The best wishes for not too many bandits turned out to be a red flag much faster than any of them could have expected.
By the time that the city was out of sight from the ground, Hawk had already spotted three groups of bandits waiting for travellers along the road.
The first one, all the travellers were going around, as they were set up at a bend in the river with two bridges, and it was simply faster to go through the field in a straight line to where the road came back to their side.
But the second was going to be an issue, Karl could tell already.
There were twenty buffalo type Minotaur, much like the sort that Karl was familiar with, but Hawk said that they were much more heavily built, and their heads were different, with forward curled horns instead of their usual upright ones.
There was a farmer following them who had his two boys as guards, and they all looked nervous. If they were ambushed on the way back to the farm, they wouldn’t lose their crops. Instead, they would either lose the money they needed to keep the farm running, or possibly, their lives.
Karl considered just going through the coulee where the Minotaurs were hiding, but there was a chance that they would ignore him to go after an easier target who was guaranteed to have cash on them.
So, he followed the flat lands further east, as he was going to be turning that way when the river forked, which might not be for most of the day.
He didn’t have a precisely scaled map, only their reproduction of the one that the Beast Clerics had at the temple, and there was no telling exactly how accurate it was.
If it was right, they should reach the split later that afternoon, but it might be near dark, or even the next day.
The farmers followed them for another hour, then turned off on a small track and pulled into a farmhouse.
After that family had separated from them, the number of bandits began to increase steadily. Whatever was going on in this area had created an influx of desperate bandits, and the situation was disgusting to Hawk.
In his mind, bandits should be predators. Like Rae, they hid in the trees and set traps. They should be dangerous, not a bunch of hobos with rusted weapons, or even just tattered clothes and their own claws.
Their state was embarrassing. Even if they were just monsters, they should have some dignity.
One of the groups of bandits, Minotaurs who had set up a checkpoint of downed trees, was struggling to even make a proper campfire with the fresh green wood that they had collected.
It was so pitiable that even Hawk was moved. Moved enough that he bombarded their campsite a little and lit their cooking fire before flying away.
Thor had decided that the best route wasn’t on the road, so they were travelling nearly a kilometre to the east of it, in between farmers’ fields. That meant that they were in no danger of bandits along the road, just anything that might be in the fields.
If the farmers were alarmed to see his group travelling between their fields, they didn’t say anything about it, and by dark, Hawk had found the split in the river, and they were prepared to set up on the edge of a stand of trees, where they could get firewood and set up camp for the evening.
An empty wagon made a good tent substitute, and with a bit of reorganization, they had everything set so that the whole group would be comfortable and nobody was sleeping in the dirt.
Dana joined Karl in his hammock slung under the wagon, while the other three made a nest of blankets in a net that Rae had created across the wagon bed.
It looked like a cargo securement net, or a fishing net, but it was made of the same stretchy silk that Rae used for hammocks.
The Bloodbath Spider had decided to join Thor on the outside today, so she could keep a proper watch. There was a better than zero chance that something would come looking for them at night, even if Karl had put the wagon and the trees on opposite sides of the small campfire.
That meant there was a chance, however faint, that she might get to hunt tonight.
Hawk was asleep, resting after having scouted all day, but she was ready to go and eager for someone to try her.
Her dreams were doomed to be left unfulfilled. Nothing really moved around at night in this region. The dense population had run off the wild beasts, and the danger of the more intelligent monsters kept everyone else home at night.
So, while Karl and Dana silently held each other in their hammock, Rae was left to focus on her skills. Nothing was as good as actual combat, but a little practice wouldn’t do any harm. She wanted her Golems to improve by a Rank again.
Even if they couldn’t be as smart as the bodyguards, they could be stronger. Rae prided herself on the amount of damage that she could do, and while her Golems still held the edge, thanks to Offensive Adaptation and Lacerate, it was getting close.
Karl had bodyguards now too, and unlike Remi’s limited arsenal, he had far too many skills to help them cheat.
Only a few hours after everyone fell asleep, midnight by Rae’s reckoning, something changed in the air around them. There was a surge of power and suddenly the area was filled with monsters.
Not a portal, but a monster spawning Anomaly.
Despite this being the best thing that Rae had seen in a month, she resisted the urge to run out and turn them into a new art installation.
Instead, she woke Karl up to inform him of the good news.
[There are new monsters. The ones that just appear. I can see three Drakes, or maybe baby dragons, and a dozen big, Minotaur sized things.]
That didn’t seem right to Karl. [Did they just appear in the middle of the night? That’s only supposed to be a problem at home because of the broken anomalies. The books said that doesn’t happen in other places.]
[Well, they’re here. Maybe you can ask them?]
That was a novel concept. If they were not insane and feral like the ones at home, they might be something that he could talk to and see what was going on. But with this feeling in the air, Karl suspected that it would not be that easy.
He gently roused the others, spending a few extra seconds to kiss Dana until her eyes opened, then motioned for silence, so she knew to be ready for danger.
The group slowly gathered around the embers of the campfire, and Dana sleepily settled into Karl’s lap.
Cara, seeing an opportunity, came out to sit on Lotus, knocking her over for a moment before the cleric got herself adjusted.
“Sorry to wake everyone up in the middle of the night. Rae reports that there has been a monster spawn in the whole region. She has located at least three drakes or small dragons, as well as over a dozen Minotaur sized monsters in our vicinity. I didn’t want you to be caught unaware if they gather to fight. They’re not that close right now, but I am calling out the other bodyguards for the remainder of the evening, so we can get a bit more sleep.
But we should consider this to now be a hostile battleground, not just a hostile nation.” Karl explained quietly.
Everyone nodded quietly, and Tessa shook her head as she realized that Lotus was already asleep under Cara. They could stay on the ground for the rest of the night, it was warm enough on the grass. Plus, Cara would defend her sleeping buddy, so if there was an attack on the camp, Lotus wouldn’t be in much danger from the initial assault.
Not that it was likely to get past their defenders, but you could never be too prepared.
It was a good thing that none of them snored, though. The night air was so silent, as if every small creature had gone to ground, that Karl could hear the wind rustling the grass, and the faint crackle of the fire’s embers.