Chapter 164.1: Town

Chapter 164.1: Town

PART 1/2

The man, after some prodding, handed over his valuables. It felt nice, turning a mugging around on the robbers, even though he didn’t actually have much coin on him. Well, not much objectively. But to us, the five one-hundred-eyt coins he put in my hand almost doubled our haul from tonight. Plus, the satisfaction Ainash had when she stared down at the coins gave me the impression she saw them as not only a resource to use, but also a trophy from defeating the “mean guys,” as she called them. So I supposed that was a plus.

Once we took everything off of the man, I looked back over at him, restrained and on the ground. “You know the deal, right?”

“I never made no deal with you,” he spat.

“Oh, but you did. See, when you were alone and vulnerable, lying on the ground—like you are right now—and I decided not to kill you, that was us making a deal. A deal where, in exchange for you fucking off forever, you get your life.”

He scowled. “Fine. We’ll leave you be. No revenge. Now can you let me go?”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m asking you to do. I’m not just saying ‘no revenge.’ That’s something you’ll do anyway if you value your lives. I’m saying that you do not interact with us. You do not talk to us. You do not look at us. You do not interact with law enforcement regarding us. If you see us hunting out here, you run off back to whatever hole you crawled out of. If we’re walking toward each other on the street, you cross to the other side. And especially, you do not mug, rob, extort anyone, ever again. And I know you probably won’t listen to me, and you’ll go out and get your coin from the pockets of newbie adventurers. I get that. But I do want you to be afraid every single moment while you do so. Because if we ever see you even speaking to another adventurer in any sort of adversarial way, we will not hesitate to execute you where you stand. This is your one chance.”

“Alright, fine, I get it.” He averted his eyes from me.

“I still don’t think you do. If you ever try to kill any of us, whether it's some ambush as a group, or tracking a single person down and targeting them while they’re isolated, we will not hesitate to find and kill every last person in your group. I will track down your homes, your families, and end them. I don’t care if they’re innocent. I will do it just to fuck you over. If a single one of us dies—for any reason—you are all dead. Got it?”

He took a shaky breath. “Look, I’m really sorry we tried to hit you. W-we didn’t know who you were. I-I dunno if you’re some famous adventurer from the kingdom or something, but I swear we didn’t know.”

“I don’t give a shit about what you knew. Now you know that if I ever catch you breaking any sort of law, be it murder or fucking tax fraud, you are dead. So, y’know. Move with caution.”

He nodded over and over, as though each nod had a better chance at reassuring me.The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

“Okay. Now go find your little group. Tell them what I told you. And be absolutely sure they understand the weight of my promises. Because when I make them, I keep them.”

I sent a message to Ainash asking her to take off the bindings around his wrists, and the moment they were off, he pushed himself to his feet and scampered off.

Erani watched him leave alongside me. “You sure you didn’t go too far with the whole threatening their families thing? Also, I do hope you realize I’m definitely not going out and killing random children if you die.”

“Oh, yeah, it was a total bluff,” I said. “But I’m not taking any chances. Obviously, I don’t want them to try and assassinate any of us or whatever, but I also don’t want to get involved with any sort of law enforcement. That’s just asking for trouble, when it comes to tracking our identities if we come forward as witnesses, or something. So I thought being as intimidating as possible would be the best way to keep them silent. Plus, if they stop trying to mug people, that’s definitely a bonus.”

Erani nodded. “I suppose. But be sure to stay safe while you’re out here, alright?”

“I will!”

“Good,” she sighed.

As we walked, I suddenly got an unexpected notification.

Time Loop has refreshed its uses.

Recycled Loop has activated. Due to 2 uses being leftover, you have gained the following Stats:

+1 Strength, +1 Endurance

8 Stats remain until you must Level up.

“Oh, hey, there it is,” I said.

“There what is?”

“It just turned to midnight, so I got my uses of Time Loop back. And the other two got recycled into Stats.”

“Right, I forgot about that,” Erani nodded. “So, if you got two today, that means you can get eight more before you have to Level up?”

“Yep. Probably gonna stick with the plan of getting another Spell Crystal use from those guards tomorrow, too. So I’ll get another two then.”

“I’m sure you’re excited,” Erani laughed. “I need to get Spell Crystals for my Spell Upgrades, too. Just about locked out of practicing by now, since Firebolt is nearing 20.”

“That’ll probably be what we save up for soon, then,” I nodded. “Or maybe we’ll find some bandits with a couple of them on hand when we counter-rob them.”

Erani laughed. “Great idea. We should just rely on stealing from bandits to make all our money from now on.”