Chapter 148: Cart Battle
Lake was making good progress chasing down the cart, he was pretty sure he would be able to see them soon and them having stopped after a while of him chasing them was probably the reason he had been able to get as close as he was. He was a little worried about why they had stopped though.
There were good reasons they could have stopped but he felt like there was a good chance something had happened to the cart that had made them abandon it. If this turned out to be the reason that meant he would not only have to return to Grundam with the bad news but he would have to go looking for some more bandits after spending so much time looking for the ones he was currently after.
Cresting a hill, Lake finally made eye contact with the cart. Like he already knew, it was motionless on the road and he could also tell there were no longer any people anywhere near it. Once he finally got to it after checking the surroundings for people using Mana Vision Lake saw whatever had been pulling the cart was also gone.
That meant the cart was useless and unless he found the seven people who had taken it before they ate the horse or whatever those three people he had spoken to earlier were going to be living in that forest for a long time. After looking inside the cart to see if anything was inside it, Lake started to look around for any signs of where the bandits had gone.
Finding some tracks that lead away from the road, Lake started to follow them but looking in the direction they went he couldn't really see anything other than a small hill. As he was following the tracks he started to see a few animal tracks every now and then that gave him hope he wasn't too late to save the cart puller.
Getting close to the hill, Lake slowed down and approached while using Mana Vision. "There we go." Lake could see cores moving around on the other side of the hill so he sped up slightly and got ready for the fight but as he was getting closer he started to see more and more cores. Once he was standing right next to the hill there were around thirty cores and all of them were up and moving around.
It wasn't really a problem though it was just with this many people the fight would be a lot harder to control even if they were all weak, some would probably get away as well and with this many there was a chance there would be someone who was as strong as he was. Wanting to get a look at them, Lake crept up the hill and peaked over to see families eating.
There were seven families sitting around a big fire as meat roasted. When he saw the meat Lake knew he was too late and the cart pulling animal was dead. Going back down the hill, Lake started to think about what he should do next. When he had set out to kill bandits he hadn't really thought about the fact they would probably have families and if he wanted to kill them it would have to be in front of their children.
A lot of people would probably think Lake was a cold blooded killer if they had seen everything he had done in the past but that would be because they had never seen a real cold blooded killer; he was at most a regular killer and he really only ever did it when it was necessary. Like when he was attacked or the person was going to die anyway and he might as well take the Exp.
Deciding that he might still be able to get something out of this, Lake walked around the hill and said. "Are you the seven who stole that cart out there?" Lake's plan was to antagonize these seven into attacking him so he could defend himself into leveling up. "No we wouldn't do that." Turning to the one who had answered, Lake said. "You're lying, you're literally eating their horse or whatever it was."
After Lake said this he could see all the people who weren't part of the theft start to question where all their food had come from. That wasn't what he was after though he was hoping for a more violent interaction not just him yelling at people who had been feeding their families so he said. "That's it, you're under arrest."
Pulling out his knife Lake said. "Come over here and receive your punishment." Lake was implying a death sentence to make the people think they had no choice but to fight back but instead the man said. "Arrested for what, I didn't break any laws and you're not even a royal guard."
"What do you mean you didn't break any laws you stole a cart from someone."
"I didn't steal anything, we asked the guy for the cart and he gave it to us." Lake guessed that was technically what had happened but that was a misleading way to put it. "Why would he give you his cart, he needed it to get away, you clearly used force to get it, that makes it stealing."
"No. All we did was ask." Lake was done with this argument and said. "Well in that case he wants it back, bring him his cart and I'll go away."
"No, it's ours now he can't have it. Plus how would we even get it back to him, we ate the horse."
"So it was a horse after all." Lake had been pretty sure but there hadn't been any evidence that it wasn't something like a donkey. "That's right and we ate it so go away." Lake had lost this battle so he left and walked back to the cart. Once he was there he looked at it for a moment before he started to walk away.
He didn't have the time to drag it back to Grundam and he had already wasted like an hour on this mission he had been given. He also thought that even if he did get the cart back to Grundam it would just end up being stolen again especially if it still had its horse so then not getting it back was for the best. They would be happy in the woods surrounded by food and family.
...
After a while of running down the road Lake saw another group of trees large enough to be a forest and headed towards it. It was demoralizing to have to start all over again but he had learned from the mistakes he had made last time. If he saw any people who needed his help he would just ignore them.
It didn't take long for Lake to find evidence of people in the forest. There had clearly been a large encampment here in this forest but like last time they were already gone. There was a big difference between this encampment and the last one though. He could clearly see cart tracks here and while all they told him they were using the same road he was to travel that meant this forest was empty and he could move on.
Plus with how fast he was these days he was starting to get far enough from the capital that there would start to be monsters he could kill while looking around the woods for people to kill. He was probably already a third of the way to the capital wall and if it was his goal to get there he would make it before nightfall.
Getting back onto the road, Lake started to run again before stopping because he felt a little hungry. There was no reason to not eat something as he moved so after getting some of his meat out he started to walk at a normal pace. As he was walking, Lake couldn't help but wonder what the odds were of him being robbed now that he was looking like a normal person who was just taking a walk.
He had been pretty good about using Mana Vision on his surroundings while he ran but he was going so fast there was a chance he had missed a few robbers that had been waiting by the road for people to come by. They had probably missed him all well because most people couldn't see him when he was moving at his top speed.
That being said, what were the odds he had missed all of them? What was more likely was most people had already made it away from the capital and the few he had found were just stragglers who had been unsuccessful in their attempt to leave the capital for whatever reason.
Looking ahead, Lake finally saw something that wasn't just more road or wilderness; it seemed he had found a town and since he was heading there anyway he might as well see if there were any people out and about. He was heading away from the direction the armies had come from so he felt there was a good chance he could find someone to talk to and if he was lucky he could ask them about bandits or monsters he could kill.
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