"Waaah!" A baby's cry broke the silence as the half moon lit the forest.
"Lady, shut your son's despicable mouth!" one of the bandits snarled.
"Captain! We have company!" Another bandit pointed straight at the hidden rescue team.
"Archers, formation!" the Tribe Leader Thaine ordered.
"Damn it, our cover's blown," Routh growled. "I hate sentry seekers. These sons of witches ruin every ambush."
Four poorly armed bandits charged. Three carried wooden-handled axes; the fourth drew a long sword. They all had their faces covered.
At the same instant, Routh and the Village Head Thaine exploded forward, launching at the approaching bandits.
"I'll take the right," Thaine said.
He yanked the heavy iron chain from coiling his upper body. In a heartbeat, blazing flames engulfed it, turning the links into a roaring fire whip. The chain lashed out like a living serpent and wrapped around one bandit's neck. Scorching fire raced across his head, chest, and arms. The man screamed once, then silence. The stench of burnt flesh and blood filled the clearing.
Routh smiled grimly as he watched.
He stamped the ground, leapt, and unleashed his edgeless sword in a clean arc. The bandit blocked with his axe, but the wooden-handled axe shattered.
"Haha. A farmer's tool has no chance." His voice turned ice-cold.
Routh stepped back and drove his edgeless blade straight through the man's chest; it shattered through the rib cage. Elder Routh pulled the sword out. Blood oozed. The bandit couldn't scream; he groaned in pain. His knees smashed into the ground.
"Huh, a tough one" Elder muttered.
The bandit tried to rise; Routh's edgeless sword slashed diagonally from shoulder to waist. Blood sprayed. The body fell in two pieces.
Elder Routh was a Kindled seeker of the warrior path. At Kindled, warrior path seekers had the ability to double a single physical property of a weapon for a period of time. This ability was called property cheater: sharpness, weight, heat conductivity, toughness, and all physical properties.
Routh turned to the last two bandits, killing intent blazing in his eyes.
Thaine grinned. "Take that one. The swordsman is mine."
The remaining bandit paled and tried to run, but Routh was already behind him. One savage kick slammed the man into the dirt. He coughed blood and went still.
"We'll keep this one for questioning."
On Thaine's side, the swordsman was decent, but not decent enough. Thaine caught the blade with his flaming chain, ripped it from the man's grip, and hurled a blazing fireball with his free hand. The bandit never had a chance. He died screaming, body wreathed in flames, another glowing phoenix.
"Tribe Leader, the information Griford provided is true; only those four are seekers," Routh pointed at the remaining bandits. Seekers had a dominating aura around them; it was easy discerning a seeker from a mundane mortal. A seeker could gauge another seeker's level and stage through one's leaking aura.
"Seeker or not, it doesn't make any difference to me." Thaine replied as his gaze landed on the captain of the bandits.
Seeing four of his men fall in seconds, the bandit captain's face twisted. "Escape! Use the woman and brat as shields!"
The captain pressed a knife to Merchant Griford's wife's throat. Another bandit dangled the screaming toddler by one leg, a dancing torch flame inches from the child's face.
"Please! Let my child go!" the woman begged. "My husband will pay, just give him time!"
Merchant Griford's wife and children were kidnapped for a ransom of fifteen Nash Silver.
"Shut your mouth, witch!" The captain slapped her. "I thought I made myself clear: no authorities."
"Your stupid husband dared to test my bottom line." The captain was in a rage.
He looked at the rescue team and laughed. "Hahaha… you must be Thaine and you must be Routh."
"I would have preferred we meet under better circumstances," he said, pressing the knife closer, "but fate doesn't allow it."
"An Illuminated and two Kindled seekers… with two awakened archers." The captain's laugh was cold. "We're destined for a beating."
"A beating is the least you'll get," Thaine calmly said; a dominating aura burst from his body, the weight of an Illuminated seeker crushed everyone's heart. Griford's toddler stopped crying. "I'll turn every last one of you into glowing phoenixes!"
The captain trembled. "We have your people's lives in our hands." He signaled his men to back away slowly. "One more thing I don't understand: with all the tension between you and Akash, is it really wise for the tribe leader to leave his flock to hunt rabbits?"
He was clearly stalling. In the face of a lion, a rabbit maintained its calm.
Two wind-augmented arrows screamed past Routh and Thaine at the same instant, one into the captain's knife arm, the other straight through the torch-holder's forehead.
"Aaa, fuck!" The captain dropped the knife, blood spraying.
The second bandit fell backward, eyes wide, reflecting the stars. The toddler dropped onto the bushes. The bandit was dead, the torch beside him burning his leg.
The captain and the last two bandits turned to run. The captain was trying to pull the arrow out of his flesh as he was escaping. "Fuck it!" He broke the arrow with his other arm, leaving the iron arrowhead drilled into his flesh. Blood kept splashing from the arrow wound. He was in deep pain; he had to run for his life first.
Out of nowhere, four huge wolves exploded from the undergrowth and slammed into the lead bandit.
"Who gave you permission to leave?" Rafael shouted proudly, letting the arrogant side of him slip a little.
Routh and Thaine chased the captain and the remaining sentry seeker while the wolves tore into the third man. The perfectly timed ambush stunned everyone, even Thaine and Routh. They had known about the single scout wolf and the rabbit, but four more wolves?
The fight with the sentry seeker ended in seconds. Routh broke both the man's arms with raw strength-path power; an awakened without real combat skills was nothing against a Kindled seeker.
On Rafael's side, the bandit was shredded: clothes torn, body covered in deep gashes, skin pale from blood loss. The pack of wolves had done a good job on him.
"Rafael! Don't kill him!" Routh shouted. "We need him for questioning!"
The two archers stepped away from the tree cover, as one walked straight to check Merchant Griford's wife and the baby. The other moved toward the wolf pack to tie the bandit.
"Rafael, shouldn't you be healing the baby and his mother?" she asked.
"I need to feed my wolves first," he calmly replied as he turned to Routh.
The archer was stunned. This lass had guts to prioritize his wild beasts over citizens of Amala, with both the village head and an elder around.
"Boss, can I feed my pack that fresh meat you chopped? You know they worked their dewclaws hard," he said, pointing at the bandit cut in two by Elder Routh.
Merchant Griford's wife became scared. The one supposed to heal her and her child treated a human corpse as meat for his pack.
Griford's wife's heart sank.