Using [Expert Stealth], I crept up to the damaged section of the prison hut. The Skill told me exactly how to clamp my hand over a mouth to ensure silence as I slit the bandit's throat, pulling him back slightly to ensure he couldn't reach the other guards in his struggling.

  Despite the claim of the System, I knew my technique hadn't been flawless. He'd made noise as he struggled, and my cut was rough and shallow. [Expert Stealth] didn't help my skill with a dagger, even for the purpose of an assassination, alas. Thankfully, the continued noise of fighting at the front gate meant that the small slip-ups didn't matter.

  The other pair of bandits guarding the holes fell in the same manner.

  None of them were high level, and all looked in their twenties, so my guess about team six being the weaker team was likely accurate. It was a shame the three weren't enough to earn another level, but if I circled around to the front of the hut for the others, there was a danger I'd be seen from the front gate, and I had no desire to be discovered by either side. It was time to get the hell out of the camp.

  "Cross Chop!" came the yell of Leo.

  "Steel Aegis!" came a response in a gruff, male voice I'd never heard before, reverberating in a strange way that I was coming to associate with Skill use.

  The shouting was followed by a massive clang. Had I heard it back in town, I'd have assumed the bells had fallen from the temple spire. That such a noise came from two mere men, the clash between a pair of combat Skills, was utterly terrifying and only confirmed my desire to get far away from this place.

  I fled in the opposite direction, noting the guards standing in pairs atop a platform behind the palisade, staring alertly out into the forest.

  The palisade was a reasonable defence, but I was already on the inside, and I could simply run up the stairs. But, if I did, what purpose would it serve? The guards were in pairs. I had two daggers, but how could I silence them while they died without a hand to clamp over their mouths? Even if I could, they were further away from the fighting, which meant less noise to mask my mistakes. I'd kill one or two, then be seen or heard, and then I'd swiftly pay the price.

  I could simply rush up and leap over, and hope that the bandits were more concerned about self defence than chasing me, but the palisade was quite tall. If I had the time to look over the edge and pick my landing spot, it would be one thing, but running up and jumping over before any bandits could react would be another. Besides, the bandits had bows. Even if they didn't chase me, they could still shoot me in the back.

  Hmm...

  Yes, the palisade was quite tall. The wooden battlements on which the bandits were arrayed were therefore also, by necessity, quite high up.

  The platforms were attached to the palisade on one side and supported by wooden posts on the other. What if a few of those posts were to break under mysterious circumstances?

  One of the bandit guards I'd just killed had been carrying an axe. Not really an axe of the wood-chopping variety, insofar as I understood axes, but my Reasoning pointed out that it still fulfilled the basic premise of a sharp edge with a lot of weight behind it and the ability to swing it with a fair amount of leverage. I ran back to fetch it.

  Obviously the bandits lacked detection Skills capable of operating through [Expert Stealth], or else they didn't respond to sound or were focused outside the camp, because I'd taken out three supports before anyone thought to question the noise, by which point it was too late. I ducked out of sight as a section of the battlements collapsed, bringing four bandits down with it. Less than I'd hoped, and the lack of notifications indicated that no-one had died, but neither had anyone seen me. For all they knew, it was an accident, or a consequence of all the damage done at the gate.

  Removing four bandits wasn't sufficient to escape the camp without being seen, though, and if I repeated that stunt, someone was going to get suspicious.

  A quiet gurgle came from above. A noise that I'd have dismissed completely, had I not recently heard something very similar, multiple times. I looked up just in time to see a bandit topple backward from the battlement, blood spurting from his neck. A black shape flickered from the platform as another bandit toppled, leaping through the air and into the camp.

  Even if I hadn't managed to create a big enough opening to get out, I'd apparently created an opening for someone else to get in. Thankfully, whoever it was hadn't seen me, and I had no intention of sticking around to make their acquaintance.

  I wasn't the only one who'd seen him enter, and another couple of bandit pairs peeled away from the perimeter, chasing the intruder. That left a big enough gap in the defences for me to escape unseen.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  With part of the element of surprise already lost, and with the nearby defenders having left their posts, I decided I could risk some noise. There were four bandits prone on the ground, struggling to free themselves from beneath heavy wooden planks that had landed on top, pinning them defencelessly to the dirt. I was more than happy to introduce the child-traffickers to my stolen daggers.

  "Wait!" cried the first, seeing me approach.

  Higher level than the ones I'd already dispatched, but level alone wasn't sufficient to survive having your throat slashed. Constitution could turn the blade, but, barring that, you were dead. Yes, high Constitution could buy time. Precious minutes for healing before wounds became fatal, but no-one was coming to save these bandits. I hadn't seen a single mage in the camp.

  "Who are you?!" yelled the second of my victims.

  Killing humans was pretty decent experience. Someone at level thirty was worth four goblins.

  Or maybe that wasn't decent? On top of being intelligent and not wanting to be stabbed, I was fairly sure someone at level thirty would be more than four times harder to kill in a straight fight than a goblin. Perhaps the System wanted to discourage people killing each other?

  "Please, I'll let you go! Just don't... urk..."

  As if a random grunt had the power to let me go... Why make promises he so obviously couldn't deliver on?

  "I suppose this is karma," sighed the fourth before he, too, died, neither struggling nor resisting.

  It was nice that I was still getting sneak attack experience. Presumably that was for bringing down the battlement undetected.

  I hurried up the stairs, taking advantage of the gap in the bandits' defences to peer over the edge of the palisade unseen, and prepared to jump.

  "Heroic Impact!" came a yell from behind. Leo's loud voice, invoking a second active combat Skill.

  I'd woken up thinking the world was exploding, but this time the thought would have been slightly more literal. Splinters of wood the size of my arm went flying past as a chunk of the bandit village simply disintegrated. I couldn't resist a brief glance backward, and realised to my horror that the destruction was centred on the prison hut. There was nothing of it left, merely a crater carved out of the forest floor. A crater containing a number of bloodied corpses, all too small to be bandits.

  There was a second of silence as everyone processed the event. In my case, I couldn't help but think about the contradiction between the 'heroic' in the Skill name and the use to which the Skill was put. Not really the most important thing in the world to think about, but it took my mind off the bile forcing its way up my throat.

  "Tobias!" came another yell, this one from the 'steel aegis' guy, and the shout reminded me that I had no time to waste being stunned. I jumped over the palisade, exploiting my Dexterity to roll as I landed, then took off at a sprint. I had no need to worry about being seen as I vanished into the treeline. For the moment, every surviving bandit in the camp was looking inward.

  What the hell?!

  Okay, I could put the clues together and make a few guesses, but even so, what the actual fuck?

  The attack at the front gate had been a diversion, intended to let someone—Tobias, presumably—infiltrate from the back. Leo had foreseen such a possibility, and had the full perimeter guarded, leaving the infiltrator unable to enter. At least, until I unwittingly provided an opening. Tobias had immediately taken advantage, taking out a pair of bandits, then rushing for the prison hut. The operation was likely intended to rescue one of the prisoners, but rather than permit the rescue to succeed, Leo had simply crushed the hut and slaughtered everyone in it.

  Given the behaviour in the camp, Leo didn't strike me as the sort of person to cut down his own subordinates, but Tobias had likely killed his pursuers and the members of team six that I'd missed. It was quite possible that the bandit chief hadn't killed a single one of his men with that strike. That raised the horrible possibility that, had I not killed the three at the back of the prison, Leo wouldn't have reacted so indiscriminately.

  To keep the bile down, I had to tell myself that even if I hadn't, Tobias almost certainly would have.

  I couldn't think about it. I just ran and ran, probably for a couple of hours. I had no idea which direction I'd been running in, but I must have kept a fairly straight line, because the forest gave way to open scrubland.

  I froze, staring at the notification. A pursuit? Had the bandits been after me?

  No. There was too much experience for that, and the notification explicitly called out the fact that it had lasted multiple days. The ones who had attacked the bandit camp were after me. The whole fight was because of me. The dead children were because of me.

  This time, I failed to keep the bile down, throwing up over the barren, rocky ground. As much as I knew it wasn't my fault, my brain refused to believe me, repeatedly replaying the fact that if I hadn't been there, the kids wouldn't have died.

  Maybe the attackers hadn't been after me, and my pursuers were somewhere behind, and the timing was pure coincidence?

  It was bullshit, and I knew it, but the more what-ifs I could feed myself, the better I felt.

  Deciding I'd rather not feel anything at all, I returned a few trees deep into the forest, climbing one and curling up to sleep for the remainder of the nightmare-filled night.