Wizard Of Cosmos

24 - First Day Without Leaving

‘That is a lot of people.’

Jason sneaked out of the back of the Inn to avoid all the players waiting for him outside.

‘The war might start within a one-year to two-year period. What should I do?’

Unless he could gain enough strength, his only other option would be to leave Alexandria. 

‘I will first do what I came here to do.’

First, he had to scout the locations of bandits. According to Boris, there were possibly three bandit groups in the area. 

‘I can get more information if I meet the mayor. But I will just go to him for rewards.’

With his status as a Wizard Initiate, he could easily meet the mayor of Forestedge, but he was too lazy to do it at the moment. 

‘I should buy some basic equipment.’

He at least needed a pair of shoes for the time being.

“Excuse me….”

Jason was about to enter the small shop when a voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Do you need a map?”

Jason immediately noticed the armband on the man’s arm. Even without that, the white clothes made his identity obvious. 

“A map?”

He saw the stack of pieces of cloth in the man’s hand. 

“Yeah. I drew these based on Envoy Boris’ map, bro.”

Jason saw the roughly drawn map on the tattered cloth. 

It was a basic drawing of the city with some important shops and other locations. 

“How much?”

“Ten coppers, brother.”

“Did you sell any?”

‘No. Not until now.”

“Hm….”

Jason needed a map for his current task. He had to mark the locations of bandits and plan out his tactics. Also, he had to find out details about which group could be useful to him. 

“I… Can reduce the price.”

“Why are you doing this? I mean, you can find some other work, right?”

“There is nothing much to do here, brother. Most people are leaving Forestedge.”

“I think so too.”

Jason felt it was the better choice at the moment. Light Shone was good, but for people with skills. 

“If I buy you papers and a pen, can you draw me a roughly scaled map?”

“Huh? For real? Of course, brother. I can do that.”

“Good. Let’s add each other as friends. I will give you the specification for the map.”

He received a notification from a player named Noah.

“Is this your real name?”

“No. I am Bruce. This is….”

“Yeah. I am Jason. Come on.”

He entered the shop with Bruce, planning to buy some extra things.

…

‘So, you are the snitch.’

Jason opened his eyes with a smile when he heard the footsteps. 

After getting the map from Bruce, he walked around the farms, looking for information on the bandits. In reality, he just wanted to alert any potential informants hiding within.

Then he found a small hill overlooking the farms and awaited the movement.  

Of course, he wasn’t wasting his time. Instead, he was practising without a stop. He tried his best to unlock the skill he developed much later in last life. 

The stealth skill tree. It would be one of the hardest skill trees to unlock without a mentor. The reason was simple. It only came with stealth practice. Things like sneaking, eavesdropping, and hiding could trigger this skill tree, but it took some effort compared to the weapons they could unlock by simply wielding them. 

Jason practised this after learning the harsh reality during the early days of the invasion. Killers, murderers, and thieves were abundant, and people killed each other for simple things like a loaf of bread and a warm blanket. 

In his last life, Jason learned this the same way, trying to survive treacherous humans. However, this time he unlocked the skill tree much earlier.

Stealth was not only an important part of assassination skill, but it was also much more useful for information gathering and observation. Because, the skills included tracking, observation, perception and many more valuable skills. 

‘Pity I am not planning on becoming a physical type.’ 

For a wizard, these skills were pointless. Even though concealment-type magic couldn’t achieve what stealth skills could give, a wizard wasn’t the type to attack from the shadows. 

He slowly followed the man, who looked like a common farm-hand. The only difference was that this man was walking into the forest at night with no light. Also, he looked worried and cautious.

Only after walking about one kilometre into the forest, the man took out a hidden torch to light it up. Jason used this light to follow him all the way to the palisade wall with closed gates.

‘As expected, they are building to the other side of the forestedge.’

Jason expected these bandits to be away from the road leading to Light Shone. 

First, he never heard of bandit attacks on Light Shone. If there was such an incident, Xanders would have told him already. Besides, no bandit would be brave enough to set up their hideout in The Dark Forest. Lastly, there weren’t many merchants they could plunder on that road leading to the edge of civilization. 

He waited until the man entered the camp before finding a tall enough tree to climb. 

‘What kind of shitty bandits are these?’

He saw the dimly lit camp that looked more like a shabby village. 

The bandits looked worse than refugees. Jason took his time to observe the camp. There seemed to be no captives or advanced warriors. 

‘Disorganised, shabby and poor.’

A taunting smirk came across his face. 

‘Cheap Labour!’

However, Jason frowned just a moment after. 

‘Why are they so shabby? What about the other two? Hmm… I should wait a bit.’

He used a function of his armband that he had never used before. From the tree, he started recording the overview of the camp. 

‘I should pay Bruce to draw me a map later. Then I can use it to plan my attack.’

He waited for about an hour before seeing another man leaving the camp. This wasn’t the one he followed earlier. 

‘So… They do have connections with the other camps. But why is there only one messenger?’

He patiently waited for a while to see if there was only one messenger, but no one left the camp before the gates closed. Since he couldn’t lose track of the messenger, he followed the man. 

…

About another hour later, Jason came to the second camp.

‘Seriously?’

He wondered if this was all a lie. The second camp did not differ from the first. Around fifty people were behind a shabby palisade wall. However, he saw several captives in cages and he heard the screams of women made him frown. 

Even though these bandits looked shabby as the first group, this one was not the type he wanted to bring to Light Shone.

‘Not Cheap labour.’

He recorded the layout and defences. Even though fifty was a significant number, he could handle them as long as he wasn’t surrounded. To avoid that, he had a backup. Besides, these camps had no sentry, and the forest was too close to the base. A sudden attack was possible as long as they had enough stealth. 

‘What about the third group?’

He had a bad feeling that the third group might not be simple. If two out of three look this bad, there could be two reasons. One was that the security of the surrounding area was too good. Which wasn’t the case with Forestedge. The other reason was someone taking all the good things for themselves. 

‘Could this other group be too powerful? But where could they be?’

He decided to wait a bit, and luckily for him, a second messenger left the camp not long after. 

Jason immediately followed the second messenger, wasting no time. He already had an idea to get rid of this camp. 

…

‘What the….’

He almost cursed out loud when he saw the sight in front of him.

There was around a seven-metre clearing in the forest that ended in a tall wooden wall around ten-metres high. The wooden sentry towers manned by archers overlooked the area. The noise coming from the camp confirmed that there were at least a couple of hundred people awake within the walls. 

‘This is not a bandit camp. This is a stronghold.’

He could say this was a medium-sized bandit group, but the sheer size of the construction made him wonder about the possibility.

‘Why is such a group appearing here?’

Forstedge was too small for such a group of bandits. Besides, he had a feeling this wasn’t as simple as it looked. He started walking at the edge of the forest, looking for a vantage point. 

…

‘Whoever built this, they knew what they were doing.’

There was not a single point where Jason could take a peek at the camp, and he wasn’t a trained assassin to sneak in. The constructions looked mostly recent. If a bandit group made a camp like this, they wouldn’t move around easily. This meant one thing, this group was new to Forestedge.

‘Could this be related to war?’

He had a bad feeling about this camp. If he didn’t count Boris, this bandit group might easily take Forestedge by force. 

‘They should only have Elite Warriors, but how many?’

If there was a Master or a Grandmaster, Alexandria wouldn’t have stayed idly. However, they seemed to be underestimating the threat. 

‘I have to meet the Mayor. But first, I have to see what this place actually looks like.’

Even if he had no way of getting in, he decided to wait until they opened the gate in the morning. If Envoy Boris knew the danger lurking so close to a town, he would have already taken some action. It was obvious that only the town Mayor might know the actual situation of these bandits. 

A reckless attack might bring him an unforeseen disaster. Even if he wanted to take on the other two, he had to make sure a message wouldn’t reach here before he concluded everything. 

‘Sigh.’

This would be his first day without leaving The Endless. He wondered how many more similar days would be there before the end of Earth.