Thieves

'Who's there?'

Of course, he wasn't going to shout out loud, what idiot gave away that much information. He quietly boosted himself up with slime and sneaked toward the noise.

As he got closer, he heard a bunch of whispering and realized it was a large group of humans. people sat around a fire, some others pulled out some meat, spices, and a few random tools.

Zeeth decided to stay hidden and watch them quietly in case they were doing something.

He had never intended on sleeping anyways, his slimes would do that for him. A bunch more were happily chilling in some water nearby to restore his mana and bring his body to tip-top condition.

They were all happy to get out of the condensed form that made them sleepy and work their bodies a bit.

The forest had a strangely large number of ponds. The roots of the trees in the forest grew upwards to make small vats that water collected in after rains and the leaves prevented the sun from evaporating too much of the water, creating a perfect water storage area and thus, a perfect slime making a forest.

The trees developed with all the water and the mana, making their roots stronger and give all the nutrients they didn't need, making them the perfect water coolers that always kept the water in perfect conditions. it was the perfect source of water.

The only reason people haven't totally taken over the area yet was because of the dragons. Even before the apocalypse, they protected this area religiously.

He watched the people from treetops and kept his slimes well hidden in patches of water that they wouldn't look in.

A stout man with quite a large belly loudly read, "Fetch 20 jugs of the water, 16 small bags of fallen wood that's preferably 2 or 3 days old, and get a single bag of leaves from the forest. Get them from various locations, the dragons might spot us otherwise."

He put the paper away, turned around, and patted a younger man's shoulder, "Son, this is important so remember. Everything here is pretty high-class stuff. The water doesn't need to be explained, they're high in nutrients and taste heavenly, the leaves go perfectly with the water to make amazing tea, and the wood, after being tempered with water for so long, developed a certain texture and feel that artisans from all over the world desire.

Just don't take too much, this is a known hotspot for dragons, although we have no clue why."

"Okay," The boy replied in a bored tone.

"Haaa. I understand you want to be an adventurer, but you have to learn the world of marketing to live the easy life."

"Yeah, I know, but this isn't fun at all. You just sit around trying to talk. Being an adventurer is exciting. It's exhilarating, remember when grandpa took me hunting?

If I have to live the majority of my life all boring and whatever just to have a good last few years, I would rather live my whole life having fun so that I can at least reminisce back to it when I'm old and happy."

"Listen, we've gone over a thousand times. We're merchants, have been for generations! We're world renown, presidents, kings, queens, and even dictators know and respect us for our service to the world! You still call this boring? When I'm seventy, I can tell my grandkids about the time I accidentally spilled tea on the dictator of South Lokema and he just laughed it off!

Being an adventurer, you can die anytime. Dragons are still roaming around, you know?"

"Alright, dad."

His dad let out a deep sigh of defeat after clearly not piquing his son's interest at all and muttered, "If this is so boring to you, why did you even come?"

"Because there is someone I have to meet here today!" When he said that, an uncontrollable and massive smile spread across his face.

"I didn't know you had friends in Jarlon."

"Mmmm, it's complicated."

"Alright, well I'm gonna go on watch, you do whatever you want. If you really don't want to follow our family tradition, I'm not going to force you. Your happiness and wellbeing are above all."

"Thanks."

The dad muttered as he walked away, "Besides, we have Soal back at home to train if he wants to be the next head."

Zeeth watched around some more, listening in on more conversations to learn a bit more about this new land he was about to enter, and soon, all the people finished eating, put out all the campfires, and went to their tents to sleep.

A few armor-clad people with black swords stayed up and walked around the group to keep watch.

Although they went to bed, Zeeth stayed as alert as ever. He kept looking around for any possible dangers.

He then decided to sculpt with the wood. The man said it was good material, so he wanted to try it out too.

He had one of the slimes playing in the puddles throw an old piece of wood towards him. It was about as thick as his arm and half as long, so there wasn't much he could do. He dug his nails into the center, and it surprisingly split easily, like an apple.

Of course, it was only so easy since he was so strong and he had a slime brace on his arm. He kept digging at the center, used another stick to smooth it out, and pushed it out with his hands.

He accidentally made a simple cup and went looking for another piece of wood. Unfortunately, it seems the man and his team had cleared out all the old wood from nearby except this one and he had no more to work with. The rest was in a tent with the other people.

He kept staring at the cup to analyze it since he had nothing else to do. 'oh wait, I can brew tea!' he realized. 'The man talked about tea and tea leaves.'

He threw the cup down, had a slime catch it for him, fill it up with water, and reached up there to hand it back to him.

He then grabbed two leaves and put them in the cup. A shade of blue started to come off of the leaves and spread around the water. Pretty soon, all the water was light blue and smooth.

He took a sip and as the man said, 'it's amazing. The water was so refreshing! It had a nice minty taste.'

He slowly drank the entire thing, and when he was done, he remembered that he had yet to call god that day. He threw the cup into his slime suit and was just about to come up with some possible questions for god when he heard more whispering.

These voices were unfamiliar. They weren't the same people from the original group. These voices were full of danger and malice, ready to cause some trouble.

He looked over to the source of sounds and saw a small group of people.

The armor-clad people seemed to have heard something as well, two of them walked towards the voices.

Although to them it was just a bunch of strange sounds. Their hearing and sight weren't nearly as developed as Zeeth's hearing or sight. After all, he did have to spend months living in the forest by himself.

Three rather skinny and small ones started walking towards the large group of merchants holding daggers.

Four more stayed behind, holding large swords with a single blue gem where the hilt met the sword.

Another person, the largest one, stood even further back and held a red magical scepter with a blade attached to the other end instead of a stick.

All of the gems glowed a slight hue, but the red one glowed the brightest.

The moment the knights got close enough to see the three men walking towards them, the man with the red scepter bashed the blade onto the ground and white strips came up from beneath the knights, wrapping them up. The strips weren't particularly strong, given some time and anyone could break them off.

But the strange thing was, once the end of the strips reached their mouths and taped itself against them, their eyes dropped and their bodies fell limp.

More knights heard their bodies drop and all but two walked towards the sound.

"Kev? Nick?" One of them quietly whispered their names as he cautiously walked towards the sound.

Once they got to the bodies, the same thing happened to them. He bashed his scepter, the gem glowed and more paper wrapped them up and knocked them out.

When all of those knights were cleared up, the people with the daggers quietly sprinted towards the camp. When they got halfway across, the others started wrapping the gems up and Zeeth could see vein-like patterns grow from the gems into the swords.

He didn't know much about the world, but he knew these people weren't going to treat them to tea. He had to alert the sleeping people. He held up his arm, directed a medium-sized slime to his wrist, hoping to create a thundering sound and wake them up. He released the slime from its compressed mode and it swelled up so fast it launched itself from his slime suit.

He launched it towards the back of the bandits and above the trees so he wouldn't draw any attention to himself.

But, he had sorely miscalculated. A medium-sized slime was about as tall as the trees and even wider, the slime wasn't launched far enough and when it expanded, the back end of the slime slapped into the back of the person with the red gem which launched him straight into one of the tents and the slime gave a big, silent yawn.

He was launched so fast that his other goons had to blink for a few seconds to figure out what was going on. When they realized the captain was the launch, two of them looked back to see what had done that and two of them ran towards their leader.

All of the sleeping people from within the tents ran out to check out the commotion, one of their tents was crushed and a woman was yelling and a child was crying from the tent. To top it all off, a slime the height of a tree sat right in front of them.

Worse yet, when the clouds cleared up from the sky and the moonlights, they had three moons, hit the slime, they illuminated it and the slime redirected the light all around itself as blue light, which shined into all of the bandits.

They all panicked a little but they eventually understood the situation and all pulled out a weapon of some kind. They were traveling merchants, they had to learn to keep themselves safe. Everyone here was at least an E-grade magician except for the kids.

The large man who had been shot into a tent was suddenly flung out and landed back on the ground like a comet. A bunch of dirt had been rubbed into his mouth and clothes.

A woman jumped out of the tent holding sword nunchucks and a baby on her chest.

"YOU DARE ENTER MY TENT AND GET THAT CLOSE TO MY BABY WITHOUT MY PERMISSION?!? EAT DIRT, YOU DIRTY BIT-"

The fat man from earlier ran up to her and started applying healing ointment to her leg. "Lady Eviry! Thank goodness you're alright!"

"ALRIGHT?! DO I LOOK ALRIGHT?! THIS FILTHY MAN JUST TRIED TO TOUCH MY BABY!"

"I am terribly sorry for all that has happened, you will definitely be compensated for all that has happened."

"LADY, YOU'RE CRAZY!! I WAS ACCIDENTALLY THROWN INTO YOUR TENT, WHY WOULD I WANT YOUR BABY!! JEEZ, THERE WAS NO NEED TO KICK ME THAT HARD!!"

"YOU WANT THE BABY because she's the cutest baby to ever exist, coochie-coochie-coo!" She said in a cute voice and removed the sound dampening bubbles from the baby's ears allowing the baby to hear her and she giggled a little bit. She then reapplied the bubbles and pointed her nunchucks at the man again.

"If you aren't here to harm us, why do you have those words? Your other dagger men have already been taken down."

They looked over at where they last saw them and sure enough, a man and a woman with tattered farmers' clothes, pitchforks, and kitchen knives held their faces down on the ground, the blades took away and most of their clothes stripped off.

The man and woman looked over and gave a slight smile and a thumbs up before they returned to wrapping up the dagger men.

"These are all laced with sleeping drugs, we don't kill people. We're just forest thieves."

"YOU WANTED TO DRUG MY BABY?! AND THEN WHAT DISGUSTING INAPPROPRIATE THINGS WERE YOU GOING TO DO TO OUR PRECIOUS BODIES?!"

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! WE WEREN'T GONNA DO ANYTHING OF THE SORT, WE WERE GONNA LEAVE YOU HEREAFTER STEALING YOUR STUFF, THAT'S IT!"

Zeeth dashed around them from atop the trees while they were yelling to go get his slime back and no one noticed him.

No one, but the soldiers creeping up on the yelling group of people. They bore the insignia of Jarlon on their chests and held long spears embedded with red gems.

"HALT!! Who's there?!"

Upon hearing the loud, domineering voice, all of the people stopped to look at the source, even Zeeth.

The man who had rolled stood at the front with a giant blue shield, glowing spear with an orange gem, and similarly glowing armor.

Behind him stood 10 more people with normal armor and a single spear with only red gems.

The surprising thing was, 5 more stared at Zeeth and started walking towards him with their spears pointed up at him.

'How did these people find me? I honed my stealth skill so much while in the forest that even eagle bats couldn't find me. Are the knights of Jarlon that perceptive?'

"Get down from there and identify yourself!"

The others were whispering to each other while the fat man tried to explain to the head of the soldiers that he was a traveling merchant and the others were forest thieves.

"Is he with the bandits? How did none of us spot him?"

"Boss, did you hire that guy?"

"No. The others seem just as confused, I don't think he's with them either."

Zeeth knew it was impossible to avoid confrontation now that they had all already found him up there so he jumped down from the tree. He couldn't afford to run away, Tel, his mid-sized slime that he shot out, was still there and he needed to come in contact with it to compress it again.

He looked really suspicious since all he had on was a skintight blue onesie and the robe sprawled on top. Who comes into a forest wearing that, even if it was a beginner one. There were still terrifying monsters here.