Chapter 112

“Gods above, what are those idiots doing up there?” the boss muttered to himself as he glanced up at the ceiling.

Zea would have laughed if she hadn’t still been gagged. Luke was generally pretty easy going, but she’d seen him when he got riled up about something. From the sounds of it, he wasn’t happy and was taking it out on the mercenary group that had attacked them. It sounded like a demolition crew was tearing apart the building over their heads, and Zea had some vague worries about being buried alive if it all collapsed down into the basement.

Based on how many different sources of XP up there were disappearing one after another, things had gone very badly for the mercenaries over the last two minutes. It sounded like Luke wasn’t holding back at all anymore.

“Why in the hell isn’t he coming straight at her? It’s like he can’t even find her,” the boss muttered. He walked over to the door and jerked it open. “Change of plan, men.”

“Sir?” one of the mercenaries lurking in the hall said.

“Get this one out of here and delivered to the client. It looks like the other one is either too smart to fall for the trap or too stupid to even find it. I’m going to have to go take care of him before he causes any more damage.”

“Understood.”

The boss stalked out, presumably to go fight Luke himself, and three other mercenaries came into the room. One of them hoisted her up over one shoulder, and they trooped out in a line. “Can’t believe that apostate is going through us like that,” she heard the one in the lead say softly. “How many fucking levels did that kid pack on since he got here?”

* * *

[You have slain Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 27). 769 XP awarded.]

[This creature has slain 719 other creatures.]

[Total kills for this type of creature: 25.]

[Highest level kill: 30.]

Finally, Luke had a moment to get his bearings. After the third group, the rest of the mercs had backed off. As far as he could tell, most of them had retreated out of the building completely, like they’d just given up stopping him. That was all well and good, except he still hadn’t found Zea. For a few minutes after he’d arrived, he’d heard a rhythmic tapping sound, but that had stopped at almost the exact same time he’d finally had a second to focus on it. He thought it was coming from below him and to the left, which was as good a direction as any.

There had to be a set of stairs somewhere, but Luke had no idea where they were. Rather than waste time looking for them, he brought his mace down in a wild overhand swing and busted the floorboards apart. A second chop was all he needed to widen it enough to fit in, and Luke dropped down into, well… not a basement, but he supposed a sub-floor. He landed in a hallway, unlit with any light besides that which spilled down from the hole he’d made, and looked around for any mercs.

There was no one in sight, but he could hear a group of them moving somewhere behind him. They didn’t appear to be heading towards him, but since they were the only ones he could hear moving around, he figured it was better to check on them first. He set off at a slow, for him, jog, and within a few seconds, was barreling through his first locked door. The wood broke apart before the lock did, and the remains of the door blew inwards as he charged through it.

“Hello,” he said in Ostari. Three mercs who’d been walking towards the door all froze in surprise. One of them gave an uncertain glance behind him, then muttered something softly while running off. The second one, who was holding a tied-up Zea over his shoulder, darted off in another direction, and the merc in the lead pulled out a weird sword-looking thing with no edge, but which was hooked at the tip, then moved to the center of the hall to block Luke from getting past him.

“Dick move of your buddies to run off and leave you here,” Luke said, activating [Analyze].

[Name: Blacktongue Human Mercenary]

[Level: 28]

[Strength: 31]

[Agility: 28]

[Stamina: 25]

[Perception: 22]

Tough, but not the worse he’d fought in the last few minutes. There was no question in Luke’s mind that he would win, just how long it would take and how far away the one carrying Zea would get. Now that he’d gotten confirmation on her position, he knew which set of sounds were hers. The gag was unexpected, but it actually made things easier to pick her out of the background noise since she was the only person breathing with one on.

The merc rushed forward, his hooked blade snaking out to grab at the haft of Luke’s mace. It tugged the weapon to the side, either in an attempt to disarm Luke or to pull him off balance and leave him open for some sort of follow up attack. Either way, the merc lacked the strength to move Luke’s weapon any farther than he allowed it to.

Just as Luke was about to reverse that and use the man’s own weapon to pull him into an attack, something changed. All of the sudden, his mace was being dragged sideways, practically out of his grip. There was no way the merc had enough strength, and the angle seemed all wrong to give him that leverage.

Despite that, Luke was forced to shuffle to the left just to keep hold of his weapon. He grimaced as he was pulled out of his stance, then kicked out to check an attack coming from the merc. It seemed Luke wasn’t the only one stacking ranks into [Unarmed Martialist], and this guy’s build was actually countering him pretty hard, despite the level gap.

Luke was far from out of tricks, though. Whatever skill the merc was using to keep his mace tied up, it wasn’t enough to keep Luke from moving it. He feinted left, then when the merc moved to keep his weapon locked down, Luke pulled back to the right. This earned him a fist across the face, which Luke gladly accepted in exchange for getting his hand locked around the merc’s arm.

All skills aside, when it came down to a contest of brute strength, Luke outclassed his opponent. He demonstrated that fact by picking the man up by his arm and slamming him repeatedly into the wall. The hooked stick fell from his limp fingers and clattered against the floor, followed swiftly by the man’s body. That was less of a clatter and more of a wet thump followed by some groaning.

Luke finished the merc off before he could recover, then stepped over the corpse and raced down the hall after the man who’d been carrying Zea. Before he could catch up, two more mercenaries came out of a previously unseen stairwell and got in front of him. The first was one of the two runners from the group he’d just encountered, but the second was someone new.

[Name: Blacktongue Human Mercenary]

[Level: 35]

[Strength: 42]

[Agility: 38]

[Stamina: 48]

[Perception: 29]

“Shit,” Luke said. Of course he’d have to run into the toughest one of the lot right as he was about to catch up with Zea. It really couldn’t have happened any other way, otherwise he might have taken is as proof that the gods weren’t fucking with him. Show him the goal, then block it with the biggest asshole of them all.

“Not as planned at all,” the merc said with a shake of his head. “Very messy.”

He was a big guy, almost a full head taller than Luke’s five foot nine, with a square jaw and a neck like a bull. Considering his stats, Luke was kind of surprised by just how bulky the merc was, but he moved with all the fluid grace Luke would expect from someone with 38 agility. Strangely, Luke didn’t see a weapon anywhere.

That actually worried him a little bit. His own style of combining heavy attacks with his mace and following up with quick, brutal strikes at pinpointed targets thanks to [Unarmed Martialist] had been incredibly effective so far. The only times he’d really struggled was against opponents who were using the same skill. Given the skill level on display so far, Luke felt comfortable saying that his superior levels and stats had carried him through.

For the first time in a long time, he was fighting someone who was a higher level than him, with the exact same strength stat and similar stamina. Luke had a big advantage in agility, but he knew better than anyone how some skills could defeat that by predicting attacks instead of reacting to them. There was no telling what kind of skills the strongest merc in their whole outfit had, or what ranks he had them up to.

Luke tightened his grip on his mace. It didn’t matter how strong this guy was, not really. One way or another, Luke was going through him. “Move,” he said quietly, “or I’ll move you.”

The merc just let out a laugh and told him, “Been a while since I had a good scrap. Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. Though, maybe you’ll wish I had once the client gets hold of you.”

There was nothing else to be said. Any stalling for time would only hurt Luke’s chances of catching up to Zea, and he knew how fast these mercs could move. If this fight dragged on, they could get ahead of him by miles before he got out of the building. Finding Zea at that point would be difficult, verging on impossible.

Luke sprang forward, and the merc rushed down the hall to meet him. The smaller, scrawnier one said something in Ostari, something rapid fire and complicated enough that as distracted as Luke was in the moment, he couldn’t process it to figure out what was being said. Whatever it was, the merc he was fighting just grunted in return. Apparently, that was good enough for the other guy, who took off running.

That was probably a bad sign that the guy was so confident that he didn’t even bother keeping his reinforcement around to help. Another bad sign was that they were less than ten feet from each other and he was showing every sign that he planned to just body Luke into the floor without stopping. The mace flashed up, speeding towards the merc’s center mass, only to be deflected by a palm slap that hit with surprising force and drove the weapon through the wall.

Luke was forced to let go or get run over. His hands worked to block the merc’s attempts to grab onto him as their bodies collided, and Luke threw himself backwards both to lessen the impact and to tuck into a roll and throw the merc over him using nothing but his feet. Both of them went flying, with the merc going overhead and landing fifteen feet down the hallway.

It looked like the big guy was a fan of wrestling, something Luke had briefly considered trying out for in school before deciding he liked baseball more. Now he was kind of wishing he’d played a season, just so he’d have some basic idea of what kind of moves to expect. Well, it probably didn’t translate well anyway. At the levels they were working on, having an extra three hundred pounds trying to hold you down to the ground contributed nothing anyway.

The merc settled into position, his hands wide in a pose that made Luke think of Tantoro, the ostol he’d fought once back in Valtira. That had been a close fight, but Luke was a lot weaker back then. He still hadn’t used [Life Surge] anyway, but now that he thought about it, the merc was on the wrong side to stop him and Luke knew agility was his weakest stat.

Luke tore his mace free from the wall, then spun on his heel and dashed off after the fleeing mercenaries.