Mastery Is Earned

The four remaining bandits spread out once more, slowly surrounding Raymond. But after watching their companion die to a single thrust, none of them wanted to be the first to charge. For a moment, the two sides remained locked in a standoff.

“Out of my way!”

An angry roar with a heavy nasal resonance came from deep in the forest, followed by the rapidly approaching thud of heavy footsteps. Bushes were forced apart by a towering body, their branches and leaves shaking violently. The two bandits on that side instinctively turned toward the sound. One of them even turned halfway around. Raymond did not look toward the noise. He kept his eyes fixed on the four men, and the moment a gap appeared in their encirclement, he charged straight at the pair.

“Watch out!”

The other bandits immediately shouted a warning. Hearing them, the half-turned bandit hurriedly raised his weapon to block. But Raymond's thrust was only a feint. Once it forced the man back, he immediately changed direction and burst through the gap between the two men. Only then did he see the person whose arrival had created this opportunity.

The newcomer was tall and powerfully built, with reddish-brown skin. It was Henk, the half-orc!

“What kind of monster is that?”

The bandits' expressions changed at the sight of Henk coming toward them. Two instinctively turned their weapons on Henk, while the other two continued watching Raymond, who had just broken free. Their once-tight encirclement fell apart completely. Henk did not slow. Carrying his woodcutting axe, he charged straight at the two nearest men. Raymond did not waste the opportunity either. He immediately turned to face the other two bandits.

Faced with Henk charging directly at him, the bandit in front retreated in terror until he backed into his companion and had no choice but to raise his weapon in defense. The heavy woodcutting axe came down at him. The instant the man's sword met the axe blade, the tremendous force knocked his weapon aside. The axe sank between his neck and shoulder, and blood immediately gushed from the wound. The bandit behind him let out a strange cry. As Henk pulled the axe free, he seized the opportunity to thrust his sword at Henk's waist. Henk turned aside from the blade and swung his axe backhanded in a horizontal arc. The blow tore a massive wound across the man's chest, and he toppled to the ground.

On the other side, the two bandits closed in on Raymond from left and right. Raymond quickly retreated to the large tree from before, preventing them from attacking him from behind. The bandit in front roared to bolster his courage and swung his sword toward Raymond's right side. Raymond braced his sword horizontally in both hands and caught the blow, while the other man seized the chance to rush him from the side. But the moment he drew close, a massive foot lashed in from the side and struck him squarely in the midsection. The bandit was sent sprawling several paces away. He fell to the ground and could not rise for some time.

The bandit fighting Raymond instinctively glanced at Henk, and fear immediately filled his eyes. Raymond seized the opening to knock the man's blade aside. Stepping forward, he drove his sword straight into the bandit's chest.

The man Henk had kicked down struggled to his feet. Without even stopping to retrieve his weapon from the ground, he turned and fled deeper into the forest. Raymond was about to give chase when Henk reached out to stop him, then pointed in the direction Raymond and Teddy had come from. Raymond quickly understood. Henk had already confirmed that he had followed the wrong target, so he did not want to waste any more time on this smuggler. Rather than chase the man down, it was more important to return to the fork as soon as possible and search for Sarah.

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Raymond glanced at the two corpses lying at Henk's feet, unable to suppress his shock. Only a few moments had passed between Henk bursting from the forest and the end of the fight, yet two armed adult men already lay dead beneath his axe. Henk was equally surprised to encounter Raymond there, and a flicker of astonishment passed through his dark golden eyes. Raymond briefly explained Sarah's disappearance, the town guard's arrival in Silverleaf Village, and how he and Teddy had followed Henk's trail to this place.

Henk was not fluent in the Goldvale common tongue. It took Raymond some effort to piece together what had happened to him over the past day.

While tracking Sarah the day before, Henk had reached a fork deep in the forest. Two groups had departed in different directions, and one of them had a wagon loaded with something heavy. Henk assumed that the abducted girl was inside the wagon, so he chose the path with the clearer trail. As a result, he followed the wrong target. These people were not responsible for abducting Sarah. They were smugglers using the abandoned logging road to transport goods.

Henk followed their wagons deep into the forest and personally witnessed them trade with a group of gnolls. When the smugglers retraced their route, they discovered Raymond examining the tracks near the fork. They left one man to guard the goods while the other five spread out, intending to silence the unexpected investigator. The first man to appear had not truly been lost. He had deliberately approached Raymond while checking whether anyone else was nearby. Henk had followed behind them the entire time. He killed the guard when the man was alone, then hurried over to help Raymond.

After confirming that these people had nothing to do with Sarah's disappearance, Henk prepared to return to the earlier fork and follow the direction taken by the other group. The smugglers had blocked his path and cost him a fair amount of time.

Henk tore a strip of coarse cloth from one of the corpses and wiped the blood from his axe blade. He was about to leave when he seemed to remember something and raised a hand to point in another direction through the forest.

“Goods, over there. Guard, I killed.”

Raymond looked in the direction he indicated and understood that the smugglers must have temporarily stored their goods there.

Henk had been tracking through the forest for a full day and night. His eyes were bloodshot, and undisguised exhaustion showed on his face. Raymond took a piece of dried meat and a whole loaf of bread from his pack and held them out to him. Henk remained silent for a moment, but eventually accepted the food and nodded to Raymond.

Teddy had already returned to Silverleaf Village to report their discovery. Raymond needed to stay behind to guard the smuggled goods and direct the approaching town guard, so he did not leave with Henk. The two soon parted ways. Carrying the food, Henk returned to the previous fork to continue tracking the other group, while Raymond headed toward the smuggled goods.

Raymond walked several hundred meters in the direction Henk had indicated and soon found three horses in a relatively open patch of woodland. Each horse was harnessed to a flatbed cart, with its reins tied to a nearby tree. All three carts were packed with goods.

Two of the carts held large quantities of pitch-black ore. Raymond knew little about minerals and could not tell what kind it was. The last cart was piled high with animal pelts, including entire bear and deer hides. The pelts had been treated extremely crudely. Many were torn in places, and scraps of flesh and blood that had not been cleaned away still clung to their surfaces. Their rank stench was noticeable from a great distance.

Among the ropes binding the pelts, Raymond also found several tufts of coarse, grayish-yellow hair that had clearly caught there while the goods were being moved and loaded. Given what Henk had told him, the hair most likely came from the gnolls who had traded with the smugglers. Not far from the wagons lay the body of a man with an obvious axe wound across his chest. This was presumably the guard Henk had mentioned.

Raymond did not carelessly disturb the goods on the carts. The horses, ore, and pelts were likely evidence of the smuggling operation, and he could not safely bring all three carts back to Silverleaf Village alone. After studying the surrounding terrain, he climbed a nearby tree with dense foliage and concealed himself among its branches. From there, he could watch the three carts while also keeping an eye on the route leading back to the fork. All he had to do now was wait patiently for Teddy to bring the town guard.

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