Chapter 24: I feel like im missing out on something cool.

Upper Fire Month, 7th Day, 600 AGG

Tina tossed a pebble down the side of the road leading to the entrance of the compound.

"Did you hear that?" the guard's voice was clear even from a distance, her trained senses allowing her to catch his voice as if she was right by him. "Go check on it."

"Fuck, you heard it first," his partner grumbled. "You should—"

Tina gestured towards her sister in the tree across from her. Without a moment of delay between them, they activated 『Dark Crossing』and sank into the shadows before emerging again from underneath the silhouette of the guards.

The guards should've noticed that something was wrong.

They didn't.

Tina and Tia quietly slipped away from the entrance and delved deeper into the drug compound, the pair of watchmen none the wiser. Killing now would draw unwanted attention.

"You there, Evileye?" Tina muttered in a low voice. The vampire wasn't fluent in the hand signals her and her sister were so prone to using. Additionally, Tina's senses could not pierce through the stealth spells Evileye had layered upon herself.

"Yeah," the spellcaster's voice whispered into her ear. "Patrol coming from your right."

Tina nodded, silently informing her sister, and the trio dashed off towards the nearest warehouse. Two guards were lazing around and leaning against the walls near the loading ramp. The ninja didn't feel bad; these were people who knew very well what they were getting into.

And now was the hour of reckoning.

"『Charm Person』," one of the guards blinked in confusion. Evileye glided towards the man, an invisible specter under the moonlit night, and muttered into his ear. "Ask your partner when your shift ends."

"Hey, you know much longer we gotta stay up here?" he turned to the side and asked. "Creepy as hell out here."

"We're the night shift," his partner grumbled. "So we're gonna be stuck here till the damn sun rises. Haven't you been working here for a while? You should know this already—"

In one smooth show of teamwork, Evileye pulled the charmed guard's face towards her the instant Tina leapt at the other guard. Her Vampire Blade sank into the man's throat with a practiced, cold efficiency as she covered the sound of his death throes with her other hand.

"Oh, did you want something?" the guard looked curiously in the general direction of the invisible Evileye. Meanwhile, Tina dragged the bloodless corpse out of sight, hidden under the cover of night.

"Well, your partner had to go to the restroom, you see?" Evileye spoke in a gentle voice. Tina shuddered. Such a tone was far too out of place coming from the mouth of the short spellcaster. "So could you show us around? Just as a favor for me and my friends?"

"Of course," the man nodded before frowning in confusion. "But why are you invisible?"

"It's a secret inspection," a hint of exasperation crept into Evileye's voice. "No one's supposed to know we're here, got it? Orders from above."

"Ah!" the man flushed in embarrassment. "Right, I should've thought of that. Sorry for the question, friend."

"It's fine. Now, show us where you keep all your stuff."

Tia suddenly appeared behind the pair. "Three warehouses. All of them are interconnected; one's filled with dry materials, another with alchemical solutions, and the last with packed goods. Matches with the diagrams we got."

"Wow," the guard looked suitably impressed. "You secret inspectors work fast."

Evileye groaned with noticeable annoyance. "Okay, forget the warehouses. Could you take us to your manager?"

"Sure," he walked into the warehouse before pausing with a conflicted look on his face. "But I'm not supposed to leave my shift—"

"Your bosses won't mind," Evileye lied. "You're with us, remember?"

"That's true…" he still seemed conflicted. "Okay. I'll take you guys to him, but I have to head back to my post right after, alright?

"That's fine," Evileye nudged him. "Now, lead the way."

The guard nodded and headed into the warehouse, an invisible vampire and two unseen ninjas in tow.

"Aren't you all supposed to be shipping out goods today?" Evileye noticed the lack of workers inside the warehouse. "Ran into a delay or something?"

"Oh, we had a schedule change out of the blue," the man shrugged. "Don't know why, but that's what the boss told us."

"Huh."

A sense of unease crawled up Tina's spine. She looked at where Tia was creeping along and saw that she was not alone in her restlessness.

They were even more on guard now, each step taking them closer and closer to the person in charge of this facility. It was too empty, even if their ship-out date had been pushed back. Something wasn't adding up.

"Hey boss!" the charmed guard rapped on the door to the manager's office. "Got some visitors for you!"

No response. They waited for a few more moments until the man knocked again.

Silence.

"Oi, boss—" the man pushed the door open with an air of irritation. "Huh. He's not here."

"Shit!" Tina cursed and yanked the still-invisible Evileye backwards, just in time to avoid the worst of the explosion that ripped the guard to shreds.

The two were flung through the air into—and through—a wall, wood and plaster crumbling down on them.

"Ugh," Tina groaned, blinking the dots out of her eyes. Pain wracked her body as she noticed that the whole front of her body was an angry red. Her arms had been bruised by the shrapnel from the explosion instead of being torn to shreds. She thanked the gods for her enchanted armament.

"Holy shit," Evileye dispelled her invisibility and frantically poured a healing potion on the ninja. "You okay, Tina?!"

"Fine," Tina groaned and picked herself off the rubble. "Tia?"

"Here," her sister was unscathed; her decision to follow along from a distance sparing her from the brunt of the blast. "Send a『Message』to Lakyus and Gagaran. We need to leave."

"This was a trap," Evileye angrily said after a brief moment of silence. "I fucking knew it."

"Not the time—" Tina grabbed the spellcaster and sprinted her way towards the exit.

"—To argue," Tia flung a throwing knife at an approaching light and was rewarded by the wet gurgle of someone choking on their own blood. "Need to run."

"Looks like we'll be doing this the hard way," Tina released Evileye even as they cut their way through a group of enforcers. "『Glitterdust』!"

The twins slipped in and out of the blinded and shouting crowd, dealing death with every flick of their wrists. Tina wondered though; what was the point of this trap? Surely, Eight Fingers should know that this little wouldn't be enough to stop whoever had been disrupting their operations.

"Incoming," Tia ducked under a 『Fireball』, the edges of the burning sphere singeing her ponytail before blowing up behind her with a furious roar. "Mage."

"I'll deal with it," Evileye raised her palms in the rough direction of where the fiery projectile had flown from. "『Crystal Lance』."

A man-sized crystal shard flew down the room, clearing the smoke and dust in its wake, pulping all the Eight Fingers fighters in its way. There was a loud, unnatural screech as it crashed into a translucent barrier and then a dry crunch upon slamming into the robed skeletal being behind the shattered arcane shield.

"Elder Lich," Evileye hissed in horror. "What the hell has Eight Fingers been doing?"

"There's more of them," Tia pressed her back up against her two comrades, forming a triangle that covered each of their backs. "Should we teleport out?"

"No," Evileye's voice burned with hate. "This is our best chance to really hurt them. We're taking it."

"Foolish humans!" the Elder Lich dusted off its black robes with red highlights, empty eye sockets glowing with hatred. "Stand down, and your deaths might be painless."

"No thanks," Evileye flung a flask of Holy Water at the lich. There was some joke to be made out of that, Tina supposed. Unfortunately, the Elder Lich sidestepped the glass bottle without a second thought, blessed water spilling ineffectually on the torn-up floor. "I don't take orders from no-name bone bags."

"Hmph. You face Davernoch of Six Arms—the Undead King!" Davernoch raised his arms at the same time four more people walked into the warehouse behind him. "This place will be your final resting place, interlopers!"

'Three against five,' Tina tensed at the appearance of the new arrivals. A powerfully-built man with animalistic tattoos carved into his body. A rapier wielding man with a confident smirk. And then the exotically dressed woman with floating swords alongside the man in full-plate wielding an odd sword Tina could barely recall seeing. 'Not good odds.'

"Well," the tattooed man swaggered forward with the assurance of someone who knew their own strength—and reveled in it. "So you three are the rats that've been messing with our operations, huh?"

"『Crystal Dagger』," Evileye responded to the question by launching a jagged shard of teal-green towards the man. "『Lesser Reverse Gravity』!"

"Brats should listen to their elders! 『Iron Fist』!" the tattooed man sneered even as Evileye's magic removed his footing. With a grunt of exertion, he slammed his fist just to the side of the crystal's tip, sending the entire projectile spinning into a pile of dust-filled bags. "That magic… that appearance… you must be from Blue Rose."

At the mention of Blue Rose, the other four enemies stiffened.

"Aren't there five of them?" the rapier-wielder looked much less confident now. "Where the hell are they?"

'Any moment now,' Tina thought vindictively, fingering one of the alchemical firebombs she had in a hidden pouch. They had originally made them with fuses, but with the situation as it was…

No, there were the Laira fumes to take into account. Even Tina was hesitant to breathe that stuff in.

"Doesn't matter," the man in full-plate whipped his blade towards Tina. The metal warped in the air, extending far beyond what its appearance implied, and nearly decapitated the ninja.

'Urumi,' Tina suddenly remembered as she parried the whip-like sword. 'That's what it's called.'

"Stop dozing off," Tia gave her an unbelieving look, leaping over and parrying the floating swords sent out by the woman. "Evil boss is taking too long."

"『Crystal Wall』!" the two groups were separated by the appearance of the barrier. "Okay, let's make a run for—"

The vampire's words were interrupted as the walls cracked and erupted inwards, the tattooed man's fists breaking through the magical defense.

'A monk,' Tina evaluated him with a calculating eye. 'Strong one too if he could break through Evileye's magic. Getting in close will be tough—'

Her train of thought was cut off by a flying sword rushing straight towards her torso. Tina deflected the sword with a burst of strength, her limbs shaking from the impact.

'And that woman,' the ninja thought even while she threw another pair of throwing knives at the woman in question. Both were blocked with a contemptuous ease that was accompanied by a cruel smile from under the black cloth. 'That kind of control over multiple swords is going to be troublesome to deal with.'

"Tsk," Tia clucked her tongue as she narrowly dodged the sickly-wet point of the rapier-wielder's sword in exchange for taking a long, red scratch across her side from the full-plate man's urumi. "『Immobility Binding Paralysis』."

The rapier-wielder froze in place, and in that split second, Tina pounced on him—ignoring the bolt of lightning streaking towards her, ignoring the storm of blades descending upon her, ignoring the monk's fist closing in from the corner of her vision—

Outnumbered as they were and with retreating no longer an option, their best chance was to at least trade one-for-one to improve Lakyus and Gagaran's chances when they arrived.

"『Protection from Energy - Lightning』!" Evileye shouted, creating a cloak of protection around Tina just in time for the lich's lightning to wash off her. The ninja sank the Vampire Blade into the base of the fencer's neck, the floating swords cutting her flesh and the monk's fist crushing her bones and bruising her organs a moment after.

Tia grimaced as her bloodied sister was sent careening outside. There was no time to worry about her. She would survive, albeit with great discomfort. Or not, but then Lakyus would be able to deal with that should it occur. "Evileye!『Strengthen Perception』,『Evasion』,『Greater Evasion』!"

"Fuck, where the hell is Succulent?!" the full-plate man cursed. "Did the little shit die already?!"

"『Shard Buck Shots』!" Evileye conjured a storm of crystal splinters, firing them at the same time Tia shot forward like an arrow. "Watch out!"

Her senses pushed to the limit, Tia smoothly slipped through the gaps in the shard-storm that came from behind, each step bringing her closer to the full-plate man.

"『V-Void Cutter』!" the man's urumi flashed in an arc of light and a razor-thin wave of pressurized air rushed headfirst towards Tia. At the same time, Davernoch raised a skeletal hand and launched a ball of flames. "『Fireball』!"

A slight tilt of her body a split second before impact and she dodged both of those too. The air slash slammed against the wall, biting deep into the structure right before the『Fireball』blew a large hole into the side of the warehouse. Laira smoke alluringly drifted out the hole, sacks of the dreadful powder having been ignited by the lich's magic.

"You—" the monk was too late though, a step too slow as Tia climbed atop the full-plate man's shoulder and easily thrust her own Vampire Blade into the gap of the man's visor. A wet squelch and then it was two against three.

Unfortunately, she wasn't fast enough to dodge the monk's revenge strike. Two of the five tattoos on the man's skin lit up before a heavy fist slammed into Tia's side. Her vision flickered and spun; the blow knocking her through supersacks filled with refined Laira, through towers of stacked wooden pallets, and through the wall where she joined her sister as a crumpled heap on the ground.

'I need to apologize to Tina later,' Tia thought with morbid amusement before passing out from the shock of the impact. 'This sucks.'

"Watch out for the merchandise!" the monk growled at the Elder Lich. "That's money you're burning there!"

"Irrelevant," Davernoch coldly responded, not taking his eyes off Evileye. "『Lightning』."

"Shit," Evileye grit her teeth. "『Dimensional Move』!"

The vampire spellcaster field of vision blurred from that of the warehouse to the outside in an instant. "『Translocation Damage』!"

She felt her mana drain as two scimitars flew through the air to skewer her. Being able to transfer physical damage to her mana pool was useful, but she didn't have mana to spare in a fight like this. At least not without accidentally killing Tia and Tina.

'Innate damage resistance isn't going to cut it here,' Evileye grimly thought to herself. 'Need to get out of here with Tia and Tina somehow. Wouldn't be good if they inhaled too much of the fumes.'

"『Crystal Lance』!" Evileye skirted around the three criminals. The lance was effortlessly deflected by the monk, but that was fine; she just needed to get them further away from the fallen twins. "『Reverse Grav—Who the hell are you?!"

A man dashed out the corner of a building and attempted to stab her with a shortsword. His form was hazy, a tell-tale sign of illusion magic.

It wasn't enough to fool Evileye. She stepped out of the way and slammed a fist into the man's gut as hard as she could.

"Guh!" the man fell to his knees and coughed out blood. Spellcaster she was, but her physical parameters were far higher than even seasoned adventurers. "M-Monster—"

Another bolt of lightning struck the two, causing the man to scream in agony while Evileye stalwartly withstood the pain.

She had faced worse. Far, far worse.

"Shit, you hit Succulent!" the monk roared at Davernoch. "I didn't spend all that gold on you just so you can hit our allies!"

"Succulent was weak anyways," Davernoch scoffed. "It was high time we found someone to replace him."

"U-Ugh…" the man, Succulent, wasn't dead—yet. Evileye quickly fixed that. "『Acid Splash』."

"Not bad!" the monk smirked at the sight. "You've definitely got the right material to join us. So how about it? We'll even heal up your friends."

Revulsion welled up inside Evileye's unbeaten heart. Someone who could throw away their comrades so easily was trash—less than trash.

"Sorry," she caught a quick glimpse of a blur of blue, red, and yellow rapidly growing in the distance before flicking her eyes back to the enemy. "But I already have another group to babysit."

"Fool," the monk spat on the ground. "You could've been so much more than an adventurer." All five tattoos carved on his body lit up. "Blame your own stupidity—"

"『Dark Blade Mega Impact』!" the monk dropped to the ground just in time to avoid being bisected by the umbral wave. Davernoch wasn't so lucky; the Elder Lich fell to the ground in halves with a look of surprise on its desiccated face.

"Die!" the woman dressed in the clothes of a dancer launched her scimitars towards Lakyus. The priestess ignored them, allowing the bulky Gagaran to tank the hits in her place.

"Six Arms?" Lakyus's eyes shone with a cold glare.

"More like Two Arms now," Gagaran jeered and pointed Fel Iron at the monk and woman. "Not feeling so big when the numbers are against you, huh?"

'Oh, that's who they were,' Evileye resisted the urge to slam a hand into her face. 'Not like we had any detailed information on them, but it's pretty obvious in retrospect.'

"Numbers don't mean shit to the strong!" the monk slammed his knuckles together with a savage grin. "This just makes it more fair."

'He's not trying to run away,' Evileye narrowed her eyes from behind her mask. 'Is it because he believes he can't or because he believes he doesn't need to?'

"『Severing Blade』," Lakyus ignored his boasting and swung Kilineiram, the legendary sword a shadowy blur in the night.

"Not good enough!" the monk mocked her as he knocked the attack aside with the back of his fist. His fists glowed as he applied more Martial Arts upon himself before throwing a devastating punch at Lakyus. The wind whistled in his wake, the air distorting with a wretched clang the moment the enhanced punch collided into the flat of Kilineiram's blade.

'Dangerous,' Evileye thought. The strike appeared even stronger than the ones that had felled the twins. Of course, Lakyus was much sturdier than the ninjas, but if the monk was holding back even more of his strength…

This could be very dangerous. With four of six killed, it was perhaps high time to leave.

"『Grease』," Evileye targeted the ground such that the monk was on the edge of the spell's radius. "Gagaran!"

"On it!" Fel Iron crashed into the monk's guard, knocking them back far more than one would expect; the slippery surface proving to be a poor place for him to stand his ground.

The monk slipped as he was propelled backwards by the force of the attack and was knocked back into the innards of the warehouse.

"『Grand Fireball』," yeah, fuck the Laira fumes. Any lasting damage that could result from inhaling it wasn't anything beyond Lakyus's capabilities. At this point, Evileye just wanted to finish up this damn mess.

A massive fireball followed the monk's body through the gaping hole in the wall and a deafening explosion of heat and sound shook the building to its foundations. Smoke rose into the sky as the warehouse was set alight.

"Think that was enough?" Gagaran cautiously hefted her warpick into a ready position. "Doesn't seem like he's coming out."

"Probably ran away," Lakyus angrily muttered. "That shouldn't have been enough to kill him."

"Looks like sword-girl ran off too," Evileye saw no trace of the woman who wielded the remotely controlled scimitars. "Fuck."

"They knew we were coming," Lakyus bit her thumb. "But how?"

"Let's talk about that later," Evileye walked over to the fallen twins and checked their pulses. "Shit. Tina died."

"Gods," Lakyus let out a shuddering breath. "How bad is it?"

"No parts are missing, so that's good," Evileye inspected the body with a practiced efficiency. "Resurrection shouldn't be a problem."

"Okay," tension bled out from Lakyus's shoulders. "Okay. That's good."

"Do we still burn down the fields?" Gagaran pointed at the Laira being grown en masse in the distance. "I see some of their little friends coming, so we've better hurry."

"We came this far so we may as well," Lakyus carefully picked up Tia and Tina. "Evileye could you—"

"Yes, I'll go and blow up all their shit," the vampire stomped off. "『Fly』."

"Shorty's pissed," Gagaran whistled. "We should leg it."

"Right," Lakyus looked behind her, the shouting of reinforcements becoming clearer and clearer. "Let's go."

Lakyus hoped Evileye wouldn't stay angry for too long. The ancient spellcaster could get pretty scary when she wanted to.

A fiery bolt streaked down from the sky, lighting up night and black dust alike. The Eight Fingers reinforcements faltered in their steps and pointed up with fearful shouting.

Evileye's crimson cloak flapped in the wind as hellish judgment erupted forth from her palms. The fields burned below her, casting its scorching gaze upon the monstrously powerful spellcaster.

'So this is someone who fought against the Demon Gods…' Lakyus thought to herself as she and Gagaran blitzed through the forest, tramping roots and undergrowth underfoot. 'She looks so… lonely.'

"How the hell did Rigrit ever beat her?" Gagaran mirrored her thoughts. "Shorty's been holding out on us!"

"Let's hope it stays that way," Lakyus grimaced while the complex burned to ashes behind them.

'I don't want to imagine a time that'll require her full power.'

"See you tomorrow, Climb!" Renner waved to her beloved puppy.

"Rest well, Princess," her puppy closed the door behind him.

"Climb," Renner happily whispered to herself. "Oh, Climb."

'We're so close,' she sat by the window of her room. 'So very close to being together.'

Lakyus and Blue Rose had reported back to her via『Message』; at the end of the night, Six Arms had sustained a whopping four casualties. She had expected one to three at best. But four was certainly more than enough to fulfill her end of the contract with Emperor El-Nix.

She did feel a little bad for leaking information on Lakyus's raid to Eight Fingers—if only because Tina's resurrection would take the party out of commission for a while—but she had judged the priestess and her companions to be more than strong enough to decisively defeat that group of malcontents even under unfavorable conditions.

'Leaking the clues in such a way to make Eight Fingers feel like they figured it out by themselves had been so tedious too.'

To her knowledge, the teamwork of those who overcame life and death situations together was far greater than those bound together by petty greed. And that wasn't even mentioning the power Evileye was surely concealing…

'How amusing,' she traced the outline of the moon with a delicate finger. 'That my confidence is placed in their friendship.'

That being said, she was somewhat relieved that the miniscule chance of Blue Rose getting party wiped did not come to pass. It would be a shame to lose such effective tools. Adamantite adventurers didn't pop out of the ground like weeds.

'Everything is just lining up so… perfectly,' if Renner had been a superstitious person, she might have felt uneasy at how smoothly events were unfolding. Alas, all she felt was joy. 'Emperor El-Nix asks me to deal a critical blow to Eight Fingers in return for all of my requests. I did expect him to come to me eventually, but the incident at E-Rantel expedited affairs beyond my wildest dreams.'

There was no chance of betrayal either. Not unless Jircniv Rune Farlord El-Nix wanted to see his precious Empire ostracized by the Theocracy and every other nation within a thousand leagues.

Or worse, razed to the ground.

'I must thank Lakyus later for telling me about Fluder,' Renner sincerely smiled, a sight that would have chilled the bones of any sane person. 'A wonderful tidbit at the most serendipitous of times.'

It wouldn't be difficult at all to spin the Empire as a wicked nation secretly ruled by the crazed Tri-Arts Caster; a man that would happily betray all of the living for the sake of his own selfish goals, even unto becoming one of the undead.

Ah, well, it wasn't as if Jircniv knew she knew any of that. Renner was sure that he was aware that she knew something though, and that something would quickly grow into a catastrophe if he thought he could double-cross her.

'It would be hilarious if he didn't know what his pet archmage was up to though. An unlikely conclusion—a more plausible situation is that he's aware but unable to do anything about it. A Sixth-Tier spellcaster must wield power that beggars belief. Evileye is terrifyingly strong, yet is only of the Fifth-Tier.'

And by the time her blackmail lost its value, she would have already entrenched herself so deeply in his bureaucracy that the Empire wouldn't be able to function without her.

Renner had briefly considered employing the distant Lady of Wings in the east in her plans, but the angel was too much of a variable. That being said, Renner believed she had a fairly good grasp on their personality from the reports she had heard… Maybe a meeting or two was in the distant future. Involving them now would just be adding unneeded complexity.

'Ahhh, Climb, Climb, Climb!' Renner dove into her bed with a girlish giggle. 'I wonder, what should I do with you first~?'

A few placating words and her precious puppy would be praising her name to the heavens and back for effectively defecting to the Empire. She was doing it for the people of the Re-Estize Kingdom—their precious Golden Princess valiantly serving as a sacrificial hostage to the detestable Empire for the sake of the lowborn.

It was beautiful when a plan so long in the making came together so neatly.

Renner fell asleep, her dreams happy and bright.