Kazuma stood out in the fields outside of Lorm as he looked for the village he was going to. The two week ban had finally been lifted so Kazuma decided to immediately go take a quest. The quest was for a village to the north of the city that had reported monsters being seen nearby. So far a few villagers have been kidnapped by them, so it was a rising concern that brought the reward, as well as the difficulty of the quest higher. He certainly wished he could just sit and relax with the nice weather, but he knew he had to get going to the village.

It took him an hour by walking, but he eventually reached "The Village of Sol". It was a decently sized village that had all of their main facilities covered, such as food, clothing, health ,woodwork, and metal working. As he walked through the open paths he saw various children running around playing games. It was a leisurely benefit of living in a village compared to the city, it felt more homey and safe. While there were children running around in Lorm, it was under the careful watch of their parents, whereas here the children seemed free. However, while the children seemed fine, everyone else seemed a bit on edge.

Kazuma asked around for directions to the village mayor, the one who sent in the quest in the first place. Upon meeting him, he was explained the finer details of his job.

Lately people had been disappearing from the village, whether they were sent to a location a little further from town, or they stayed out a little too late, they were gone. Naturally, this had an effect on the village. He was to stake out during the night and prevent any monsters from taking people, and if possible find their camp and defeat them.

As a result, Kazuma spent the rest of the day at the inn, resting up for the long night. As dusk came, Kazuma had started going through his items. After the dungeon, he had gotten John to make him a new bow, one more durable and potentially more powerful. He had his quiver set with 2 packs of 10 arrows. He also had an assortment of vials filled with Mana, Health, Stamina, and boosting potions, as per Lily's suggestion. While manatite would have been ideal, as they restored a ton of mana, even if such a small amount is used, they were very expensive, so potions were a more common option. Once he was certain, he packed everything up and headed out.

There were a couple of guard outposts around the outside of the village, one at the east, which overlooked a forest nearby, and one on the west, which overlooked the large fields. While they did have guards in the form of their own villagers, the quest was neccessary as they would be more experienced and much stronger people than their own. Kazuma would spend about an hour at one tower before rotating to the other for another hour.

Kazuma climed to the top of the east tower, a guard was already set to watch the area.

"Yo." Kazuma said as he got to the top.

"Oh, hello there!" Said the guard back to Kazuma.

The guard was a young male, possibly in his teens, blonde hair and blue eyes.

"Are you the adventurer that came to help?" The boy asked.

"Yep, Satou Kazuma at your service!" Kazuma said, giving a mock salute, which got him to laugh a little.

"Hahaha, well, thank you for coming to help us. The name's Hans." He said, giving out a hand to shake, which Kazuma took and shook hands with him.

"Looks like you're stuck with me for the next hour." Kazuma said as he set set down a pocket watch that was given to him to monitor the time.

"Better than being on my own, it gets quite boring up here after a while."

Once Kazuma got himself comforable, he noticed that Hans seemed slightly anxious.

"What's wrong?" Kazuma asked.

"What do you mean?"

"It seems like something is bothering you, what's up?"

Hans looked out towards the for, seemingly taking a moment to think before he spoke.

"I have a friend, her name is Pyr. She often likes to go out to the forest to gather flowers and other plants for herself or the local doctor. But lately with the monsters taking people, she's been warned not to enter the first. But since the doctor had been running low on herbs, she took it upon herself to gather them. But the sun is setting already, where could she be..." Hans had a worried expression on his face.

Kazuma could see where this guy was coming from, being out in the forest this late is dangerous, but there wasn't much they could do. They couldn't risk abandoning post otherwise monsters could come by while they were gone.

"Say, how long have you been an adventurer for?" Hans asked, deciding to change topics and get his mind off things.

"I'd say for maybe half a year now, why?" (idk the right time frame for this, I just guesstimated half a year since winter did pass before the Destroyer came)

"I was curious if you had any interesting stories of your adventures." Hans said, which got Kazuma to grow a small smile.

"Well then, let me tell you about this one time where an explosion loving loli and I blew up an abandoned castle that turned out to be where a Demon King general was situated, and how he came after us..." Kazuma started.

For the next hour, he told Hans about his adventures, both in Axel and in Lorm. During that time, Kazuma's "Detect Enemy" never went off.

"Ah, it's been an hour already! Look's like it's time for you to go over to the west tower." Hans said, when he realized the time.

"I better get going then, see you in an hour!" Kazuma said as he climbed down.

Hans watched as Kazuma climbed down and walked off towards the other tower.

Once Kazuma was out of sight, he turned back towards the forest. He didn't feel right, just sitting around, waiting while Pyr was in danger.

"Just one hour, right?"


Kazuma finished up his next hour at the west tower, making him head on to the east tower where Hans is.

"Man, that guy was so uptight, not much for a conversation. Least Hans is more talkative, and we can share these sandwiches that I got." Kazuma said to himself as he looked at the small basket of sandwiches that were given to him by one of the villages he passed by, as a way of thanking him for taking the quest.

When he reached the tower, he climbed up, ready to greet Hans.

"Yo! I'm back I got some food for us..." Kazuma trailed off, noticing that the tower was empty.

"Hold on, I remember this tower having someone here, where did he go?" Kazuma said to himself

He noticed a note lying on the floor.

Kazuma, I'm sorry but you will have to watch the tower by yourself, I went into the forest to look for Pyr. - Hans

'That idiot! What the hell does he think he's doing?' Kazuma screamed internally.

Kazuma quickly climbed down the tower and used his skill to check for any enemies nearby. After he confirmed that it was safe, he quickly ran into the darkened forest. The fact that it was night time made navigating the forest a bit of a challenge, buy luckily Kazuma had "Foresight" which granted him the ability to see in the dark. It wasn't perfect like if it was day time, but it was something to work with.

Once he got really deep into the forest, he saw a few markings that seemed out if place. He got closer to inspect the marking, only to realize it was blood droplets that stained the ground. He looked around and found more of them, making a trail.

'This must be Hans' blood!' Kazuma thought as he followed the trail. As the trail went on, his "Detect Enemy" skill went off, alerting him of the monsters he was looking for. He noticed there was a glowing object up ahead, so he turned off the night vision to see that it was a camp fire that he saw. Hiding behind the trees, he got closer to see a band of goblins dancing around a fire, with a giant goblin, seemingly the leader, nearby. He looked around and saw a cage with a bunch of unconcious people, one having familiar blonde hair, and another having bright red hair. He realized this was Hans and Pyr, alongside the other missing villagers.

'There they are! But how can I get them out of here... It won't be easy getting them out of here while the big guy is present.'

After a moment he had hatched a plan, it was definitely a dangerous one but it was something.

He used "Lurk" to get close to the cage, hiding behind it so he wouldn't be spotted. He then shook Hans to wake up him. Hans soon regained consciousness, and almost shouted out before Kazuma covered his mouth.

"Shhh! Listen, you need to get everyone out of here, I'm going to distract the monsters, when I do, get these guys up and running to the village, alright?" Kazuma said, explaining his plan to him.

Hans nodded in response. Kazuma saw that the cage had the door secured with some tied up rope, so Kazuma quickly cut it with his sword.

"Alright, make sure to wait until we're gone to make a move." Kazuma said before getting away from them.

He then went to the opposite side of the camp before he took out his bow and prepared his quiver with some arrows. He took an arrow and drew his bow. Taking in a deep breath to relieve his nerves a little, he used "Snipe" and let the arrow fly to the camp, going right through a goblin's head. Before the goblins had realized what had happened, Kazuma shot more arrows at them, killing many more.

The goblins soon noticed Kazuma, and they immediately began chasing him, giving Hans the opportunity he needed.

As he ran through the darkness of the forest, he could see that some of the underlings were slowly gaining on him. Once he thought he was a good distance away from Hans he turned around to face the goblins, drawing his sword.

8 goblins and the giant stood before him. The smaller goblins were no problem, but the giant concerned him the most.

One goblin immediately charged right at him, which he was able to dodge, but as he moved, two more jumped at him. Kazuma raised his blade and the two attacks were blocked, but it left him open for another to jump in and attack him. The attack hit him right in the chest, and knocked him onto his back. As another jumped to attack him while he was down, Kazuma rolled to the side before getting up.

'They'll definitely win with their numbers, it's gonna be tough to fight them all.' Kazuma thought.

Before he could come up with a plan, he saw a large club being swung down at him. He narrowly dodged to the side as the club impacted the ground, leaving quite a small crater where it hit. The giant goblin had moved to attack as well.

"Seriously?! You couldn't wait your turn for an ass whopping?" Kazuma shouted at the goblin.

Soon the smaller ones had began attacking as well, constantly forcing Kazuma to leave himself open for an attack from them.

'The hell is up with these goblins?! They're much smarter than the average bunch.' Kazuma thought, confused at the enemy.

Most often goblins would attack blindly, but perhaps under the leadership of the giant goblin they became more organized.

He had already taken several hits, he wasn't going to last at this rate unless he came up with something to fight back.

He rattled his brain as hard as he could to come up with something.

'Come on think! What can I do?'

The goblins soon started making their move, running towards him. Just as they raised their weapons to attack, it finally came to him.

"Steal!" Kazuma shouted, extending out his hand to use the skill on the attacking goblins. In his hand was the weapon of the goblin that was closest and was about to attack. With the weapon out of it's hand, it became disoriented, it was enough to distract it, giving Kazuma the opportunity to stab and kill the goblin.

He then used 'Create Water' to douse the enemy and ground, before using 'Freeze', to slow down the enemy and create a layer of ice that cause many goblins to slip.

With many of the goblins on the ground, Kazuma quickly swapped to his bow and shot a few goblins closest to him. He then aimed for the giant, and with the added power of 'Snipe', the arrow embedded itself into the giant's eye, forcing it to shout out in pain.

It was now that the strangest thing happened. The giant seemingly ordered the few goblins left to flee, as they took off, not going to either the village or the campsite, but somewhere else.

'Where the hell are they going?' Kazuma thought.

He didn't have much time to think about the odd behavior as the giant had begun charging at him once again with more fury.

The giant's attacks coming faster and stronger, Kazuma felt like if he failed to dodge one he'd be done for. He had to constantly use 'Lurk' along side a leveled up 'Tinder' to deal some damage as he couldn't risk getting close, but wasn't given enough headroom to use his bow. Unfortunately his mana and stamina were slowly running out with this tactic, and soon he was only able to just dodge the incoming attacks by a hair.

Suddenly, right after he dodged a strike, the giant had quickly changed directions forcing Kazuma to block the attack with his sword. He cried out in pain as the blow was too much, forcing him to drop the weapon as he was blown right into a tree.

Kazuma was in pain, he couldn't grab his dropped weapon, he couldn't use his bow, he was too low on stamina and mana to run or even use one of his skills to escape.

The giant had slowly approached Kazuma, an evil grin on it's face as it approached him, ready to deal the killing blow on the pesky adventurer. Before it could kill him, it was shot in the back of the head with an arrow, causing it to stop in place before dropping dead.

"Kazuma!" Hans shouted as he emerged from the darkness.

"Hans..?" Kazuma said out weakly as he looked up at the person who saved him.

"Are you alright?! You idiot you almost got yourself killed!" Hans said as he ran up to him, kneeling on the ground. He rummaged through Kazuma's satchel before pulling out the vials of potions to restore Kazuma's health, stamina and mana. It took him a moment to recover his strength to stand up.

"Hah... You're a life saver Hans, I would've been a goner if you didn't show up." Kazuma said.

That is before he snacked him over the head.

"AND WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW DANGEROUS THAT WAS?! WERE YOU ASKING TO GET YOUR ASS KICKED?" Kazuma shouted as he scolded the boy.

"I-I'm sorry... But I couldn't sit still with the risk of Pyr getting taken by those goblins..." Hans said, explaining himself.

"Sigh... I'll let it go this time but don't do something stupid like that. Normally goblins aren't that difficult, but with something like this-" Kazuma pointed at the giant, "it can be really dangerous."

"I understand... Still, it's quite rare to see a giant goblin, especially one that can lead other goblins like that." Hans said.

"Yeah... It was quite unusual... Wait... What's this?" Kazuma said as he inspected the giant closely.

On the back of it's neck was some kind of symbol. Kazuma looked at the other normal goblins and saw that they all had the same one on the back of their necks.

"They all have it, but what is it for?" Hans asked.

"I don't know, but something about it seems familiar, in a scary sort of way... Wait, no... It can't be..." Kazuma said , dread filling him as he came to a realization.

"What is it Kazuma?!" Hans asked, worried at his expression.

"This symbol, it's the same as 'The Blood Eyed Bandits'!"

True to what he said, on the back of every goblin's neck was the symbol of those bandits.


Another chapter done, and those bandits are up to something terrible! Once again taking me forever to make this chapter as I have one hella cramped schedule, leaving me only time to write this at night. I'm still not great at writing fights, but I am trying! Also please excuse the random double spaces between lines of text, for some reason when I save the document on the mobile app, it does the double spaces, and I even try to delete the extras but then they pop up elsewhere!