With the blood completely drained from his face, Siegfried begged Kaya, but the herbalist merely brushed him off with a teasing smile.
This was most likely Kaya’s revenge for her partner’s foolish decision to plunge himself into the lion’s den without her.
Men had the tendency to get so drunk on the prospect of adventure that they’d forget the things promised to those dearest to them. Kaya had left her family behind and covered herself in soot to be with him. How could he have forgotten such a thing?
“So... Big Bro Siegfried isn’t called Siegfried at all?” Karsten said.
“No way... I thought Big Bro had some noble blood in him or something!” Gerrit added.
Neither of them could hide their surprise. Gerrit in particular thought that Siegfried might have been in a similar situation to his own. After all, it wasn’t the best name to give to a farmer’s son.
“Okay, then... Big Bro Dee it is, I guess?”
“Yeah, rolls off the tongue better than Big Bro Sieg!”
“I mean, c’mon, Sieg means ‘victory,’ right? It’s a bit on the nose, huh?”
“Bastards the lot of you!” Siegfried roared at his chattering Fellows. “It’s Siegfried! Call me Siegfried!”
The Fellowship’s second-in-command fought to try and maintain the image of a cool adventurer he was working toward, but the damage had already been done.
That night, there were no drinks or speeches—the next day would be a workday, after all—but they whiled away the hours teasing Big Bro Dee, overjoyed at his return.
[Tips] Affection is an emotion usually only reserved for those who are of the same standing as you.
I suddenly found myself remembering an idea called “Surprise Ninja.” Simply put, a director from my old world had advised that if your script would be made more exciting if a surprise ninja burst in and killed everyone, then your script needed work.
You might wonder why I’d be thinking about something like that at a time like this; reader, understand that at that very moment, I was fighting a decidedly unfigurative surprise ninja of my own.
Running on no sleep, we had made our way to our target location an hour before dawn, scoped out the perimeter, and waited in the early morning light until it was time to spring into action. To be honest, I had a bad feeling the whole morning. In my mind I was shouting, “Open up! This is the MPD!” as I kicked down the door. I had barely set foot inside before we were ambushed from above.
It was so out of the blue that I was dazed for just a moment. If it weren’t for Permanent Battlefield, the black-cloaked figure hurtling toward me from the rafters in perfect silence would have parted my head from my shoulders with their wicked dagger before I could form a thought.
The room was dark and the light coming in through the door barely reached inside. I couldn’t make out my assailant’s face. But the chill down my spine told me that another fatal blow was coming.
“Missed, huh?!” they spat.
I blocked their blade with Schutzwolfe, but couldn’t disarm them. My opponent registered my guard and eased out of their follow-through with astounding speed, barring me from creating any space between us.
The rule of surprise dictated that a second attack was no longer an ambush, but I’d have preferred it if they got out of my face!
“YAAAAH!”
They’re quick! They didn’t step forward; instead they twisted at the hips to go for a heavy thrust I was certain would kill if it connected. I didn’t know if the enemy had placed them there, but there were two stacks of wooden boxes by the doorway that reached up to the ceiling, shutting out any attempt to juke left or right. I couldn’t head back through the doorway, lest I embroil my Fellows in this assault. And with my would-be killer in the way, I couldn’t even push forward. They had cut off almost every move available to me.
Damn, they’re no amateur. They know just how to put a bug up a swordsman’s ass!
“Erich?!” came a call from behind me.
“Margit, fall back with our Fellows!” I shouted. “They’re too strong!”
The next blow came for my neck—straight for the gap in my armor. I couldn’t deflect this with my gauntlet. My arm was already bent, so on pure instinct I brought my sword’s hilt to bear, deflecting their attack into the upper left corner of my helm to soak the blow. I’d managed to turn a killing blow into a glancing one, but the tug on the strings tied under my jaw told me that they had managed to scrape off a whole chunk of my helmet.
What’s more, I still couldn’t do anything about the distance between us. I was stuck in super close quarters—unable to move or swing my sword properly.
My sword grip also felt odd in my hand. The wood covering its core was melting off. Most likely my foe was packing some kind of acid or virulent toxin. I could write off any defensive strategy involving sacrificing a less vital hit location to tank the next attack. Our resident healer wasn’t with us today—Kaya was with Siegfried’s group.
As soon as the poison entered my bloodstream, I would be stuck in this stalemate until it wore me out from within. In other words, if I was going to break out of this surprise hell scenario, I’d have to resort to an ace in the hole.
Bring it on, then!
“Hm?”
My opponent’s low grunt betrayed their surprise. Anyone would be caught off guard, seeing their swordsman opponent charge forward after dropping his sword. I’d cast it aside with such confidence that it seemed to indicate that all I needed to do was avoid one more hit.
I blocked the right-handed spear-hand strikes that were being sent my way with my left gauntlet and drew my fey karambit into my other hand using my cheapest Unseen Hand variant. I was hesitant to rely on it, as its range was short and its ability to cut through armor would make my sword skills rust, but in quarters close enough for me to identify my enemy’s cologne preferences, this wicked little thing could beat any sword of mine hands down.
My heavy thrust aimed to gouge right through the enemy’s jaw seemed like it would seal the deal...but it didn’t strike true. I had dropped my sword to make them think I was going to enter a desperate wrestling match with my assailant, but they saw through my bluff and blocked the attack. They’d spread their hand so that my blade passed through their middle and ring fingers, catching my incoming fist easily.
My leather glove and the gauntlet that protected the back of my hand started to hiss as they melted. Poison here too? I wasn’t sure if they had doused their own glove or if it was secreted from their very hands, but it was potent stuff if it could chew through hardened leather and metal!
Although it was dark and their cloak made their face hard to see, I could tell that they were a regular humanfolk, if on the tall side. I might not have been the tallest soldier, but as long as they didn’t have the sort of power to crush me into mincemeat as soon as they looked at me, then I shouldn’t have been at too much of a disadvantage in a knock-down, drag-out fight...
Ah!
Something bad was coming. Enough battles nearly to the death had taught me the warning signs—if I pushed, I’d be a goner. It practically had a signature stench.
I had sensed a huge whirl of mana. It wasn’t being let out; the assassin was threading it together inside their body.
I was about to kick up my knee to push the fist holding my fey knife clear, but instinctually I released the tension in my body. My form crumbled. The assassin had clenched harder on my right hand in a bid to twist it apart. My body tensed up again, and I used that sudden push of energy to try to pin them down.
In the next moment, the assassin dropped their dagger and thrust their left hand toward my neck. I jerked my jaw away and angled my neck guard and helm so that my weak points were out of reach. The assassin must have twigged that they wouldn’t be able to deliver the final blow like this, and so they suddenly grabbed at my collar.
I felt weightless. I was already in the air when I realized I had been thrown. I had been launched into an empty storage room, deeper in the building.
What power! I had worked hard to improve my own strength through my Hybrid Sword Arts and wrestling practice, but I didn’t even have the time to react! I wasn’t tall by any means, but I was fully decked out in armor; I couldn’t have been less than a hundred and eighty pounds! Just how strong were they, if they could huck me in an arc that cleared twice my own height?
The spell she had cast must have buffed her physical might. If it hadn’t, then that meant this woman had pulled off such a feat through sheer brawn. A crack of sunlight had finally caught her in the light—she was a tall and slender woman in a girlish dress that felt charmingly out of place. If she managed this on pure physical prowess alone, then she must have been somebody with Divine-level skills equal to my own!
Oh, this ain’t it! This isn’t the kind of enemy you throw out against someone doing a bit of errand work! Who the hell sent her?!
I wasn’t just stuck airborne and helpless; I was under an assault from all angles. I could barely sense the killing intent, but it was still there. Four crossbow bolts and garrote wire from below, two projectiles from above.
There was no way I had forgotten this formation and their distinctly rotten vibes. The assassins who had almost killed Schnee had come for me now. What splendid luck I had to meet them here, right when I was all alone! They must have forced me apart from my crew to create the perfect moment to eliminate me without any interruption.
I couldn’t even manage a chuckle. What had I done?! Yes, I might have helped thread together a plan that would incinerate all of Diablo’s bases, but I was positively cuddly compared to some of the other anything-goes-style adventurers!
Even with Lightning Reflexes stretching out my perception of time, I couldn’t afford to hash out my complaints in my head. I needed to get a little serious here, or it would be the end of the road.
I twisted in midair. With my feet toward the ceiling, I activated my Unseen Hands. Pushing off from a makeshift platform, I managed to clear the barrage just in time. I figured my foes hadn’t expected that I could correct course in the air, but all the same, they were too clever and I was too unlucky for them to have caught one another in their full lines of fire.
I landed hands-first and rolled into a quick somersault as I hit the ground to keep my momentum. As soon as I was on my feet again, I was running full tilt.
I was bearing down on the source of that volley of crossbow bolts. I know who you are—you’re the vierman, I thought. Even with four hands, they still needed time to reload!
Twenty paces in and I was upon them. I let out a powerful strike to their cloaked head, preventing them from even reaching for their weapon. This assassin must have had melee skills too; they dropped their crossbows and tried to square up, but they were too late. I caught them in their soft, unprotected jaw with a gauntleted fist. I felt their teeth give and fragment through the layers of leather, metal, and unfamiliar flesh.
The vierman fell backward. I wanted to follow up, but I was in no position to be greedy. As if launched from a catapult, a small figure sped toward me, their dagger held in both hands and leveled straight for my throat.
I used the momentum from my right jab to pull back with my left arm into a half-turn. My body ducked under the blow, my head kept firmly upon my shoulders. My foe registered the dodge, but I grabbed at their cloak as they passed by.
“So light...” I muttered to myself.
I used the little assassin’s momentum against them and hurled them at the kaggen that was gunning straight for me. Two pained grunts sounded at once.
I was well aware of the extra damage caused when two objects collided while they were both accelerating. Although the assassin I’d launched was only half my height, they had almost been a blur as they came rocketing toward me. It had been an easy feat to knock the kaggen straight out of her pounce with all that momentum.
Unfortunately, I was still surrounded, and I still hadn’t removed a single assassin from play yet.
Ugh, talk about a hit to the ol’ ego... I got rid of my sword and I still haven’t racked up one kill.
To top it off, when I’d slugged the vierman, I had heard the sound of the crates stacked up near the entrance crashing down. My ambusher had sealed off the entranceway to bar the way for any backup. This had bought them a ton of time—I would be on my own until Margit circled around and found another position to provide fire support from.
Adventurers worked as a unit by nature. Our work obliged us to pick fights with foes outside our weight class, and in the absence of a real force multiplier, we had to rely on the inherent advantage of numbers in the action economy. But here I was, alone against five assailants, each with enough strength to tank a single attack from me.
“Quite impressive,” the woman who had been the first to attack me said. “It has been quite a while since our formation has failed to kill our target. You’re starting to shake my faith in myself.”
I still didn’t want to show my entire hand, so I drew my emergency dagger from my waist. The woman in the dress brushed off the dust and remains of the boxes from her gloves as she approached me. It was clear that she wanted to buy some time to let her allies regroup.
Grr... I hated to answer the duel, but I steadied my breathing and readied my blade.
“But I haven’t come away from our little skirmish empty-handed,” she went on. “You are no mere swordsman, are you?”
As she walked toward me, clacking her heels with such intensity that I couldn’t believe how well she’d suppressed her presence before the ambush—when Margit had tried to suss out the presence of anyone inside, she’d said she could only sense the people sleeping upstairs—I finally realized that she was a mensch.
I had seen her dress earlier, but now that I got a better look at her I was quite surprised by her fashion sense. She was wearing Gothic Lolita fashion with long gloves, knee-high boots, a lily of the valley tattoo on her cheek, and poofy bangs that wouldn’t look out of place on a trendy guy in a fashion magazine. The image was so intense that it took my brain a few beats to process what I was looking at.
“Your methods are rather similar to mine,” she went on. “You appear to merely use magic, not devote your studies to it.”
“Who could say?” I replied. “I’m just a Renaissance man. I make it a point to learn every lesson that comes my way.”
I could sense mana waves coming from her again.
Gods dammit... It was as she said; we were of a similar breed: lightweight fighters who buffed up their skills with magic. Unlike me, she was a brawler. I admired them, but they were a pain to deal with. They pooled all their stats into a narrow set of specialties to put an unhinged amount of power behind each blow. Having allied myself with a number of them in my previous life, I could say with certainty that I was pretty familiar with the temperament.
This didn’t just come from me comparing the real world to some game systems that I was particularly fond of. I could feel the mana flowing through her and those expensive but plain gloves when she threw me earlier.
The lily of the valley was a perfect simile for her own pretty appearance combined with her fatal poison. Deadly fists and deadly venom—a package of pure bloodlust. To top it off, her appearance suggested that she would gouge away until the job was done.
Now then, what to do? The cloaked small figure and the kaggen had finally untangled themselves and were finding their footing. Behind me, I could hear the sound of the vierman spitting out blood and a tooth. Hold on—looking back at the small figure, I noticed that their hood had come off. I could finally see what was underneath: two pointy ears and a rabbit face. They were a hlessi—a race gifted with bursts of incredible speed and agility. That explained their cannonball-like charge earlier.
Finally, there was the one who’d tried to entangle me in her “garrotte wire”—the huntsman arachne.
Each of these races were extremely powerful in their own ways, each endowed with uniquely deadly traits. If I’d had the chance to be reborn as something other than a mensch, then I would have carefully considered each of these among my options.
“Whatever the case, it matters not,” the mensch woman said. “I’m sorry, but you will be dying today. No matter what.”
“I’ve received such invitations many times before, although maybe not quite so explicitly phrased,” I said.
I put on a brave front, but this woman oozed danger. To be honest, she was pretty damn frightening. Not only was she difficult for me to fight, I wasn’t even sure if I could kill her in a one-on-one matchup—even with a no-holds-barred strategy.
The meaning behind Lady Agrippina’s warning to me before I left Berylin passed through my mind: a mage needed to make sure that their spells killed as soon as, or preferably before, the enemy clocked them. It didn’t just go for me—I was probably only scratching the surface of what this mensch woman could do. Maybe her strategy had been to get me scared and paranoid of her poisonous hands. A mage slowed their foes down by getting them caught up in maybes, ifs, and but-what-abouts. In this regard, the woman had scored an A-plus.
I started to wonder about her choice of clothes, gaudy tattoos, piercings... Were they all specifically chosen to distract her enemies and confer an advantage in her own battles and negotiations? This woman’s build was designed to not only give her immense physical power, but also to let her creep around in the shadows. She was not to be trifled with.
All right, then. This isn’t working. I need to change tack.
“If you think I’ll go down so easily, then I need to get you to reconsider your estimation of me,” I said.
With the scene so drastically different from my expectations, I could practically see the GM’s intense stare which said: Abandon your mission and focus on getting out of there alive!
It would take a while for my backup to arrive. I wasn’t capable of eliminating all five of these assassins without suffering immense damage myself. I could tell that this was just the GM’s own little show: Take a look at these boss-level enemies I’ve prepared for you.
Of course, I knew better than to assume such benign intentions on my GM’s part; this crew was out for blood. But these idle thoughts of mine kept my brain’s heat gauge clear. If this were the table, then I probably would throw myself into the fight, just to reward the hard work that had gone into cooking up such a compelling death squad.
Only yesterday, Lady Maxine had warned me that my death would be the worst possible outcome for our alliance. Today’s citywide base-crushing would end successfully, but without me to keep everyone together, the mission would stall in the aftermath.
I imagined that my lineup of enemies had acted out of their usual remit in order to plot this ambush. Any penalties would probably be offset if they brought my head back on a platter. Above all else, if we wanted the win, I had to survive. I just needed to bail without incurring any wounds that would prevent my return to the battlefield.
I heard the sound of scraping metal. The vierman was getting up, and as they readied their weapon, they must have removed some kind of attachment.
The second round had begun.
The first attack came in the form of a metal stake about as thick as my finger piercing the air. It resembled the throwing nails that ninjas used, and was launched by today’s very own surprise ninja.
She was incredibly fast. This was proof enough that her mobility stats far outclassed mine, able to outpace me and attack immediately after setting up. Not only that, if I didn’t have Lightning Reflexes, I wouldn’t have spotted the second stake hiding in the trajectory of the first. I couldn’t forget that despite her dabbling in magic, she was a brawler with abilities that outpaced those seen at the table. I had vague memories that fighters from a certain TRPG lost the ability to throw projectiles after the release of a new edition. They helped to dull the fear in my mind as I dropped clear of the first stake. The second careened straight for my leg so I simply deflected it with my dagger.
In a crouch, I pushed from the ground and faced my left, in the direction of the closest way out...before turning away and dashing deeper into the warehouse.
“So that’s your game!” the mensch woman shouted.
My primary objective was to not die, but I couldn’t let these monsters tail me taking the quickest route outside. If I chose the wrong egress, then I might accidentally lead all of my Fellows into early graves. They were putting in the hours to come into their own as sword fighters, but they didn’t stand a chance against such unfair odds.
All I had done was to bring together rookies with whom I wanted to adventure. We were allies; I didn’t want them to become my personal meat shields. I would be ashamed as their leader to bring their stories to an early end by dragging them into the lion’s den with me.
I’d decided that I would escape through the back. There had to be a window or door right at the far end. If I reached it, I could claw my way to safety.
Judging by their formation and their methods, I imagined that these assassins favored subtlety. They wouldn’t want a laundry list of witnesses to eliminate, so if I made it to the street outside, I figured my odds were good that I’d be in the clear.
I was not keen on fighting in a dark, enclosed space—their obvious preferred stalking grounds. If they were craving a slugfest, then I would draw them to the base nearby, where Siegfried’s unit was probably well underway cleaning up, and take them down with our full force.
You wouldn’t catch me fighting an enemy when they had such a transparent upper hand and a clear path to their strategic goals. A killing blow was only a safe bet when you could overtake your prey with overwhelming speed and force, or else wear them down and shut them out from every avenue of escape. If you played into their hands, then your loss would be only more absolute.
Ehrengarde worked on similar principles. If you kept playing half-baked moves, your formation would be worn down before you knew it. Eventually you would reach a point where no amount of struggle would bring you back to the path to recovery.
I needed to prioritize survival. It annoyed me, but if the choice was to go down valiantly while taking down two of their number or to scamper off with my tail between my legs, then the latter was far preferable to the former.
“Got you!” I said.
“Huh?!” came the reply.
But if I was going to make it, I couldn’t keep playing coy about my tool kit. I used my space-time magic to summon back the projectile that I’d just deflected and used it to stop that hlessi in their tracks. Thanks to my timing, I’d made it look like I’d simply caught and redirected the projectile.
My enemy was struck in midair. It must have quite literally added insult to injury for them to take the same hit I’d managed to evade in an impossible quirk of fate. Still, even though I’d forced them into a bit of a corner by shutting down their offense, they were still an extremely mobile threat. Even dashing at my full speed with no intent to fight, they could easily catch up with me.
Fifty paces remained until I reached the far end of the warehouse. Running through the maze of haphazardly placed boxes and bags just about tripled the actual length of the route. What stressed me out was that I could sense my foes rushing toward me in a straight line.
I heard the sudden keening of a sharp edge slicing through the air. It was the kaggen, soaring toward my blind spot as they ignored the difficult terrain separating us.
Their shearing limbs were spread open—looking like they were ready to give what would be my last hug on this earth. It was a courageous pose to strike, betraying the confidence they had in their ability to take a blow. As I watched their not insubstantially charming face close in, it felt like I was playing first victim in a horror flick.
Before I met a grisly end, I leaped up onto a wooden crate before kicking off from another one off at an angle from the first—my crude approximation of a good old-fashioned triangle jump. A single moment of hesitation would send me crashing back down to the ground, but this was one of the few key tactics to liberate a mensch from their two-dimensional constraints.
My opponents made a living attacking their targets without being seen. They researched their opponents—to a fault. I was a mensch, therefore I would only move on the ground; this assumption was their downfall. The kaggen’s attempt to block me off was terrifying, made even more so by their form and their grotesque three-part rage grimace, but it’d take more than my full complement of armor to keep someone like me from making the occasional airborne maneuver.
“Ah!”
They went whizzing past me down below. A momentary flash of greed urged me to stamp on their head as they went by, but I decided to play it safe. Letting my desire to show off and get the win anyway would totally scupper my getaway plan.
“Blood ’n’ thunder!” I sputtered.
Seeking my next foothold—at this point, leaping between these boxed stepping stones was a faster way of getting away—I cast my gaze all around me and saw the beginnings of a horribly deadly attack coming my way. I quickly unleashed my Unseen Hands and yanked at my collar, putting on the emergency brakes. The whiplash hurt my neck a bit, but it beat the hell out of the alternative.
The vierman had readied a gargantuan bow that they needed two hands to steady and two hands to draw. There was practically zero lag between the sound of the arrow being loosed and it barely grazing me. In the next moment, I heard the deafening sound of it crashing through the back wall of the warehouse. Arrows were not supposed to fly that fast!
If I had chosen to deflect it, it would have smashed right through.
What the hell was with that stupidly big bow?! It was taller than your average mensch and about as thick as my forearm. No normal person should be able to even draw that!
I wondered what tricks they had pulled on the arrow too. Usually one made affordances for concerns like gravity and air resistance when creating bows and other projectile weapons, but despite the vierman being 150 paces away, their arrow had flown perfectly straight. I wasn’t sure if it was magic or a miracle, but something must have been done to let it ignore the laws of nature and fly like a rifle bullet. If I had decided to get in that extra hit on the kaggen, I would’ve been shish-kebabbed. I could tell from the angle of their attack that they’d known the arrow wouldn’t slow down, even if it had to bulldoze through some of these crates to get at me.
That was too close. I knew this was life-and-death, but the bloodlust from this lot was off the charts. What the hell were pros like these doing messing around with the drug trade?!
I continued my escape, keeping an eye out for a second sniper shot, but somehow the arachne had gotten the jump on me. This huntsman arachne could move far quicker than their size suggested. Arachne were arachne no matter their size, it seemed.
All the same, I wanted to believe that they had moved at max speed to pull off this end run. If not, then it was just unfair that they could do this when I had to sacrifice any major action to push my movement and still end up slower than them.
Now that I was closer, I could finally tell that my glimmer of hope wasn’t a window but a door. The poor lighting and the cluttered layout had made it difficult to make out, but my earlier checks had told me that an escape route was guaranteed. I’d been wise to look ahead.
Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t heading out that way!
With only ten paces left until I reached the end of the room, I readied my dagger in a reverse grip, and suddenly I felt the weight of tremendous killing intent. There shouldn’t have been anyone behind me, but still I felt it suddenly gush forth. This wasn’t good—I was just readying myself to smash right through the wall!
The mensch woman laughed. “What an interesting hand you’ve been hiding!”
It was as if she had materialized out of the shadows. The goth woman loomed close enough to strike me.
How strange, I thought. She had moved into action first, but I had started moving before anyone else. How had she got the jump on me when she’d been so far behind? Maybe she had used space-time magic? No, I would have felt the stench of the mana it took to do that—the fabric of reality produced a telltale metaphysical “odor” when it was tampered with. The likeliest option was that she had used a catalyst to swap places with something.
“The shadows!” I said.
The pitch-black of her cloak was too deep for simple shadowy camouflage. Whether she was operating under the veil of night or in the nooks and crannies behind objects, a slightly more navy tone would be far more appropriate than black. Under the light of the full moon, truly black clothes would stand out. There was another, deeper reason she had chosen this color.
“Seems you have a few brain cells knocking around in there after all!”
She gave me a toothy, terrifying grin, the flash of her canines bringing to mind a starving hound.
Her clothes looked as if they’d materialized out of the shadows themselves. I had thought that the style had just been a product of the sort of singular taste in fashion typical of adventurers, but this fit of hers actually shored up her whole build. On top of giving the impression that she was tough and not to be messed with, it allowed her formulae to manifest more easily. I was dealing with an extremely old-school mage. At the College, there’d been a number of fallen bloodlines known for berating the current trends in magic for a perceived lack of elegance or grace; this made me realize that they weren’t talking out of their asses—the material gains one could reap from keeping it classy were incredible.
If you described the fundamentals of this lightning-fast shadow-based movement in a thesis, you could probably see yourself reaching professorship before long.
“If you don’t show me everything you can do,” the woman said, “I’ll crush you, you light-addicted woolgatherer!”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login