Chapter 117

Luke experienced a moment of sheer, visceral panic when he read that notification and realized that his lungs wouldn’t open up to pull in air. He could try to take a breath, but there was nowhere for it to go. Then he remembered that he could hold his breath for an hour if he needed to, probably more.

He’d be fine. Or at least, he wouldn’t die from just the poison. The merc who’d attacked him knew it too, or at least was smart enough to realize that he’d be able to fight back. She didn’t even try to press the advantage, instead offering him a smirk and fading into invisibility right before his eyes.

Luke’s eyebrows went up at that. That was a powerful skill, right there, but he was willing to bet it wouldn’t let her walk through walls. He leaped to the door, slammed is closed as best he could, and leaned up against it. Hopefully, he’d been fast enough to keep her trapped in here with him. He was confident he could survive this poison. Zea might not.

“What was that?” Zea said from outside the door. “You okay in there?”

Luke went to say something, to reassure her that he was handling it, but the words wouldn’t come. Specifically, the air wouldn’t come. The poison that had paralyzed his lungs was also keeping him from speaking. Lacking a better means of communicating, Luke tapped out a quick beat on the door.

“Uh… what?” Zea asked.

If he could have thought of a way to communicate without opening the door, Luke would have. Failing that, he had no choice but to place himself firmly in the way so she couldn’t come in. His eyes scanned the room, looking for the invisible assassin who was trying to kill him. Wherever she was at, he didn’t spot her, and it looked like she was patient enough to just wait for him to drop dead.

That wasn’t going to happen, of course. He was pretty sure he could outlast the poison if he had to, and he was willing to bet [Life Surge] would knock it out, or at least cut the duration to under ten minutes. He thought about triggering it now, just so he could talk to Zea, but he wanted to save it as a surprise to use on the merc once he figured out where she was. Besides, he hadn’t quite worked out what the side effects would be for using it multiple times in a short time frame now that he’d upgraded the rank.

The room was a scattered mess, thanks to Zea’s ransacking. It might have been well-organized originally, but now the floor was covered in what looked like account ledgers, loose paper, small crates that had been overturned, and a mess of shattered ceramics from where she’d knocked over what appeared to be some sort of pot or urn.

Wooden boxes were stacked high on the back wall, almost to the ceiling. Luke counted twenty of them, all piled up in five stacks of four each, each one closed with a lid that had been nailed down. He suspected they’d remained unmolested during Zea’s search more for their height than their security. Perhaps most importantly, there was a smudge of dirt on one about half way up, one that looked suspiciously like the tip of a shoe.

If his guess was right, the would-be assassin had jumped up on top of the crates and was hiding in the two feet or so of open space left there. Luke just wasn’t sure what exactly to do with that information. He could start throwing things up there, he supposed. As long as he didn’t leave his post guarding the door, the worst that could happen was that he was wrong.

Well, no, the worst that could happen was that the assassin used his distraction to slip a knife between his ribs, killing him and leaving her free to kill Zea too. Or maybe they’d both end up captured and sold to whoever was interested in them the first place. That might be worse, depending on what the contract holder wanted and what lengths they were willing to go to in order to get it.

Luke was about to start throwing things up there anyway when he noticed another footprint, this time in a loose sheet of paper on the ground. He was about ninety-nine percent sure that hadn’t been there when he’d done his first scan. The invisible merc was moving, and based on the direction of the foot print, closer to him.

He kept scanning the room, not wanting her to know that he’d seen a clue. A second later, he noticed another partial print on the cover of a ledger book. She was getting close now, heading his way. Luke considered pulling the mace off his back, but hesitated. It might spook her now that she was so close. He should have done it a few minutes ago when he’d first jumped in front of the door.

It was probably fine. The assassin’s big advantage was her invisibility skill. Once he tagged her with even a glancing blow, he was confident he could end things quickly. Luke just needed the perfect moment to strike. His eyes scanned the room again. The newest footprint was only three feet away, close enough to strike. He was just about to lunge forward and attempt to body slam her, when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

It was a hazy spot, just to his left, opposite the side of the footprints. In an instant, he realized that she’d been setting him up, just waiting for him to draw the conclusion she wanted and jump the wrong way. Then she’d either stab him in the back or slip out the door and flee. He wasn’t sure which she was planning, but neither was acceptable.

Luke jumped forward the wrong way, then stopped short and lashed out behind him with a kick. His lips curled up into a grin when he felt contact on his foot, and the assassin crashed into the wall. He was on her in an instant, even before she became fully visible, his knife drawn and on its way into her chest.

She reacted instantly, kicking out with both feet to try to push him backward, but there just wasn’t enough power in her legs to stop him. Luke’s knife flashed down, only slightly off-course, and hit her ribs. That didn’t stop him from driving it home, not with the alchemically treated steel and enough strength to tie a piece of rebar into a knot behind it. The assassin screamed, or at least tried to. What actually came out was more of breathless whimper.

Luke turned the blade and jerked it sideways. Blood splattered across his face and chest, and he got the kill notification. The invisibility skill failed completely with the assassin’s death, but the poison she’d inflicted him with remained active.

[You have slain Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 27). 769 XP awarded.]
[This creature has slain 1037 other creatures.]
[Total kills for this type of creature: 25.]
[Highest level kill: 34.]

Zea burst into the room, now that he was no longer blocking the door. She took in the dead woman at a glance and said, “What happened?”

Luke shook his head and pointed at this throat. When she just stared at him blankly, he cast around for something to write with, then scooped up one of the ledger books. It took him a few tries to get the hang of a quill and ink well, and he made a hell of a mess, but they weren’t his books. Fuck those mercs anyway.

Poisoned, he wrote. Can’t breathe for 42 minutes. Can’t talk.

“Are you going to be alright?” she asked.

Luke nodded and added, High stamina. Don’t need to breathe. Just can’t talk without air. You got everything you need?

“Yeah. Fuck, yes. Like three times as much as we had yesterday. I don’t even know if it was ours originally, but it is now. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

You want poisoned throwing knives? Body upstairs has them.

Zea shrugged. “I don’t have a skill for them. Might be worth it to sell if they’ve got any valuable poisons, but I don’t know anything about them. We’d probably just get scammed. I guess we could take them and throw them away somewhere, just as a final ‘fuck you’ to these assholes.”

Luke shook his head. In his mind, it wasn’t worth the time if she didn’t want them. Let’s just go, he wrote.

* * *

Luke sucked in a heavy lungful of air and let out a satisfied sigh. “Man, that was annoying.”

“I don’t know. Seemed like an improvement to me,” Zea said.

“Well, it wasn’t.”

They were taking it slow, not wanting to strain Luke until he could breathe freely again, which meant regular walking speed and a lot of paranoia that they’d be attacked before they got far enough away. Luke thought, somewhat uncharitably, that none of it would have been an issue if Zea had been willing to give up her search. On the other hand, she’d found a literal pot of gold at the end, so it was hard to complain too much.

“You think we should get off the road?” Luke asked. “Just to make it a bit harder for them to catch up to us?”

“Road’s the fastest way, and more or less a straight line to where we’re going,” Zea said. “It would be really nice to just get there and be done, but maybe you’re right. What if we encounter more of them, or even higher level. Some of those guys were really pushing the limits. Any higher and they’d have people hunting them down instead of the other way around.”

“System, we’re going to need you to navigate for us,” Luke said. “Just keep us pointed in the general direction of Sicanti.”

“That will not be a problem, Luke. Would you like to continue the pattern of a course correction once every ten minutes?”

“Yep, let’s do that.”

They ducked off the road then. Thankfully, the forest here was nothing like that nest of wood the squirrels had made farther south. There were spots they had to skirt around, but for the most part, there was plenty of space between the trees to weave their way through. They went north for a few miles before turning east again.

“So I know you want to get that amaril hide sold off, but how do you feel about doing that, then immediately leaving the city again?” Luke asked.

“Why, what would we need to do outside the city?”

“I was, uh. Well, I was thinking about leveling some more.”

Zea nearly tripped over a root when she turned to look at him but failed to stop walking. “Are you out of your damn mind? You’re already level 35.”

“34,” Luke said defensively.

“Really? I just figured you’d leveled again from all the mercenaries.”

“Not even close. I still need another 8,000 or so XP.”

“Either way, 34 is high enough, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “If there are church inquisitors waiting for us in Sicanti, is it high enough?”

“That’s… shit. That’s a point. But how high are you thinking here?”

“I thought we could figure that out together. I’ve got a few skills that could use upgrades to max rank, and I’m thinking another 20 AP to pour into strength and perception to bring everything up to around 50.”

“So like level 40? Gods above, you’re going to die before we get across the ocean. How would you even do this quickly?”

“Well, that’s what I was thinking about. The way this system is designed, it rewards killing a lot of weaker monsters quickly instead of one big one. So, everything has a level, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And most insects would only be level 1?”

“Sometimes 2 or 3,” Zea said.

“Does Aros have ants?”