Chapter 232: Predator and the Shadow Thief

Luke kept putting distance between himself and the fortress. No Warden came after him, but he still pushed as far away as he could. The alarms rang across the city, echoing off the stone, but he ignored them. Instead, he climbed to the top of a nearby building.

He had spent a while sitting by the fortress gates, waiting for some Warden to step out, but none ever did. Eventually, he decided to leave. Lingering there was still dangerous. Bastion assassins could show up at any moment. The kukris were badly damaged. The fortress would have to wait. He would attack it again once he had a plan.

He took an arrow in hand.

[Common Arrow (Common)]: An arrow generated by an enchanted quiver.

It was a limitation of the gear. Luke might have grown strong, but even the best weapons had their breaking point.

He sighed. If only it were rare-tier. I wouldn’t mind losing it to a mana explosion.

In fact, that was exactly the approach he would have taken. Against a monster like that, he was running out of options.

That damned armor is the problem.

There were only two ways to bring down a Warden: outpower them or drain their mana dry.

Luke could outmatch the Midnight Wardens in raw strength, and Charlie was a little stronger than they were. Against one or two, she had the upper hand, though she struggled against groups. Sure, she had her berserker mode, but that gave her maybe three to five minutes of heightened power. Then she would be completely spent.

Even so, the two of them were strong enough that they never needed to drag a fight out, forcing a Midnight Warden to waste mana repairing its armor just to finally land the killing blow. Luke could take one down with a stamina-charged arrow, or conserve resources and use his rare-tier kukris. But now, the enemy was a Midnight Warden Captain, level seventy.

My poor kukris won’t survive channeling that much mana in such a long fight.

On the rooftop, he lay back and stared at the sky.

“Right when I was starting to feel strong,” he muttered.

“Hey, don’t get all gloomy on me. When you’re upset, my food tastes bad,” Artemis said.

“You’re eating right now?” Luke asked.

“What else am I supposed to do? I eat when I’m nervous,” she replied.

Luke let it drop, staying silent.

Wasn’t the story that the first fortress only had one Midnight Warden? This one has an entire army.

The image of the Warden Captain burned in his mind, and with it came a memory of Angelica. Maybe it wasn’t a Midnight Warden that hunted her and her friends back then. Maybe it was that monster.

“All that work I put into getting stronger… and it’s worthless,” he said.

“Hahahahahaha!” The Beast Lord’s laughter rang out.

“Stop laughing, you idiot!” Artemis snapped at him. “I nearly had a heart attack, and I don’t even have a heart!”

Luke ignored the two loudmouthed souls. He thought back to what he had seen. There are too many, and they’re coordinated.

A duel with the Captain would be bad enough, but the real danger was how the other Wardens backed it up. Their individual levels were low, but the way they worked together made them deadly.

“It was a trap. From the very start…”

The creature had let him and Charlie push deep into the fortress on purpose. If Allison and I had tried storming that place back then, we’d be dead.

The thought dug in like a splinter. It felt like every step he took out of the tutorial came with two steps back. More obstacles. More reasons to believe all the effort had been for nothing.

“You’re seriously insane,” a woman’s voice said. It wasn’t Artemis.

Luke glanced to the side and froze. A jolt shot through him, and he rolled backward, coming up to his feet. Sitting cross-legged on the rooftop was a woman dressed head-to-toe like a ninja.

“Who are you?” Luke asked, kukris in hand.

She locked eyes with him, then melted into the floor, dissolving into shadow.

“Oh, no…” he muttered, recognizing her for what she was. A Bastion assassin.

The shadow slid away from him. She reappeared with a knife in hand, lunging. Luke met the strike with a kukri, the blades locking.

“Hi. Pleasure to meet you,” she said, smiling as they pushed against each other.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Luke twisted, slashing, but she dodged with effortless grace.

“So you came. Bartholomew actually sent you,” Luke said.

“Oh, wait, you’ve got me mixed up. I don’t run with those guys. I’m kind of an enemy to everybody. I work for myself. And, for the record, I’m not an assassin. I’m a thief,” she said, holding something up.

Luke’s eyes darted to his neck, and the cold hit him. “My necklace!”

She had stolen his storage item. And now she was running. Luke tore after her. She blinked in and out of existence, shadow-dashing ahead of him.

“Hey, Luke! Don’t let her rob me!” Artemis shouted.

“Hahahahahaha!” The Beast Lord trapped in the necklace roared with laughter.

Luke hurled both kukris at her, but she dove, rolled, and kept going, vaulting across rooftops, leaping from wall to wall.

[Predator’s Mark activated]

Her silhouette flared in red, then vanished completely.

“Damn it!”

Luke vaulted high, using the Aracna Leap. She darted through a narrow opening into a house. He dove in after her, shifting into mist. Inside, there was nothing. She was gone. And worse, she had taken his storage item with her.