Chapter 70

A break to catch his breath would have been fantastic right about then, but that third inquisitor, the woman who’s been practically invisible, had disentangled herself from Luke’s trap and was coming straight at him. He imagined there was probably a note of desperation there since both her companions were now wounded. Luke was surprised he hadn’t gotten the kill notification from the one whose chest he’d caved in yet, but he planned on fixing that soon.

The armored inquisitor was out of the fight for at least a minute or two while he dealt with his new stump, but now that he was on level ground with the final inquisitor, he found it took all of his attention to keep up with her. She was fast and accurate, not above throwing various bits of sharp metal with her left hand while her right worked a short sword in his general direction. Luke gave ground willingly when he couldn’t parry or dodge her rapid-fire attacks.

He felt the heel of his foot smack up against the inquisitor he’d taken out early on in the fight and did his best not to stumble as he stepped backwards over the man. The woman he was fighting was quick to take advantage of that and Luke found himself twisting at the waist to try to avoid being gutted. He was partially successful, and a sharp line of fire drew itself across his abdomen.

He whipped his mace around in a wide horizontal arc to push her back but it didn’t have much power in it with his feet already tangled up trying not to trip over the man. The assassin inquisitor faded back a step to let it whoosh by, then rushed in before he could bring it back around, her sword already thrust forward and ready to sink into his chest.

There were no other options, at least not ones he could think of on the spot. [Unarmed Martialist] was screaming about his bad stance and all the ways he could have avoided being put in this situation if only he’d made different choices ten seconds ago, but it was [Twitch Reflexes] that actually saved him. He threw himself backwards and straight down, a bad place to be in a fight but still better than getting skewered through the heart.

The assassin overshot her mark, perhaps too surprised that Luke had managed to get out of her way, and he used that opportunity to bring both legs up and kick straight out. Something snapped when his feet connected with her hips, and she cried out in pain. Luke scrambled to his feet, lined up his mace at the still reeling woman, and swung as hard as he could. She stumbled backwards, narrowly avoiding the attack, but he pressed her and with the damage she’d taken from the kick, she couldn’t keep away from him.

Blow after blow landed, and a few moments later, the ding of his first kill of the night sounded in his head. Luke glanced over to confirm it was from the woman and not the guy whose ribs he’d busted and organs he’d pulped. Somehow, that guy was still hanging on, probably from a high stamina stat. It wasn’t getting him back into the fight though, so Luke left him where he was and turned his attention to the one-handed inquisitor.

“Don’t suppose you’d just tell me where the woman your group was following is?” he asked. “After this, I’m going to have to go looking for her. You could make it easy on me.”

“You think you’re going to get out of here alive, apostate?” the inquisitor spat out.

Luke made a show of looking around. “Yeah, I think my chances are pretty good at this point.”

“Even if you kill us, there will always be someone else ready to uphold the will of the Pantheon. We aren’t going to let you tear this world down for your own selfish desires.”

“Whoa there,” Luke said. “You’re making a lot of assumptions, buddy. I’m not trying to tear anything down. I’m just trying to get my family back so we can all go back to our own world.”

The man just grunted and lifted one of his axes in his off-hand. The stink of seared flesh and a bit of smoke wafted out of his stump, which was no longer bleeding. He moved in to attack again, but with only one hand and such a grievous injury distracting him, Luke had no problem deflecting the attacks and killing his opponent.

With a second kill notification up, there was only one more person to deal with. A strong part of Luke wanted to just walk away and leave the inquisitor there. He didn’t particularly enjoy killing other people, had in fact lost more than a few hours of sleep over it. Plus it was always harder to look down at someone and make a deliberate decision to end a life than it was to take a lethal swing at someone doing their best to kill him.

On the other hand, this guy was unconscious and barely alive. Unless Luke carried him to town and found someone to help him, he was going to die anyway. Since it didn’t look like the guy was going to wake back up, and Luke doubted he’d get much information from him anyway, the only options were to kill the unconscious man immediately or let him die on his own. With a sigh, he dropped the mace directly down on the man’s head and ended his life.

[You have slain Hestocian Human Inquistor (lvl 24). 603 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Daranite Human Templar (lvl 22). 505 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Hestocian Human Inquistor (lvl 23). 553 XP awarded.]

Luke took a few minutes to slice a long strip off one of their cloaks to tie around the cut going across his stomach, then cleaned himself up as best he could on what was left. After that, he looted the gold and silver out of their belt pouches, not that any of them were carrying all that much, then stripped the two that the system identified as inquisitors of a pair of gold rings with some weird script engraved on the inside.

He figured it was probably a religious thing, but worst case scenario, they’d just melt the gold down and sell it as a nugget. Any bit of cash he could get now would make things that much easier once he found a place to cross the ocean. Unfortunately, none of their weapons appeared to be anything other than standard steel, and if there was anything else of value on the bodies, he missed it in his search. The armor was unfortunately the same distinctive style as his previous set, so he left it behind.

Luke stood in the middle of his campsite and debated what to do next. Zea was supposed to meet him here, but instead three church agents had shown up. Had they found him on their own and she was still on her way, or had they captured her and tortured the location out of her? Luke didn’t want her to come into the camp while she was away and find a bunch of dead bodies and blood, and he especially didn’t want her tripping any of the boobytraps that were still set.

The risk that something had happened to her was too great for him to just stand in the camp and hope for the best, but rather than making a straight line for Landston, he swept back and forth through the woods. There were a lot of different angles someone could approach from, especially someone as small as Zea. He tried to limit himself to obvious trails though since he assumed she didn’t have a lot of wilderness traversal skills.

Luke didn’t find Zea, but he did find two more inquisitors. They were searching for something in the woods, occasionally calling back and forth to each other to coordinate. He thought he recognized the voice of one as the man from the bakery, but wouldn’t swear by it without getting a look at the man’s face.

Thankfully, he’d reached the point where the range of his senses outweighed the feeling his XP gave off, and by keeping himself far enough back, he was able to shadow the two inquisitors. Whatever they were looking for, they weren’t having a lot of luck finding it. Luke started scanning ahead of them, both to see if he could spot whatever, or whoever, they were looking for, and to find a good ambush spot. At this point, he was determined to leave as many inquisitor corpses behind him as he could. If the alternative was to have them harrying him every step of his journey, he’d save himself some grief and kill them all now.

Maybe if [Survivalist] was a higher rank, or if he’d spent some points on a more purpose-specific tracking skill, he could have followed whatever trail the inquisitors were working. That wasn’t the case, and Luke navigated mostly by reacting to changes in direction from the two inquisitors he was shadowing. Keeping in front of them wasn’t easy, but he was outclassing them in terms of pure stats and he did have a single rank in [Stealth]to help.

Almost by accident, he stumbled across Zea crawling under some branches. She was covered in dirt and grime, and had several new tears in her clothes from scrambling around in the underbrush, but it was definitely her. Luke circled around the brush and got in front of her about the same time she climbed back to her feet.

“Zea,” he hissed quietly.

She flinched in surprise, but didn’t make any noise. Slowly, she exhaled a breath and shook her head. “There’s four or five of them behind me. Come on, we have to keep moving.”

“I killed three already. There’s two more tracking you. I’ll take care of them too. You wait here and I’ll come back when I’m done?”

“Wait,” she said. “There are more in town, including that woman.”

“Ah shit. Okay. Okay. Um, how many?”

“I don’t know. Four? Maybe more. About half of them came after me when I escaped.”

“They’re going to know something’s wrong when the three I took out don’t come back. Best I can do is kill these other two and we can make a run for it.”

Zea hesitated, took in Luke’s ragged and bloody appearance, then nodded. “Okay.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Wait here if you can. Go north otherwise. I’ll find you somehow.”

He didn’t know if he could, honestly, but he didn’t want her in the middle of a life and death stakes battle. Zea was all sorts of clever, much smarter than he was, but she just didn’t have the levels to be fucking around with these guys.

Luke slipped back between the trees and tried to figure out how he was going to close in on two guys who’d sense him coming long before he was ready to strike, and whether or not he’d be able to kill one before the other showed up to help. He didn’t have a prepared battlefield this time, and while he was confident that he’d at least survive a one-on-one fight, he was also still tired from the last three people who’d tried to kill him.

He had [Life Surge] in the bank still, and enough stamina for a [Power Strike] or three. If he was quick, maybe he could overpower the first inquisitor before his buddy could get there. The fight would have to end in seconds though; they really weren’t moving that far apart and most of those seconds would be spent getting to his target once they sensed his presence.

The trackers were getting closer to his position now, and Luke didn’t want them noticing Zea behind him. It was time to move. Luke let his cloak fall to the ground so that it wouldn’t hinder his rush, then picked the one with the least amount of brush in the way. Charging at full speed towards his victim, he used his hands to shove branches out of the way where he could. The ones he couldn’t bend snatched at him and were snapped in half after scratching the shit out of his arms or snagging on his clothes.

Both inquisitors reacted to his sudden presence at the same time, but by then it was too late. Luke darted out from behind a tree and, mace raised, launched himself at his first target.