Chapter 22: Bandit

The next day doesn’t really differ much from the first, lots of walking through the forests, lots of chit-chatting and teasing along the way until we reach a good spot to camp yet again. Luckily we haven’t encountered anything dangerous yet, although Hilda did say that tomorrow would be the beginning of the most dangerous part of the entire trip. We set up our tents and go to sleep. Just before we are supposed to get up, way too early in the morning, we get violently woken up by a loud yelp right beside one of our tents.

I immediately get up and peak outside with my staff at the ready.

“Holy shit, what was that!?” I hear my sis call out.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry - I took care of it.” Hilda appears from the shadows and walks towards our fire, blood splattered all over her face and clothes. “Some twats tried to raid us but they didn’t look up well enough.”

I get up and leave the tent, beholding the massacre around our camp.

My sis did the same and is already standing next to the fire, putting on her gear.

“Geez. You really should’ve woken us, Hilda.”

Hilda wipes the blood off her face and walks over to one of the corpses, wiping off the blood from her cane and daggers on their clothes.

“Maybe I should’ve, but I thought stealth was a better option.”

“You call this stealth?!” Élise motions all around us.

“Well, only the last one of them saw me coming, so yeah.” She smirks

“Is Nikki still sleeping?” I ask my sister.

She looks back at the tent and back of me and she nods. “Yeah, Nikki can pretty much sleep through a hurricane.”

“Who said mine name?” a mumble arises from the tent.

“Unless you call her by her name.” She laughs.

Nikki stumbles from the tent and walks over to Élise.

“Lise, I’m hungryyyy.”

“Alright, alright.” She uncovers a part of her neck as Nikki almost immediately latches on. First a couple of licks, then she goes in for the bite, a soft moan escaping from Élise’s mouth.

“Ah really, there are children here!” Hilda calls out.

“She’s old enough.” Élise barely exclaims. “And on top of that, you’re literally covered in blood.”

Hilda looks at herself again. “Fair point.”

Nikki does look like she is enjoying herself a lot. Almost unable to control her own moaning. 

I’m not gonna lie, it is making my heart skip a couple of beats too, seeing them like this...

Almost two minutes later Nikki stops indulging herself and wipes her mouth with a huge blush on her face. “S-sorry you had to see that, but sometimes I just can’t hold myself…”

“Don’t worry about it.” I smile “Were you really that hungry?”

“Yeah, I’ve not eaten the last 2 days.”

“But didn’t you eat some snacks on the way?”

“I did, but human food just doesn’t cut it. They taste well, but it doesn’t fill me. And coupled with certain phases of the moon, my hunger just gets amplified.”

“Oh, that’s interesting.”

“Well, the moon is important for you too, Amicia.” Hilda turns herself back to the group, she probably hasn’t been watching for the last couple of minutes. “Being a lunar mage and all.”

“Now that you say it, I do feel a little bit more powerful today.”

“Yep, if I read it correctly on online forums, you generally get a bigger buff the fuller the moon is, with a slight debuff when there’s a new moon.”

“Wow, I should probably pay more attention to that then!”

“You probably should.” Hilda smiles and pets me on the head.

Talking about paying attention to certain things, I should probably pray to my Goddess Veanya, who I’ve been neglecting quite a bit. Totally not because the author forgot about it, at all, I promise.

I quickly say a little prayer to my Goddess, thanking her for the company I have, the body I received, and the holiest of holy things in the world, fish.

I swear I could hear someone giggle a little about that last bit. Must’ve been the wind.

“Are you ready, Amicia? We’ve finished looting the bandits.” Hilda comes up to me and pats me on the shoulder.

“Pretty much, yeah.” I stand up from my knees and wipe off the dirt on my knees.

“We’ll have to really keep an eye open today, this area is pretty dangerous.”

“I’ve seen that.” I smile. “Thanks again for protecting us.”

“No problem, kiddo.” Hilda moves to the front of our little group and leads us back to the road.

While we are on the road, even though we see some movement in the trees a couple of times, it doesn’t look like they are willing to engage our party at all.

“Do you think they are scared of us?” I ask Hilda, still keeping a good eye on the treeline.

“Hmm, perhaps, but I think they might be scouting us instead.”

“Uhm, you might be right about that.” Élise says, the sound of her sword unsheathing from her scabbard.

In the distance we see the silhouette of a blockade, together with a couple of carts torched by the side of the road.

As we come closer we see a guy confidently standing up on top of the wooden blockade. His compadres standing closely behind the top of it or in make-shift bunkers, skillfully crafted inside of it.

“Halt!” He yells out. “My name is Billiam the Black-Blooded Bastard, and I am here to relieve you of your goods!”

“Hmm, interesting.” Nikki addresses Billiam, with her head slightly cocked.

Billiam’s confident pose crumbles, nervously starting to shift his weight from one foot to the other. “W-what’s interesting? Out with it!”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I don’t want to comment on your banditting or anything, what do I know of it.” Nikki waves his question away.

“E-exactly! B-but still, out with it!”

“Well, it’s just that you made your barricade out of wood.”

“So? What does that have to do wi….” WOOSH

A fireball, shot out of Nikki's hand with a flick of her finger sets the center part of the barricade alight. Followed by a stream of flame, shot to both side’s of said barricade out of the palms of her hands. Some of the bandits who didn’t immediately collapse to the deluge of fire, start running hecticly around with their clothes ablaze.

“Holy mother Veanya.” I let out with a gasp.

A couple off guys do come out of the woods to our sides but Hilda and Élise quickly take care of those. Two of them approach Élise, one of their blades parried by her shield, while she cuts them both down in one fell swoop. Her sword cutting through their padded linen armour like its butter.

The people approaching Hilda fared even worse, not even reaching her before getting hit by her throwing knives.

“Well, I guess that was that.” Élise sheats her sword again once it’s clear there’s no more enemies trying to approach us.

“Job well-done Nikki.” Hilda walks over and gives her a fist-bump.

“Thanks, I wanted to test out my flamethrower skill!”

“You tested it pretty well I’d say.” I giggle. “Too bad we didn’t get to hear his big bad evil guy speech.”

“Amicia is right, it was terribly rude of you to interrupt the guy, Nikki.” Élise laughs out.

“Billiam the big bad evil guy, everyone shudders in fear once they hear his name!” Nikki mimics an overly dramatic narrator. Even Hilda can’t keep her laughter in at that one.

After this short interlude with Billiam we quickly search the bandits for useful items and move on. The rest of the day is pretty calm in comparison, until I finally get the smell of salmon in my nose.

“Hilda! Hilda! Hilda!”

“Yes, I know, we are basically in Sinmaa now. We can set up camp next to one of the streams since it's already getting late.”

“Yaaay!” I start sprinting of the road towards the sound of water and the divine smell of fish.

“I guess Amicia is leading the way.” Nikki giggles.

“Why don’t you teach her how to fish while we set up then?” Élise proposes.

“Sounds good to me.” Nikki quickly follows suit.

It doesn’t take long to catch a couple of fish with my cat-like reflexes.

Sadly enough I did get quite soaked in the process.

“Get out of those wet clothes and sit down next to the fire Amicia, before you get a cold.” Hilda sternly points towards one of the tents so I can undress there.

“I’ll hand you some of my reserve clothes until yours are dry.”

“Yes mom.”

Hilda smirks. “Quickly now or you won’t get supper.”

“Nooooooo.” I follow Hilda’s wise advise and quickly get into the change of clothes she handed me while undressing. After which I sit down next to her.

She takes out a blanket and puts it over me.

“Thanks Hilda.” I give her a quick hug.

“No problem kitten.” She smiles. “Are you mentally prepared for your date?”

I blush “A-after Billiam I’m prepared for everything!”

Hilda laughs. “I’m sure you are. Call your sis if something happens okay?”

I nod. “I will.”

She pets my head and scratches behind my ear as I lean against her. Softly purring while the sun goes down.

“Say Hilda?” I glance up to her.

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“Do you play any other games on the Machina?”

“Of course I do.” She tilts her head at me. “Why?”

“I was just wondering, I’ve only ever played this game so I was a bit curious.”

“Well, I mainly play this one too. There’s a couple more I play though occasionally. If you ever want to you can join me in one of my play sessions.”

“I’d like that.” I smile.

“So, are you ready being all lovey-dovey you two?” Élise says, holding the prepared fish on a plate. “Already cheating on your girlfriend I see.”

“Hilda is family! Cuddling with family is allowed!” I grab hold of Hilda even tighter.

“Just pulling your tail sis.” Élise laughs and hands over the fish.

The taste of it is unbelievable. Fish is usually already divine, but nothing can beat this freshness.

Hilda finishes her food and gets up from the log we were sitting on.

“I’m going to ward the camp so we won’t have to worry about getting killed in our sleep.”

“Couldn’t we have done that for our other camps?” I ask, a bit confused to why we were doing guard duties the nights before if we could just ward.

“We could’ve, but I only bought one of them in town. They are consumables and not the cheapest ones at that.”

“Oh.”

“And since we normally have someone keeping watch at all times, it’s not really necessary anyway. But now we all need to sleep.”

“As long as the ward is up nothing can enter or leave within a 10 meter radius.” Élise starts cleaning up the rest of the food.

“That’s interesting.” I put my plate aside as well and let out a big yawn. “Do you mind if I already go to bed?”

“Nah, you can go ahead Amicia, I’ll be going to bed in a bit too.” Hilda waves me goodnight.

“Okay! Goodnight everyone. I love you all.”

“We love you too Amicia.” Nikki waves too.

“Lots and lots.” Élise sends me a blow kiss.

Once I’m in my bedroll, fatigue quickly takes me.

“Sam, here I come.” I whisper to myself before I finally fall asleep.