The lead Fighter finally snapped out of his daze. He used Power Strike against Jack. Jack met the move with the same skill. Two swords imbued with Power Strike skill clashed in mid-air. The damage of Jack's Power Strike completely overpowered the lead fighter's one. Even after deducting the reduction of damage caused by an attack against attack, the lead Fighter still suffered 108 damage as he was thrown away by the Power Strike force.
He crashed onto a nearby tree and suffered additional damage from it. Jack reached him before he could get up and gave him two rapid slashes as well before kicking him towards the ranger and the magician.
The sequences of the fight had transpired at a fast pace. Before they knew it, the group of robbers had lost half of their fighting force. The three that had been put in a critical situation were dazed that they forgot to use any restorative potion. The remaining three who had been hit by Swing previously immediately put themselves in front of the wounded three. One of them yelled at those behind them, "use your potions!"
The Ranger responded first, he took out his basic healing potion and was about to drink it.
"Oh, no you don't!" Jack said as his hand swung his sword forward. A crescent light shot out and passed through the gap between the three persons guarding at the front. The sword light hit the Ranger who was just about to drink his potion and caused massive damage, which eclipsed the Ranger's remaining HP. He fell lifelessly to the ground, his thought was still wondering what had happened.
The three players at the front who saw the crescent light passing through them, had their eyes fixed on the Ranger's lifeless body. They also had a hard time understanding what exactly just happened. What was that skill? While they were in a trance, they felt pain in their bodies.
Jack never stopped moving, he had run forward while sending his Sword of Light to kill the Ranger. He used the chance while the three were in a stupor to get close enough and made rapid slashes on all three of them. They were standing close to each other so he could hit them without moving much from one position. The two fighters were hit with three slashes each and the remaining Ranger were hit with two slashes.
He then stopped his attacks, stepped back, and said to them, "now I only need to hit each of you one time, and you will die. Don't try to drink your potion or run, you saw the skill I used before. I can hit you from a distance. I will not hesitate to kill you if any of you try anything funny."
Of course, they didn't know that his Sword of Light had three minutes cooldown, which made it unavailable at the moment. But they were scared enough to not think that Jack was bluffing. They had seen the high damage from the man's attack, they did believe that he only need one more slash to kill anyone of them.
"W–what do you want?" One of them asked.
"Hehe," Jack gave a wicked grin. "I am giving you guys the same option you gave me a while ago. Either die and lose everything, or give me the permission to take everything inside your storage inventory."
All of them were stupefied. Weren't they supposed to be the ones that did the robbing? Why was it the other way around?
"Make your choices," Jack said, then pointed to the closest fighter. "You, I will give you three seconds to decide. If I still cannot reach inside your bag after the count of three, you can just start over from the beginning."
"One…," Jack started counting.
"Two…"
Before Jack could say three, the Fighter raised his hands. "I surrender! I surrender! Take whatever you want!" He screamed.
It was a sensible choice, although he would lose all his possessions, it was still better than to also lose his level and completely start over from the beginning. Unless he was completely bitter and preferred to lose everything rather than gave Jack the benefit, there was no reason for him to defy.
Once he agreed to the condition, Jack felt that he could send his consciousness into the person's storage bag just like how he could check his own. The guy had surprisingly many items, but most were common grade. Jack simply moved everything into his bag without checking on them. He also stripped the poor guy off the equipment he was wearing, leaving him half-naked with only junk undergarments.
He gave a signal that the Fighter could go, the guy was hesitant for a moment before he started moving. He was still looking back every few steps to make sure Jack did not trick him and backstab him. After he was at a distance where he thought he was safe, he broke into a run towards the capital.
Jack then moved to the next player. After seeing his comrade was really being released after complying with Jack's demand, the next person surrendered more swiftly.
In the end, Jack robbed them all. Except for the dead ranger, which only dropped a single piece of equipment, the others complied. The ones with the most valuables were the level 16 lead fighter and magician. The two of them had all 5 cbm of their space storages filled up, they must have been the first ones to collect the loots from the people they robbed.
From the quantity Jack had gotten, Jack could gauge that they must have robbed quite a large number of other players. There were various types of equipment, from cloth armors to even heavy armors, multiple kinds of weapons, ingredients, materials, potions, and even some tools. No rare items though, most were common and a few uncommon.
Jack didn't have the time to organize all of them yet. In fact, his limited 5 cbm standard storage was not enough to hold all the goods. Good thing he had that Large Bag that had been sitting inside his inventory unused all this time, he could finally put it to good use. All the overload goods, he put inside this Large Bag which could hold a volume of 100 cbm.
For the coins, he could calculate their amount at once. From all five of them, he had collected 7 gold, 83 silver, and 42 copper coins. It was a massive earning, it was much more profitable than a single trip of his efficient hunting quests, Jack couldn't imagine how many players had become their victims. Perhaps he should follow in their footsteps and be a robber instead of doing honest quests?
He chased the last person away after robbing him clean. The guy was worried as hell that Jack would simply just kill him since there was no one left to show his sincerity, but Jack still followed through with his promise and let the man go. Jack wondered if those robbers also kept their words to let their victims go after they were done robbing them.
He was still grinning as he watched the last robber getting further into the distance. His coin savings had been filled up again now. He looked towards the East, then headed in that direction.
"Where are you going? You are not going back to the capital to submit your hunting quests?" Peniel asked.
"No, I just found a really high-profit work," Jack answered.
Peniel was confused for a while before she said, "wait, you are not talking about robbing people, right?"
"Half correct, I am robbing robbers," Jack exclaimed.
"Are you nuts? Do you expect you can find robbers everywhere?"
"No, but you heard what they said, didn't you? They were talking about competing with other teams. That means there are other groups of robbers out here. Most probably there is someone that organizes these robbers to make a profit out of the misery of others. Don't you think us making a profit while delivering justice is something worthwhile to be done?"
"But where do you even want to find these supposed robber teams? You should have kept one of them captive to get the information on the whereabouts."
"I considered it before, but they could easily send a message to their organizer to warn the other teams. That's why I didn't bother to. Better they consider this to be an isolated case, so the other teams won't get alarmed."
"You still have the problem on how to find them."
😉