Alaric smiled, his eyes closing into crescent slits as he turned toward the squealing cook.
"Don't. Don't come any closer," the cook cried in panic.
Joji spared the man a cold glance, but his attention had already shifted elsewhere.
His senses reached past the camp and fixed on the dark beyond the shrubs and trees.
Then the air whistled.
"Get down. Shields up," Joji roared.
Joji caught Walter by the collar and slammed him into the dirt. An arrow hissed past the merchant's head and shaved away a few strands of his golden hair.
But no ambush party ever loosed only a single arrow. A rain of shafts came down overhead.
Most of Walter's guards were quick enough to dive for cover. But not all of them.
Two men fell with arrows buried in their throats. Blood sprayed across the ground. They dragged in a few ragged breaths, then died where they lay.
Others were luckier, left only scraped and bleeding.
That was only the beginning.
The surviving guards drew their swords, but not to defend.
They turned their blades inward and struck at their own. Ten men went down in the first hard exchange.
A few managed to throw up wooden shields on instinct, confusion wide in their eyes as they tried to understand where the true enemy stood.
Then the head guard saw the man they kept glancing toward.
Simon.
The traitors' eyes flicked his way like dogs checking their master before they bit.
"What's the meaning of this, Simon? Have the Pinnaclers stripped you of your wits?" the head guard roared, blood running down both shoulders.
Simon flinched at the sound, but when he saw the men around him waiting on him like lackeys, his courage swelled and his face twisted into a sneer.
"What do you mean, what?" Simon shot back. "A man swore I'd be dubbed a knight. Can you grant me that, Captain? Can you truly?"
"Madman," the head guard spat. "Look at yourself. Look at your years. Can't you see they're making a fool of you? They're using you for their own ends."
"What right have you to talk like that?" he blurted. "I've had my hundred gold already, I have. And this new sword too. Ain't you seen it? The deal's half done. That makes me half a knight already."
Joji paid none of it any mind. While the quarrel swelled behind him, he simply bent, seized Walter, and lifted the fat merchant up like a maiden.
Lightness of the Wind lent speed to his feet and turned the ground into a blur.
"F-friend, if you please, a little more gently," Walter said, trying to sound composed even as his stomach lurched with every pounding step. His fingers pinched hard into Joji's biceps.
"Hey, hey. Don't pinch me like that," Joji said.
Alaric ran close behind, using the cook's plump body as a shield. The man jerked each time a shaft buried itself in him.
Once enough arrows had punched through to make the body useless as cover, Alaric flung the cook aside. The poor fool died with his eyes still open, indignation and regret trapped in them.
"Joji," Alaric said softly, "let me help you carry him."
"We'll take turns," Joji said.
Then he shifted Walter onto his back in a piggyback carry and kept moving.
Even in panic, Walter still found breath for concern.
"What about the guards? Can we do anything for them?"
Joji shook his head. He had no wish to break Walter's heart more than the moment already had.
"All we can do is pray for them," Joji said.
After fifteen minutes, Joji and Alaric noticed the arrows losing accuracy. A few still came near enough to matter, but most no longer had any true aim behind them.
After half an hour, only distant shouts reached their ears.
Even so, they did not stop. They ran for more than an hour in all.
When at last they slowed, Alaric was panting hard, his lungs burning. He looked at Joji and saw only a thin sheen of sweat at the man's brow, his breathing still steady.
"Are. Are you not even tired?" Alaric asked between breaths.
Joji had the stamina of sixteen men stacked one atop another, and even he still found it startling.
By now, he understood that these stats were far removed from anything in games. Each point was not a mere increase, but a qualitative change.
He let Walter down at last, noticing how the merchant's arms and legs trembled from clinging on for so long.
Walter sank into the mud and leaf rot, his own limbs shaking, as though he wished they had been of more use.
Then he looked up at the two men and stared at them as if they had stepped out of some tale told to children by firelight.
"Who are you, truly?" he asked.
His thoughts were plainly racing through every ugly possibility, even the fear that Joji and Alaric had been part of the scheme from the start.
Alaric's mouth had already begun to open, no doubt ready with some flamboyant explanation, but Joji raised a hand and stopped him. Then he reached beneath his clothing and drew out his Everhart knight badge.
The moment Walter saw it, he went rigid.
At once, Walter dropped into a deep bow, his forehead pressed to the ground.
"Honored sirs, I have been a burden. Please tell this humble soul how I may make amends."
"Stand up, Walter," Joji said. "We're on a mission, and truth be told, you make excellent cover."
"Er... Sir Desmond. If I may, what's your plan from here?"
Joji took responsibility without flinching.
"We've another job in a town not far from here," he said. "You're coming with us as our porter."
Walter did not complain. If anything, he looked at Joji with something close to admiration.
Being treated like cheap labor bought for a handful of coins felt more believable than kindness. Right now, believability mattered more than pride. For Walter, realism meant survival.
There was another problem. Walter was nowhere near as striking as Alaric, but his unblemished skin and soft features would betray him the moment anyone looked too closely.
Joji read the thought on Alaric's face. He bent, scooped up a handful of mud, and smeared it across Walter's cheeks and forehead.
Walter had no complaints about the method. He cared only about returning to the Cutler Estate alive, with his limbs still attached. So he let Joji do as he pleased.
Back at the camp, the two bandit groups, now joined with the traitorous guards, gathered around the fire.
The guard captain and seven other survivors had been bound and thrown aside. Their acting leader, his face wrapped in black cloth, gave a curt nod toward the prisoners.
"Why keep those nobodies alive?" he asked. "They are just extra mouths to feed."
Another man, draped in a dark green cloak, took out a needle from his sleeve and let out a cackle far too pleased with itself.
"We'll send their bodies back whole," he said, tapping his own temple. "Only their heads will be set a different way. We'll make spies of them. How does that sound?"
Both groups were only posing as common brigands, but in truth they were two teams of bounty hunters. This was an assassination mission backed by Melchor's rich payout.
While they plotted, Joji and Alaric stopped by a river.
On a flat rock near the water, he held out a hand for Walter's clothes without a word, then soaked them in the river. After that, he dragged the fabric slowly over rough stone and dried it with a careful wash of aura.
Alaric watched the whole thing and quietly stored the lesson away. He had thought of doing such things before, but seeing Joji use aura for work this mundane made it feel strangely permitted.
Walter, meanwhile, could only stare. A knight doing chores like this felt wrong to him, almost disrespectful to the title itself. He had already grasped the intent and thought he could manage the work better with his own hands.
"Sir, my skills with textiles are quite decent. Allow me to do it," Walter said.
Joji looked at Walter more closely and noticed the small, almost imperceptible working marks on his hands, along with the calluses left by long hours of holding a pen and handling different tasks.
It told him the merchant truly did have some skill with crafts. So Joji agreed and explained the aim clearly. He wanted the clothes to look like hand me downs, worn and passed along, not outright ruined.
Walter, unwilling to seem more of a burden than he already was, threw himself into the task and even showed a bit of acting skill once the work was done.
The result earned a thumbs up from both Joji and Alaric.
By the time they moved on, Walter no longer looked glamorous. His fur lined coat had been turned into a makeshift bag, and his clothes, once finely sewn and gilded, now looked only a step above what a slum dweller might wear.
"You look the part of an adventurer now," Alaric said from the side.
Walter had never done work like this himself, but he had hired enough laborers to know how such people carried themselves.
As they followed the riverbank, a deep grumble broke the quiet.
Joji and Alaric tensed at once, hands drifting toward their weapons. The merchant quickly raised both hands.
"It was me," Walter said. "I might be feeling a bit hungry."
Both of Joji and Alaric knew Walter had not managed a single bite earlier.
More than that, Walter did not even had tea times or fancy pastry breaks along the road. He drank water and that's it. It was reasonable someone without aura would hunger at this time.
"Hold up," Joji said. "Let me check the river."
Joji himself had begun to feel a small pang of hunger. He stepped to the water's edge, planted his palm, and used Emerald Blade Wind.
The strike shot through the river like a bullet. Water rose in a sudden sheet, and fish burst thrashing into the air. Alaric reacted at once, loosing arrows tied with rope. Three salmon were caught and dragged to shore.
"More. I need more," Joji said.
Soon, they had ten fish laid out on the bank.
Joji worked quickly. Gutted. Filleted. Sliced thin.
He took the first piece into his mouth, chewed, and could not quite hide the delight that crossed his face. Alaric, who was not usually fussy, still found this a step too far.
"Desmond, wouldn't it be better to cook it over a fire?" Walter asked.
Joji glanced into the dark around them and shook his head.
"Too conspicuous." He took another bite. "Try it. I'm telling you, this is one of the fish you can eat raw."
They needed the strength. Walter and Alaric pinched their noses and forced the slices down.
Then both men blinked.
"Not so bad," Walter said, plainly surprised.
Alaric gave a reluctant nod in agreement.
Joji, however, was already tearing through the fish by the handful. Hunger hit him all at once. By the time he finished the ninth fish, while Walter and Alaric had only shared a single large salmon between them, he looked almost renewed, his face faintly rosy with energy.
"Alright," Joji said with a grin. "Off to our adventure."