Chapter 147: Forest People
"Finally." It had been about forty minutes since he had entered the forest in search of people to kill and while he hadn't yet completed this goal he had found something related to it. It was a large clearing that had very clearly been used as a camp. He could tell because the places where there had been fires were still pitch black and there were a few places where paths had started to form from people repeatedly walking in the same place.
That being said they were gone now but the fact they had been here until recently made him think he might be able to follow their trail. He had never tried to do something like that before but he felt like it would probably be better than just running around the forest randomly. Plus if there had been a lot of them here they had probably left a pretty obvious trail to where they went.
Doing a quick loop around the old campsite, Lake found a trail that headed deeper into the forest and one that went in a direction that led him to think it went towards the road he had just been on. Figuring either could be the right one to follow, Lake just went down the one that led deeper into the forest.
If he was wrong there was no harm done and he could just go to the road to continue his journey. It didn't take long for Lake to see something with his Mana Vision three cores next to each other up ahead. It wasn't as many as he had been hoping for but three people might be enough Exp for him to max a job depending on the multiplier of said job.
And he knew the perfect job if he was going to be killing humans, switching his job to Ripper Lake rushed towards the cores until he got his eyes on who he was about to attack. The thing was they were clearly not bandits, it was an old man holding a staff which probably meant the old guy was some form of mage and two children who were probably his grandchildren. All three were sitting on a log and the old guy was telling the two children something.
Lake didn't really want to kill children so he stopped his charge and slowly walked into the clearing, once the old mage saw him Lake said. "I'm looking for bandits. Have you seen any around here?" As soon as Lake said that the old man started to stand, Lake could tell this wasn't an easy action for this old man and it made Lake wonder how the three of them had made it so far into the forest.
"Yes we have seen some bandits, but they left in the cart they stole from us."
"Which way did they go?" Lake was sure he could catch the cart if this had just happened. "They took the road that's directly next to this forest. Me and my Grandchildren didn't feel safe just sitting on the side of the road so we came into the forest to hide." Lake gave the old guy a thumbs up and ran towards the road when he heard a distant yell.
"Wait." Guessing the old guy wasn't done talking, Lake returned and said. "Sorry, do you need something?"
"Would you return our cart if you're able to catch them?" Lake gave another thumbs up and was about to leave again when one of the kids started pulling on the old man's long wizard beard. "Pop-pop I'm humgry." Lake looked at the small child and wondered if it knew it was trying to manipulate him or if it just came naturally to something that couldn't take care of itself. He couldn't deny how much he wanted to give them food after hearing how the kid mispronounced hungry.
"Sorry to be more trouble, but do you have any food you could spare, just for the children is fine." Lake had more food than he could probably eat because he had taken some meat and a full loaf of bread. His plan had been to eat half the loaf with his meat and save the rest for later in case he wasn't able to make it back to the guild tonight but now that he thought about it, giving them some of Millie's food would probably be worth the loss.
Reaching into his bag Lake grabbed the loaf and tore it into uneven halves, keeping the smaller one for himself Lake handed the bread to the old man. "Thank you, um, may I know your name?" Lake had no problem with them knowing who he was, so he said. "I'm Lake."
"Well thank you I'm Grundam and these are my grandchildren Solis and Frandar." Lake almost laughed when he heard the little girl's name but he kept it in and said. "Go ahead and give the kids the bread then tell me more about the ones who took your cart." Lake was no longer in a hurry so he thought he might as well get some more information while he was here.
Grundam quickly split the bread and said "Don't eat too much, we need to save some for later in case the bandits ate what was on the cart already." After Grundam handed the bread to the children he turned to tell Lake about the bandits when he heard what sounded like wild animals eating.
The sound was of course the children going into a feeding frenzy from the effects of the magic bread he had just handed them. "No! Wait! What are you two doing!?" Lake didn't say anything and just watched as the old man tried to keep the kids from eating it all. Once he had failed he turned to Lake and said. "I guess they were more hungry than I realized."
Looking at the old guys embarrassed face, Lake nodded and said. "It seems so, so back to the bandits." Lake wasn't going to tell the old man what he had done because now that he thought about it the old guy would probably be mad that he had given him weird food for the two kids so Lake decided to just pretend like nothing had happened.
"There were seven of them. They said they didn't want to hurt us, they just wanted the cart. I told them They were free to get in and I would let them ride for free but they insisted so I let them have it. I'm guessing they wanted the food and our luggage and didn't need a ride away from the city."
Lake nodded and remembered the number, seven was enough to max out two different jobs if he was careful to do exactly what the Exp bonuses said to. He had his bow so he could get all the bandits off of the cart and shoot them in the face for 10X Exp and once that job maxed out he could rip the rest of them apart with his hands to get the 5X Exp from Ripper.
That would be four new skills of the Unique or Legendary rank plus whatever stats he would earn. Getting ready to leave again Lake turned to go when he stopped and thought of Treasured. If he was to use this on the three of them there was a good chance one of them would care enough about the cart right now that he might be able to know where it was.
"Would you mind letting me use one of my skills on you? It sometimes helps me track down items that were stolen."
"Go right ahead, do I need to do anything for it to work?" Lake nodded and said. "Yeah just think about your cart and take off anything you're wearing that can interfere with skills."
"Ok I'm ready." Lake noticed the old guy didn't take anything off so Lake assumed he didn't have anything like a ward ring on and activated Treasured. As soon as he used it he saw a mark appear on the little girl and guessed that meant she was his most treasured person. That left place and thing, so he turned to look back at the city to see a mark in that direction.
Lake assumed that would be his favorite place, most likely his home, so that left item. Doing a full circle Lake eventually saw the last mark and after looking at it for a few seconds he could tell it was definitely moving. "Alright I'll do my best to get your cart back to you before tomorrow but if I fail you should start picking Whanto to fill yourselves."
Lake really only said that last part because Whanto was such a funny sounding word and he liked to say it, plus he had seen a few patches of it on his way into the forest so there was plenty for them to eat if they started to starve because he was unable to bring the cart back for whatever reason.
Heading back out onto the road, Lake tried to measure how far away the cart was but all he could really tell was it was in range of his feet and that there was no way they were going to be able to outrun him.
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