Chapter 2 - Section 2: Bandit Fort Part I

Having hurriedly left the town behind as the party entered into the mountainous terrain.

The paths were so rough that they could not ride on the carriage but instead formed a filed company each tasked with their own zones of surveillance this was of course a futile effort as Satou had his skills mapping ability able to scope out their full periphery for any hostile forces.

There was the minor problem that was that anything not hostile didn't appear at all unless they were classified by the system as being a monster, or sentient race.

But it gave everyone something to do so he didn't speak up, instead keeping his own head on a swivel looking for crafting materials that he could collect up and use to increase his own professions experience points.

The forests were teeming with life but since the stampede, the number of monsters had dropped dramatically with the increased number of adventures clearing out the hunting grounds, or forcing the advancing forces to their death or back from whence they came.

Thanks to his ability finding the bandit forces would be the easiest quest in the world, too bad its range wasn't infinite or he could simply just scan the world map and locate the possible locations based on hostile groupings, but who knows maybe like his professions and skills he can level up the map as well.

The march up the mountain trail went smooth, with no interruptions due to random encounters, and due to the warnings of bandits, even adventures were sighted less and less in the surroundings.

The mountains themselves were fairly impressive the entire north of the Meritocracy was one large mountain range acting as a natural fortification against invasion from the north, which freed up the local lords to position their forces towards the other borders increasing their war potential.

Well assuming that the empire of the north could not come up with a way to cross the range with a full army.

There were a series of military outposts of course, since they couldn't just leave the region undefended in the unlikely event that the impossible happened.

The most likely scenario is that the bandits overran one of these outposts and took it over, or that they were in a cave system that allowed them to be missed by the regular sentry patrols.

Either of these would allow them relative complete control over the area to pillage, steal, and kidnap as if they were an Orc camp.

From the report they were given a good number of adventurers went missing during the stampede, sure some of these might've been unlucky enough to fall victim to their maws, but the numbers just don't add up not to mention those who reported the disappearances illustrated that only those fighting on the fringes were targeted.

With just this, it could be said the most vulnerable were kidnapped since their focus would be on the stampede and not on the possible traitors in their midst waiting to stab them in the backs and then cart them off to be enslaved, or used up until their untimely deaths.

The tales from novels back on earth would display even worse situations than this, the horrors those captured would face could turn the stomachs of any who were not battle-hardened but even then the most stout man would still turn his face to some of the horrors that the races would inflict upon one another.

"As dangerous as this journey is it just feels like a national park hike to me"

"What's a national park?"

"Oh um, well let's see, it's like a large expanse of land that is under the control of the crown, and therefore you cannot hunt, log or pretty much anything else without permission or paid approval type of thing"

"So crownlands then we'll there's not a lot of them in the continent but they surely do exist, mostly just as hunting grounds for the royals to use to guarantee they can always hunt something, but the knights regularly use these lands as training area's to gain combat experience in fighting monsters as well"

"But what if the knights are busy with war? who controls the crownlands then?"

"Well they'd never send the entire knights' force off to war as they'd need to retain at least a defensive force to protect the cities and even then the crownlands themselves are generally close enough to the city that scout could report of an impending attack and call them back well in time to defend"

"So a home defence force, I see"

"A world of greenery is always one to look for, it shows the abundance of life, fertile ground for the Hellenic teachings, and even thriving as it is the ecosystems of this world could always use the assistance of the gods and goddesses of earth and harvest"

"No polythesizing on this journey Herc, at least not until we rescue those kidnapped all right?"

"Yes milord"

The conversations held were all over the place, Prim continued to ask about life as a commoner, while Raisa almost incessantly asked an endless number of questions about the earth, and the various things that came about as a result of technology and not magic.

However there was one topic they touched upon that brought the most cross-talk and that was when they got onto Satou's magic, as it was magic that didn't obey the known magical laws of this world.

First off because summoning magic aside from the hero summoning was completely unheard of, secondly because of his use of curse magic which could be construed as a form of dark magic, but darkness was not one of the elements utilized by the people of this land.

While a similar system existed they referred to it as Evil magic, since it was the polar opposite to Holy magic.

As they marched on the topic continued, and Satou seemingly distracted whilst walking kept tripping over various roots and footholds.

Until he was finally questioned on what was going on or If he was tired, but he just covered it up with an excuse about being lost in his own thoughts.

[I can't very well claim to be trying to do something weird again, after all trying to move my internal mana whilst stationary is already hard enough but to go an extra 10 steps and try to do it while walking and holding a conversation is damn near impossible, but at the same time I must be racking up the skill points for every second I'm successful at it, and who known maybe I'll develop a parallel thinking or, computation skill to aid in multi-tasking.]

Still continuing his practice until he came to an abrupt stop after running head-first into the person in front of him who'd come to a stop,

The impact caused Heracles to waver slightly, and Satou to fall backward on his rump.

"What the hell!"

Starting to complain but being silenced by a hand motion from Raisa.

"Bad guys, ahead." Kurama

True to her words, upon checking his map it was displaying over 20 dots of malicious intent, 3 situated outside the cave they were now peering at and the rest inside, but the cave went deeper than his map could see so it was possible there were 10x that number inside, with multiple entrances and exits.

"So it begins..."

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Character Progression:

Satou (Kokei) Ekiken Age: 27

Race: Human Level: 22/30+4 (Lvl: 52)+4 Class: Conjurer summons 11 max +2

Title: From Another World, Dungeon Conqueror (54-Pale Grotto), Dungeon Master (54)

Health E Mana C

Strength F Dexterity F

Vitality F Intelligence C +1

Agility D +1

Skill:

Unique Skill: Gamer [Yggdrasill]

 Magic Hand (1), Fire Magic (1), Lightning Magic (1), Dark Magic (2), Deception (1), Mana Sense (1), Mana Manipulation (1), Mana Vision (1)

 Summon (3)

 Beast GFE

 Insect GFE

 Bird GF

 Grass G

 Professions:

 Alchemy (3), Blacksmithing (2), Cooking, (2), First Aid (4)+2, Herbalism (2), Leatherworking (2), Mining (1), Scavenging (2)+1, Skinning (4)+1, Tailoring (2), Treasure Hunting (2)+1