"How do you know it's the same bandits? Are you sure you can find them?" asked Brin.

Zilly glanced at Sion, and Brin understood at once. She still wanted to be seen as a [Warrior] in the wider world, which meant that she didn't want to give away her [Rogue] perception abilities. Davi had already fumbled that when he'd announced that Zilly had already heard them coming and he had the feeling that Sion was too canny to have missed or forgotten that, but there was no reason to openly out her. He added, "Have you found their trail?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I guess I don't know for sure that it's the same group. After all, they registered as adventurers in Oud's Bog, so now that they've been outed as bandits they won't be able to show their faces in any cities in this part of Frenaria. It would be smart to just move on, but for some reason my gut is telling me these are the same guys."

Her gut, huh? She'd probably snuck up and verified it personally. He wondered if Sion's [True Reckoning] was good enough to see through the lie.

"Then this is all the more reason you should come back with us. You can explain all this to Hogg and Zerif personally. I'm sure they'll want to send a team out, and you can guide them in person."

She shook her head. "If anyone leaves the caravan I'll find them and catch up. But if you want, I could show you. I haven't dared to get too close just in case they have a [Rogue], but with all of us here I think it'd probably be ok."

Looking around, Brin saw that no one had a problem with that, except for Sion.

"Truly?" the young [Merchant] asked. "Should we not instead return and warn the caravan of the danger?"

"Is that spear just for show?" Brin teased.

"Mostly, yes! Most beasts will leave large groups of humans alone, doubly so after a poke teaches them that the humans have teeth."

Davi furrowed his brow. "But if you let them get away, you don't get the experience."

"The System gives me experience for warding off threats to my property, just as it would give you experience for using your song to lure monsters away," said Sion.

"Instead of goading them to attack you for no reason," said Myra. "Just to name an example."

Zilly barked a laugh. "You did that? Maybe I'll finally take your spot as their favorite person from Hammon's Bog."

"Nah, they blame me for that. You can't beat a [Bard] in a popularity contest," said Brin.

"You're all being awfully casual with the idea that there are bandits in this forest," Sion said. He looked at Brin. "You're a [Glasser], correct? Am I missing something, or is that a Class for making glass?"

"I am and it is. And I make fantastic glassware. Relax, we're just having a look. We won't get close enough for them to know we're there. Right, Zilly?"

"Absolutely," she said.

Sion shook his head, but didn't argue any further.

They walked through the forest, with Zilly in the lead. Every once in a while she examined a broken twig, or bent down to touch the ground and pretend she was seeing tracks, pretending to actually be following the bandits' trail. He wasn't sure if Sion was actually fooled or if he was just playing along, but Brin would guess it was the latter.

Marksi quickly became impatient with the slow-moving two-legs and disappeared into the forest for long stretches of time, only to reappear suddenly and walk alongside Brin as if nothing had happened.

Once, he had a somewhat smug look on his face, and Brin thought his belly looked a little more full.

"Hey! Pio said you're not supposed to eat any more solid food today! You better not have eaten any spiders."

Marksi huffed in contempt and refused to pretend to feel guilty for eating whatever he wanted.

After a while, Zilly stopped. "This is probably as far as we should go. Keep your voices down, just in case."

Brin peered into the woods, but didn't see a thing. "How are we going to–"

"Like this." Zilly stepped up to the nearest tree, and now that Brin noticed it, he saw that it was unusually wide and tall.

Unlike the tame national forests he'd been to in his old world, the trees of the Boglands had a startling amount of diversity. Pines and spruces would snuggle up next to oaks and birches without reason or pattern, giving the forest a strange and wild appearance. Of course, none of the exact species of tree from his old world existed here, but he found near equivalents for most of the tree-types he could name, which granted wasn't very many.

This one sort of looked like a fir, but with fewer and thicker branches that didn't seem to have enough needles for the amount of wood they grew. He knew kids around here loved this kind of tree because they were easy and fun to climb, and because they grew up much higher than the trees around them.

Aided by her high Dexterity, Zilly flew up the tree as easily as if it were a ladder. Brin shrugged and climbed up after her. The others waited at the bottom, since it would get sort of crowded at the top.

He climbed up after her, and honestly it was kind of fun. The feeling of the rough bark on his hands and the scent of pine brought him back to his childhood back on earth. How long had it been since he'd done something like this? He'd had to go to the park to find any really good climbing trees, and it had always made his mom nervous, but he couldn't be stopped. Kids were made to climb on things. If you never climbed a tree, how could you really even call yourself a human?

As they got higher, the branches got thinner and the tree started to sway a bit with Brin's movements. Luckily, the tree was tall enough that he didn't have to go more than three-quarters of the way up to get above the other trees.

He immediately saw what Zilly wanted to show him. Five lights in the distance, from five campfires all grouped together. The caravan never made more than one big bonfire each night, and that was mostly for cooking. The nights didn't get cold enough to really need it for warmth, although Brin still enjoyed gazing into the flames. Did the fact that they made five fires mean this group was huge? Maybe it meant that there were five factions and they didn't like each other very much.

He couldn't quite make out the figures around the fires; it was too far away. He could launch an Invisible Eye over there, but it would be hard to explain to the others why he wanted to sit on the ground staring at nothing for a half hour.

Maybe there was something he could do with glass? But nothing he wanted to try while sitting in a tree. He climbed back down.

When they got to the bottom, Zilly said, "There's twenty of them. Five groups of four."

"Why do they group up like that?" Brin asked.

"I haven't been able to figure that out."

Myra and Davi wanted to look next. They came down a few minutes later, not having gleaned anything that Brin couldn't.

Sion refused to take a turn. "I'll trust you all. Can we please go now?"

"Sure. I'll guide you part of the way back to the caravan," said Zilly.

Brin was thankful for that; he hadn't really been keeping track of the direction.

On the way back, he thought about seeing further with glass. Surely there was something he could do. He'd played around with lenses and telescopes back in Hammon's Bog, but hadn't gone very far with it because he'd always known he'd have illusions for seeing far away.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

He decided to see what he could pull off now. He cast [Summon Glass] to make something in an approximate lens shape, then cast [Shape Glass] using words of Language here and there to guide it into what he wanted. He pumped mana in wastefully, making everything happen faster than it should, and got a nice lens in a matter of minutes. He did it again, this time to make a smaller lens, and created it even faster than the first. When he'd tried this back in the shop, he'd had the best success with the larger lens being convex, while the smaller lens was concave, but flat on one side, so that's what he did now.

Then he made the tubes, a short one for the small lens and a much longer one for the bigger lens. This he could do quicker, since they didn't need to be clear or pure; they were for blocking light rather than refracting it.

He made the tubes just the right size so that they could slot into each other while still being able to slide, and then attached the lenses to his tubes. It was crude, and he'd used nearly a quarter of his mana to rush the job, but it was done. He'd made a telescope. Well, it was a little arrogant to call this a telescope. He'd made a spyglass.

[Shape Glass] leveled up! 32 -> 33