Chapter 314: Scumbag Assassin

Luke strolled down the fortress corridor as if he had all the time in the world. His kukris dripped red, and he wiped them clean with a strip of cloth torn from an enemy’s shirt. He could have tossed them into his inventory and let the system clean them automatically, but today the blades felt like they deserved a little personal care.

He stopped in front of a door and knocked.

“Who is it? I already said I don’t want to be bothered at this hour!” came an irritated voice from the other side.

“Sir, I brought your dinner,” Luke answered.

“Dinner? I already ate. And tell that idiot cook not to forget to send the leftovers to the prison wing, I don’t want anyone crying in my ear,” the voice snapped.

Luke opened the door.

“I told you not to—” The man didn’t finish. Luke’s kukri flashed across the room.

The blade hit home. The man shrieked, tumbling out of his chair.

“Shit!” he roared.

When Luke saw him reaching for a sword from his inventory, he flicked another kukri straight into the man’s hand. More screaming, rolling pain. Luke whistled softly, strolling through the office while the kukris snapped back into his grip, guided by Magnetism.

“You bastard!” the man shouted, staggering backward.

Luke exhaled, motionless.

The man fumbled for a crystal and yelled into it. “Alert! We have an intruder!”

The crystal pulsed with a faint echo, likely relaying the warning throughout the fortress. Luke recognized the mechanism—some magical blacksmith working with an artisan, probably from Bastion tech.

He calmly pulled out a chair and sat down. “You done?”

The man gulped down a healing potion, bolting for the door. The moment it swung open, a fist came flying.

Princess Charlie stood there waiting.

She stomped on his leg hard enough to make the bone crack like dry wood. The man howled, pulling a massive axe from his inventory and swinging it at her shin. Nothing. She barely flinched. Her fist came down instead, smashing into his face. Teeth scattered across the floor.

“You shouldn’t have pissed her off,” Luke said lazily.

The princess grabbed him by the hair, dragging his head across the floor while he screamed. She crushed his hands in her grip, then shoved him into a chair across the table.

It was an office.

Luke propped his boots on the desk.

“You’re all screwed,” the man spat. “My soldiers will be here any second. You think you’re tough? We’ve got seventy people in this place! You’re nothing!”

Luke smiled faintly, cupping a hand to his ear as if listening.

“I don’t hear anyone coming,” he said. “Do you, Princess Charlie?”

She shook her head.

Luke shrugged. “Looks like your soldiers aren’t coming.”

He stood, voice even. “All right. Before anything else, you’re going to give me some information.”

“I’m not telling you a damn thing!”

Luke’s gaze slid to Charlie. She drove her fist into the man’s face again.

“The bones breaking won’t be mine,” Luke said softly. “Play the tough guy all you want. I promise you, she’s tougher.”

He gestured, and Charlie reached for the man once more.

“Let me go!” the man screamed.

Princess Charlie hurled him straight through the window, glass exploding around him as he plummeted into the open air. Before he could vanish into the night, a spectral chain shot out from her hand and coiled around his leg.

Wind tore at his clothes, the drop yawning beneath him. This office was at the very top of the fortress’s main keep.

“See any of your soldiers down there?” Luke called, leaning out casually.

“Help! Please! Pull me up! For the love of the gods, pull me up!”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The height really was dizzying.

“Can you fly?” Luke asked.

“Please! Don’t let me fall!”

Charlie loosened the chain just enough for him to drop again. His scream echoed before she snapped the chain taut and hauled him back up like a hooked fish.

“Ready to cooperate now?” she asked.

“Yes! I swear!”

“Good. Then sing, little bird. Answer every question exactly, and if anything you say contradicts what I already know, you’re diving headfirst.”

The man was crying now, truly crying. After everything, kukris through his body, a broken leg, mangled hands, was he still trying not to cooperate, or had they just taken too long to make their point? Luke decided not to dwell on it.

“Let’s start with the most important question,” he said.

“WHERE DID YOU PUT MY FOOD?” Artemis’s voice barked from the pendant, sharp and annoyed.

The man blinked, stunned.

Luke cleared his throat. “What I meant was: where are the supply crates?”

“They, they’re gone! Someone came and took them, stuffed everything into storage items!”

Bastion bastards… everything we stockpiled over these days.

Luke tightened his grip on the kukri and continued the interrogation.