Chapter 156

There were countless skills in the system, including those that helped with crossbow use. The one that concerned Luke was called [Rapid Reload], which helped the user pull new bolts, place them, and reset the crossbow far more quickly than they otherwise could. Between that and a decently high agility stat, it was easy to fire three or four bolts a second.

Roughly a third of the caravan guards had that skill, not that it would do them any good if they didn’t already have their weapons pointed his way. Unfortunately, the one guard who was on the ball didhave [Rapid Reload] and he wasn’t shy about using it. The first bolt pinged off the head of Luke’s mace. The second one got swatted out of the air. The third one cracked against Luke’s shoulder, deflected by either the armor itself or the enchanted chain Zea had given him. He wasn’t entirely sure.

The fourth bolt went straight up, along with the crossbow itself and the guard’s body. It had taken less than a second to leap from one wagon to the next, and though it would have been easier to smash the guard straight down, Luke had some concerns about injuring the slaves in the wagon under his feet. He opted for a vertical swing going upward instead, and a brief one-note ding in his mind confirmed that the blow had killed the guard.

That extra fraction of a second gave the other three guards an instant to retaliate, but they were too slow to hit Luke, especially when he was already within arm’s reach. They had enough time to start yelling before he killed all three of them.

It didn’t really seem fair. Luke was used to overpowering opponents through raw stats and a build focused almost exclusively on combat, but this was on a whole different level. It was like beating up toddlers. Most of them were barely half his level, and none of them had the durability to survive more than a single blow.

On the other hand, they did have numbers, and now that the rest of the guards were aware he was there, they took turns shooting at him. The ones on the next wagon dropped to a knee and started firing, and the ones behind them shot over their heads. By the time Luke got the triple-ding of successful kills on the second wagon, there were dozens of bolts in the air heading his way.

He dove off the back side of the wagon just in time for the bolts to zip by overhead like a swarm of huge, angry hornets. Luke twisted as he fell to land on his feet, crouched down and facing the last wagon in the caravan. The driver stared back at him, wide-eyed and crouched down low with his arms held up to shield his head.

Luke took a beat to consider what to do. The driver was unarmed and making no attempt to change that. He was young, younger than Luke at least, and obviously terrified. The boy wasn’t a threat, not right now. Luke could ignore him and continue his assault safely. But the boy was a driver for a slave caravan, and there was no pretending anyone didn’t know what was inside those wagons. He’d knowingly helped transport more than a hundred people kept in conditions deliberately designed to leave them sickened and weak.

Luke had killed a lot of people since he’d arrived on Aros. The system even kept track for him, every time he killed someone else. The number was over sixty now, which meant he was either a serial killer or a mass murderer; he wasn’t sure which. He’d been able to justify every one of those kills. He was defending himself or attacking someone doing something evil like banditry. Even the mercs had been a military force trying to abduct him. He’d lost a little sleep over it, but all things considered, Luke thought he should feel a lot worse than he actually did about killing so many people.

He didn’t know if this boy deserved to die. Was he complicit? Had he been coerced into helping? Did he even think he was doing something wrong? A lot of people used the law as a guide to morality, and slavery was allowed by law. Luke suspected there were some laws about how exactly those slaves were acquired that might have been violated here based on what Ruca and Val had told him about why they had to hit this particular caravan, but was this kid a part of that initial raid, or was he just someone who’d been hired to drive a wagon down a long stretch of road after the fact?

For that matter, how guilty where the eight guards he’d just killed, and was it his place to determine that? Luke had already established that he didn’t care if he was legally in the wrong, but the whole thing reminded him of something Curt had went on a long rant about once, something about the contractors on the Death Star. Luke had kind of always hated Star Wars, mostly because he’d gotten sick of all the jokes about his name very early on in his life, so he hadn’t paid much attention.

He realized his mind was wandering and brought himself back to the present. The boy in front of him was no threat, and while Luke didn’t know if the driver deserved to die, he did know it was a lot harder to bring someone back than it was to end their life. If he had the power, he’d capture all of the guards and drivers instead of killing anyone.

But he didn’t, and at the end of the day, he was making a conscious decision to kill the people preventing him from freeing the men and women trapped in the prison wagons. If the driver came after Luke, he would die. Until then, Luke would ignore him.

He just hoped the kid wouldn’t suddenly discover his courage and put a bolt through the back of Luke’s head.

The plan had been to clear the first three wagons before being driven back and forced to take cover, but they’d both acknowledged that pulling that off would be more luck than anything else. That was why they’d come up with phase two, though Zea had expressed some concerns about her ability to pull off her part.

It wasn’t that far from the cover of the trees to the road the caravan was on. Luke could cross it in an instant, and he was strong enough that he’d literally leaped the gap. Zea had a strength of 7, which was still quite strong compared to what Luke considered a baseline human to be. He knew she could throw the distance; the question was whether she could do it quickly and accurately. She’d been doubtful, but Luke had faith in her.

That was why he was tracking her behind the trees, a feat done entirely by hearing and made far more difficult than it would have been if the guards would stop yelling. He knew she was in position and readying her ammunition. Any moment now, he would need an explosive burst of speed to make it up to the next wagon roof.

There! A dozen small stones flew through the air in a steady stream, hurled one at a time as hard as Zea could throw them. Their speed was abysmal, at least by Luke’s current standards. More than a few of the guards noticed them and had time to avoid them, but better than half were struck by the magic rocks. The enchantments discharged, sending arcs of electricity out from the point of impact and locking up limbs long enough to give Luke an opening.

He jumped straight up and then forward. A few guards reflexively fired their crossbows, but Luke was anticipating that. His initial forward jump only took him about four feet across the top of the wagon before he landed, juked left, and jumped again. Only one guard on the next two wagons had managed to dodge Zea’s bombardment and was fast enough to reload her crossbow.

Luke raised an arm to guard his face and felt the bolt skip off the metal gauntlet on his hand. His foot smacked into the back of the wagon, causing him to stagger forward a step when he landed, but now he was too close to be stopped by a crossbow. The woman who’d shot at him was the first to die, and only one other guard was in good enough condition to pull a short sword to defend himself with. Luke killed him next, then dropped straight down when he heard the click of a crossbow behind him.

The driver of the second wagon was apparently much more proactive in defending the caravan than the one at the very back. Luke scooped up a dropped short sword and hurled it down at the driver, who immediately adopted a panicked expression and tried to leap out of the way. He was far too slow, and even though Luke lacked any sort of weapon throwing skill, he had plenty of strength for power and agility for accuracy. The weapon struck the driver hilt first with enough force to smash the man backwards into the wagon. He crumbled down onto the bench and laid there, limp but alive.

Luke hadn’t been trying to spare the driver’s life. Unlike the boy from the first wagon, this guy had tried to kill him. It was only the man’s good fortune and a decently high stamina stat that kept him from dying. If not for the other guards already recovering from Zea’s attack, Luke would have jumped down and killed the driver. As it was, he barely had time to finish off the two guards on the roof with him.

Another wave of paralyzing stones came from the trees, but this time the guards were ready and started firing back. Zea cut her attack short as she ducked behind cover, but between the stones that hit and the guards splitting their attention, Luke had an opening to jump forward to the fourth wagon.

Unfortunately, they weren’t just waiting for him to move up and slaughter them one group at a time. Fully half of the guards from the front half of the caravan were on the ground now, and he wasn’t facing just one or two groups firing at him. Some of them had been drawn to the front of the caravan, where Ruca and Val were engaged in some sort of hit and run battle with the level 42 guard and a few of the one on horseback, and that fight was going very poorly for the bandit side.

But that still left ten armed and alert guards who hadn’t been disabled by Zea’s enchanted stones or distracted trying to stop her. Luke wasn’t going to get another opportunity to sneak up a wagon and dispatch more of them. Every inch of ground he claimed now was going to be soaked with blood, and a lot of it would be his.

He had his armor. He had Zea’s chain. [Life Surge]was filling him with strength and speed. He had twenty levels on his opponents. The next few seconds were going to suck, no doubt about it, but he’d learned that in this world, absolute strength trumped numbers. Everyone who didn’t break ranks and flee was going to die unless one of the horsemen circled back to get in Luke’s way.

All he had to do was survive the next few volleys of bolts. He trusted in his preparations, and in Zea’s support in keeping them from overwhelming him. The air filled with bolts, with most of the guards putting two or even three in the air before the first one arced across the open air to reach Luke, and he ran straight forward into them.