He closed the distance fast enough that the man's hand was still reaching for the makeshift alarm, when Harley's shoulder connected with his chest. Not a clean technique but sometimes speed is the strategy and harley had played enough contact sports to know a few things. The bandit recovered faster than expected, grabbed Harley's collar, and redirected his momentum sideways into the wall.
Well the wall didnt move so that was a nasty hit, even the remaining captives winced on his behalf. 8 HP lost. But Harley was not going down like that.
The fight moved through the room in a messy arc, the freed prisoners pressed themselves to the walls while two of the steadier ones helped the remaining bound captives finish getting loose. Harley took another hit to the ribs, same side as yesterday, which he felt the system register as 'Existing Injury — Aggravated', fantastic, the game had persistent damage tracking, great news, extremely useful to know right now.
The bandit was stronger, while Harley was learning him, he was a pattern fighter; he had a combination of three moves that he cycled through convinced that he had never met a problem that could not be solved by it. Left grab, center push, right strike. Left grab, center push, right strike. The third time Harley saw the pattern he stepped inside it, inside the grab range, too close for the push to generate force, and landed the right strike before the bandit could.
The HP bar above the man's head dropped to 23.
Then a notification appeared that Harley had not seen before.
⚡ NEW SKILL AVAILABLE
[Exploit — Lv.1]
Identifies and capitalizes on repeated enemy patterns.
Bonus damage applied on pattern recognition.
PASSIVE ACTIVATED
His next strike landed with a crack that was louder than the previous hits; not because he swung harder but because that was his new passive, yaaaay! The bandit's HP dropped to zero. The man sat down heavily against the wall with the defeated expression so much for the three move combo.
⚔ COMBAT RESOLVED
EXP Gained: +95
[Exploit Lv.1] — First Activation Bonus: +20 EXP
HP: 38/100
Harleywas short on breath as used the salve immediately; the HP climbed back to 61 and he made a note that he needed more than one salve going forward because this floor was harder than it was if he were just controlling a character with a joystick. He looked at the fifteen people now fully unrestrained and standing in various states of recovered dignity.
"Exit," he was still cqatching his breath but was audible enough. "Behind me, right corridor, move quietly and fast. If you hear fighting, keep moving, don't stop to look."
The woman with the water jug looked at him with relief and gratitude She nodded to his instructions and moved first. The others followed.
Harley stayed at the back until the last of them had cleared the doorway.
Namir's half of the operation was going smoothly until it wasn't.
The deeper cave system was larger than the surface approach had suggested; which was the caves' primary personality trait apparently. More storage, a rough kitchen setup around a fire pit, sleeping areas along the walls. The bandits had been here long enough to make the space more comfortable. Namir catalogued all of it without touching any of it; he was looking for people and the people would be where they were hardest to access.
The second holding area was further back, a natural alcove in the rock that someone had closed off with wooden bars. Four people inside, in worse shape than the ones in the first room, bruised, dehydrated, and very still, it was internally alarming.
He was working at the bar latch when he heard her.
Soft footsteps from the side passage, he turned with his spear ready and found a woman pressed against the wall, one hand out in front of her, palm forward. She was maybe thirty, her right arm held close to her body, she had been wounded. A cut along her jaw had dried into a dark line.
"Please," the pain was getting to her, the translation came through, "Please, they're going to know I'm gone soon. Help me. I know where they keep the others."
Namir studied her for exactly two seconds. The arm was convincing. The cut was convincing. The fear in her eyes was very convincing, which was why something in the back of his mind, something that had been playing this game since its first release and had died twice in its original run to lessons exactly like this one, stayed very quiet and very present.
She moved toward him but he kept his distance.
"The others," he however had given her the opportunity to prove herself, "Where?"
"This way, I'll show you; please, we have to hurry." She was already moving toward a side passage, glancing back at him, urgently "They check every hour."
He followed. One step behind. Spear at his side but his grip was loose; ready rather than raised, just in case she did something funny.
She led him to a door. The door was made of solid wood, iron hinges, a bolt on the outside. She gestured him toward it, "The bolt, quickly."
He reached for it.
Her hand came over his shoulder with the knife.
She was fast, he would give her that. Trained in fact, not just opportunistic. The blade caught him below the shoulder blade, the leather across his back absorbing most of it. The game registered it instantly; 'Ambush Damage — Backstab Modifier Applied' and his HP dropped 22 points in one notification.
He moved away from the door before she could press the advantage, before she could hurt him more; turning, putting space between them, the spear coming up now because the reading of the room had resolved itself and he had all the data he needed.
She straightened almost immediately. The injured arm was fine, it had been fine. The cut was real but old. She looked at him with the smuggest grin to have ever smugged.
"They knew you were in the holding room," conversational now, the fear performance retired. "You and your friend. The mist doesn't knock out trained fighters for as long as it knocks out civilians. We expected you to wake sooner."
"Good intelligence," Namir groaned lightly, his blood seeping through his leather.
"We try." She rolled the knife once in her grip, that meant she was comfortable with it, "Your friend is probably already—"
"Handled." Namir said with a confidence he estimated at seventy percent. The remaining thirty percent he set aside for later.
She came fast, targeting the side that the backstab had already compromised. Smart. He turned it, the spear shaft catching her wrist and redirecting the knife outward, and then they were in close where the knife had the advantage and the spear did not. He shifted his grip to the midpoint of the shaft; shorter weapon now, the stone behind her limiting her movement options.
⚔ COMBAT INITIATED
Namir Vox vs. Bandit Decoy — HP: 78
Enemy Trait: [Deceptive] — High evasion when stationary
Enemy Trait: [Knife Specialist] — Bonus damage in close quarters
She was very good, better than the guards in the forest had been, better than the bandit that Harley had dealt with in the holding room, She caught his second strike on the flat of her blade and pushed it sideways, pivoting to open his left side. He moved with the push instead of against it, using the momentum rather than fighting it, spinning the spear in a tight arc that she wasn't expecting to come back from the other direction.
It caught her across the shoulder. Not the blade; the shaft, a blunt impact. Her knife arm dropped half an inch from the force and he was already moving; two steps forward, spear point at her throat, the question of whether she wanted to continue answered by geometry.
She looked at the spear point. Made the correct calculation.
Her HP bar hovered at 14.
The knife dropped.
⚔ COMBAT RESOLVED
EXP Gained: +140
[Speed Burst Lv.2] — Threshold reached. Level Up.
HP: 56/100
Namir stepped back, secured the knife. Looked at the door she had led him to; which was, he confirmed when he drew the bolt, actually a holding area. Three people inside, in poor shape, but alive. He helped them out one at a time, the door opening into the side passage.
He bound the woman's wrists with the cord from his pack; She watched him do it with no other option for her, she had been outplayed and was still doing the math on where the error had been.
"The door was real," she tried to gain his sympathy.
"Most good traps have something real in them." He checked the knot, Satisfied, "That's what makes them work."
He left her there, someone would find her eventually, and the cave system's logic suggested that eventually was going to be sooner than comfortable when the rest of the bandits discovered what had happened to their operation.
The three people from the back room moved slowly and he matched their pace.
He walked behind his rescues or a while before reaching a large space and he suddenly let out a breath. Was it relief or another problem?