Chapter 145

The simplest place to put AP was into stats. He had more than enough to drop 30 into every stat and just completely overpower Lath in terms of raw capabilities. Of course, that didn’t guarantee a victory. It had been a painful lesson that had been beaten into him repeatedly, but he was finally figuring out that just having a higher strength stat didn’t guarantee victory, especially when he was fighting against someone with skills that were way more advanced than Luke’s. Given the nature of Lath’s advanced merged skills, Luke felt it was fair to compare it to fighting someone with a rank 8 weapon skill, and similar movement and dodging skills.

125 AP wasn’t going to be nearly enough to bridge that gap in their skills. He could upgrade [Power Strike] to rank 3, and under other circumstances, he would have seriously considered that. With this particular fight being one where he had to worry about collateral damage, he didn’t think he’d be relying heavily on that skill. It was going to be hard enough not to break the ship as it was.

If he had another 125 AP, he’d buy [Inflict Status]and [XP Reset] right now. That would have been problem solved, but Zea had been stubborn about attacking anymore anthills. That option wasn’t available to him.

He didn’t have the 250 needed for rank 3 [Life Surge], but rank 2 [Tactical Foresight] was exactly 125 AP. That was an option, and probably a better one than a [Power Strike] upgrade. [Twitch Reflexes]was only 50 AP for rank 4, but since he couldn’t get that and [Tactical Foresight] both, he figured he’d be better off with the more expensive skill.

[Mace Mastery] and [Counter] were both already maxed out, and [Peripheral Awareness] wasn’t going to help him if he upgraded it here. That was more for handling large groups coming at him from every angle anyway. [Unarmed Martialist] technically had one more rank available for 50 AP, but he didn’t plan on fighting without a weapon, and he’d already absorbed all the lessons on footwork and positioning it could give.

His only real options were the upgrade to [Tactical Foresight] for all his AP, or a combination of [Twitch Reflexes] and raw stat bumps. That was a tough call. Maybe a bit more information would help him make his decision.

Luke walked up to stand next to the Captain and watch the boat get closer. Despite being powered by nothing but oars, it was steadily gaining on them. He reached out with [Analyze] to target the man rowing.

[Error: Unable to detect user profile. Generating temporary profile.]
[Temporary profile failed to generate. Target is not a viable user.]
[Submitting Error Report… … … Error report failed to submit.]
[Flagging error for administrative review.]

Luke’s brow furrowed as he read the messages. He couldn’t recall something like that ever happening, and it sounded suspiciously like Pantheon fuckery. That last line was especially ominous, since it seemed to be saying that the God Machine’s system was going to be letting the gods know something had fucked up.

In theory, that wouldn’t make a difference. They were gods. They obviously already knew about him, since Hestoc had sent his flunkies to the valley to kill Luke, and then the church had come after him as soon as he’d reached Valtira. It didn’t seem likely to Luke that the gods had lost track of him over the last month or two.

Why exactly none of them had reached down through the clouds and squished him like an ant under their divine thumb was a mystery he still hadn’t figured out the answer to. And he didn’t believe for a second it was their covenant bullshit. Something else prevented them from coming down and dealing with him personally.

That was a problem for another day, one he might never find the answer to. Right now, he needed to deal with the problem right in front of him. “Can you tell what level he is?” he asked the Captain.

She shook her head, setting a pair of hoop earrings to jiggling. “Don’t feel a damn thing from him. Kind of like you that way. Handy skill, that. Don’t suppose you’d care to share what you’re using to hide yourself completely?”

“No,” Luke said. “You wouldn’t be able to take it anyway. That inquisitor is using [Infiltrator], though. Rank 5.” At least, that was what he vaguely remembered from when he could actually look at Lath’s status.

The Captain let out a low whistle. “You don’t see many people with advanced skills at max rank. He’s dangerous, huh?”

“Yep.”

“You can beat him though? Preferably without damaging my ship.”

“Probably not,” Luke said, his eyes not leaving the row boat.

The Captain turned to face him fully. “The fuck is that supposed to mean? If you can’t beat him, why the hell shouldn’t I just throw you overboard now and let him have you?”

“I’d kill every single person on this ship before you budged me an inch in a direction I don’t want to go,” Luke said evenly. “You’ve been paid a hell of a lot of money. You knew we were apostates; this is the risk you took when you accepted that gold. I’ll do my best to keep this ship intact because I need you to fulfill your half of the deal, but don’t expect me to pretend to give a shit about you or anyone else on this tub on a personal level.”

Before the Captain could say anything, the man rowing the boat stood up. He was clearly Lath, but not the Lath Luke remembered from their first two fights. He looked closer to the state he’d been in when he’d come back as a mobile anthill, but Luke’s bloodline skills didn’t work on him now. Something had obviously changed, and that scared Luke. Lath was the most dangerous opponent he’d ever met, and now was not a good time to be dealing with unknowns.

“He’s about to jump,” Luke said. “Get your people below.”

The Captain gave him one last withering glance, then spun in place and started bellowing orders. Before anyone could even start to move, Lath leaped at the Silk Lady. He left the row boat cracked in half behind him, both sides pushed underwater and immediately starting to sink. Lath flew through the air with explosive force, no weapon visible on his person.

That was good. It probably meant Luke didn’t need to worry about his [Blade Master] skill or any of his poisonous concoctions. That could only help tilt the fight in Luke’s favor. Maybe he’d get lucky and not have to spend any of that AP. On the other hand, this really wasn’t the time to be holding back. He already knew how hard Lath was to fight normally.

He bought [Tactical Foresight] rank 2.

The skill immediately latched onto his brain and ran everything he knew about the inquisitor through it. Almost instinctively, he started making calculations about where Lath would land—crashing through the railing right in front of Luke—to what his first move would be—either a lunge for the throat that flowed into barehanded grappling, or a kick with the torque of his full body behind it to disguise the motion of drawing a hidden weapon from beneath that enormous cloak he was wearing—to how well Lath would be able to dodge a hard strike to the chest if Luke struck right when he landed—pretty damn well, likely by dropping straight down and attacking Luke’s ankles.

He had almost a full second to get used to the skill communicating with his brain before Lath crashed through the wooden rails, ducked Luke’s mace by dropping straight down, and swept a leg out to smack at Luke’s ankles.

Lath was every bit as fast as Luke remembered and even more aggressive than usual. But now, it was easy to predict the paths of the inquisitor’s wild blows. Luke worked his mace around, perhaps for the first time really fully utilizing his rank 5 [Mace Mastery] since he’d maxed it out. Lath came at him, his limbs flashing out to strike a dozen times in the first second of combat, and Luke both predicted and parried every one of them.

He gave ground as Lath pushed forward, easily dropping backward to the main deck. It was clear of sailors except for three who’d been up in the rigging when the Captain had given the order. All three watched the battle start, slack-jawed with astonishment. They were far enough out of the way that Luke didn’t think he needed to worry about them interfering, not unless the fight brought down one of the ship’s three masts.

Lath landed right in front of Luke. He hit so hard that one foot cracked through the wood planks that made up the deck. He recovered his balance in an instant, but not before Luke struck him across the face with a [Power Strike] infused mace. Skin tore to reveal muscle and bone underneath, but if Lath felt the pain at all, he didn’t show it.

Then they were fighting again, Luke playing it defensively in hopes of minimizing the damage the Silk Lady took. The worst of it was trying to dance around all the ropes still hanging loosely. The ship’s crew hadn’t finished setting everything up yet, and there were plenty of spots where something or another hadn’t been tied down properly.

It actually put a bit of a time limit on the fight. Without anyone to steer or a crew to complete their preparations, the ship was already turning with the wind. It wouldn’t happen in the next minute or two, but eventually they’d run up against the seawall Sicanti had constructed to protect the harbor.

As he settled into the rhythm of Lath’s new fighting style, Luke started letting [Counter] guide him into striking back. Those attacks rarely hit; Lath was simply too good to leave himself vulnerable, and despite all of Luke’s skills working in harmony, he wasn’t on the level of the inquisitor.

They were fighting at a stalemate now despite Lath’s lack of a weapon. It wasn’t quite the same as their original fights, but there were plenty of similarities. Luke had fought this fight before, but he was better prepared now. He blocked or dodged Lath’s attacks, struck back when he could do so without compromising his own defenses, and did his best to keep the inquisitor from inflicting too much damage on their arena.

That wasn’t to say they didn’t break anything. At one point, Lath seized a loose line, gave it a tug, and sent one of the men up in the rigging falling thirty feet to land on the deck. He didn’t accomplish anything useful with the action; it just seemed to Luke to be a feeble attempt at distracting him, or maybe it had been done out of sheer frustration. The unintelligible snarls coming out of Lath’s mouth were getting louder and more frequent the longer the fight went on.

Then Lath made a mistake. It was a small thing, just a misstep around a loose rope that caused it to roll under his foot. He corrected his balance so fast that no one with human levels of perception would have even noticed it. One of those cameras that took a thousand pictures a second could have picked it up.

And so could Luke. In that frozen hundredth of a second where Lath was vulnerable, Luke struck. His body flared with energy as he triggered [Life Surge] and he brought his mace around to smack against the same place he’d hit before. The metal struck the side of Lath’s face, again infused with [Power Strike], and Lath couldn’t dodge or move with the blow this time, not while he was busy sliding his foot back to the wooden deck.

Lath went flying away, his whole body spinning from the force until he crashed into the wall that separated the Captain’s personal quarters from the main deck. Wood gave way, and Lath crashed through it. Luke was sure the fight was over for half a second. He’d seen the inquisitor’s head spin all the way around in a full circle, far beyond the tolerance of any human’s neck.

But there was no ding. And in that same second, Lath regained his feet. Head flopping loosely, he leaped forward to continue his relentless attack.