Enigma of Sin

Finally! After over three months, Kayn had finally found a bandit camp! From the looks of it there were no slaves and at first glance it just appeared as a group of people camping in the forest going about their own business.

Just to be sure though, Kayn used his Sense Extensions to hear what they were talking about and confirmed that they were indeed bandits. He also took that time to understand how many people were in the group that he was planning on taking care of.

There were only 11 bandits inside the camp and two walking around outside of the camp perimeter. The most surprising thing Kayn learned from his reconnaissance was that essentially half of the group were female!

'I guess it was naïve of me to assume all of the bandits and slavers would be male all the time.' Kayn shrugged as he thought this to himself.

'Now, how do I want to deal with them? Should I make it a game and try to snipe as many as I can without the others noticing? It also begs the question of if they deserve death or not. Maybe I'll just stick around for a day or two and see what they do and say before I make any decisions.'

While Kayn knew that it would be easier to just take them all out and steal their stuff now, he still had morals that he wanted to follow. Repossessing their stolen goods and killing them were on two completely different spectrums in his mind.

If they deserved death, Kayn would be more than happy to ensure they ended up six feet under, but if they were just highway thieves who brandished weapons and shouted threats, wouldn't that make him the bad guy?

While there were a lot of crimes punishable by death in the Carnet Empire, Kayn's rule book was his own and he wouldn't cross certain lines unless there was no other choice.

Good versus evil? Morals and ethics? None of these mattered to Kayn in reality. Kayn would break his own rules for his family and their safety. Luckily his family was a loving and kind one and not a group of mass murderers, otherwise he would probably not cross his own lines for them, even if he was raised that way.

He knew someday he may have to cross a few lines, but today wasn't that day. He could deal with the situation how he thought best after observing for a few days. Best could be either the death of this group, or just tying them up and leaving handing them over to the authorities to deal with.

***

The first day and evening of watching the camp was relatively boring for Kayn. He just sat up on a high tree a decent distance away from them with his mask equipped to better hide in the shadow of the tree.

He thought at one point one of the patrolling bandits had caught a glimpse of him, but the bandit just shuddered a little and continued on his path. This amused Kayn because he assumed the guy had an image of a smiling mask in his head now.

Kayn ended up sleeping up in the trees and eating dried food, such as bread and jerky. When it came to taking care of his business, what good was darkness magic for if not removing any trace as soon as it came out!

This was a trick he discovered back when he was starting as an adventurer. Darkness was even good at cleansing dirt off his body! Though, Kayn did notice that each time his core evolved his body seemed to digest the food he put in more. Thus, he was going to the restroom less in general. At first, he was worried he might have a problem, but when nothing bad happened even after a long time, he considered it a good thing and forgot about it.

***

On the second day the group finally made a move. 11 of the 13 left the camp while two others stayed behind. Kayn decided to follow the 11 to see what they were up to. He did that by utilizing the shadows in the tree tops to jump from branch to branch while utilizing wind magic to be as quiet as possible, so he really just sounded like a small animal jumping between branches.

He followed the group for a few hours where they stopped at a road and began to set up their trap at a spot where multiple bushes and trees were close to the road. Once they all seemed to be in position, the waiting game began.

Moving in slowly from the distance was a wagon with multiple boxes on in the back. The only people with the wagon were the driver and two guards who were walking by the side.

The guards seemed to be relaxed as they were not even paying attention to their surroundings, until it was too late of course. Without any warning, four of the bandits popped out and simultaneously used earth magic on the wheels of the wagon to immobilize it.

'Oh? Four of them have an earth affinity. This should be interesting.' Kayn thought to himself as he was still watching from a high vantage point. He planned to watch the exchange until its ending, strictly as an observer.

Unless the bandits looked like they were going to kill one of their victims, he wouldn't step in. However, he did have several sure kill wind bullets at the ready just in case he had to save the guards or wagon driver.

With the guards surrounded, outnumbered, and out-matched, they quickly gave in. The wagon driver looked like he was about to cry and pee his pants at the same time as he watched the bandits removing the boxes and placing them into a hand drawn cart they had stashed over to the side.

The bandits didn't harm the three at all and simply left them semi-restrained after transferring every single box to their own cart. Once the 11 bandits were out of sight of their victims, Kayn made his move.

Using several non-lethal water and earth bullets that would simply knock out their target, Kayn aimed mostly for their heads, but since he shot off around 30 bullets at the same time, it was more so a hail of water and earth that flew towards the bandits without any prior warnings.

All but one of the bandits were knocked out on the spot, but Kayn swiftly moved towards the still conscious bandit and hit him in the head with his fist.

'Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. I don't think any of these guys go above the 1st stage, they must only target merchants with few guards that would be easy to rob with numbers.'

Kayn restrained all 11 bandits with earth magic and sat them up near a tree. He hoped a rune beast wouldn't show up to attack them, but at the same time they were bandits and karma is a bitch.

Kayn moved the cart back into line of sight of the victims, and since he was pushing the cart in reverse, he wasn't seen by them due to the height of boxes. Then he just left, they could get out of their restraints on their own.

Returning to the camp, Kayn noticed that the two who remained were sitting side by side near the fire and hardly paying attention to their surroundings. For bandits they weren't very attentive to what was going on around their camp.

Kayn decided to sneak up behind them and knock them out with a quick strike to the neck each, but right as he was about to take his last step, he broke a twig. Both bandits quickly turned around while reaching for their waists, but Kayn was faster and struck both with a quick throat strike followed by a strike to the back of the neck.

After restraining both of the bandits, he got a good look around the camp and took any money or small valuables they had on them. In reality, they didn't have much, maybe 10 or so silver coins, a few coppers, and about a dozen core stones from d-class rune beasts.

While Kayn didn't receive much from the raid alone, he was hoping if he brought one of the bandits with him and turned him into the nearby town, they would reward him a fair amount for telling them where the rest of the group was.

***

To Kayn's disappointment again, he only gained another 50 silver coins after turning in the group to the nearby authorities. But it was pretty easy money, and more than most that lived in countryside areas would make in a year.

It was at this time that Kayn tried to contact Lydia for the second time in a couple weeks, but was still unable to reach her, so he decided to bring it up with his mother when he called her.