Chapter 109

While Luke wove through the trees to reach the next archer, a woman at level 24 with high agility and perception, but not much else going for her as far as [Analyze] was concerned, he tried to remember what it was that System had said the highest level mercenary was. He wanted to say the answer was 35, but he hoped he was misremembering.

At least nobody nearby was that strong. As far as he could tell, he was the highest level combatant in this particular fight, though he would appear as the weakest to them. Anybody with more than two brain cells would know that he was stronger than his non-existent XP aura would indicate, but he much preferred his power to be an unknown to them.

He hadn’t really stopped to appreciate how [Analyze]cut through any XP-suppressing skills until now, but as he dashed wildly through the trees, he was reminded of how it seemed like every single church agent he’d met had always been stronger than their XP would indicate. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if these mercenaries were the same, but without the ability to sense it, he couldn’t be distracted by false impressions.

Well, that was what he was going to tell himself, anyway. The truth was that he keenly felt the loss of that sense. He could hear his opponents, and Zea as well for that matter, and that was good for roughly keeping track of their location, but it was a poor substitute. On the bright side, the look of surprise on the second archer’s face when Luke popped out from around a tree and broke her arm with his first swing was priceless.

She didn’t even get a chance to draw a weapon before he obliterated her on the backswing. Luke wanted to take out the third archer, but Cartman had reached the woods and had, perhaps smartly, decided to go after Zea instead of Luke. He wasn’t sure if that was an attempt at taking a hostage or if Zea was just easier to find since her XP wasn’t hidden, but either way, Luke needed to step in before he got to her.

There was a slight problem there, one of distance. Luke was fast, but so was Cartman, and Zea hadn’t moved deep enough into the forest in the intervening seconds to delay getting caught. In fact, Luke was pretty sure she hadn’t moved at all. He hadn’t expected all that much in ten seconds, but he figured she’d at least have made a token effort to hide.

He was about halfway there, fully aware of the futility of racing Cartman but desperately trying to plan out some way to save Zea anyway, when an explosion shook the trees around him. Luke was thrown off his feet to tumble through his air, where he landed feet first, crouched against the side of a tree.

“What the fuck,” he muttered, dropping back to the ground and advancing considerably more slowly now. The forest practically screamed with the sounds of panicked birds fleeing into the air, but underneath all that he heard the voice of a man groaning in pain.

There was a new clearing in the forest, a circle about ten feet around where all the vegetation had been torn away. One tree was ripped out of the ground and only upright at this point due to the other trees it had partially fallen on. Any grass that had been there was now scoured away, and there were a good number of stripped bare branches snapped off and laying outside the circle. Loose leaves still fluttered through the air, dozens of feet away from the clearing.

Zea was nowhere to be found, which Luke took to mean she hadn’t been in the middle of whatever the hell had happened. Cartman, on the other hand, was on the ground about twenty feet outside the clearing, his whole front a charred mess. His facial features had been burnt off, and the steel plate he wore was partially melted into his flesh. Luke sighed in annoyance. Once again, he wouldn’t be scavenging any armor off the fight. Cartman had been the only enemy even close to his size.

Putting the mercenary out of his misery was probably doing him a favor at this point, but on the off-chance he had his own healing skill, Luke killed him anyway. That left, to his knowledge, one archer and the two men from the wagon who had yet to enter the woods. Luke felt comfortable with those odds.

Zea was still missing, which was probably a good thing until the rest of the mercenaries had been dealt with, but he’d feel better if he knew where she was hiding. The explosion almost had to have been caused by her, but he hadn’t even known she had something capable of doing that. He wondered if she could make things that he could use too, even without [Mana Manipulation] and [Mana Sight]. Having a secret bomb he could set off in a tight situation would be awesome.

Of course, it would have been nice to be let in on the fact that she was carrying a bomb, even if it was magical and there was no chance it could go off accidentally. They’d be having a discussion about that as soon as this was all over, and as soon as he figured out where the hell she’d went. Luke idly scanned the branches overhead, half-expecting to find her draped over one near the top of a tree.

She wasn’t there, because that would have made things too easy. Instead of continuing to look for her, Luke targeted the last archer, who he could hear running directly away from ground zero. Smart of her, really. Luke expected they were all wondering just what the hell had happened and internally debating whether they’d gotten paid enough to take this job.

He slipped off after her, but after a minute or two, it became apparent that she had the agility to keep ahead of him and the stamina to keep up the pace for longer than he was willing to give chase. His time would be better spent finding Zea and getting away from the ambush site before more mercenaries showed up.

Wagonman number one, the guy who was only level 19, burst out of the bushes nearby as Luke turned to head back towards the edge of the trees, a knife longer than Luke’s forearm brandished in one hand. He did so in near-perfect silence too, obviously leaning on a few ranks in [Stealth]to achieve that. Luke hadn’t heard so much as a single breath as he was going by. But he did smell horse and some sort of grease or oil from the man’s time sitting on the wagon, which was all he needed to expect the ambush.

The knife flashed by as Luke stuttered his step slightly to alter his speed. The mercenary ended up in front of him, his whole body thrown into the attack, and in the perfect position to have his legs kicked out from beneath him. He went down with a grunt and immediately rolled, quick enough to dodge Luke’s follow up attack, but not so quick that he made it back to his feet before getting kicked again.

“You know, I should probably keep you alive so I can ask all sorts of questions, but somehow, I doubt you’d answer. And I’m just not really into torture,” Luke said as he brought the mace down again.

The merc threw the knife at Luke’s face, his arm uncoiling in a whip like motion that sent the overly large blade spinning a full rotation in the scant three feet between him and his target. It was actually kind of impressive to Luke that the knife did a full spin before it reached him, not that it mattered. Luke just tilted his head to the side and let the blade go past him.

“So I’m guessing you don’t want to tell me why a group of mercenaries is after me? I mean, I can guess, but it’d be nice to know.”

The merc snarled and lunged forward in an attempt to tackle Luke around the waist. [Twitch Reflexes] tried to push him back a step and to the side so that the tackle could miss, but Luke already knew his strength was only 25. He simply braced himself to take the tackle, held his ground, and then mercilessly slammed his elbow down into the man’s temple.

Strength left the merc’s arms and he wobbled, now held upright only by his grip around Luke’s waist. From there it was a simple matter to kick the man free, and Luke found himself at a bit of a loss. He was no good at information extracting, but it still seemed prudent to try. Maybe Zea would have a better idea. With a sigh, Luke grabbed the now-limp body by the arm and started dragging it back towards the demolished clearing.

“Okay, one more wagon guy, who I don’t hear anywhere nearby, and one hot little short stack that I also don’t hear anywhere nearby, probably because of some sort of trinket she whipped up that hides her just like that feather did,” Luke said, looking around. “Which I guess means I’m standing here and letting people come to me.”

Luke didn’t like that idea. He wanted to do something proactive, not just wait for someone to show up and take a swing at him. Proactive was always better than reactive. That was why they’d pulled the fight into the forest to begin with. So far, that was working out just fine, except that he’d lost track of the only person on this whole planet he actually cared about.

Worse, if he just sat around waiting, that meant more mercenaries might show up. Considering he’d given up the chase on one of the archers and had never even encountered the second Wagonman once they’d gotten into the trees, not to mention the various people stalking them, he figured there were good odds that reinforcements would be showing up soon.

“Uh, Pavena? Could you like… stop hiding now?”

Luke didn’t want to pitch his voice too loud, just in case, but at this point, he figured he could take anyone who might still be lurking in the area, and he didn’t hear anyone at all anyway. He waited a minute, gave his new prisoner another kick to the head when the man started groaning, and then tried again.

“Pavena? Seriously, it’s time to go.” There was no answer. Luke looked around again, hoping to spot her and knowing it was futile. “Shit.”

* * *

“Hey, wake up,” Luke said, lightly slapping around his prisoner. “I need to know where you guys set up your camp. I think my friend might have gotten abducted.”

The man’s head lolled backwards, and the only thing keeping him even sort of upright was a firm grip on his armor. Once again, too small for Luke. He was really getting sick of that. It wasn’t even like he was that tall, but somehow, every time, the one guy whose armor might fit him ended up getting gruesomely murdered and took his armor along with him.

“Snap out of it,” Luke demanded. “Really, dude, I don’t have the time to fuck around with you here.”

The man murmured something, but Luke could barely hear it. “What was that again?” he asked.

His prisoner said something else, different words this time, but a little louder. Luke didn’t understand a word of them. “Of fucking course. You don’t speak Thalian, do you? What was this language called again. O-something. Osagi? No. System, what is this guy speaking?”

“Ostari, Luke.”

“Right, thanks. Okay, time to buy rank 1 in that. I knew that was going to end up happening.”

A few seconds later, [Ostari] got added to his list of skills. “Okay, shithead, let’s try this again. Where did your friends take my friend? I need to go get her back.”