Chapter 126

They walked out of the inn and started heading for the edge of town, with Luke throwing out an [Analyze] every few seconds at random people to help him spot any mercenaries tailing them. They seemed to have fallen back for some reason, or else they’d gotten better at avoiding his notice. Maybe their only job had been to figure out where Luke and Zea were sleeping. A late-night ambush might be their new strategy, since he’d thoroughly thrashed the whole company in a head-on fight.

If so, that trap was going to fail. Luke had learned better than to just assume he’d figured out an enemy’s plan, or even that the enemy only had a single plan. He would need to be extra vigilant as they left the city and got into the open grasslands and fields surrounding it. He wasn’t sure even a concentrated volley of crossbows would put him down, but it would fuck Zea right up, and just because something wasn’t immediately fatal didn’t mean it couldn’t be in the long wrong. There’d be no civilians in the way if a large group of mercs decided to try their luck outside the city.

At the same time, Luke was confident in their ability to outrun any pursuing mercs if it came down to it. Zea hated riding piggyback, but she’d do it so he could leverage his full speed against them. It would also be much harder for the mercs to successfully ambush the two of them once they were outside the city and there was no crowd to hide in.

He’d feel a lot better once they got away from all the people.

“Anything yet?” Zea asked quietly from his side. It was really more of a whisper under her breath purposely done because she knew he’d hear it and nobody else was likely to.

“No mercs,” he said, only slightly louder. “Suspicious that they all just vanished. They’re planning something.”

“Change direction. If they’re setting up something up ahead, they’ll have to abandon it or show themselves to herd us into it.”

“It’ll add a few minutes to our travel time,” Luke said, “But yeah, Good idea. Take a left at the next intersection? We can go down four or five blocks before we start heading to the edge of the city again.”

Zea nodded her agreement, and the pair kept walking. On the bright side, he was finally getting to wear his stolen armor in public, and no one seemed to look twice at it. It was garbage for blending into a crowd, but he doubted he could even if he wanted to, not with Zea next to him. Plus, a lot of mercs had seen his face. They’d be able to spot him again more easily since they knew exactly what he looked like.

Minutes ticked by, and no one jumped out to ambush them, or popped up on a nearby rooftop to snipe at them, or even walked up and tried to sell them something. Pushy vendor stall merchants were a staple in Sicanti, so that last one was actually something of a relief. Even as far away from any market districts as they were, it wasn’t unusual to get verbally assaulted by someone running a food stand. Maybe it was the armor making him look serious and unapproachable.

Someone flicked at the very back edge of Luke’s peripheral vision, and he quickly tagged them with an [Analyze]. “Got one,” he said. “Level 26 merc with an agility and perception build. Probably a scout. Way back behind us too, and I think with some stealthy skills to keep hidden.”

“So they are still following us, just not closely. They’ve pulled back their weaker members to keep them from becoming casualties in their ambush.”

“Makes sense to me. They have to know I’ll tear through anyone under level 30 like paper at this point.”

The problem there was that Luke had only seen one merc who was a credible threat. There’d been a few who had hassled him, but they weren’t strong enough that he was concerned with losing, just with how long it would take to win. The weaker Blacktongue mercenaries hadn’t been able to stop him in groups of five or six, and while Luke hadn’t wanted to test twenty or more at the same time, he was pretty sure he could escape after inflicting casualties at the least. Depending on the scenario, if he could pull off an ambush that killed five or six before they could react, he might wipe out all of them.

He was pretty sure that wasn’t the plan though. Attacking in town would be a smarter move for them, unless they knew something he didn’t. “Is there a reason to let us walk out of here?” he asked Zea.

“Maybe? It could be they just don’t have the manpower to do what they want, so they’re trailing us while they gather up the rest of the mercs.”

“Why cut back on the number of tails, though?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say they figured out that you were identifying them and changed tactics. Plus you’re in full armor now, so it’s a lot easier to keep track of you.”

Luke wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, but he didn’t have a better one. “They’re going to try something,” he muttered. “The only question is when.”

* * *

Lath stood outside a dingy old inn, one that catered to travelers who were more thrifty than picky. “How long ago did they leave?”

The mercenary who’d become his new liaison glanced at his comrade, who said, “Five minutes, moving west in a straight line. We’ve got people rushing to the edge of the city to set up a perimeter, but they’re moving fast. We’ll be lucky to get adequate surveillance set up.”

“Lead the way,” Lath said.

He followed the merc, who stopped twice to speak to people dressed in unobtrusive outfits of the local style, but who were obviously stronger than their XP presences would indicate. Their infiltration skills were severely lacking if they thought dressing like a peasant would be enough to hide the fact that they had much higher stats than normal.

The Blacktongue Mercenary Company had been an utter disappointment, despite coming with high recommendations from the local church. They’d completely failed in their assignment, gotten half of their band killed in the process, and were struggling to even keep up with the apostates, let alone follow them without being detected.

They changed direction each time the merc in the lead stopped to talk to someone, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, quickly found themselves in a poorer district, one where Hestoc’s guiding light had failed to take hold. For some reason, the church had made no efforts to purify these cancers from Sicanti. Instead, they festered around the edges of the city, threatening to infect everything else that had been built in Hestoc’s name.

“There they are,” the merc said, drawing Lath out of his contemplations.

The human was plain enough. He was a bit pale, even compared to the other northerners, but nothing that stood out. The dwifkin he was with could have been any of the thousands Lath had seen scurrying through the back alleys of Valtira. She was surprisingly high level, higher than he’d been expecting from the mercenaries’ reports, at least. Strangely, that phenomenon of having no XP at all they’d mentioned was still in effect. Lath couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone able to hide all XP. Even he couldn’t do that.

It was probably some heretical off-worlder ability. The church had records of some truly odd skills previous apostates had exhibited centuries past, though none that so completely shrouded their XP. It was entirely possible that those records had been corrupted, parts lost or purposely altered as they were copied over the decades.

Regardless, Lath felt something he hadn’t felt in years. He was wary about approaching the apostate with so many unknowns. That the man was powerful was obvious just from watching him move, but exactly how powerful was still a mystery. If his stamina was high enough, he might shrug off all but the most potent poisons.

Based on what poisons had been missing from Myla’s supplies and what ingredients the servants had reported her using, the fact that the apostate had survived her meant his stamina was likely at least in the high 40s, or that he had some skill to temporarily boost it that high. Lath had chosen his own weapons carefully, with that fact in mind.

Killing the apostates who’d murdered his apprentice would be one of the most expensive tasks he’d ever undertaken, but it was worth every last copper. He felt his fists clench as his side and forced his body to relax. There was no room for personal feelings in this part. He’d indulge himself after the apostates were dead.

The human apostate jerked in place, then leaned down and whispered something to his dwifkin companion. Lath frowned as he observed the motion. He could only assume one of those idiot mercenaries had gotten themselves discovered. It had better not complicate Lath’s takedown of the pair. Just to be safe, he picked up the pace.

* * *

“Fuck me,” Luke swore.

[Name: Hestocian High Inquisitor]
[Level: 45]
[Strength: 37]
[Agility: 61]
[Stamina: 40]
[Perception: 51]

“What’s wrong?” Zea asked.

“Fucking church inquisitor behind us. Level 45. Stats are close to mine, a bit higher in agility and perception. I’m betting he’s got all sorts of skills at rank 4 or 5.”

“You’ve still got about 200 AP you’re sitting on too,” she said. “Fuck. Maybe you should spend it. Bump your big combat skills up a rank, drop 50 AP or so into raw stats?”

Luke chewed on his lip and stared straight ahead. If only he knew how much he needed to save for after the next bloodline purification, it would be an easy decision. The big thing was creating a skill that protected them from XP Madness. He was starting to push the threshold now where he didn’t want to have to gain too many more levels before they had a solution, especially right before they took a hopefully uneventful boat trip across the ocean, where his XP would have plenty of time to work on his brain and circumstances would keep him from leveling again to fix it.

“I’ll keep 100 AP in the bank,” he said. That would leave him enough to upgrade a few skills. [Mace Mastery] would take 30 to get to rank 4, [Counter] needed another 30 to get to rank 3, and [Twitch Reflexes] needed a whopping 50 AP for rank 4. That would leave him with 100 AP to spare, but nothing to pour into his stats.

He decided to buy the upgrades for [Mace Mastery] and [Counter] only, and split the 50 AP left to add 10 to strength and perception, bringing them up to 52 and 49, then put 15 in stamina to bring it up from 49 to 64. That left him with 15 more for agility, which kept it as his highest stat at 68. That one wasn’t an upgrade he particularly loved, but he didn’t like the idea of fighting an enemy that could move faster than him.

That left him with 113 AP, and he decided to save that extra 13 just in case he needed to give another stat a bump mid-combat to compensate for something. Luke was worried even that much wouldn’t be enough. This inquisitor was a higher level than him, than anything Luke had ever seen, and he kind of doubted the man had sunk a significant amount of points into needlepoint or gardening.

He probably had a dozen combat skills, all a higher rank than Luke’s, not to mention just straight up decades more experience fighting life-or-death battles. They needed another edge if they wanted to ensure victory.

“Hey, how fast can you make those bombs explode?” Luke asked.