings, he assumed that the traces left behind belonged to people scouring the site for valuables. The six separated with Kyle standing guard over the captured bandits.

Once again there was no sign of demonic energy. Mateo caught sight of Noah giving him a grim look. The priest was set on his assumption that a Demonic Tool was involved.

Mateo entered a house that had been thoroughly wrecked–by the demons or bandits, he did not know. As he was going from room to room Mateo began to feel his senses alerting him.

He became fully on guard when this feeling hit him. He had been taught before by Instructor Belle what it meant when a person trained to heighten his senses felt them flaring up. This was a warning.

He focused on his senses one by one to figure out which one had picked up on something he failed to notice. His sense of touch only felt a slight breeze that came from the cracks and holes in the room. Taste and smell only left him with the dust in the air filling his lungs. Even after scanning the room multiple times he hadn’t seen anything. Finally he closed his eyes and focused all of his attention upon his hearing.

He could hear the wind, his own heartbeat, and his breathing. He noticed the house creaking–likely to collapse if struck by a strong gust. He could also make out his party members moving in the neighboring houses.

He couldn’t hear anything strange either. No, wait, something about his breathing sounded off. As he focused upon the sound of his breathing he soon noticed what his senses had been warning him of.

Although it was near impossible to notice, he found that a second set of breaths would overlap with his own. There was someone else in the room with him. Not only that, they were highly trained when it came to stealth too.

While the person was already trying to quiet their own breathing, they went further to time it with his own. The dust in the air had made his breathing a little raspy, further masking the other party’s breathing. Were they wearing a mask so that the dust didn’t affect their own breathing?

Acting like everything was normal he did a quick cursory glance around the room and then left. He walked over to the next room and once again closed his eyes and focused upon his ears. There was no second set of breathing in this room but the person in the next room was more noticeable now.

They could no longer observe him to hide their own breathing, and the damaged walls made it all the easier to hear into the other room. He walked from room-to-room but failed to find anyone else.

Rather than confronting the hidden anomaly he left the house altogether. He went to the house next door, where Alicia was.

“Hey, find anything?”

She turned towards him with an eyebrow raised. They had just begun, why check in on her already?

“Nothing important. Only traces of demons breaking into the house and bandits turning everything else upside down.”

Mateo wasn’t surprised at the negative report. Even if someone was hidden here, without having trained her senses, there was no way she would find someone with this level of skill.

As he talked to her he focused on listening to his surroundings. At least this room was empty.

“The house next door was the same.”

He initiated a leisurely chat as he made his way to the doors to the rooms and peered inside. Alicia gave him a confused stare the entire time. No surprise, they hadn’t been particularly close. Even after forming their party they had only acted professionally.

“The bandits really didn’t leave anything untouched did they?”

Found you. At the door to the third room he walked over to, he could hear the subdued breathing again. Instead of entering the room he continued on to the fourth one. Once he walked past all the rooms he made his way to the front door.

“Well, this house was wiped clean. Come on, let us see if anyone else found anything.”

As he led the confused Alicia outside he frowned. For what reason were these people hiding? Did they happen upon the bandits like last time, but these ones noticed them first and hid? Seems unlikely. This level of stealth capability couldn’t be the norm for these bandits. This had to be some kind of covert bandit squad.

Now, the question was, what is their purpose? Was this an ambush, or were they just observing them? Were they even bandits to begin with?

To get a better grasp of the situation he entered two more houses, each one of them having someone hiding in one of the rooms. There were too many people just for observation. So an ambush. What were they waiting for? The chance that one of us completely lets down our guard while in the room they were hidden in?

That would leave too much to chance. A signal? Mateo’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he controlled his expression to return to normal. What if the ambush doesn’t start from the inside?

Without being obvious, he glanced at the surroundings of the village. To the east of the village was a small stream. The north was just flat farmland. The west was also flat land, but there were several storage sheds in that direction. Lastly, the south was the entrance of the village where the main road was, the road they had traveled upon.

Where would the ambush come from? The farm had crops that people could hide in. Inside the storage sheds was not out of the question. While the south had nothing before, the bandits could have circled around once the party arrived at the village.

The stream seemed unlikely, but there were potions and spells that allowed people to breathe underwater for a short period of time. To Mateo’s dismay all four options were a possibility.

He also gave a passing glance to the bandits that they had already captured. Since he wasn’t trying to be obvious he hadn’t been able to deeply study them. What he could see though was that although they tried to appear calm, they were tense, ready for action. They knew something was about to happen.

Mateo kept observing houses in the four directions as a cover while trying to guess where the ambush would come from. He ruled out the stream immediately. The potion was too expensive and a mage would only be able to cast the spell a few times. Both would create a severe limitation for the quantity of ambushers.

The main road was eliminated next. Moving a bunch of people would definitely cause a commotion, one that Kyle would have noticed even if his attention was focused upon the captives.

Storage Shed or Farms.

After a few seconds he decided which option was most likely. Not wasting a moment he gathered everyone.

“This place was wiped clean by the bandits. We’re not going to find anything here, no point in wasting our time.”

Everyone was taken aback by his remark. Glenn was the first one to speak up.

“There’s still places we hadn’t searched, like the storage sheds. Just ignoring them feels sloppy.”

“We’re just wasting time. Even if we find something it’ll probably just lead us to the bandits. That’s not our priority.”

That threw them all off due to his remarks from yesterday.

“Remember, our target is the Demons. Even then, the true enemy is in Velin.”

He gave all of them a pointed stare with his closing sentence. Some of them couldn’t understand why he would suddenly bring up Velin. Thankfully, a couple of his party members thought further into his words.

Helen gave a hesitant nod and spoke up.

“Mateo, so you're telling us all we need to focus on is the enemies in Velin. Right?”

Finally, everyone caught the implication behind the sentence.

“You're right Helen, that’s exactly what I mean. Think of all the destruction they caused with the fire they rained down upon Breglin.”

Everyone looked down as if mourning the loss of life, but in actuality they were quietly grabbing something from the pouches on their belts. Mateo looked up and caught everyone's gaze fixed upon him.

He mouthed the word now and quickly pulled his arm back with the item he had pulled from his pouch firmly in his grasp. He threw it as hard as he could, with five of the same object flying through the air along with it.

Upon impact they exploded into a ball of fire, lighting the crops in the farms aflame.