"Halt there and turn over your goods if you want to live." Comes the easily predictable call from the woods.
"Do you honestly think you are capable of killing us?" Cain calls from his spot in the wagon, making his Companions laugh.
"I am warning you, we have a blessed warrior with us." The bandit leader responds and Cain can hear Gavin give an impressed whistle for whoever just came into sight.
Cain grabs the wagon seat and flips himself out of the wagon and on to the road in front of them. The bandits mutter about Blessed being everywhere lately, and the enormous Barbarian smiles down at Cain.
"I'll make this short. What did you find? An agility amulet? No matter, you won't be leaving here with it."
So their enhanced abilities are mostly from magical gear then. That makes sense, you can enhance even a level 1 transfer way above their starting power with the right items.
Between his own stats and having both a Seraphim and Dragon merged with him, the barbarian seems to be moving in slow motion.
But Cain has forgotten about the power differential at the moment, and he draws his Scimitar to strike with the flat of the blade.
The unfortunate man's head turns to a fine, bloody midst on contact, spraying over his comrades, who begin screaming and running even before the body hits the ground.
Not exactly as intended, but winning is winning.
"Looks like we can keep going now." Cain shrugs, seeing that there are no more bandits in sight.
"What sort of power was that? We're both Blessed, and count ourselves as fairly powerful, that that was just ridiculous." Gain exclaimed, as Cain checked the corpse for the magical item that was enhancing his abilities.
It was a simple ring, according to his System it was level 185, and gave a bonus to strength Modifiers plus a load of extra strength. Doing rough math in his head, that should have made this opponent somewhere around the strength of a level 40 transfer without gear.
Cain also collected a discarded backpack, making his disguise a bit more believable in a world where nobody had an inventory. Traveling with just the clothes on his back made it look like he was only days from starvation and wholly unprepared for a journey.
If level 40 is the level of combatant in this upcoming match, Cain will definitely have to compete unarmed. Anything else would simply kill anyone he hit.
Cain's new traveling Companions were much quieter after the run in with the bandits, and wary of him in a way that they were not when they through he was on par with their strength.
That was fine by Cain, he was only here to complete his quest and recover the artifact, he didn't need to make new friends every time he entered a quest dungeon.
The next day passed in absolute silence, until they got closer to the city gates and found a long line of people waiting to enter.
"Blessed Competitors to the left. All others stay right. If you are not Blessed or not competing, stay right or you will not be allowed in to the city." A guard called from halfway down the line.
"We won't get through the left with the wagon, so you can go ahead." Joe informs him with a polite nod.
"Thanks, good luck on the tournament. If we have to meet, I hope it is in the finals." Cain says with a smile, striding towards the guard.
"Wait until he finds out you can't kill anyone or you get disqualified." Gavin chuckles just as Cain is almost out of earshot.
That does make things difficult, but he's only here for information, once he gets it there's really no need for him to win. Though if there's no news he might need to advance to get guaranteed entry into a bigger city.
"Name, strength and combat style." The guard at the left gate gets Cain as he approaches.
"Cain, unarmed fighter, strength I am not sure, I never had it measured."
The man brings out a middle aged Elf in wizards robes, who casually casts a spell on Cain. So, some people can still use magic here, it's just him that's being restricted by the quest.
The Elf gets a mischievous grin Cain knows all too well from dealing with the prank loving species and turns to the guards. "He's definitely Blessed. Very, very blessed."
"Good enough for me. Sign your name and take your token. NEXT."
Cain sees that the Elf is still laughing as he blends in with the crowd inside the red sandstone walls. Something is off about this whole situation, but it is clear that the Elf is not going to tell him exactly what.
The token hangs on a necklace, so Cain drapes it over his armor as he looks around for a place to stay and somewhere to eat. A hotel isn't an option, no amount of money will get you a hotel room in a city this crowded. But a nice park bench will do for the two hours of daily sleep that Cain needs.
Cain finds a Dwarven run cart selling kebabs and saunters over to see if he can find a good spot to drink.
"Two Kebabs, and if you could tell me where I could find a Stoneheim Lager or a Graskan Ale I would be in your debt."
"That's an awful long ways from here lad. But if you can stomach a proper whiskey, go to the end of the street, turn down the alley and knock twice at the basement door."
Cain pays for his kebabs and casually heads down the street that he sees is full of weapons vendors. The alley is full of trash and slag from the smelters, but that's to be expected if you are looking to keep people out. That lone Dwarf was the only non human Cain has seen, either inside the city or in line outside.
He knocks twice at the only basement door and waits until the door opens.
"What do you want?" The Dwarven women inside practically snarls at him.
"Whiskey. But you look hungry, want a Kebab?"
That makes the Dwarf smile, and she pulls him inside, leading him to a long bench beside a Dwarf height table.
"I don't reckon you know what you are in for, but whiskey we've got aplenty. We are out of ale though, the humans have confiscated our shipment, said it was to pay back taxes or some such nonsense."
Cain creates a half dozen local silver coins from his System storage and places them on the table. "Then whiskey with dinner it is."
