NeoRealm - Staring back into the Future

Jason frowns as he shakes his head, "System, show me my level."

{Level: 14 - 97.51%}

Jason rolls his eyes and sighs. He really needs to start fighting higher level enemies. While he doesn't mind the slow grind as his stats are being perfected, but eventually he will have to hit the bottleneck. This would preferably happen close to when he gets to his destination.

Curiosity satisfied, Jason turns to a much grimmer task. Up till now, he had been fighting monsters and so the act of looting them was more sanitized in a way. Now, of course, he wasn't going to go for any "parts" as it were, but he did have to check them all to see if they were hiding anything. This isn't helped by the fact both Jason and Lily's kills this time were a bit messy. Still, someone has to deal with it and Jason is the only one around to do it right now.

The first step was the pockets, easy enough to do and informs you why they are bandits. So yeah, a handful of copper. After that, though, the search gets a little more intense as Jason searches everything down to the skin. What for some of his fellow players would be a distasteful act doesn't particularly face Jason.

The clothes are a complete loss as he just cut those up. None of the stuff was worth hauling with him, after all. Besides that, though, one of the mooks surprisingly had something extra. Attached to the inside of his leg was a suspicious leather bag that screamed magic. That in and of itself wasn't particularly strange, it was a decent place to hide such things. The fact it was a bag completely lacking in markings was, though.

Even Jason's new arm guards, declared a failure by the original creator, had a maker's mark. Sure, if it was just a normal leather bag, then likely no one would have bothered sewing or stamping such a thing on it. An enchanted bag, though? The only reason a maker's mark wouldn't be included would be if the bag was specifically created for those less than savory sorts and you don't want it tracked back to you.

So while the one guy seemed to be the leader, this random mook was the connection. Though maybe the leader didn't even know about it. Jason sighs some more, by killing this dude, someone somewhere would now be wondering what happened to the local connection. An important person to warn any large group of bandits when someone is poking around the town or a small army of adventurers have shown up.

Jason shrugs and opens up the unmarked bag and rolls his eyes when he sees there is a good bit more space inside than you would expect. Though it looks like in this case the spatial enchantment was focused on keeping the outer bag flat instead of getting as much inner space as possible. A useful feature that Jason himself plans to make use of. You know, after giving it a thorough cleaning.

As for what was inside? Well, there were a couple of papers covered in coded messages that the next town's constable would likely find interesting. More up Jason's alley though was a small collection of non-magical gems, though he had no clue where to start on them except for the fact that depending, they might be worth more than all of his gold.

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After all, while the System backed coins had innate value (cause the System said so), they could also end up weighing a lot. So while sure, a ruby in one town valued at 100 gold might only be worth 90 a few towns over, it weighs a whole lot less. Something worth quite a lot when your bag of holding didn't have a high weight offset even if you do lose a few gold in the conversion.

Though speaking of coins, the bag wasn't completely bare of the things. After all, while gems can hold a lot of value, that doesn't mean anything until you turn them back into coins as rarely will you find a shop willing to be paid in them. There weren't that many coins of course, just ten silver and 100 copper coins clinking about.

This sadly pointed towards the gems likely not being worth all that much, but Jason was fine with that. From his perspective, the gems were most likely meant for the mook to pay people and so they made sure he couldn't just use them on booze without notice. After all, it isn't like there was going to be all that many places to sell gems in a small town.

Then, last but not least, Jason pulled out a crudely carved wood figurine from the pouch. Despite likely being the thing worth the least, it was likely going to cause the most hassle. While Jason wasn't sure which specific entity it was meant to look like, what it represented was that the local bandits had taken up the worship of some nasty sort. Whether that meant a demon, fiend, devil, dæmon, winter court fae, or something worse Jason wasn't sure.

What he was sure of though, was that his next segment of training had to be skipped. As a card-carrying member of the Adventurers Guild, it was his duty to report this asap to the nearest guild location. Because sure, even if the cultists involved managed to summon their "god" it wouldn't be the end of the world. However, they could potentially wipe out a kingdom or two if not taken care of.

At the high end, this could represent an entity with the same level of power as the one who taught him war stomp and that would require the guild to bring in multiple maxers to banish it. After all, you don't manage to reach that level of power without a few trump cards.

As for why there was such a clear give away in a random bandit's hidden pouch? Well, while the System does let people do what they want as long as they play by its rules. It also wants to give the players a fun experience and what could be funner than being able to thwart evil schemes or help them along? So yeah, that figurine probably wasn't there until Jason had gotten a hold of it. A frustrating feature for any evil sort as even the tightest of information security isn't enough to keep interesting things hidden.

A demon summoner all alone out in the wild trying to summon up a demon prince? Well, now there are random imps bamphing into existence further and further away from you until you get found. A lone necromancer raising the ultimate army of undead? Better believe there will be random skeletons wandering around where they shouldn't be. Cults trying to summon fell beings? Jason just got to experience how that is taken care of. Hell, the trio might have even been nudged into place so they would go after him. Who knows, maybe if Jason hadn't stopped at the town, they might have not gone to that store that day.

Jason can only shake his head as he drags the bodies off to the side where Lilly had been digging a couple of massive holes in the underbrush.