Chapter 111

Luke was planning on killing a lot of people in the next few minutes. He wasn’t sure what the exact number would be, and he supposed that really depended more on them than it did on him. But he was sick to death of people in this world fucking with him, and abducting Zea crossed the line. She’d been dragged into his problems enough, and he’d failed at keeping her safe.

That was his fault. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He’d thought she’d find a place to hide, but then there’d been whatever the hell that explosion was, and everything had gone sideways from there. Now these merc fuckers, Blacktongue or whatever, had her, and he was going to get her back.

And anyone between point A and point B trying to stop him was going to have a really bad day.

He took a breath after blocking the crossbow bolt and just… listened. It wasn’t as good as feeling XP, but the sounds were all there. Pretty much all the time, he did his best to block all that extraneous noise out. It was necessary just to keep from being overwhelmed by it. Lately, he’d been trying to get a better handle on it.

One guy on the roof. Two on the other side of the wall, flanking the gate and crouched low. Footsteps of people running around inside, at least five. Whispered conversations discussed who was getting in what position, and where and when they’d attack. He heard the word ‘non-lethal’ thrown around a lot. That was great. They were handicapping themselves. By the time they changed their minds, some of the mercenaries would already be dead.

Luke exhaled. Somewhere in that building, below ground level, he thought, was a dwifkin woman who wasn’t doing much moving around, but who was regularly tapping her foot once every five seconds. That was the goal.

Priority one was the sniper. [Analyze] told him the guy was level 22, with agility and perception in the 30s, strength and stamina around 15. The compound was about thirty feet back from the wall, which was itself ten feet high and topped with a row of metal spikes that curled outwards.

He jumped it in one smooth motion, touched down briefly on the outer curve of the spikes, and leaped up to the roof. Below him, the two mercs waiting for him to rush the gate gaped at his sudden appearance overhead, and Luke took a moment to hurl his knife into one of their throats.

A few months ago, he would have been amazed at his own athleticism and precision. Today, he was just grimly satisfied when the kill notification went off. His feet pounded against the cedar shingles, three distinct steps as he scaled the pitch of the roof and brought his mace around to hit the sniper as soon as he came into view.

The cowardly merc had already abandoned his position, but he hadn’t made it off the roof yet, and he wasn’t nearly as fast as Luke. He died and his corpse was flung out into the open air to crash into the fence surrounding the back of the compound. Luke dropped back down to the ground, stepped around some sort of bear trap that was hidden in a flower bed, and kicked the back door hard enough to blow it off its hinges.

It was significantly heavier than he’d expected, being made entirely out of some sort of steel, and the hinges squealed as they tore free. It landed with a huge echoing boom which Luke found entirely satisfying, right up until the four mercs in the room all whipped around to face him. “Hi,” Luke said. “Just direct me to the dwifkin girl and I’ll be out of your hair, okay?”

Even as he was speaking, he was already moving into the room and bringing his mace around to crack the first merc across the face. The man went flying through a wall, definitely dead, and definitely surprising two more mercs. Then the other three attacked, and Luke let himself fall into the grip of his skills.

[Tactical Foresight] took center stage, easily predicting the incoming attacks. That, combined with [Unarmed Martialist]to keep his body moving and [Counter] to show him the openings the mercs left when they tried to kill him, was all it took to end the fight.

A man with a sword stumbled past him, his agility too low to keep up with Luke’s movements. The mace caught the back of his skull and threw his corpse to the floor. The woman farthest away from him across the room unloaded a brace of throwing knives so fast and so precise that There was no way for Luke to weave through them. Instead, he hopped straight up and flipped in the air so that when he landed, he was behind the man holding a pair of short swords.

Mace met blades as the man blocked behind him, not even turning around fully to stop Luke. Then the man collapsed when Luke kicked the back of his knee out, and Luke took a single step to the side just as the knife-thrower unloaded another salvo on him. The dual wielder took three of them in his back, which slowed him down just long enough for Luke to tear his head off with a simple horizontal strike.

He advanced on the knife thrower, who’d run out of weapons and was now looking for a way out. She’d backed herself into a corner to get some distance on him, but without the other mercs to keep him occupied, she was trapped now.

“Downstairs, right? Want to tell me where the stairs are?” Luke asked, noting the two mercs from the other room were coming in from the only other door in the room.

When the woman didn’t answer, Luke closed the distance and blew through her defenses as she tried to step into his swing and grab his arm, only to find that he outmuscled her by an order of magnitude. He planted a hand on her chest and shoved her backwards, then swung a second time. Ding. Ding.

Two dings. He supposed that meant he’d leveled up. That was good. Having loose AP that he could use mid-fight when he needed it was always reassuring. Rank 4 [Mace Mastery] would probably be a good option, or maybe rank 3 [Counter]. Right now, his biggest concern was being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and both of those skills would help with that.

He held off on it for the moment, if only because he had yet to use [Power Strike] or [Life Surge] and he’d already killed six of the mercenaries. Most of them had been low 20s, but he was betting there were a few tougher ones floating around somewhere.

Luke knew that he needed to keep his momentum going. Right now, the mercenaries were off-guard. They’d expected him to show up, maybe, but not to charge in like that. [XP Mask] was proving its worth already, throwing people off. If they were anywhere as used to relying on feeling someone else’s XP to keep track of where they were as he was, it was no wonder they were having a hard time reacting to him.

Sooner or later, they’d get their shit together and then he’d be fighting all of them at once instead of three or four at a time. The more of them he killed before they got to that point, the better off he’d be, which was why Luke turned and attacked both mercs as soon as they made it into the room.

One of them was level 30, and more than willing to get in Luke’s face. He actually had a mace of his own, which surprised Luke, as it was the first time he could recall seeing anyone using the same kind of weapon as him. From the look on the merc’s face, it seemed like he was surprised to. A brief moment of kinship passed between the two, and then they were back to trying to kill each other.

The merc had the strength to back up his weapon choice, even a few points over Luke’s, and he’d complimented it up with an excellent suite of skills, just judging by their initial clash. What he lacked was the agility to keep up with Luke’s lightning fast strikes. Merc-y McMaceFace was more than happy to take the damage in exchange for getting a shot at Luke, and perhaps most importantly, he had a friend to help him out. That other guy was even more of a problem, in his own way.

He had, of all things, what looked like some sort of slingshot that he was rapidly loading with pebbles and firing in Luke’s direction. They were pretty accurate too, and stung like a bitch whenever one of them landed. It wasn’t going to be fatal on its own, not unless Luke took a real unlucky hit to the head or something, but it was distracting, and that was unacceptable when he was squaring off against someone who could dish out punishment just as hard as he could.

The skinny one was skulking around behind McMaceFace, relying on his buddy to be a human shield for him, a… a meat shield, Curt would have called it. That was unacceptable. Not only did Luke not have time for a drawn-out confrontation, but what kind of asshole just shot rocks at someone?

Luke skipped back a step and let McMaceFace’s attack whoosh by, then surprised the man by stepping in to meet him with his own attack. There wasn’t enough space between them to fully swing his own mace, so Luke compensated with a short downward chop infused with [Power Strike]. The merc got the haft of his mace up in time to partially block it, but even his strength and stamina weren’t high enough to keep both his feet under him.

Maybe Luke could have finished him off right there. There were certainly openings to exploit, but he didn’t even try. His arm snapped forward, just like that other merc who’d thrown that huge knife at him, and his mace flew out to strike the dick with the bag of rocks right in the chest. Ribs broke, his heart was pulped, and the man died with a surprised and pain-filled squeal accompanied by a one-note ding in Luke’s head.

Throwing his weapon would have been a terrible move, except that Luke activated a second [Power Strike], this time through his fist, and drove it directly between McMaceFace’s eyes. Even down on one knee, the man wobbled. He dropped his own weapon and fell to the floor, now needing both hands to keep from toppling over. In an impressive display of willpower, he shook his head slowly and tried to reach out to grab Luke as he moved past.

Luke was far too fast, and McMaceFace was far too dizzy. Luke recovered his mace from the destroyed chest cavity of his latest kill, then spun back to finish off the last merc before he could recover. In a way, he almost felt bad about killing this one. Almost.

[You have slain Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 30). 957 XP awarded.]

[This creature has slain 1126 other creatures.]

[Total kills for this type of creature: 16.]

[Highest level kill: 30.]

At least the XP was good. He’d just leveled a few kills back and was already down to a mere ten thousand to level again. Hell, it might even happen before he left the compound if he found another twenty or so mercenaries. And he was planning on going out of his way to kill anyone who wasn’t smart enough to run, just so there wouldn’t be any pursuit after he was done.

Booted foot stomped on the floor about fifty feet away from him, just slightly out of time with each other. Luke paused and counted. Six people, he thought, all of them coming his way. He hefted his mace and moved forward, already using [Analyze] as he picked out individual targets by sound alone.