Bandits Slain, Bandits Robbed
The battlefield was silent now. Only the whisper of the breeze broke it. Sometimes, arcane lightning crackled in burning brushwood, kissing the soil and making it hiss. The air stank: scorched flesh, spilled blood, ruptured earth, ozone. Crows circled above. Not one dared descend.
Because the real predators were still here.
Charles stood atop Nimbus's head, arms folded. His robes fluttered lightly in the mid-afternoon breeze. Silver hair—flecked now with blood not his own—glinted in the sun. Iridescent blue strands shimmered, peacock-like, kissed by light. His sapphire eyes were calm and expressionless. He surveyed the carnage below, judging it like a magistrate examines the ledger of the dead.
Below, his seven elite companions prowled with the precision of scavenger-killers hardened by countless battles. Their expressions ranged from grim to amused as they stepped over dismembered corpses and plundered what valuables they could uncover.
"Don't just stand there gawking," Charles said mildly, without shifting his gaze. "Strip the dead. Take everything."
He didn't shout.
He didn't need to.
His voice rode a stream of qi-enhanced wind. It echoed across the clearing like the calm before a storm. The world obeyed.
Kael slogged forward. His boots gouged deep impressions in the dirt. The massive claymore Gravemeld hung sheathed across his back, throbbing faintly. He halted before the charred corpse of the Black Fang Bandit leader—a Unity Realm Rank 1 commander who had dared to challenge the heavens. Kael booted aside the ashen remnants of his cloak.
What lay beneath brought a rare smirk to the elder twin's face.
"Storage ring," Kael grunted, snatching it with practiced precision. He pivoted and hurled it up with a heavy flick of the wrist.
It arced through the air and landed in Charles's waiting palm with a faint clink.
Charles stood at the edge of the burnt-out camp. The air, still thick with ozone and ash, pressed on his senses. Around him, the battlefield cooled—scorched earth, shattered armor, blood, and silence. The Black Fang bandits were no more. What remained was detritus. Opportunity, too, lay in the aftermath.
He opened the blackened spatial ring of the fallen bandit commander, a Unity Realm brute who had perished with a look of shock frozen on his face. The interior was larger than expected—clearly a captain's tier storage artifact, layered with encryption sigils. But Charles barely needed a flick of his will before SIGMA, his personal AI assistant and analyst—a fusion of arcane and digital intelligence bound directly to his consciousness—pulsed to life.
[Decryption complete. Compartmentalized subspaces identified. Shall I begin indexing?] SIGMA intoned in Charles's mind, its voice the constant analytic hum of his arcane technology.
"Start with anything sealed," Charles murmured.
The inner vault flickered into view—a cascade of scrolls, maps, and jade slips suspended in a weightless dome of twilight.
One sealed black envelope shimmered first—secured with a wax crest Charles didn't immediately recognize, until SIGMA cross-referenced it.
[Confirmed: Crest belongs to Assistant Minister Rhovan of the Southern Ducal Office. He is a direct subordinate to Duke Henry of the Southern Province.]
Charles's eyes narrowed.
He cracked the seal and unfurled the documents. Inside lurked ledger pages—covert transactions, shipments masquerading as merchant contracts, and logistical records forged under false names. Paired with the camp's maps, they revealed a darker truth: This wasn't just a bandit raid.
This was infrastructure.
"This is one unit," Charles said quietly. "A single branch."
He seized the next cluster of documents—tactical maps, sketched routes, alchemic code. Each line mapped not just roads, but supply arteries. Some funneled through the southern duchy. Others threaded into central territories.
And then he saw it.
Two parchment scrolls stood out. Both were triple-sealed and marked urgent. SIGMA auto-identified the authorization glyphs.
[Commission Grade: Black Fang Central Directive. Seal: Southern Assistant Ministry of War. Assigned Target: Ziglar Supply Route—Ore Caravan A17 and Battle Armament Convoy Delta-4.]
Charles's breath stilled.
He read orders—ambush timings, loadouts, fallback routes. Both missions targeted resource lines to House Ziglar's forges and fortresses.
One of them—Ore Caravan A17—was scheduled to move within the week.
"These bastards were planning a sanctioned strike on Ziglar supply lines. From within our own kingdom," he muttered.
SIGMA hummed darkly.
[Probability Duke Henry is directly implicated: 91.3%. These are not rogue actors. Black Fang operates as a pseudo-military branch—fully embedded within southern nobility networks.]
Charles slowly collected the documents and slid them into a reinforced sub-compartment of his own spatial ring.
He found a leather-bound dossier at the vault's bottom. It was heavier, laced with wards, but opened easily under SIGMA's filter. Inside were reports from various Black Fang units, not banditry logs, but intelligence dossiers.
They documented troop movements across five noble territories.
Refugee population counts in outlying districts.
Trade disputes quietly stirred into rebellion.
This wasn't a gang.
This was an underground syndicate.
This was a decentralized espionage network. It posed as criminals but was funded and deployed by traitors with noble titles.
Duke Henry. The southern ducal office. Their assistant minister. And who knew how many others.
"This isn't just sabotage," Charles whispered. "It's groundwork for something bigger."
Rebellion.
Civil war.
Or worse, House Ziglar's logistics may fall apart, letting the south break Davona's northern power.
His hands were steady. But anger shone in his eyes, held back only by will.
[Should I make encrypted digital copies for safe sending?] SIGMA asked.
Charles said, "Not yet. This kind of proof shouldn't be shared. Not until I know who to trust."
[Understood. Making extra encrypted backups. Securing in a separate vault-3A. Can't be tampered with.]
He shut the ring again and glanced out at the horizon, where the land of Throm Vale lay wild and unclaimed.
Charles murmured softly, "Let them keep playing their games. They play with knives in back rooms. I'm making a castle out of their bones."
Charles turned back to his dragon, even if the storm was still in the sky behind him.
He had more than just riches now.
He carried proof.
And when the time came?
He would drop it like a guillotine.
Charles leaned back and stared at the sky for a long moment, letting the implications settle in.
"Duke Henry," he said, the name like acid on his tongue. "You've just handed me your leash—and I didn't even have to pull."
SIGMA confirmed it all.
[Document authenticity: 98.7% verified. Compiling evidence chain for future political deployment.]
"Send sealed copies to Inquisitor-level shadow archives," Charles said softly. "Flag for Shadow Vow retrieval if I'm ever assassinated."
[Understood. Backups encrypted. Transmission underway.]
Only then did he turn to the rest of the vault.
Rows of chests burst open under SIGMA's scan. Gold coins, platinum slips, rings, signets, and relics. Magical weapons with ancient etchings, armor with forbidden runes, and skill tomes sealed in crystal appeared. The treasures belonged in a museum.
The Black Fang hadn't just killed merchants—they had bled empires.
Charles watched silently as a river of wealth, secrets, and power spilled into SIGMA's vault system.
[Estimated value: 6.87 million gold equivalent. Assets are divided between Stellar Bank Tier 2 and SIGMA PSY Conglomerate's hidden reserves. Your public net worth remains unchanged.]
He exhaled through his nose.
"Perfect," he whispered. "Let the world think I'm still poor. Still limping. Still dying."
He reached for one final object—a black velvet box tucked beneath the others. Inside, wrapped in dragon-hide parchment, was a memory crystal.
A Sword Saint's dying thoughts.
"Now that," Charles said, slipping it into his sleeve, "is worth more than all the gold in Davona."
He stood, the light of the dying day glinting off the obsidian cliffs. The battlefield was clean. The secrets were his. And the vaults of the Black Fang?
They now belonged to a ghost.
A cripple.
A prince with no crown—yet.
But soon?
They would whisper a different title when they spoke of him.
"Efficient," Charles murmured. "Ruthless and wealthy."
He slipped the bandit leader's ring into the SIGMA inventory without comment.
The others were enjoying themselves in their own way.
Andy let out a laugh as he ripped two storage pouches from the belt of a fallen lieutenant and then pried a still-glowing helmet from another.
"I knew raiding bandits would pay off better than hunting magibeasts," he declared. "And these bastards didn't even encrypt their storage pouches. What a bunch of amateurs."
Donald was already sorting loot into neat piles with the elegance of a seasoned tactician—blades, coins, scrolls, valuables. Karel whistled cheerfully as he pocketed a finely woven red robe with fire-resistant enchantments. Wendy flicked blood off her twin daggers and plucked a tiny orb of nightsteel from a fallen assassin's wrist.
Even Rob, usually the gentle breeze of the group, hovered above the blood-stained field with his cloak of storms gently billowing. With a sweep of his staff, a dozen bandit mounts were herded together in a tight circle—elks with golden hooves and warhorses with bone-plated armor trembling before the magical pressure he emitted.
"Lord Charles," Rob called down, his voice warm and sonorous as a bell in spring. "These fellows still breathe. Might I… contain them?"
Charles gestured lazily and tossed him a glowing spatial ring with a dragon insignia.
"For official business," he said dryly.
Rob caught it midair, delighted. "Ah! Finally! A proper stable."
The bandit steeds—formerly terrifying mounts—let out despairing whinnies and screeches as they were absorbed into the beast ring with a swirl of blue light. The ring pulsed once, then quieted, now burdened with an entire battalion's worth of stolen warbeasts.
The field was now quiet again.
Utterly looted.
Thoroughly ransacked.
Even their boots had been taken.
From the treeline and behind overturned wagons, the survivors of the caravan still watched in a kind of horrified reverence. The guards who remained—bloodied, ragged, clutching weapons with trembling hands—dared not speak. The support staff, healers, cooks, scribes, and provision runners stood stone still. The slaves within the carriages didn't even blink. Some didn't breathe.
It was not fear of more violence.
It was fear that these eight strangers might now turn their weapons on them.
The Black Fang Bandits had always been considered demons in the flesh.
But these newcomers had slaughtered the demons.
Effortlessly.
Mercilessly.
And now they stood laughing and sorting loot as if they'd just returned from a shopping trip.
Bernard "Bernie" Lothan, head merchant of the caravan, stood to one side in his ornate robe, drenched in sweat. He'd long since lost his hat. Blood clung to his sleeves—not his own—and his voice had fled him completely.
Was he to die next?
Was his cargo, his entire livelihood, about to be claimed?
Was he just another worm to be crushed under this silver-haired noble's heel?
His mind raced. His heart pounded.
One word echoed like a drum in his skull: Ruined.
All his efforts. All his gold. All his years of networking, bribing customs officials, outwitting rival buyers, hiring elite slavers and scouts—gone.
He'd spent a fortune acquiring this batch from the southwestern borderlands—through bloody skirmishes, false nobles, smuggler routes, slave-seal artists, and blackmarket registrars. This haul—this elite batch of slaves—was to be his crown jewel.
And now…
Now this silver-haired youth atop a dragon was watching him like a cat watches a crippled mouse.
Bernie's knees trembled. He dared not move.
Then, to his horror, the man descended.
Charles descended from Nimbus with the silent grace of a falling feather, each step from the dragon's brow measured and precise, as though gravity itself deferred to his presence. His silver hair shimmered in the afternoon sun, streaks of iridescent blue rippling like enchanted silk. Eyes of sapphire scanned the ground—not the bloodied terrain or the stripped corpses, but the men still alive. The bystanders. The slave merchant. The chained cargo.
He landed gently, boots touching earth, the whisper of silk brushing polished marble. The bloodstained battlefield still echoed with death, but his gaze was calm—serene, almost aloof. Yet beneath that calm façade, behind the light cordial smile forming on his lips, something darker coiled in his chest.
He hated this.
Slavery.
Trafficking.
Chains on necks.
It stirred something in him far older than this life. He remembered his past self—Charles Alden Vale, the young officer with the sharp jawline and colder fists, storming cartel-run compounds, breaking down warehouse doors, dragging screaming men out by the collar while gunfire roared behind him. He'd seen girls no older than twelve caged like animals. Boys missing limbs. Families shattered and sold.
And now he was here.
In a world where it was all legal. Celebrated. Traded like spice, salt, or gold.
He hated it.
But he smiled anyway.
Because here, the rules were different.
And if he was going to change anything—anything at all—he needed power first.
He exhaled softly, letting the disgust dissolve into calculation.
Nimbus crouched low, tail curling with amused patience, and Charles stepped down from her brow with an eerie grace, his boots not even disturbing the grass as he landed. His expression was calm. Too calm.
The dragon, as if in playful protest, huffed a cloud of ozone-scented breath toward the caravan. The guards nearly passed out.
Charles looked around. His gaze passed over the carriages, the terrified slaves, the scattered piles of bandit corpses now stripped of everything down to their boots.
His lip twitched.
"Don't worry," he said at last, smiling faintly. "I'm not here to kill you."
The survivors exhaled in one collective breath. The sound was like the whoosh of a thousand collapsing lungs.
"I just needed to do some spring cleaning," Charles added.
Kael chuckled.
Karel clapped sarcastically. "One-liner, ten out of ten."