“Why force all their families to move?” Damion asked Arica.
He understood taking access to the dungeon away as punishment for the banditry. But making their families suffer? Damion just did not understand what the point was.
“It serves several purposes,” Arica said as she helped Damion stuff his tent into his bag while keeping a watchful eye on the people on the road. “The first is to put all the rotten eggs in one basket. The Justiciars are sure more members of the Falks Guild are guilty of banditry, but they lack proof.
“By forcing all of them to move to Bufort where the guild headquarters are, it makes it easier to keep an eye on all of them. It also discourages the guild from doing anything that harms Bufort.”
“You mean like hijacking a supply caravan full of food for Bufort. If they did that, sure they could make money, but then they’d have to explain why their families weren’t starving or buying the inflated food prices.”
“Exactly. I heard they tried to intercept a shipment of Association goods. It was not a wise move on their part.”
“Hey! How about giving us a lift,” a man wearing the Falks Guild emblem on his armor said as he started moving towards Arica and Damion.
“Sorry, we are on a time sensitive mission. We are not able to help you,” Arica said as Damion stuffed his bag into the ground car storage compartment.
“It won’t take long, just a bit of journey up to Bufort so I can rent a truck to help our families out on their journey there.” The man said moving closer to them. Damion could see the man had a longsword on his hip and his muscular build told Damion he probably knew how to use it.
“Sorry. No.” Arica said firmly moving beside the ground car.
“And what if I ain’t asking,” the man sneered as he began to draw his sword.
Damion, however, was faster. Sword in hand, Damion quickly channeled his mana in the fire attack glyph and fired a column of fire over the man’s head that shot clear across the road. The Falks Guild member fell backwards and landed hard on his butt when he saw the attack. The families on the road immediately began screaming and clutching their children, pleading for mercy.
“Go tend to your families,” Damion said trying to sound as domineering as he could. “Don’t cause the Falks Guild to get another black mark of banditry.”
“That’s all a lie so Bufort could take our dungeon, we ain’t never done no robberies!” The man shouted in defense of his guild.
“Tell that to someone who wasn’t there. Or are you saying Barnes was not a member of your guild?”
The man looked at Damion and evidently saw no lie in Damion’s eyes and after the attack Damion had just released, decided the fight was not worth it. The man scrambled to his feet and headed back to the road, joining the families on their walk to Bufort.
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Damion and Arica took the opportunity to hop into the ground car and speed away. The first plate was only 100 meters down the tree line from the road. Easily, still in sight of the Falks Guild members, so Damion remained by the ground car while Arica quickly searched for the plate to take her measurements.
After the fourth plate was done and measured, they began to relax a little since the road was no longer in view and they did not see any signs of pursuit from the Falks Guild.
“That made for an exciting morning,” Arica laughed. Now that they seemed to be out of danger she started to relax.
“I can’t believe they would resort to trying to steal our ground car so soon after being punished. Do they want their guild to get disbanded?”
Damion had a hard time understanding the motive of the Falks Guild in this situation. Anyone with any reasonable amount of intelligence could think the situation through and realize causing more trouble was not the solution. They needed to lay low, let everything blow over and start to rebuild their guild’s reputation. Not drag it further through the mud.
“Some people, no matter what you tell them, will only make the decision that benefits them at that moment. Even if you show them the outcome of those choices, they will choose the quick fix, with the deluded belief they can avoid or stay one step ahead of the consequences.”
“They should at least think about their families,” Damion responded.
“In their own way they are. Just because you can clearly see a path, does not mean everyone else sees the path the same way.”
Damion just shook his head and kept watch on the surroundings while Arica searched for the next plate. They might have moved a good way away from the road, but Damion was not so sure the Falks Guild was done being stupid.
Arica seemed to be a bit calmer, though Damion did not know why, it was because she had already alerted her master to the actions of the Falks Guild. She was certain her master would provide the Falks Guild with incentive to behave, on their journey to Bufort, so she paid no mind to the actions of the guild member earlier.
As the day drew on, the pair reached their final plate for the evening and started setting up their camp. With the distance they now were from the road through Benault Forest, Damion felt comfortable that the Falks Guild would not be able to cause them any more trouble.
“What kind of things do you learn in the magical theory classes?” Damion asked when he was done eating his ration pack.
“Well, there are different types of magic theory classes. Some classes try to teach you to read glyphs, others focus on how to manipulate your spells. There is an entire class in the third year to break you of calling out your spells before you attack, but it doesn’t matter if you succeed or not. Silent casting is not that easy. Or at least not as easy as you make it appear.”
“What do you mean?”
“You practiced with your sword quite a bit yesterday and even unleashed a spur of the moment attack that was quite powerful today, but you never uttered a single word.”
“Oh, well, when I first started learning to use the glyph on my sword Ms. Teft did not give me any instructions other than to channel my mana and activate the glyph. I guess I never learned the bad habit of announcing my attacks.”
“Bad habit huh? Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
“Were there any classes on Demonic Beasts and Ferocious Beasts?” Damion asked curiously.
“Oh yes, we had a number of classes on beasts of all ranks. My favorite though was the beast origin theory.”
“What’s that?”
“It is a class about theorizing where Ferocious and Demonic Beasts come from.”
“I thought Demonic Beasts came from Unstable Breaches.”
“Oh, they do. But where do Ferocious Beasts come from?”
“They aren’t native to our realm?”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. The prevailing theory is that Realm Breaches did not always happen. And eons ago, before the first Realm Breach, there was no magic and there were no Ferocious Beasts, just normal people and normal animals.
“But then sometime in pre-historic times, or perhaps all that history was lost, the Realm Breaches started and flooded our world with Demonic Beasts, who then bred with normal animals to create Ferocious Beasts.”