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*****
"A bunch of paupers!"
After rummaging through the entire watchtower, George couldn't help but shake his head as he walked out.
From the whole watchtower and all the bandits combined, he had only managed to find less than three hundred Septims.
In truth, it was understandable. Bandits lived lives of licking blood from the blade's edge. Perhaps they were living merrily today, but tomorrow their heads might be cut off.
Therefore, they basically spent however much money they had, never keeping too many savings on their person.
Only the larger, more established bandit groups, those with their own hidden strongholds, would possibly hoard a large amount of wealth.
The bandits at this watchtower, according to what the townspeople had said last night, were a group that had just recently wandered into the area.
This was because the previous wave of bandits who had been causing trouble had already been cleared out by soldiers dispatched from Whiterun.
This type of bandit group was generally not very strong, nor numerous, numbering thirty or forty men at most. They would probably stay at the watchtower for a period of time and then, before Whiterun could dispatch troops to clear them out again, they would drift off to some other place.
"Going this way is just another long detour."
George turned his head and glanced at the winding path to the right of the watchtower, which disappeared into the distance. He decided against following Camilla's previous instructions to travel normally.
Instead, with a powerful exertion of his legs, he leaped straight up from where he stood.
Bleak Falls Barrow was located directly above the watchtower. If he were to take the path on the right as one normally would, he would have to traverse at least several times the distance.
Although he couldn't use magic to fly up there at the moment, he could jump.
With his current physical body, if he were to leap with his full strength, it wouldn't be a particularly difficult feat to jump directly from Riverwood at the base of the mountain all the way to the summit of the Throat of the World.
The only difficult part was controlling the force properly, so he wouldn't overshoot it.
In an instant, terrifying cracks spiderwebbed across the ground beneath George's feet. In the next moment, his figure shot upwards just like a rocket.
On the outer perimeter of Bleak Falls Barrow, at an altitude of three thousand meters, two archers were rubbing their hands together in the ice and snow, standing guard.
They originally belonged to a roving bandit gang from Falkreath Hold.
A week ago, a Dark Elf who had just joined them provided a piece of information to their boss.
He said that the Golden Dragon Claw, located in the Riverwood Trader in Whiterun Hold, could unlock the legendary treasure of the ancient Nord nobility rumored to be within Bleak Falls Barrow.
Thus, the boss had led them all to Riverwood, temporarily taking up residence in the watchtower. A few days ago, they found an opportunity to sneak down the mountain and steal the Golden Dragon Claw.
However, before they had even finished preparing to enter Bleak Falls Barrow to search for the treasure, that treacherous Dark Elf had actually stolen the Golden Dragon Claw from the boss's possession and entered Bleak Falls Barrow all by himself.
It was obvious that the Dark Elf intended to monopolize the treasure.
Consequently, the boss left a portion of his men behind to guard the watchtower, while he personally led the majority of the bandits into the ancient tomb to hunt down the Dark Elf.
The three of them were left to guard the entrance, in order to prevent the Dark Elf from bypassing the boss and sneaking out.
"What's that sound?"
The two archers, who had keen hearing, suddenly heard the sound of something tearing through the air from below. They immediately tensed up, vigilantly nocking arrows and drawing their bows as they looked downward.
They could vaguely make out a small black dot appearing below, and that black dot was rapidly growing larger.
"It's a person!"
Upon discovering that the black dot, once it enlarged, was actually a person, the two archers were instantly scared out of their wits. They hurriedly tried to aim, intending to attack.
However, before their bows were even properly aimed, the human figure had already flashed past them in an instant, landing squarely in the ancient tomb's courtyard behind them.
"Seeing it this close-up, it really is rather magnificent. The owner of this tomb must have held a high status in life."
The moment George landed, he bent his knees slightly to absorb the impact, then began to turn his head, curiously looking all around.
It wasn't very obvious in the game, but now, examining the entrance to this Bleak Falls Barrow in reality, he couldn't help but feel a little impressed.
The area of the plaza in front of the tomb alone was almost the size of a soccer field from his previous life, and it was adorned with all kinds of large-scale carvings and decorations.
The massive door to the ancient tomb in the distance was, furthermore, a full five meters tall.
To be ableto construct such a massive tomb, the owner must have been, at the very least, a Jarl-level existence during their lifetime.
"Swish! Swish!"
Two iron arrows rapidly streaked toward George's back.
It was the two archers, having snapped back to their senses, launching an attack on George.
At the same time, the greatsword-wielding warrior who had been guarding the tomb's entrance also charged toward George with a furious roar.
One breath later, the three bandits were lying neatly on the plaza ground. George pocketed their thirty Septims and pushed open the great door, walking into Bleak Falls Barrow.
Nords loathed magic and worshipped warriors; the majority of them were rather rash.
These Nord bandits were no exception.
Normally, any bandit with a bit of intelligence, upon seeing a person jump up from the base of the mountain, would instantly know that this was an expert they absolutely could not deal with.
They wouldn't even think of attacking; they would have immediately turned and fled.
If those three bandits had actually turned tail and run, George truly would have been too lazy to bother killing them.
"It seems the draugr are still quite lethal to ordinary bandits."
As soon as he entered the door, George saw the bodies of eight bandits lying in the tomb's antechamber, while, in contrast, there were only two draugr corpses.
This meant that the bandit leader had brought more than twenty subordinates to hunt down the Dark Elf who stole the Golden Claw.
Just upon entering and encountering the two draugr in the front hall, the twenty-plus bandits had ganged up on the two draugr, yet they had lost a full eight of their men just to take them down.
But, upon reflection, it made sense. If the draugr were really as easy to deal with as they were in the game, these ancient Nord tombs probably would have all been looted clean long ago.
This was especially true for a famous, major tomb like Bleak Falls Barrow.
"Hm? It's gathering energy. It seems they can even automatically repair themselves."
Walking up to the two "defeated" draugr, George sensed the magical runes throughout the tomb flickering. Dark energy was slowly condensing and being injected into the draugrs' bodies.
The damaged parts of the draugr corpses were also slowly regenerating under the infusion of this dark energy.
He estimated that in just two days or so, these two draugr would be fully restored and would once again become the guardians of the antechamber.
"No wonder it hasn't been breached after all these years."
Seeing this, George instantly understood.
He had just been wondering. Even if the draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow were formidable, after so many years and with so many adventurers coming to seek treasure...
Even if they only whittled down a few draugr each time, the draugr should have been completely depleted by now.
Now it seemed that unless one could eliminate all of the draugr in Bleak Falls Barrow in a single, sustained excursion, it was fundamentally impossible to reach the final main burial chamber and retrieve the funerary goods and legendary treasure.
Passing through the antechamber, George continued deeper into the ancient tomb.
Along the way, George did not see any more draugr bodies. He did, however, see quite a few more bandit corpses. They had all died to the tomb's various traps.
The ancient tomb was much larger and far more complex than it was in the game. It wasn't just a single path straight to the end; rather, it had many, many branching forks.
However, this meant nothing to George. He could use his hearing and sense of smell to precisely lock onto the positions of those remaining bandits.
If he truly encountered a complicated maze, he just needed to smash open the wall blocking his path with a single punch to continue forward.
As for whether doing so would cause the ancient tomb to collapse?
This tomb was excavated deep inside the mountain, surrounded by solid rock. It wouldn't collapse that easily.
And if it really did collapse, so be it. It wasn't like it could crush him to death, anyway. It would just make collecting the buried treasures a bit more troublesome.
(End of this chapter)