Ch40: Raiding A Wagon & Looking Through The Loot

Krvavy doesn’t want to just murder a man, but... it isn’t like he is unarmed and undefended. He has a couple weapons on him. He is clearly prepared to be attacked, as if he was expecting it to happen. Which... makes it better...?

The horses continue to neigh and stamp their hooves, resisting the old merchant’s orders as best they can.

After just a few moments of thinking this through... Krvavy makes up her mind. She is playing as a savage barbarian, and what are barbarians so often depicted doing? Raiding. So that is exactly what she’ll do. It’ll get her some loot and some experience. And it should be more entertaining than a hike through the woods. It’s a win win win for her.

Plus, she has done worse things than this before.

With her decision made, Krvavy rises to her feet and steps out from behind the bush she had been using as cover. Her fingers tighten around the bone-handled haft of her axe as she takes a deep breath and, without any more hesitation, immediately charges down the hill.

The horses notice her before the travelling merchant does. They whinny and bray in fear, pulling against their reins and violently rocking the wagon. Those panicking animals ignore the worried orders shouted at them as they bolt away from the incoming barbarian, veering off the road.

Which is probably the best thing that could have happened. At least for Krvavy. That sharp, almost ninety degree, turn causes the wagon to tip and flip over onto its side, throwing the man riding it onto the ground before he can even see her.

Pained neighing joins the utterly terrified noises that the horses are making as one topples over, getting trampled by its partner. The wagon is dragged just a little bit before the reins finally give in and snap, one horse running off without hesitation while the other has to scramble back onto its hooves before it can do the same.

“What in–!?” Is all the travelling merchant can shout out before Krvavy is on him with her axe. He was lucky enough that his spear landed within arms reach, letting him grab the thing and lift it up just in time to block the barbarian’s strike.

But that isn’t quite enough to save him. The old wooden haft of his spear just isn’t strong enough to keep Krvavy’s axe from his prone body. Splinters rain down on him in his very last moments.

Critical Hit! 583.47 Damage dealt to [Travelling Merchant]

[Travelling Merchant] has been slain!+100 Experience

Level Up! You have reached Level 8. As a Drakling blessed by a divine power, you have 5 attribute points to allocate and have gained +2 to Might & Toughness. If not allocated by the time you fall asleep it will be done automatically.

It is over as soon as it began.

Krvavy frowns. That was honestly a bit disappointing. She kind of expected a bit... more.

At least she got a level up out of it...?

Shaking her head, Krvavy looks down at the dead merchant.

As has become a habit while out and about, Krvavy has been using Seismic Stomp every now and then, to make the most out of her regen and earn what little experience she can. Which means that her mana could use a bit of a topping up, and this is as good a chance as any to use Transmute Blood to do just that.

Fresh blood flows up her axe, going against gravity in trickling streams that thin and fade away as if being absorbed into her weapon. Bit by bit her mana is restored. But the corpse dries up all too soon, leaving Krvavy feeling a little... disappointed. She recovered less than thirty points of mana from that.

Another notification suddenly pops into her vision, washing away that minor bit of disappointment.

Knit Flesh: Utilizing the sanguine arts you can weave living flesh together, shaping bodies and mending wounds. Costs 10 Mana per second of use. Associated attributes = Toughness & Insight.

That one new spell immediately makes raiding this wagon worth it, even if she doesn’t end up getting any loot. Krvavy finally has a healing spell! Or at least a spell that can stop her from bleeding to death. Which is good enough for her.

And while she is looking at her new spell, Krvavy might as well quickly allocate those stat points. She has been neglecting her magic a bit, so how about fully focusing on the mental stats for a little while?

Putting all of the points into Rationality would probably be best if she wanted to get more Mana, but her Earth Magic uses Willpower and she has already started bringing up her Perception... So she may as well continue that. At least until she gets the milestone traits. Three points into Willpower and two into Perception, then.

There. That looks alright. Now time to see what loot this wagon has for her.

Pulling her axe from the desiccated merchants chest, Krvavy eagerly takes a step towards the overturned wagon. Surprisingly, none of the goods have been tossed free, as they have all been securely tied down beneath a course fabric tarp.

Placing her crude weapon aside, Krvavy begins to carefully loosen the ropes holding everything in the wagon. They’re tied so frustratingly tight that she almost wants to just cut them with her knife, but thick ropes like these feel useful enough for her to resist that urge...

As soon as her work is done, the tarp gets dragged down by the weight of the goods within, crashing into the ground with a series of dull thuds.

In hindsight, Krvavy probably should have flipped the wagon back onto its wheels first...

But luckily it didn’t sound like anything broke. A quick glance across the fairly convenient display of loot shows that to simply be because there wasn’t anything to break. It is just a bunch of sacks and bags, with a single suspiciously rectangular thing wrapped in fabric partially buried beneath them.

That wrapped rectangle stands out enough to draw the Drakling in, and she immediately goes for it. Dragging it out from beneath the sacks reveals that whatever this thing is, it is long. Maybe as tall as Krvavy is. And it is also rather flat. Like a giant envelope. One that is oddly solid too. From the feel of it, this fabric has had long and narrow wooden slats sewn into it...

Untying some small cords and pulling aside the slatted fabric reveals a long wooden pole, dark and well polished, which has been partially reinforced by some strips of a washed out bronze coloured metal. A bundle of fabric is wrapped around one end, the shape of which makes it pretty obvious just what this is.

Peeling away that last bit of cloth confirms Krvavy’s suspicions. This is undeniably a polearm. One with three heads, each made from a dark silvery metal that looks a lot like steel. At its tip is a triangular spearhead flanked by both a rather square hammer and a crescent axe situated just a little further down the shaft. It appears to be some sort of halberd, to be specific.

Alytu Poleaxe: This expertly crafted poleaxe is made in the Vantein design, with a symmetrical axehead, a tapered spearhead, and a ridged hammerhead. The haft is composed of treated Ironbark Hickory heartwood reinforced by Ukkin Bronze, while the heads are of polished cold-iron Tolldean Steel. Deals primarily Impact, Puncture, or Slash damage, depending on the head used.

Well, that is rather fancy.

Honestly, Krvavy is really tempted to make this her new main weapon. It sounds a lot better than her axe, which is just a jagged head of iron jammed into a large femur. But there is one problem with that idea. This poleaxe is a lot more realistic in its design...

The heads feel so small compared to what she is used to. That is pretty disappointing, as she likes the bigger and more fantasy look. Sure, it’ll better concentrate the force of her attacks, but... it also has noticeably less weight to it. So it might not hit as hard. And, more importantly, if Krvavy were to use this then she would have to actually aim her strikes. At least compared to her current wild swinging.

What a shame.

But she is still going to take this poleaxe. There is absolutely no doubt about that. It looks cool, so it’d make a good trophy. And she can still use it as a backup for her current axe. It is definitely better than the Orc hammer that she has in her little ‘hoard’.

Wrapping it back up, Krvavy then turns her attention to the rest of the loot. The sacks are all rather disappointing, to be honest. All they contain is a bunch of grains. Which she doesn’t strictly need. Though having extra food isn’t really a bad idea... But she wouldn’t be able to carry them all home even if she wanted to. They are a bit too cumbersome, and she didn’t even bring a backpack.

Feeling a little underwhelmed, she moves onto the looser bags. There are only a few of them laying about, and hopefully they have something good in them. She isn’t unhappy with the poleaxe, but she’d still prefer actual loot. Though she has no idea what exactly that would be...

Opening up the nearest of those bags reveals a few rolls of a slightly shiny white fabric. Six rolls to be exact. This certainly seems valuable, at least compared to grain. And she guesses that she could use the fabric for something? So it isn’t entirely useless to take?

Rolled Bolt of Jihani Silk: This luxuriously soft and smooth fabric shimmers in the light. It is remarkably durable and resilient, even for silk. This particular bolt has remained undyed and is rolled around an approximately 1.5m (5’) rod of Jihani Mulberry wood with decoratively carved caps.

Krvavy’s eyes go wide as she uses Inspect on the fabric. It is silk! She is definitely bringing this home with her. This stuff must be extremely valuable! Not only does Inspect make it seem better than normal silk, but since this is a rather realistic world she’d bet that silk is just as much of a luxury as it was in history. And on top of that, this is a lot of silk.

Quickly opening up the other two bags reveals that they too are filled with near-identical rolls. The only difference is that some of them are dyed pink, red, coppery orange, golden yellow, dark and light green, blue, and a royal looking purple. Most of the rolls are still undyed white, but Krvavy doesn’t care as this is just a treasure trove of silk!

But how is she going to bring home eighteen rolls of silk? Without damaging them?

Testing out an errant thought, the barbarian ties the silk stuffed bag shut and carefully lifts it up into the air. It isn’t particularly heavy. As expected. Krvavy figures that she could carry the weight of all three bags around with relative ease. But that isn’t really the problem.

If she thought some oat filled sacks would be cumbersome to carry, then even just one of these bags of silk will be even worse. And she wants all three.

Her brow furrows as her gaze drops down to the ground. To the tarp and the ropes that all of this loot is resting atop. An idea slowly forms in her mind. Though who know how well it’ll work.

Krvavy can tie these three bags together into one very large bundle, all contained within the tarp. That will safely hold all the silk together, and then she can carry that large bundle around like a backpack, or something.

Deciding to at least give her idea a try, Krvavy moves the wrapped up poleaxe out of the way before going around and tossing each and every sack of grain off to the side, one after another. Grabbing up the ropes, she then ties the three bags containing silk together, placing them in the center of the tarp. Her knots are pretty sloppy and honestly not the best, but they are holding and that is all that matters.

Glancing over at the wrapped poleaxe, Krvavy decides to include it in all of this. That’ll give her one less thing to carry. And so, she carefully slides the thin rectangular package in between the three bound bags, making it sure it stands upright in between them. It seems like she didn’t tie the ropes tight enough, as it is surprisingly easy to get the packaged poleaxe in there, but luckily the extra width makes it all a little more secure.

Now all that she needs to do is lift up the corners and edges of the tarp, wrapping them around her crudely bundled loot...

And, after just a few minutes of work, Krvavy is done.

The tarp is a bit oversized, to put it lightly, so there was a lot of excess fabric that she had to deal with. That ended up being fairly helpful though, as she was able to fold it back down and tie it around the shaft of the poleaxe, just beneath the heads. Hopefully that’ll make the whole tarp contraption rather secure, and won’t make it to hard to untie.

Grabbing the big bundle near the top, Krvavy hefts it up over her shoulder. This is rather awkward, but doable. She probably looks ridiculous with this giant bag. And it is going to be an absolute pain getting this thing through the woods, isn’t it?

Still, she’ll give it a try.

Now, is she done here? Or should she do something about this wagon? Oh, and she should see if the travelling merchant had any money on him. She didn’t find any amongst this loot, so he probably did...

Carefully placing the unwieldy tarp bag back onto the ground, Krvavy goes over to the merchant’s corpse and rummages through his pockets. Sure enough, she finds a few pouches stuffed with coins, mostly gold but there are a few silver ones too. Despite his appearance he seemed to have a fair bit of money. Guess he was hoping to fly under the radar with all this silk.

Krvavy probably should have looted him earlier so that she could just toss these pouches into her large bundled bag, but it is too late now. She is not undoing that thing until she gets home. And so, tearing a few strips from the merchant’s clothing, as he doesn’t really need it anymore, Krvavy ties the pouches to her loincloth. The coins jingle a bit when she moves, which is a little annoying, but at least she’ll know if she drops them.

As for the wagon... Krvavy decides to tip it back onto its wheels and push it into a nearby ditch. Anyone using this road will definitely see it, but at least it won’t be in their way.

Now that Krvavy is done here, she should really head on home. Krvavy can’t wait to see Thea’s reaction when she shows the spoiled brat of a noble all of this silk. There isn’t really anything they can use it for, probably, but Thea definitely seems like the kind of girl who likes superficial things like this.

Picking up the large tarp bag and then her axe, hefting both over different shoulders, Krvavy turns and heads back towards the woods.