Jamal was not happy. He hated it when the boss ran off to do his thing. How was he supposed to keep him safe when he wasn’t around?

  And no matter how strong the boss became, he definitely needed people around him to keep him safe. He took too much on himself—not just the fighting, but the worrying too.

  He admitted he was being a bit hypocritical to be worrying now as well.

  But he had seen the boss at his lowest point, after the accident. He knew that Michael blamed himself for not being around when the accident happened… but what about him? He had been around and still hadn’t been able to prevent it.

  Then the hard work of getting the boss back on his feet—but fortunately that time was behind them. He enjoyed seeing the settlement grow as much as the next guy, but he would have preferred lower profile activities for the boss. It would have been easier to keep him safe.

  Now he had to focus on reaching Tier 2; that should help him achieve his goal. After the accident he’d promised Allison—“boss mom,” as he called her—that he’d look after her son, and he intended to. His time with the Jacksons had been life-changing, and he had paid his debts.

  In his grumpiness, he was also angry with Michael—not much, the man was his brother in everything but blood, after all—but a little. He’d been in full ‘shadow assassin’ mode lately and hadn’t shown since they met the nine men from the city.

  That was yet another reason to be grumpy—these guys, at least some of them, were bad business. Jamal could tell. But the boss would always just offer to help everybody, no matter who…

  He was looking for another reason to be grumpy and finally admitted to himself that he was probably just hangry—something that had followed him since childhood. He pulled out one of the homemade energy bars that the kitchen was making these days and happily munched on it while doing some lazy exercises with his shield on his left arm.

  As he turned around, he saw a group of the men, led by the loudmouth Carter, coming over, lips thin in agitation. Jamal didn’t react as Allison was responsible for ‘public relations’ in their team. He was very fine with that.

  When Allison turned to Carter, the low-life swung at her with his long knife without warning. Jamal was too far away to interfere, but raised his shield anyway in reflex.

  A golden message appeared in his vision:

  Your perk [Shield Handling] has evolved to [Bulwark Stance] — Active. Increased resistance while holding a shield. Once a day, you can interpose your shield to block an attack on an ally in your field of vision. Uncommon

  He blinked the message away and saw a golden shimmering shield block the cowardly attack on boss mom. Despite being translucent, it clanged loudly as the knife hit it.

  He was no longer angry. He was furious. He shouted a [Provoking Roar] from the depths of his soul, and all five men who had been part of the attack focused on him.

  In that moment, Michael appeared from nowhere and executed the leader with two quick stabs of his new scorpion-stinger dagger.

  Anne, who had stood beside Allison, pummeled one of the attackers and landed a vicious kick on another, while Luz, who had been talking with them, took a few steps back.

  Jamal stormed forward and bashed one of the two remaining men with his shield and lashed out with his axe at the other. The man, an overweight dude with a fancy-looking sword in his hand, tried to block but lost two fingers from his hand in the maneuver. He cried in pain and sagged to the ground—likely out of the fight.

  Roots sprang from the earth and grabbed the man he had shield-bashed. Michael had incapacitated one of the two men Anne was fighting with via a couple of strategically placed stabs, and Anne knocked her remaining opponent out.

  Within seconds the fight was over.

  Michael was about to end the four surviving attackers, but Allison stopped him.

  “Don’t, Michael. They are horrible human beings, but they are no longer a threat.”

  Jamal personally didn’t care too much, but he knew that the boss wouldn’t want that—despite everything, he would not want to have fellow humans killed like that. At least normally. Thinking about it, Jamal was not sure how the boss would react to an attack on his mother.

  It would be interesting either way. He picked up the rest of the energy bar, cleaned it, swallowed it, and started to secure the attackers.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Keeping this family safe really was a full-time job.

  ***

  Ben was packed with the branches he had harvested for Deepika as he returned to his team. But what he saw as he closed in was far from what he expected. Anne stood over four men cowering to the side, while Jamal, Michael, and his mother watched another four—beat-up and bleeding. Luz stood over their backpacks a few meters away. The group's leader—his name escaped Ben—lay to the side, clearly dead.

  He dropped the branches and sprinted the last few meters.

  “What happened? Are you okay?” he shouted as he closed the distance.

  Allison waved to calm him down. “We are fine. These… criminals attacked us a few minutes ago, likely to take our equipment, but we subdued them.”

  “Boss mom, with all due respect, they didn’t just try to steal from us—they tried to kill you without warning.”

  Jamal rarely contradicted what Allison said, so he must have been furious, but Ben had no headspace to think about Jamal’s state of mind. He had to fight to stay in control of his own emotions. He felt his fury rise from his gut, through his heart, narrowing his field of vision, but he fought back. His [Meditation] perk helped him stay in control and he took a couple of calming breaths.

  Staying in control, however, did not mean that he was not furious; it just meant that he could channel his emotions productively.

  “What about those?” he asked, waving toward the group that Anne was watching over.

  “They did not participate in the fight?” Anne responded.

  “Did they warn you?”

  “No.”

  The men had the decency to look ashamed. One of them was Jason, the man who had dissented with their leader initially. Ben turned away in disgust.

  He looked to his mother. “Do you have a preference about what to do with them?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. This guy was the one who attacked me directly.” She pointed towards the dead man. “If Jamal hadn’t somehow blocked the attack from meters away, it would have been dicey. But the others never really got a chance to do anything before we took them down.”

  Ben thought about his options.

  Bring them back to the Protectorate and punish them there somehow? Never in a million years. He didn’t want these kinds of people in his settlement.

  Leave them here?

  Kill them?

  He had never believed in the death penalty. Now that people had tried to kill his mother and his friends, he was… tempted. But no. That wasn’t his way. It wasn’t the way he wanted the Protectorate to take.

  So, leave them here? Take their weapons away? No, that was too close to a death sentence this far up the mountains.

  What if they found their way to the settlement somehow, though?

  He sighed and made his choice.

  “Michael, can I borrow your new dagger for a moment?”

  The man did not hesitate and threw it over, hilt first.

  “Jamal, can you please hold this one still?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “What are you planning, son?” Allison asked, sounding slightly worried.

  “My decision is that they will be left here with their weapons and their packs; however, I want to make sure that they will never set foot in the settlement. So, they will be marked. Jamal, hold him down.”

  The man struggled, but he had no chance against Jamal holding him in a headlock and Michael holding his feet down with one of his own.

  Ben used Michael’s dagger to carve a small notch in the man’s ear. The man screamed, though the wound barely bled.

  One of the others tried to use the opportunity to run away, but Michael was on to him in seconds and had him down on the ground right away.

  Ben ignored the commotion and moved to the next man, and then the next, until he was done.

  He wasn’t sure this was the right approach—too violent or too lenient?

  He scratched his head. It was the decision he had made and he thought he could live with it.

  “Let them go,” he said when he was done.

  One of the men was crying and still bleeding from wounds sustained in the battle. “Please, don’t send us away. We will certainly die out here without Carter! We only did it because he told us to!”

  “If all it takes for you to participate in murder is for somebody to tell you to do it, then you are definitely not welcome with us. Now leave, before I change my mind and take your weapons away as well. And make sure to never enter our territory again.”

  Now all of them looked desperate, but none tried to convince him again. They shouldered their meager packs and shuffled off.

  He looked at his mother to gauge her reaction. She patted him on the back and nodded with a smile. “I think that was a wise decision. Well done, son.”

  He felt relieved at the approval. Was that childish? No, he didn’t think so. Taking these kinds of decisions was hard and knowing that the people around you approved was important.

  He turned to the remaining four men. “Now what do we do with those?”

  Jason spoke up pleadingly, “I am so sorry for not warning you. I have to admit that I was afraid. I would do anything to not be sent away!”

  The others nodded emphatically. Whether that was due to real remorse or fear, Ben didn’t know, but from the way they looked, it was likely a little bit of both.

  He thought about it for a moment and then smiled at his team. “You know what—why should I have to make all the decisions? This is unclaimed land adjacent to the Protectorate; our law applies and the judge should decide. At least as long as you are all okay with taking those four along to the settlement?”

  Allison and Luz nodded right away. Anne and Jamal just shrugged, and Michael had already disappeared, maybe following the men they had let go.

  Ben turned to the four men who looked at him with renewed hope.

  “Okay, here is the deal. You are allowed to join us for tonight. You will not be allowed to carry weapons, but you will help us carry our load,” he said, pointing towards the branches he had dropped earlier. “Once we are at home, a judge will determine the path forward for you. Do you want to take that option, or do you prefer to take your chances out here?”

  “I would definitely take that option. But what do you mean by a judge? I thought you had just a safe cabin or something?” Jason asked.

  “It’s something like a cabin… you will have to see for yourself,” Ben said with a grin and clapped his hands.

  “Let’s go home!”

  He looked forward to seeing their little justice system in action, to what Deepika and Luz would craft from the ingredients, and to working with the professor on his perks. Lots to do, and he was excited about it.