“It’s a piece of junk,” Sang said as she reviewed the item.
Amethyst Necklace
Class: Junk
Value: 1 GP
“Maybe to the average, untrained eye. But to someone like me? This is a fine, fine treasure. Hard to locate, too.”
“Maybe because no one wants to locate a piece of trash; it’s not even worth anything,” Sang replied. The orange dots on the mini-map began to move closer to her, causing her to straighten up a little bit. She could see that a few of the players were beginning to take notice of them, and were moving very slowly to spread throughout the stalls.
“Five hundred gold!” Van said as he dropped almost all of their gold on the table. “Oh, and some trinkets, too!” He threw a few of the wooden charms that Sang had been crafting in her spare time on the table. The man with the eyepatch slowly nodded at him and leaned forward, sliding all of the gold towards himself with one arm.
“Van, are you nuts? You just gave him all of our money! And my trinkets! Which I kind of liked,” Sang protested.
“Trust me, Sang. This is well worth the price of admission!” Van said as he held the necklace up triumphantly.
“Is it worth a fight?” Sang replied as she drew her bow.
“I thought we were past the point of pointlessly arguing about everything,” Van replied as he turned around to see that they were completely surrounded by players.
“Wasn’t talking about you,” Sang hissed.
“Hey there,” said one of the players; she was a tall woman with strawberry blond hair. She wore leather armor and carried two wicked daggers. “The name’s McKenzie, but around here, they call me Captain McKenzie.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Van said, bowing. “But as you see, we just traded all of our gold for some worthless crap, so robbing us would be a colossal waste of time, and I can guarantee you that my ally here will ensure at least one of you dies before you stab us over and over again.”
“Wow, way to sound intimidating, Van,” Sang groaned.
Captain McKenzie chuckled at that. “Her inventory seems pretty full. Now, before you begin to fuss about this being a robbery, you do need to realize that we provide security to this black market. My team has worked diligently to make sure that there are no other bandits in this area for miles and miles.”
“No bandits except for you,” Sang growled.
“Come now—is it really banditry if we charge a security fee for using our property? I mean, we guard this land, we cultivate it, we watch over it. Really, it would be silly for us not to charge people for coming here,” McKenzie said with a curt little laugh.
“What’s your price?” Sang asked.
“Those arrows of fire seem very handy. They return when you use them, right? Sounds high-value enough for a trade. So, you can just hand them over to my little band of merry men and we’ll make sure you are nice and safe in your visit to Drohm Teg.”
Sang glanced at Van. The bandits were only Level 12, a few lower than Sang, but there were six of them. At this kind of range, it was going to be a tough fight. At the same time, she really didn’t want to hand over her best weapon to these thugs. Van shrugged at her. He didn’t have any gear other than a crappy necklace and a bagpipe, so there wasn’t much he had to lose.
“Tell you what, I’m willing to make you a one time offer,” Sang said. “If you and your merry band of jackasses decide to take a step back and reevaluate your life choices, me and my companion here won’t brutally kill each and every one of you.”
This caused McKenzie to laugh. “Looks like you have some guts! I like it. In fact, I’d like to see those guts all over the floor... kill them, boys!”
The bandits all chuckled as they drew their scimitars.
“What the hell is that!” Van shouted, pointing in the opposite direction and causing the bandits to immediately turn around and look behind them.
“Holy crap, it worked!” Van cried as he scrambled away from the bandits, climbing up one of the merchant stalls and running across the little hut-like rooftops.
“Are you kidding me? We actually fell for that?” McKenzie screamed as Sang also ran off into the distance. “Chase them! Chase them!”
The six bandits split up, three following after Van and three chasing Sang. The throngs of people shopping in the stalls paid no mind to Sang and gave her plenty of cover as she ran in and out of the stands, trying her best to lose them.
She dove into a large pile of garbage and held her breath. She could hear the footsteps of the pursuers running right past her. Sang grinned widely as she activated her Stealth. Her skin turned translucent and the words You Are Hidden appeared. Her enemies were scattered and confused. She had very little interest in just running away, though. On the contrary, it was time for the hunt to begin.
Slowly, she slipped out of the pile of trash and began to search the area for her targets. A surprise attack with her flaming arrows would probably be enough to instantly kill most of them. They were all the same class, rogues—meaning that they had low hit points, but could deal sufficient damage with sneak attacks. They primarily specialized in using poisons, as well, making their weapons far more of a pain to deal with. Fortunately for Sang, they wouldn’t see her coming.
She slowly approached two of the bandits, Kevar and Marvin, who were arguing with each other.
“Look, I’m just saying we should look in the lagoon,” Marvin said. “It’s not too far, and she was probably fast enough to get there.”
“The way she vanished means she’s using Stealth; she’s probably gonna hide in this marketplace until we give up searching,” Kevar said.
Sang aimed her bow at Marvin and loosed an arrow right into the back of his head. The words CRITICAL! SNEAK HIT! rose above his skull and he crumpled to the ground, dead in an instant.
“Aw, crap, she’s here!” Kevar shouted as he spun around and grabbed one of his throwing knives off of his bandolier.
Sang fired two arrows into his chest, using her multi-shot skill. The damage was high enough to drop him to the ground, but he wasn’t dead yet.
“Ahh, I surrender, I surrender!” the bandit yelped, raising his hands as he lay in a prone position.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you!” Sang said as she strung another arrow onto her bow.
“Aw, come on, we’re just bandits! No need to—”
His words were interrupted as she delivered the killing shot to the side of his cranium. It was harsh, but she was worried that he’d use some kind of poison on her when she wasn’t suspecting it.
“Two down and four to go,” she whispered as she reactivated Stealth mode. A horrific blaring of bagpipes in the distance indicated that Van was probably in some kind of trouble. This was perfect; as long as he was distracting the majority of them, she’d be able to take them out. She glanced at her map again and noticed that there was still an orange dot nearby, although she couldn’t physically see anyone around her. Her spotting skill was probably high enough to see that there was a person, but not high enough to actually see the hidden individual. She’d have to watch her back if she was going to survive.
As she swiftly navigated through the streets, she kept her eyes on that orange dot; it kept following her, but each time she’d look around, the bandit was nowhere to be seen. Sang wasn’t particularly sure what to do when her spotting skill was far too low to identify her foe. Fighting an invisible rogue armed with poisonous daggers did not sound like a fun idea. Even though she was in Stealth mode, she had a suspicion that the dot following her had a high enough skill to see where she was moving. She had to think quickly or else a sneak attack would probably one-shot her.
Sang knelt down on the ground and opened up her satchel. Jet was quietly sleeping in her bag. For a little dragon, he seemed like a very sleepy creature. He opened one eye and looked up at her. “Help me find a bad guy?” she asked. Jet yawned a little and climbed out of the bag, stretching his arms and legs. He looked around and began to sniff the air. Immediately, he began to hiss and growl at an abandoned merchant stall.