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Jack smiled and walked away under the vicious threats of the bandits. He defended back into the darkness out of sight of the brightly lit room the rest of the bandits were in.

Again the place was much like the first path that he saw. A wide path with 5 shoddy wooden doors on each side.

Jack had just started walking to one of the doors when he heard noise from the door on the opposite side of him. He quickly stopped and approached the door. Jack wasn't sure what he should do so he just waited next to the door in the wide path.

He waited a few minutes and then finally a scrawny looking boy emerged from the room carrying a bag of food on his small back. He was struggling with the bag and he could barely lift it judging from the numerous grunts of pain and desperation that came from him.

Jack was just hiding behind the boy as he walked to the hall, he drew his dagger and quickly approached him. He raised his dagger and was about to plunge it into his back, but then something stopped him.

Perhaps it was because of Jack's young mind, or maybe he saw his past self in that boy who was desperately trying to survive. But he stopped his dagger.

The scrawny boy heard a suspicious noise behind him and slightly turned his tired neck to check. He saw a boy his age wearing one of the bandanas and holding up a dagger right about his back.

Jack saw the boy promptly freak out and drop the sack of food. Before the boy could say anything though, through instinct Jack quickly covered his mouth.

The boy tried to struggle but Jack easily overpowered him with his stats and the scrawny boy found himself trying to struggle against an immovable opponent.

Jack with one hand covering the boy's mouth, grabbed the sack of food with his other free hand, and checked inside.

It was just regular bread, it wasn't something he could put the poison in as his master had told him. He started to think about other ways but before he could do anything the large voice of what Jack assumed to be the leader and the person with the most vicious and loud voice shouted

"WHAT'S TAKING SO LONG, HEY YOU, GO CHECK ON THEM AND GET US SOME WINE, MY THROATS PARCHED"

Another small timid voice sounded

"y-yes sir"

Jack was now about to get into deep trouble. But then when he replaying what the bandit leader said he focused on one important detail.

That boy was getting wine. Wine, a liquid that poison could be mixed into. Jack's eyes light up but he still had the boy that he was covering the mouth of and the new kid that was coming in the deal with.

He looked at the boy in his hands thought about how he could get the boy to be quiet while he poisoned the wine. Suddenly he thought about what he had seen many a time in the slums. Intimidation.

He forced the boy to look at him in the eyes and glared and tried his best to mimic the voice he heard one of the reaper members made when they intimidated. He lowered his voice and growled out softly.

"if you so much as say a word, I will kill you"

The boy nodded his head furiously and Jack quickly dragged him to one of the rooms on the opposite side of the storage room and chucked him in. He then ran into the room that had all of the food and instantly spotted the barrels of wine.

He jumped to them and pried open one of them and quickly opened the bottle of poison and put some in. He closed it shut and continued until all 4 barrels had poison in them.

He had closed the fourth one when the door creaked open and another scrawny boy walked in and headed for the wine barrels.

Jack instantly hid in one of the piles of food. He didn't dare to breathe and he watched as the boy slowly walked to one of the barrels of wine and pushed it out of the room.

He had emptied the entire bottle of poison, and this was basically Jack's only chance. The boy pushed on the barrel with his back to move it and slowly but surely it moved up to the room where the bandits were feasting. The boy on his way back noticed the sack of bread that was dropped by the first boy. But assumed that he had just collapsed and continued pushing the barrel up with his small back.

Jack just watched from his hiding spot as the kid continued. It felt like forever but eventually, the boy got to the room and the bandits acknowledged the wine and started to celebrate.

Jack jumped out quickly and grabbed the fallen bag of bread and walked up to the room again. He adopted the slunched tired posture of most of the small boys in the camp.

The light hit him when he entered the room. Really it was a bit difference from the almost pitch black corridors and rooms to the well light dining room the bandits was feasting in.

He walked up to the table and placed the sack of bread on it. One of the bandits grabbed the bag off the table and started to take food. More and more of the bandit raiders followed suit while the boys Jack's age only watched and didn't make any more movements. In fact, the huddled in the small corners of the room like they were trying to keep themselves out of sight from the rest of the bandits.

The wine barrel was already opened and the bandits were grabbing the crude metal cups that they already had on the table and plunging it into the barrel and lifting it back up with a cup full of wine.

Somebody got the bandit leader a cup of wine and some bread. He raised the cup of wine and cheered. The rest of the bandits started to drink the wine with the leader. And they all started to talk about separate things.

Jack retreated back to the dark corridor where the storage room was and where the first boy was probably hiding in still. After making sure that all of the bandit raiders had drunken the wine he left with a satisfied expression and left.

The poison was slow-acting so it would take a while for it to take all of the bandits out. So that just meant that Jack had more time on his hands. He went to the room where the boy was hiding in.

The boy now that Jack could focus more, seemed a bit familiar. He tried to dig through his 10-year-old mind for his face.

It finally hit him, Azarel that was the kid's name. He was a person he recognized on the streets, he was a fellow slum resident except that Jack got into the reapers after some sacrificed while Azarel was on his own. One day he had just disappeared, this place must have been where he ended up.

That meant that... Jack thought about the rest of the crowd of boys his age. He thought about how he also could have had the same fate except that his master decided to pick him up.

He swore loyalty to him again in his heart for the thousandth time again.

Jack walked to the storage room and grabbed one of the bread in one of the sacks and started to munch on it. The bread that they had was honestly pretty good. Not as good as the food his master had given him, but much better than the food he was used to as a slum resident which was basically nothing.

But before he could enjoy the food completely he heard a crash in the dining room where the bandits were feasting in.

The crash was very loud and made Jack jump up. He thought to himself in surprise

Master told me that the poison would kick in much later, what's going on?

He walked out the door and headed into the dining room again. But what he saw made his jaw drop.

One of the bandit raiders shouted

"Who are you?"

Jack looked at the entrance to the light-filled room and saw his master holding a sword and staring at the bandits with a dignified expression. But to Jack that face felt scary, it was a face that Jack had never seen before.

Perseus stood there with his sword and looked at the group of bandits, and a fallen bandit at his feet. He flicked his sword and a bunch of blood splattered on the floor.

Perseus's sword reflected the light off of the lanterns in the room in a deadly light. And the bandits just stood there in silence at the sudden intruder in a mix of surprise and fear.