Kaizen came out of the thicket with his hand outstretched, looking at the archer angrily and lifting him up with <Telekinesis>.
"Brother... I-I was just..." The archer tried to explain.
"Shut up, I don't want to hear anything from you," Kaizen replied with a sadistic smile. "You're just an obstacle in my way."
The archer looked at the player with a mixture of anger and fear on his face. "You... Argh... you can't beat us!"
At that moment, a second archer appeared from behind a nearby tree with a bow aimed at Kaizen.
"Let him go or I'll shoot." The second archer threatened with determination.
Kaizen smiled, mocking the threat. "Do you really think one arrow is enough?" He closed the fingers of his hand slightly, increasing the power of the <Telekinesis> and causing the trapped archer to scream in pain.
The second archer did not back down and shot an arrow at Kaizen, thinking it was Psyker's bluff, but Kaizen quickly deflected the arrow with a mere flick of his hand.
"Your friend will pay for his foolishness," Kaizen said as he closed the fingers of his hand completely.
The trapped archer groaned in pain as the mysterious energy around him increased, crushing his bones and internal organs.
The second archer desperately began firing arrows, but Kaizen easily dodged them all.
When Kaizen finally closed with his right, the trapped archer's body exploded, spilling blood and guts all around them.
Horrified, the second archer looked at the look of contempt on Kaizen's face.
"If you don't want to be next, listen to me carefully," Kaizen said, raising his other hand, ready to use <Telekinesis> on this next target. He didn't want to act like a villain, but he was already impatient.
Kaizen looked at the second archer with a sadistic smile and said:
"You should have thought twice before you attacked us." Then he slowly approached the archer, who immediately backed away nervously. "You have a choice: give me the information I need or end up as your friend on the ground over there." Kaizen said and looked into his eyes.
The archer felt a shiver run down his spine. Knowing that he didn't have many options, he said:
"I... I'll talk, but you have to let me go later."
Kaizen shakes his head in agreement. "I don't think you're in a position to make demands, but come on. Tell me about your camp before I change my mind."
The archer takes a deep breath before beginning to speak. "The others are camped about a mile northwest of here. They have some boys hiding near the nearby ravine, you can try to take advantage of that, but be careful, there are other archers in the trees near the camp, watching the surroundings."
Kaizen nodded. "Good. Now go before I change my mind and decide to kill you anyway."
The archer did not have to listen twice and ran off into the dark forest, not looking back and on shaky legs.
Kaizen watched as the man disappeared into the darkness. Seconds later, Jeff finally appeared, coming out of the bushes that had leaves so large they were taller than he was. Panting, Jeff immediately looked at the shattered body of the first archer on the ground, so he couldn't help the instinctive reaction of annoyance at the scene.
"You... managed to kill him before he alerted the others. That's good," the thief leader said with a frown.
"That was easy. Another one of them revealed to me that the rest of the group is in the northwest. I don't know if it's the same place your scout knew, considering our targets are nomadic thieves, but let's go, we're not far."
"Wait, aren't you going to ask what happened to the scout that was with us?" Jeff asked in surprise.
Already starting to walk, Kaizen says while turning his back to Jeff:
"You don't have to tell me, I already know he died. The arrow missed his heart by a mile, but pierced his right lung. And you know, I don't have time to worry about complete strangers right now, so let's just go".
Jeff feels uncomfortable because a man who died in his arms earlier was one of his best scouts, but he has no arguments to argue with Kaizen.
"Right..." Jeff says as he looks at the disfigured and crushed body of the archer killed by the psyker.
The archer's body was completely disfigured and unrecognizable, looking like a large stone had crushed it, and that made Jeff a little scared. What kind of magic could be powerful enough to do that to a human body?
As Kaizen and Jeff walked through the dark woods to the area of the nomadic thieves' camp, neither of them said anything, communicating only through signs. In truth, they were both very thoughtful.
Kaizen reflected on his recent decisions. He knew that he could have saved Jeff's companion by using the copied healing ability he had received from the healing wizard named Riceak. However, he didn't regret his decision not to use this skill, as he had been saving it since earlier when he received the attack from the Forest Guardian, and the twenty-four hour cooldown made him think more about the ideal times to use it.
Since he could only use this skill once to heal himself and once to heal someone else, he saved the use of this skill for when he was really in trouble and needed to save someone important to him. That was his reasoning.
As Kaizen and Jeff continued through the dark forest toward the thieves' camp, they noticed an unusual silence. The birds were not singing and the animals seemed to have gone into hiding. They knew immediately that this was a bad sign.
Night had fallen and the forest was much darker, except for the moonlight.
Thanks to this, they suddenly saw a figure sitting on a branch of a nearby tree, holding a bow. The figure seemed to be intently watching the surroundings, but did not seem to have spotted them yet.
Kaizen and Jeff's expressions froze when they saw the figure on the branch. Kaizen pressed his index finger to his lips, signaling Jeff to be quiet.
Since there was probably no way to get past the archer without alerting him, the only option was to remove him from the top of the tree, so Kaizen quickly opened his inventory and clicked on the Old Bow icon. When this bow appeared in Kaizen's hand, Jeff looked at it with surprise and attention, for it was strange that Kaizen carried such a beautiful sword in his scabbard and yet used such a terrible bow.
The worn wood of this bow was stained by time and told of years of use. Every curve and notch of the bow was like a scar from a lifetime of constant use. The fibers that made up the string, once probably shiny, were now tangled and worn, but still true to their function of providing tension to the bow and propelling the arrow in its flight.
The old bow seemed, in a way, a silent guardian.
So Jeff watched as Kaizen placed a long arrow on the bowstring and then pulled it back, as if not afraid of the bowstring breaking.
Kaizen aimed briefly, and when he felt ready, he released the arrow with precision, hitting the archer in the shoulder a second later so that the arrow went through the man's shoulder.
The archer screamed in pain and immediately fell from the high branch of the tree, drawing the attention of the other nomadic thieves patrolling the area.
Kaizen and Jeff quickly hid behind the trees and watched as other thieves quickly approached the injured archer as they heard the thud of his body.
"What have you done? Now everyone knows we're here." Jeff whispered, arguing with Kaizen.
"No, they don't. The arrow went through the target and didn't stick, there's no way they can know there's a shooter. Besides, their archer died of head trauma as soon as he fell, there's no way he could tell anything. Since he wasn't carrying a torch, his friends will think he was startled by an insect and fell," Kaizen replies. Kaizen replies.
Jeff is impressed by Kaizen's reasoning and his optimistic way of thinking, it even seems like he planned for this outcome, but that would be impossible, it was too dark for him to deliberately aim at the shoulder and get it right.
Realizing that this might be the chance to kill all the lookouts in the group of thieves, Kaizen looked at Jeff and motioned for him to follow as he stealthily approached the surrounding group. With the bushes and the dirt on the ground, it would be easy for even a child to silently approach the thieves gathered around the archer's body.
...
Edited by: DrHitsuji
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