Chapter 236: Licence to Kill

Luke left the Safe Zone and slipped back into the Wild Zone. On the way, he scanned every direction, paranoid enough to even hurl his kukris at his own shadow just to be sure no one was tailing him. But he didn’t return to his old hideout. This time, he wanted someplace different. Thanks to his storage item, he carried a mobile home wherever he went.

He found an abandoned building on a random street in the city, though not just any street. It was the same one where Paul had died. Luke climbed the stairs and picked a room with the doors shut tight. His body dissolved into mist, slipping through the cracks. The room was sealed off by solid stone walls, no flimsy wood, no windows. Nothing that could let in a fireball barrage if a squad of mages decided to level the place. That was exactly why he had chosen it.

From his inventory, he pulled out the familiar stone.

“Ah, you’re alive?” Franky’s voice chimed from within. “For a second, I thought you’d taken a fatal blow and pulled me out just so I could watch your last breath.”

Luke froze. “And why would I do that?”

“So I’d know you were dying,” Franky replied, perfectly matter-of-fact.

Luke decided not to argue with a rock. He sat down on a chair, letting his mind churn over the problem ahead. The Midnight Siege event had to be cleared if he wanted access to the chamber of the second mechanism. Which brought him back to the question that kept gnawing at him.

“How the hell am I supposed to kill that Warden Captain?”

“You die to him, and in your final moments, you let me watch you writhe in agony,” Franky suggested.

“You really don’t understand what talking to yourself means, do you?”

“No,” the stone answered.

Luke sighed.

“That’s because Mr. Shitpants. doesn’t think,” Artemis muttered.

He decided to ignore the two chatty souls and went back to thinking about his situation. It had been twelve hours since he faced the Midnight Warden. His mana reserves were fully restored, and his stamina was almost topped off. In other words, he was ready for another suicidal attempt.

Should I blow up my kukris this time?

The axe was still under repair. When his bow had broken, it took twenty-four hours to return, so he figured the axe would be the same.

Explode the kukris with mana infusion or not?

The problem was that the monster’s armor had tanked a full axe explosion. To make it work, he’d have to throw both kukris at once. That would leave him with only the bow, which meant losing access to Demonic Blade Dance and his channeling of Mana Infusion through the kukris for extra cutting power.

Definitely not worth it. Even if he managed to crack the armor, he would cripple his own arsenal.

His bow was just a common rarity piece. Charlie could help, but she didn’t have Force Infusion, let alone Mana Infusion. Her sword wouldn’t put much of a dent in the Warden Captain’s armor, and certainly not in his health.

And then there was the army of Wardens inside the fortress.

He replayed every detail of the battle in his head. Fighting the monster itself wasn’t the problem. Give him the right weapon and he could handle it. The real issue was the reinforcements. They had pulled Charlie away, preventing her from doing anything meaningful in the fight, and she had nearly died for it.

I need stronger arrows. And I need to isolate the Warden Captain from the others. Actually, isolating him at all would be enough. With just me and Charlie, we could handle him.

Dragging the monster out of the fortress would give him the edge. He had taken down the Fallen Stone Angel with strategy and planning. The situations were not so different. All he needed was the right plan. The problem was, the Captain was not stupid. He would not leave the fortress, and he sure as hell would not wander far from the mechanism’s gate.

“Assassination…” he muttered.

Luke pushed himself up from the chair. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Oh no. Not this again,” Artemis groaned.

“Trust me. It’s a good one.”

“No. Absolutely not! Your plans are insane, Luke. I’ve seen you actually plan to lose your own arm just so you could give an enemy diarrhea. That’s not strategy, that’s lunacy.”

Luke paced the room, hands clasped behind his back. “You’re judging without even hearing it.”

“Judging? Please. After everything we’ve been through, I can smell your disasters a mile away. Remember your brilliant idea to blow up the orc dam so we could get out of the forest?”

“Hey! That was a good plan.”

Artemis burst out laughing. “Good? You nearly got eaten by giant crocodiles and spent God knows how many days stuck in a cave with a monster mantis. Yeah, real genius. Ask Mr. Shitpants over there if he likes the outcome of your plans.”

“My name is Frankzaroth!” the Beast Lord snapped.

Luke ignored him, still pacing, his thoughts drifting far away, back to old movies he used to watch. He almost could not believe he was actually considering what had just crossed his mind.

“Plan whatever you want,” Franky cut in. “I’ll be right here, waiting, praying for your long, agonizing death. Hahaha!” he laughed wickedly.

“Shut it, rock,” Luke snapped. “I need to think!”

“Yeah, shut it, rock!” Artemis echoed.

Luke smirked. “Artemis, how far did you even get in the movies stored in my memories?”

“Don’t know. I’m focused on the series for now,” she said.

“Good enough.” Luke pulled Charlie out from his soul.

“Charlie, I won’t be able to bring you out again for a while. Don’t worry about it. Artemis will fill you in while I start putting this plan into motion.”

He could already see it in his mind, ambitious, complicated, time-consuming. But if it worked… it would be worth it.

“Alright, Charlie,” Artemis began, all too gleeful. “Luke went to the Safe Zone and had a little meeting with a woman.”

Charlie’s visor lit up, the twin red glows turning straight on him.

“Hey, hey!” Luke raised his hands. “Explain it properly!”

While the soul kept rambling in her usual idiotic way, Luke forced his focus inward. Because what he was about to do… he was not exactly thrilled with. He was going to attempt something that even scared him.

***

He had already set his plan in motion, though unfortunately it was going to take time. Which meant he needed a backup plan layered on top of the first. Since he would be stuck in a fixed base until the fortress was his, he might as well use the downtime to push his profession a few levels higher. Class advancement was not really an option in this corner of the tutorial. The local mobs barely scraped level thirty, and the only real threats were the Wardens and its Captain.

Once I have taken the fortress and handed it over to the Haven… should I hunt down the Orc Lord?

He kept running through the Wild Zone, mind split between movement and calculations. Profession leveling was something he could do while the rest of the plan unfolded. All it took was tending plants for a few hours and waiting for them to grow. Simple, boring work, but the payoff was attribute points and twelve free stat points per level. If he could squeeze out ten levels, that meant a flat fifty Strength from the profession itself, five per level, plus one hundred and twenty free points to spend however he wanted. That was a mountain of raw stats just waiting to be claimed, no grinding bloodbaths required.

If everything went the way he pictured, he would secure new arrows, bait the Warden Captain out of the fortress, and in the meantime climb at least ten profession levels. By the time he stood face-to-face with that monster again, he would be far stronger, and when it finally went down, he would cash in on class levels and maybe even a rare drop. In other words, the plan was brilliant. The only catch: to pull it off, he had to do something that terrified even him.

“Seriously? This is what your genius plan hinges on?” Artemis asked.

He perched atop a half-ruined building under the cover of night. “Once it works, you’ll see I’m a genius.”

‘DING-DONG.’

The midnight bell tolled, and from his vantage point the Wild Zone lit up with dozens of white flares. Reward events. Midnight Wardens stirred, crawling out of their hiding places.

“So what is this? Some kind of grand heist?” Artemis pressed.

“This,” he said, “is just the warm-up. Trust me.”

He leapt from the rooftop, boots slamming onto tile, then stone, sprinting across the connected roofs like a shadow. He had a mental map of where the chests tended to spawn, and one of them was not far.

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When he dropped to street level, creatures were already clawing toward the glow of a fresh chest. He drew his kukris in one smooth motion, spun through them like a whirlwind, and left nothing standing.

[You have slain…]

When he cracked open the chest, his eyes caught the gleam of gold, jewels, rations, and of course… seed bags. That was his jackpot. A pocket-sized farm, the chance to plant new and exotic crops that would feed his profession with precious experience. Absolutely essential. What he really wanted were healing potions, though. No luck. This chest did not have a single one.

“Grab the food!” Artemis shouted.

“Relax,” Luke muttered, stuffing the seed bags into his storage item.

“Luke, there’s peanut butter in here!”

He kept cramming the sacks inside the necklace until a sharp sound sliced through the air. His instincts flared, and he twisted aside just as a spear shattered against the wall behind him.

A towering figure loomed at the edge of the street, its hollow gaze locked on him.

[Midnight Warden – Lvl 40]

Luke hurled a kukri, lacing it with stamina and a thread of mana. The impact rocked the armored knight back a step. Without hesitation, he launched the second blade, this time pouring in more mana. The kukri struck like a thunderbolt, detonating helm and skull in a single brutal burst.

[You have slain a Midnight Warden – Lvl 40]

Both blades whipped back into his hands, drawn by the magnetic pull of his skill. He turned them over in his grip, watching the faint glow still clinging to the steel.

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