"Shit!" yelled a bandit. "The food stores!"

  The other bandits looked up at a rather angry curl of smoke rising from the roof of my targeted hut.

  "A fire?! The heck! Put it out!"

  "With what?!"

  "Then grab whatever is burning and get it out of the hut! Or at least save as much food as you can, before we lose it all!"

  "Wait," yelled the nervous one out of the four I'd been trailing. "What if the fire was deliberate? It could be a diversion!"

  "Frankly, I'd rather die quickly and without seeing it coming than by starving to death," answered one of the three others, who was already running toward the hut, his two companions alongside.

  "He's right," said another one of the four. "Without food, we're dead. Besides, it was probably a spark from the campfire. I said it was too close!"

  And with that, he took off after the first three, followed by two more of their group, leaving the nervous one alone.

  He wasn't wrong; just like back in the village, the huts here had thatched roofs, and I knew from experience how easily they could be set alight. Frankly, I was surprised at how few accidents there were back in the village, given that we lit fires inside our shacks. Very well contained fires, admittedly, but fires nonetheless. At least our village shacks were easily rebuildable, and tended not to contain much of value. These huts were equally rebuildable, but their contents, not so much.

  Still, their 'we're all going to starve' response to the food going up in flames was a surprise. I had no idea how much jewellery cost, beyond 'lots', but with what I'd seen in the boss's hut surely they had enough to sell to feed themselves for a lifetime.

  Then again, I hadn't taken it all because I couldn't sell it. No-one in my village would buy jewellery like that. Presumably there were specialised stores in town, but I couldn't currently get through town gates, and even if I could, people were likely to ask difficult questions about where my loot had come from. Maybe these bandits had the same problem? If so, why did they have so much food stored up? The hut I'd set alight was completely full.

  It was an interesting line of thought, and something to occupy myself with while I crept up behind the nervous bandit. If only he'd maintained a level of vigilance consistent with his paranoia, I'd have had trouble, given the open area of the camp he was in, but instead he was staring after the six runners, without watching his back at all.

  Hand went over mouth, dagger sliced into throat, but this time I learnt from my previous mishap and released him immediately, shoving him forward and stabbing into the back of his neck.

  Once more, it hadn't been flawless. With my Constitution, the wounds inflicted on my hand had already scabbed over, but they still stung like crazy, and I hadn't done a perfect job of silencing the bandit. Thankfully, the others were still shouting loudly enough to cover any noise he made, and I'd successfully compensated for his Constitution permitting him to continue operating with his neck half severed.

  The Mark upgrade was a little concerning, but like the last time, I was kinda in the middle of something important. I didn't have time to read the details. Largely on account of the explosion that tore through the camp, once again showering the few remaining structures in shards of wood.

  Shards of wood that were on fire. I saw a few more pieces of thatch catch alight. Perhaps that had been a little more effective than planned.

  While some might describe my plan as hasty—I didn't want to risk further bandits turning up, so I'd been rather pressed for time—it hadn't been completely spur of the moment. As the increased experience gain from the assassination attested, I'd spent a couple of skill points on bumping [Expert Stealth] up to the second stage. That still left six in reserve, both so that if I found a skill crystal I could instantly raise an E-ranked Skill to D-rank, but also because the single extra stage of [Expert Stealth] was nausea inducing enough without pushing it further. I'd even dropped another ten stat points into Processing, to help deal with it, and to aid my reactions when something inevitably went wrong. I kept my remaining ten unused stat points; they'd be useful in an emergency, to boost one of my physical Stats.

  The plan itself was as well thought through as I could manage in the few minutes before I'd enacted it. The storage hut had been damaged in yesterday's fighting, and had a few small holes, but it was still structurally sound. I knew how fast fire tore through thatch, and that the camp didn't have an unlimited water supply. There were large jars of water, presumably filled from some nearby river, but most of them were inside the storage hut. If that hut caught alight, the bandits would definitely rush in, either to attempt to put the fire out or rescue whatever food they could.

  From being stuck inside the prison hut, I also knew how easy the doors to the huts were to bar from the outside, but it was unlikely that every bandit would run into the hut at once. Besides, I'd bet they could break out quickly, too. The villagers had instilled into me how dangerous smoke inhalation was, but it wouldn't kill that quickly, especially given the high levels of these bandits and their associated Constitution.

  I'd stashed a plank of wood near the hut anyway, in case the opportunity arose, but it wasn't my primary plan. I'd used my freshly boosted [Expert Stealth] to explore the camp unseen, looking for an opportunity that would let me deal with all the bandits at once, and I'd found it inside that storage hut in the form of bags of flour. It was easy enough to rig some of them behind the door, cutting nicks into the bags, spilling the flour over the floor.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Something else we knew in our village was that flour dust and fire didn't mix. Or rather, did mix, far too well, albeit only very briefly.

  The damage to the hut let me set a fire inside it from outside, simply by grabbing a twig from the campfire and shoving it through one of the holes. The fire grew, consuming the good air inside the hut, then the bandits pulled open the door. That caused a sudden gust of wind, blowing the flour into the air, where it hit the flames, and boom.

  And that was five down, two more to go. There was even some bonus experience. From [Murderer II], perhaps?

  The surviving pair didn't seem in great condition, either. One of them had survived by dint of being the slowest, and hence furthest from the hut at the point it exploded. The other, surprisingly, had been the fastest, and had been the one to pull open the door. I could only assume he was a higher level than the others, or else very lucky.

  Or unlucky, perhaps. As the other bandit had said, if you were going to die anyway, it was better to go quickly. On top of burns, the guy had so many shards of wood stuck in him that he looked more like a pincushion. One of them was stuck into his left eye.

  He pulled himself upright, looking around with his remaining eye. Taking in his companions, lying unmoving on the floor as their clothes smouldered. The one other surviving bandit, desperately trying to pat out small fires in his clothing. The seventh of them, lying dead behind me in a pool of his own blood.

  Me, standing there in full view, with daggers drawn. Giving up the element of surprise wasn't ideal, but I'd needed to deal with the seventh bandit, and he wasn't near any cover. Had the explosion not happened, and the others been focused on saving their food, perhaps I'd have had time to hide, but that chance had gone. [Expert Stealth] tilted things in my favour, but it didn't make me invisible.

  "You," he rasped, unnecessarily. I knew full well who I was.

  "Me," I agreed.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "Just a random villager with a decently high level and a good stealth Skill."

  "Hah. 'Just a random villager with a decently high level' describes most of our camp," he complained, drawing a dagger of his own. "Shame there's no way to obtain skill crystals around here. Even the few merchants brave enough to travel through this canton aren't stupid enough to carry merchandise like that within the bastard count's reach."

  "You're that pissed that we kidnapped you, that you'd stage a suicide strike like this just to finish us off?" complained the other bandit, who'd managed to extinguish his clothes. He still had heavy burns, though, and was having obvious difficulty moving. Even two against one, and my suspicion that the first bandit was high level—or at least had very high Constitution—I felt confident. I'd just murdered their friends, and yet they were talking rather than attacking.

  "It's hardly a suicide strike," I shrugged.

  "You've just destroyed all the food we had. What are you going to do? Volunteer for the count's mines?"

  "Wait, the count was the one you were selling kids to?"

  The bandit laughed. It was a mirthless laugh, containing no trace of humour. It was a laugh of madness.

  "You have no idea what's going on in this canton, do you?"

  "No. But I do have [Adept Foraging] and [Fishing], and enough unspent skill points to bump either of them up a rank, so I'm not particularly concerned about starving just yet."

  "How many Skills do you have? No, it doesn't matter. Let's just get this over with. But one last thing before we do, do you have any idea how many kids you've killed here?"

  "Don't try that. It was your boss who killed them all. I wasn't even the one your boss was fighting at the time!"

  "It's not them I was talking about. It was mine. It was those of everyone here. Of this canton's villagers. I've heard the bastard count has even been taking from the townsfolk recently. The more we could supply him with, the less he took from our families."

  "What the heck?"

  The bandit laughed again, eyes unfocused.

  "Don't worry," said the high-level bandit. "It's only natural to protect your own at the expense of others. To earn their enmity. To kill or be killed. Such is the way of this world. Now, shall we begin?"

  He charged, moving with impressive speed despite his injuries. The second bandit hesitated, then turned and ran.

  "Damn!" I swore, charging forward, but the high-level bandit got in the way.

  "Die!" he yelled, swinging his dagger. His movements may not have been guided by a Skill, but that didn't change the fact that he obviously had me beat in both experience and Stats. I wove to his left, taking advantage of his blinded eye, and slashed at his waist with a dagger, but he was too fast, dodging my blow with a simple sidestep. He countered it with a swing of his own, which I likewise dodged.

  The fact that he was moving so well despite half a tree being embedded in his torso and face was impressive, but the wounds were obviously taking a toll. Despite our mutual missed attacks, he coughed, splattering the dusty ground with blood.

  "Dammit. Feels like you got a lung," he spat.

  "And yet you're still talking."

  "I've not got three digit Constitution for nothing," he smirked, then closed the distance for another attack, this time going for a straightforward stab, but his movements were slower than his first attempt. It seemed I didn't need to do anything; he was dying anyway.

  I concentrated on dodging, not trusting myself to block or parry against a more experienced opponent, waiting for him to drop of his own accord. Sure enough, after a dozen exchanges, he dropped to his knees, despite me not landing a single blow of my own.

  "Guess this is it for me," he muttered, before smirking. "But at least I bought enough time for my mate to get away."

  "You all seemed fairly sure he'd just starve to death, trying to run."

  "Probably. Probably," agreed the bandit with an attempted flourish of his hand. The attempt failed, his arm falling limply to his side as his blood continued to drain. "Not before he's spread the information about what happened to the count's favourite slave suppliers, though."

  And with that final ominous prediction, the bandit slumped forward, face impacting the dirt with an anticlimactic crunch.

  There was no way I could chase after the fleeing bandit; he'd had too much of a head start, and I had no Skills with which to track him. Nevertheless, with that sixth death, the camp was mine.

  At least, as long as no other bandits turned up, and there was anything left after the fire.