As the man's size clearly indicated, he was one to indulge his desires. Which was why the tent was full of scantily clad women all wearing veils and formfitting attire that left very little to the imagination. Unfortunately for the man, his propensity to indulge in one area kept him from being able to indulge in another. Looking at the man's protruding gut, his fat fingers, and trunk-sized legs Greg somehow doubted that he engaged in a lot of physical activities. The women were an indulgence that he could only desire but never truly have no matter how many of them he packed into his tent.
Seated beside the man was a slender woman who was conspicuously just as ornamented as the man. While the women in the tent were dressed provocatively, none of them had even a hint of jewelry on them. If this clear status distinction wasn't clue enough, then the fact that she was the only woman seated directly next to the man told Greg that she was probably the man's wife. She also happened to be the only one not wearing a veil to hide her beauty. Greg could see the subtle assertion of her position as wife. While the other women were faceless toys to be played with, she was the only one whose beauty he was allowed to admire. Her lack of veil, however, made it impossible not to notice the raw desire in her eyes as she visually devoured him. Months of arduous training with his familiar had left Greg a broad-chested, well-muscled, and exquisitely-toned specimen. This, paired with the fact that Roka had a naturally handsome face, made it so that he drew the gazes of most women who caught sight of him. Add on the fact that he had become a legend to those in the caravan, it was easy to see why such intense desire seemed to be coming in waves from the women in the tent.
Ever since they landed in Ethavel, Greg had been focused entirely on dissolving his teacher's mana pathways. After that, he turned his attention to dealing with the mages from the Draknar alliance. It had been months since he last attempted this new dungeon that he'd unlocked. Now that things seemed to finally be going in the right direction, Greg had decided to go for another dungeon run. After all the life mana Greg had used in the past few months, his affinity for the earth element had degraded significantly. Moving on the sand had been a lot more of a headache for him this time than it had been on previous runs. He didn't have it anywhere near as bad as the totally green recruits, but someone watching them closely would easily tell that he wasn't one of the veterans. Even his connection to the earth had grown a lot more muted than it had been before. He still got 'feelings' and 'impressions' from the ground below him, but they were vague and indistinct, not delivering any clear messages to him.
But while his connection to the earth had been weakened, Greg himself had grown far stronger than he'd been before. Having already tried this dungeon before, Greg had already been on edge awaiting the attack by the desert bandits. And so, when his earth connection transmitted the feeling of something being off, Greg immediately lifted the foot he'd just set down. Barely a second later, a knife had swiped through where the back of his leg had been, hoping to sever his Achilles tendon. Rather than jump back, as he had always done in this situation, Greg brought his foot down with every bit of strength he could master. After the procedure with his teacher, this was no small amount. With the strength of a body-enhancing mage in the third tier, Greg wasn't surprised when the ground sunk a few inches lower to the tune of ribs snapping like twigs. The sand a short distance from the tip of his foot turned crimson as blood was forced out of his attacker's mouth.
As usual, there were screams as a few of the guards had their Achilles tendons severed. The few still green guards that allowed themselves to fall to the ground were silenced a short while later as the same blades that crippled them found their way to their throats. All too quickly, the shrill cries of pain were replaced with battle cries as their attackers jumped out of the sand like dolphins leaping out of water. Unlike every other time, however, the three bandits closest to Greg found themselves headless even before their feet touched the ground once more. One of the unexpected side effects of training under Olivia was the switch in mentality that came over Greg whenever he got into a fight.
Olivia was an overwhelming force on the battlefield. When he first started training under her, Greg was certain that his familiar was just torturing him for her amusement. The more he persevered, however, the more he realized what she was doing. Olivia would find out what your limits were and then just go past them slightly. Enough so that any mistakes you made would be harshly punished. At the same time, however, if you kept a cool head, and gave it your all, then you'd grow with each fight. Every time you pushed yourself just that bit more in fighting, your skill, your endurance, your reaction speed, they'd all grow steadily. After so long training under her, it had become a natural instinct for Greg to chase that bit of improvement. Getting it, however, required that you give everything you could and then try to push a bit beyond your furthest limit. This meant that when Greg entered battle, everything else fell away. Anything and everything that didn't directly impact the fight faded from acknowledgment. Instead, he became a cold and ruthlessly efficient killing machine only interested in taking down the enemy.
Even before Greg received a comprehensive improvement in his physical prowess, he could go toe to toe with most of the bandits in this attack. Now, as the equivalent of a third-tier body-enhancing mage, he was orders of magnitude stronger and faster than any of their attackers. By the time Greg noticed that something was off and that he wasn't being challenged to the same degree he was used to with his familiar, he was stabbing through the seventeenth bandit with enough force to pick the man off the ground. Greg might not have been able to match Olivia in terms of speed, but that didn't mean that he was in any way slow. When he pushed himself to the max, his motions seemed to become a blur to those around him as they proved incapable of keeping up with him. Almost twenty of them had died by the time he realized that these weren't equal opponents. After his power-up, he had become a shark and all these bandits were just small fish swimming in his waters.
Olivia had made it a point to punish him whenever he paused stupidly mid-fight. As such, Greg had only paused for a split second before he continued with the carnage. They were far weaker than him and he was reaping their lives like it was nothing. Did that elicit any mercy, guilt, or sense of shame in him? Not even remotely. Greg knew without a shred of doubt that if their places were reversed, they would kill him without even a moment of hesitation. And this wasn't just conjecture, Greg had died enough times to this group of bandits to know this for a fact. Now that he had the upper hand, he planned to press his advantage to the fullest. Like the grim reaper, Greg moved through the battlefield leaving behind him a trail of blood and gore.
By Greg's best estimate, there had been about three hundred bandits attacking the caravan. He was a little past his fiftieth kill when a mage was sent after him. Unfortunately for them, and luckily for Greg, the one they sent after him was an earth mage. Ever since he gained the earth connection, Greg had gotten all manner of sensations from the earth, the one thing he was yet to feel, however, was hostility. That's why it had been so jarring. Greg had just parried a dagger thrown at him when he felt the ground under him turn against him and desire to bury him. Indecision is death. This was something that Olivia had beaten into him countless times during their training sessions. The situations in which standing around and doing nothing was the right decision in the middle of battle were few and far between. Oftentimes, even if it wasn't the best possible choice, you'd still suffer a lot less by choosing a course of action and committing to it rather than hesitating at a critical moment. This was why, the second the sensation hit him, Greg immediately jumped away.
Barely a second after he jumped away, the sands where Greg had been standing started to turn in a circular motion like water draining down a sink. Greg couldn't help the cold sweat that soaked his back when the bandit he'd been about to execute barely had time to yelp before he disappeared under the sands. Turning this way and that, Greg had surveyed his surroundings trying to see if he could find the earth mage. Whoever they were, however, they seemed to be the cautious type as they didn't stand out in any way. With the color of their robes blending in with the sand of the desert, and the chaos of battle all around him, picking out a single individual was impossible. Whoever this mage was, they were hoping to end him from the shadows. Letting out a derisive snort, Greg had shot off once again. Whoever this mage was, he wasn't the only one that could be elusive.
They would have to keep up with him if they hoped to do him in. Greg, however, moved like the wind and crossed from one end of the battlefield to the other in under a minute. And with the caravan stretching for almost a kilometer, this was no small feat. What was even worse for his elusive mage was the fact that nothing he did was hidden from Greg. He'd already reaped another ten lives by the time he felt the earth turn against him once more. As soon as he felt it, however, Greg was gone. Anyone observing him might have thought that Greg was fully engrossed in the fighting he'd been doing. The truth, however, was that he had been keeping a close eye on the combatants around him. If anyone had come after him, there was very little chance he would have missed them. At first, even while running away, Greg had been confused by the second attack seeing as he hadn't spotted any mage coming after him. But then, it clicked. His gaze had turned to the sands below him as he remembered how the bandits initially stayed hidden.
Powerful as he had become, Greg knew his limits. His affinity for the earth element was severely weakened. On the other hand, his affinity for the school of life, while powerful, was entirely useless in this situation. He wasn't going to heal his way out it. He just simply wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to go toe to toe with a mage that could cross almost a kilometer a in few minutes by moving through the sand. No matter how fast Greg moved from one end of the battlefield to the other, this mage was almost always just a minute or two behind him. This was why there was zero shame in Greg as he led the poor mage on a merry chase all around the battlefield. The mage's inability to keep up with Greg made it so that Greg would have reaped the lives of three to five bandits by the time they caught up.
Greg could understand why the mage didn't surface even if just for the added speed of not having to wade through sand. The bandits and caravans seemed to have a mutual understanding. Don't bring out the big guns and we won't either. If mages were involved, the scale of destruction would sharply rise. Winning the battle after the whole caravan was destroyed would hold very little meaning for either side. But since when had people abided by rules perfectly? Especially when greed was involved. Both Greg and the mage after him were playing in the grey area of plausible deniability. Greg had been fighting with superhuman strength and speed but hadn't cast any spells, meaning that the bandits couldn't point to him as justification for bringing out their mages. They, on the other hand, had chosen a mage that could remain entirely hidden even as he went after the one decimating their more mundane allies. Unfortunately for them, the need to remain hidden meant that they had no hope of catching up to him. Greg's kills were fast approaching a hundred by the time the bandits finally sounded a horn for them to retreat.
