Chapter 116

“This is bullshit,” Zea muttered under her breath. Even from across the room, Luke could clearly hear her, and he wasn’t sure how far away he’d have to be before he couldn’t. She wasn’t trying to be noisy, but his hearing was so sensitive now, and without his ability to sense XP active, he was really paying attention to what it told him. He was tracking people just by listening to them breathe, and he was reasonably sure if he sunk any more points into perception, he’d start hearing heart beats from across the room.

“We knew they’d show up eventually. At least we salvaged something, plus I figure I stole at least twenty gold worth of gear and supplies from them.”

“How much do you have on you?” Zea asked.

“I don’t know. Not much, but if we stick to the roads, we can get to the city in a few days, right? We’ll be fine.”

Zea swept the room with her gaze one more time, let out a frustrated sigh, and said, “Shit. Fine.”

Luke held up a hand and cocked his head. “They’re in the building.”

[Analyze] was easier to use if he could actually see his target, but it wasn’t impossible to tag someone if he had a good enough idea of where they were. He managed to get readings on two of them, levels 21 and 24, but the third one either had insanely high agility or a decent chunk of AP dedicated to stealth skills. Given the average level of the mercenaries he’d fought so far, he was betting it was the latter.

More importantly, he didn’t hear anyone else coming in behind them. Most likely, these three were scouts, and if that was the case, he might kill them and give Zea some more time. Either way, he couldn’t let them live to report back. That would just result in the rest of the mercs hounding them all the way to Sicanti.

“I’ll go take care of them,” he said. “You… I don’t know. I can probably get to them before they make their way here, but I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone.”

Zea rolled her eyes. “Just go. I’ll keep looking, make some noise. Maybe they’ll be distracted.”

“You’re not fooling anyone,” Luke told her. “You just want more time to look for our money.”

“So? Is that so wrong? Go take care of them.”

Their entire conversation had been whispered, barely even audible, and hopefully quiet enough to keep the mercs from hearing them. Zea made a show of throwing open a cupboard and letting the door bounce, then dropping the book she found inside on the floor. She made a little shooing motion with her hand at Luke, then dropped another book next to it.

Luke hadn’t had much use for [Stealth] in a long time. His XP had rapidly outgrown his ability to disguise it without devoting considerably amounts of AP to a specific build. Since taking [XP Mask]had always been a long-term goal for him, it had seemed pointless to sink points into skills that hid his XP from everyone else.

Now his XP was invisible. He only needed to evade their mundane senses, which he wasn’t exactly confident he could do. If the mercs were specialized with scouting builds, high perception was probably part of that, and he’d never upgraded [Stealth] past rank 1. Theoretically, his agility was high enough that he thought he could walk silently, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be spotted.

That would be very bad for whoever spotted him. It would mean Luke no longer had any incentive to be quiet, and also that he had a lot of incentive to very quickly kill all three of them before they could run off. Of course, he was going to kill them anyway, but it would be a lot noisier and messier if [Stealth] failed to keep him from being noticed.

Luke ghosted down the hallway, following the sounds of one of the mercs above him. It seemed like they were being thorough about checking out the ground floor, and they were either coordinating in some way he didn’t understand, or they’d swept buildings enough to be practiced without needing to speak.

He leaped up through one of the holes he’d made between the ground floor and the basement and landed without so much as a creek from the floorboards. Two of them were only a few rooms away, their breathing smooth, even, and shallow. He moved himself to a room ahead of their sweep pattern, drew his knife, and waited next to the door.

Luke held himself perfectly still and didn’t even dare to breathe. Silent at a statue, he waited for them to approach the room. They were taking their time, sweeping each room fully, pausing, and moving onto the next, but it wouldn’t be long until they were inside his range. His only concerns were the still-missing third person and their proximity to Zea. He expected to be back by her side in the next thirty seconds, though.

It would be fine. She could take care of herself anyway.

The merc scout was inches away from him now, both of their backs to the wall. If Luke had been more confident in his hearing, he could have stabbed through the wall and skewered them from behind. Instead, he stuck with his original plan of waiting for one of them to stick something through the doorway. He’d already been holding his breath for two minutes; a few more seconds wouldn’t hurt. Hell, he’d barely even noticed it and was nowhere near his limit.

One of the scouts swept through the door. There was a fraction of a second where his eyes went wide at seeing Luke, and then the knife flashed up under his chin and slashed open his throat. Luke’s free hand grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him out of the way so that he could leap through the door. The other scout didn’t hesitate at his sudden appearance.

Four throwing knives flew through the air, slamming into him with all the power of a Major League fastball but bouncing off his new armor. The scout scrambled backwards, drawing more knives as he went. One of them caught Luke’s cheek, his own fault for ignoring [Twitch Reflexes] to close the gap as quickly as he could.

[You have been afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Blue Bile Tincture (16M).]

Luke ignored the notification and grabbed the scout’s hand. He squeezed hard enough to crush bones, and the scout cried out in pain as he dropped the throwing knife he’d been prepared to stab Luke with. Before he could do anything else, Luke jerked him forward and rammed his own alchemically treated eversharp blade up through the underside of the man’s chin.

[You have slain 2 creatures between levels 21-24. 1062 XP awarded.]

He stopped to listen, half expecting the third scout to be closing in on him. If that was the case, Luke couldn’t hear them. Then he took a second to try to figure out what this poison was doing to him. Nothing felt different, at least not that he could tell. He supposed he might have lost a temporary point or two in strength or agility, but he couldn’t feel any real difference.

He made a mental note to ask System about it after he found the third scout. Maybe now that he’d upgraded his bloodline, he could just ask what the poison did. That would come later though, when he wasn’t concerned about making noise. The fight had been brief, barely seconds long, but he hadn’t been nearly quick enough to keep the second scout quiet.

Whatever skill the final scout was using, it was a strong one. Luke couldn’t find any trace of the merc, and, lacking a better idea, decided the best thing to do was stay close to Zea and try to ambush them if and when they showed up. He went back to the nearest hole and dropped silently into the basement.

She was easy enough to find, at least. It wasn’t that she was being deliberately noisy so much as that she was making very little effort to be quiet. In her haste to secure their lost gold, she was tossing every room without giving any consideration to being neat or organized, and that meant a lot of noise.

“Got two of them,” Luke said quietly from the doorway. Zea’s head snapped up to look at him, and she slowly nodded.

“The third?”

“Can’t find him. You ready to go?”

She gave a frustrated growl and kicked a wooden box. “More time?”

“A few minutes. I’ll find a good hiding spot and just kind of… uh, stalk you, I guess. If this other scout is still lurking here, maybe I can spot them if they come after you.”

He left it unsaid that it was far more likely in his mind that the third scout had bailed and was running back to tell the rest of the mercenary band that their two victims were still stupidly lurking in their compound. Luke really wanted to tell Zea to forget the gold, but he understood how important it was, and how many months it could take them to recoup the loss.

Zea moved into the next room while Luke scanned the hallways. As unlikely as he considered it that the third scout was still around, there was the possibility that the merc had some ungodly powerful version of [Stealth] that was making it impossible to sense them.

The counter on his poison ticked down another minute, and, deciding that Zea was making enough noise anyway, Luke whispered, “System, can you tell me what this poison in my status ailments does?”

“I can,” the apparition said. “By itself, it does nothing. It is a catalyst for several other poisons, however, and magnifies their effects.”

“I guess that makes sense. The guy using it had a ton of knives. Maybe I should go grab those before we leave. Might be worth it for Zea to take a knife throwing skill so she can use them.”

“As you say. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

“Can you tell me what poisons are most commonly used with blue bile tincture?”

“Crossok venom is the most common. It is a debilitating condition that causes fever and vomiting on its own, and also afflicts the victim with muscle cramps and lethargy when mixed with blue bile tincture. Another common combination poison is known as Arat’s bane. This causes severe dehydration, to the point that death becomes a possibility. When mixed with blue bile tincture, it also causes immense pain due to muscles retracting hard enough to rip themselves off the bones they are supposed to be attached to.”

“That’s fucking cheery. Good thing I didn’t get hit by the knife with that.”

“Arat’s bane is commonly identified by its smell. It is often described as sickly-sweet, like flowers that are dying.”

“I haven’t smelled anything like that,” Luke said. Now that he thought about it though, that knife-throwing scout had smelled unusual. He supposed it was all the poisons the man had on him. He’d have to make some effort to see if System could help him identify them all later.

“Fuck yeah!” Zea hissed out. “Found it! Shit, there’s even more here than what we had to start with. Time to get out of here.”

Luke started to move out of his hiding spot and join up with Zea, only to sense… something. It was so faint that he wouldn’t have paid it any attention, barely even the whisper of a soft breeze against his skin. [Twitch Reflexes] didn’t ignore it, though, and that was what saved Luke. He hurled himself to the side just as a blade slashed across his neck.

Blood splattered across the ground and Luke slapped a hand onto the wound. It had missed the major arteries, at least. He’d heal easily enough. The final scout was now revealed next to him, a woman perhaps forty years old and dressed in hunting leathers with a green half-cloak thrown over her shoulders.

Luke almost missed her next attack because he was busy focusing on the notification that had just popped up.

[You have been afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Withering Blossom Sap (27M).]
[Conditions have merged. You are now afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Blue Lip Rasping (48M).]
[Warning: You are no longer able to breathe.]