Exiting the ring through the other side, Jay found that Anya was silent with her crossbow drawn, the atmosphere tense. Immediately assessing the situation, Jay was about to activate his necrotic ring and summon his creatures – however a familiar voice calmed their nerves.

“At ease adventurers, sheath your weapons” it was Michael, the guard captain.

Jay took a big breath, thankful he didn’t expose his class.

Looking around, there were the bodies of 15 dead men strewn about the nearby winter forest. Most of them had holes the size of fists in various parts of their chests while a few were knocked unconscious, blood still trickling from their heads.

“What the hell is happening?” Anya said, still aiming her crossbow into the forest as she looked for any threats.

“We were attacked by bandits. They probably wanted to steal your weapons and perhaps take some of you as hostages, however they didn’t know that we would be guarding you for… various reasons. As this is a well known introductory part of becoming an adventurer in these areas, it seems like they planned to take advantage of your low levels.

“Scum.” A nearby guard said, spitting on one of the unconscious bandits.

Jay shook his head as he smiled, he couldn’t believe his luck. He eyed one of the bandits weapons as a guard cut off his thought “The loot belongs to the guild. Don’t even think about it.”.

Jay frowned ‘fair enough’ he thought. Receiving a notification, Jay glanced at Anya

[Party Disbanded].

“There’s no reason to party when we’re not in the dungeon anymore” she said.

Jay shrugged, “Sure.”

A class trainer was holding a notepad as he reported to the captain. “Sir. Only 2 more left in the dungeon”.

“Let’s hope they don’t take too long. In the meantime, have a guard escort these two back to the village.”

“Sir.” he saluted with a stomp before turning to a young-looking guard who overheard the orders – the young guard only nodded his head as he approached Jay and Anya.

“Let’s go adventurers” he gestured.

— In a nearby part of the woods —

“Idiots. I told ’em something wasn’t right. That villages patrols have been really active in the last few days, but they still fuckin’ attacked the most obvious spot! … I’ll miss Hoxta, but the rest of ’em deserved to die so fuck em. I’ll do it the right way, I’ll be smart ’bout it…”_.

—

Jay and Anya followed quietly until they were out of ear-shot of the other guards, then they questioned their escort.

“So, who killed all the bandits? Was it the captain?”

“No, they were like ants to him so he let the class trainers took care of it.”

“What classes were the bandits? What do you think their level was?”

The guard seemed to get annoyed “Look, i’m trying to protect you and I won’t be able to hear anything with all your bickering so just be quiet”

Jay and Anya seemed to ignore his request as they continued to question him as they walked.

“Look,” the guard stopped and turned around. “I’m not answering any more damn questions so stop asking. Just be quie–“

The guard’s sentence was cut short as an arrow pierced him through the neck, though it didn’t go all the way through to the other side.

He made a gurgling noise as he dropped his spear, grabbing the shaft in his neck while falling to the ground.

“Shit!” Anya yelled, pulling out her crossbow.

Jay was about to [shift] his ring but was going to wait a moment, just in case the guards from the dungeon entrance would hear and show up.

They heard a sly, unsophisticated voice from out in the forest, yet they couldn’t pinpoint it’s location.

“Look kids, I don’t wanna hurt ya, so just give me all ya got from that dungeon n’ i’ll be on mi’ merry way” the voice sounded from somewhere in the woods.

Still, no one showed up to help them, so Jay activated his necrotic ring as he responded to the lone bandit while a dancing mist of green gas and bones began to float around him.

“Bullshit.”

Anya had believed the bandit for a moment and lowered her crossbow – but raised it back up again hearing Jay’s response.

“Heh, don’t think your little…. bone shield is it? Whatever it is, don’t think that’s gunna stop me, kid.”

Before the bandit’s eyes however, clouds of green gas along with dozens of bones left the floating ring, as three bone creatures formed before him, rising from the green smoke as if leaving a portal on the ground.

Hesitating in shock, he couldn’t believe his eyes. This was something he had only heard stories of from people daring and high level enough to enter an undead-type dungeon – the tales of the necromancer. Yet there was one here, outside of a dungeon near a low level village.

Yet the bandit felt like luck was on his side “Ha, there’s only three of them? Some necromancer you are!” he scoffed at Jay – though Jay seemed to ignore his mocking as he pulled out 5 bone daggers and threw them to the ground in front of the tiny skeletons.

Each creature picked up a dagger or two as Jay lifted up his hand, pointing in the direction of the voice, and in a cold and emotionless voice he uttered a single word.

“Hunt.”

The bandits’ eyes widened seeing the three skeletons with glowing eyes and oversized rat skulls equip weapons as they charged at him.

‘Oh shit, they’re pretty quick!’ he thought.

Immediately, he fired an arrow at them, but he missed as they were small and agile targets. The arrow only served to reveal his location.

“Shit, I’m fucked now” he jumped off the back of a tree, pulled out his dagger and began sprinting into the forest – yet the skeletons were quicker.

Running out of options, he threw his bow and quiver at the skeletons rapidly catching up to him – though this only served to slow one of them down. Suddenly, a pain came from his right ankle.

Looking down, his fear started to grow.

“Shit!”

One of the creatures had successfully thrown its dagger at him, hitting him in the leg.

Another two daggers came flying, yet they missed as he continued to run – yet now at a slower pace.

The feeble creatures simply picked up the daggers as they ran, scraping their claws along the ground and hardly slowing down at all.

He slowed down more and more from the injury as he realised he could no longer outrun them.

“I can only try and fight ’em, how hard can some tiny skeletons be anyway. If I finish them quickly I may still be able to hide before the adventurers get here. Maybe I could even go back and rob those brats” he thought, preparing himself for the fight.

At this point, Jay and Anya were way out of sight. ‘Looks like they didn’t chase me. Pretty stupid’ though the bandit.

As he turned around to fight, a feeble creature was already in the air, jumping at him with it’s rat-jaw open, black decaying teeth threatening to snap at him while it had both daggers pointed towards his chest.

“Faah!” he had no time to swear as he side-stepped and parried a dagger, though he stumbled and had trouble getting up as his leg was wounded.

Before he knew it, another skeleton was flying at him with its daggers pointed, a similar attack to the first one.

The bandit simply dived under this one as it jumped too high, successfully evading it.

The first two feeble creatures were larger than the third smaller one, so it was last to join the fight with it’s single dagger.

It didn’t jump at him like the other two did, instead it ran up to him. The bandit simply scoffed at the tiny skeleton and did a spartan-kick, sending it onto its back, forcing it to drop it’s dagger.

Seizing the opportunity, he grabbed the bone dagger that the creature dropped.

“Surprisingly lightweight” was all he could think about his new dagger as he turned around, ready to parry the attack from the first skeleton-creature that leapt at him – yet it was nowhere to be found.

“What the fuc-? AHH!”

Two sharp painful stings hit him on his right side, just under his rib cage.

Gritting his teeth, he did a reverse kick as he hit the skeleton away, the daggers still in his side.

“Sneaky fucker!” he coughed up some blood, a lung pierced.

“Arrow!” he yelled, using an ability. A magic arrow was summoned out of nowhere, glowing a translucent purple as it immediately shot off into the skull of the sneaky feeble creature – yet it managed to survive through even that. What shocked the bandit more was that it didn’t even respond to the damage, it’s attack speed and actions being just as fast and concise as before.

Seeing that his trump card had no effect, his adrenaline began kicking in.

He decided to pounce onto the smaller creature as he stabbed at it’s skull – his body and mind going into fight or flight mode.

He managed to do 13 damage to it yet the creature seemed to not even realise it had been hurt as it slashed at his legs with it’s claws while attempting to bite the hand stabbing it.

“What the fuck are you things? Just die!”

Before he could finish off the creature, he was stabbed again in the back – this time, one of the daggers pierced his spinal cord.

His legs were paralysed, he dropped the daggers from a shockwave of pain travelling up his spine. All he could do was fall onto the feeble creature in front of him as it bit into his neck, still clawing at his body.

“AHH!” he let out a guttural scream of pain as the knives kept plunging into his back while his neck was being bitten. Before long, the other feeble creature came back – yet without it’s daggers.

To compensate for its lack of weapons, it put all it’s clawed finger bones together, forming a hand-knife as it thrust them into his soft underbelly – for a moment it dug around before ripping out an unidentifiable organ.

All he could do was scream in pain as he passed out – though the creatures had no mercy.

One continued to stab his back, another continued to rip out his throat with it’s jaw while the most deadly one continued to plunge it’s clawed hand into his stomach and pull out his intestines along with other organs as it killed him, ripping open a larger and larger hole until his chest looked like an empty crater. Anything below the ribcage had been ripped out from the gaping hole of flesh. Pieces of intestines and fluids began to fall out of their own accord; a pile of his insides spread over the forest floor, some still partly attached to the cavity.

Jay realised his minions had done their job as he received an exp notification.

[1100 Exp]

“Wow, nice amount of exp. I wonder what level he was…” Jay wondered as he helped Anya tend to the wounded guard.

“I’m sure he’ll heal back to normal once the blood clears from his throat” Anya said to Jay “He will probably be unconscious for a little bit longer but he’ll be ok.”

Jay nodded back “The bandit has gone. I guess he was scared of skeletons” he said innocently as he shrugged.

‘Why is lying so satisfying’ he thought ‘the secret feels even better than last time. I wonder if my class is affecting my mind… hmm… I should keep track of that.’

Jay had the skeletons return to him so he could put their bones back into the ring, while he gave muffin orders to stay out in the woods and hunt animals so it would reach level 2; healing Muffin back to full health before sending it on it’s way.

The two Don’s returned, each with two daggers as he de-summoned them, storing their bones in his ring and the daggers in his inventory. Jay wondered why one of the Don’s boney arms was crimson red up to the elbow joint – he could even see which bone it was, as it was the only fully-red coloured bone floating around him. He then shrugged, used [shift] again and returned his necrotic ring to his finger.

He decided not to loot anything from the bandit as he didn’t want to be tied to whatever horrible thing the skeletons had done to him – all Jay knew himself was that Muffin was heavily injured, while one of the Don’s had sustained a heavy hit to the skull. Jay didn’t really care though, he considered that this was all he needed to know about the event, having no clue how brutal the feeble creatures were.

“We should carry the guard back to the dungeon entrance where the trainers were. It’s closer than the village” Jay decided.

“Sure. I have an idea.” Under Anya’s instruction, they crafted a make-shift stretcher from the vegetation, covering it with the guards cloak before placing him onto it.

As they walked, dragging the slanted stretcher behind them he made sure to prepare Anya “Just let me do the talking when we get there. I’ll tell them that something scared him off.”

“Mhm” Anya responded quietly in agreement.

As they walked, the guard regained consciousness.

“Uhhh” was all he could manage to say. For now, his throat would need time to heal.

“Just be quiet until we get back. You were knocked out for a while and your throat is hurt. We’re heading to safety.” Anya reassured the guard.

“Mm” was all the young guard could respond with as he let the two 18 year olds carry him back.

Approaching the camp, Jay waved down one of the guards.

“Hey, we need some help. A bandit attacked us.” he panted out the words as his energy was low from carrying the guard.

“Where? When? How many were there? Are you injured?” The guard questioned them as he signalled Michael to come over while walking behind them, checking the injury on his fellow guardsman.

“Not far, you’ll find a blood stain from the guard on the path. We’re not sure how many there were, they told us to drop all our gear after they shot the guard, we did as he asked but then nothing happened…” said Jay, shrugging as he scratched his head, possibly over-acting in his little play.

Michael heard his answer as he walked over “Anya, is this true?”

Anya nodded, emotionlessly. She was a much better actor than Jay since she normally didn’t show any emotions; she attempted to change the topic “We removed the arrow and came back here since it was closer. He was temporarily unconscious.”

Michael looked distraught as he scratched his chin, looking away as he thought to himself. ‘Shit. I nearly had the guild master’s daughter killed by giving a job to a low level soldier…’

It wasn’t long before Michael made a decision.

“We will all wait till the last two adventurers leave the dungeon – then we will head back to the village as a group. I won’t let something like this happen again.” he attempted to say in a dignified manner.

Making a hand signal to some guards, they came and took over care for the injured man on the stretcher. “The other adventurers shouldn’t be long now. Have a seat near the campfire to stay warm while we wait.”

“Thanks… So why do you think they didn’t end up robbing us?” Jay feigned ignorance once again.

“It’s unusual that they didn’t… Leave the investigation to us.” Michael dismissed Jay as he thought to himself while looking into the forest, his eyes blazing ‘So… the creature even scares the bandits away…’

No one had realised that it was Jay’s skeletons behind the animal mutilations – not even Jay had realised. All he knew was that the forest was off-limits for some reason, not making the connection as he was too preoccupied with levelling up.