Blue Rose just happened to be at the right place at the right time when some newbie -correction, gold plate- ran in rather frantically.

Or was it?

Evileye honestly couldn't tell, being more mesmerized at its general appearance. While they shared some vague sense of kinship of both wearing conservative clothing and full-face masks, he looked… wonky. His feet looked like separate pieces of apparatus that were semi-consciously controlled by wherever it wanted to go, sliding and slipping yet always surely moving.

He had run (slid?) up to a clerk and practically demanded her attention, saying things in the strangest tones and voices. One moment, he'd be yelling "I need help!" with a strong sense of urgency, only to follow up with a "I'm taking point." as if he was actually in combat right there and then. His near-complete lack of coherent speech was simultaneously funny and worrying. Seriously, what happened to the quality standards of adventurers nowadays?

He jumped up and down in strange, inexplicable circles, seemingly controlling his momentum perfectly in the air as he would land in the same place he started despite his horizontal movement.

Okay, maybe he had some skill, Evileye corrected. Not enough to warrant being a gold plate, but that was something.

Gagaran always had a weak spot for others, and her actions here were no different. She put a hand on the man's shoulder and he froze up on the spot, completely halting all movement. Curiously enough, he went back to flinging himself around the moment her hand let go. He whipped around and jumped in front of her like a dog trying to greet its owner, turning his barrage of weird one liners towards the Adamantite.

The way he was saying them made Evileye feel like she was on the verge of remembering something. It was as if he was-

"Hey there kid, slow down." Gagaran laughed loudly at his antics, clearly perceiving his problem to be, well, not a problem. "You're not making any sense."

The man stopped everything and seemed to reconsider his approach for several seconds.

"We're knee deep in trouble here, boys." He finally clarified in a grave tone.

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?" Gagaran asked, finally seeming to take whatever issue he was facing with some level of seriousness.

"U-um, Miss Gagaran?" The clerk drew their gaze before he could respond. "I'm not sure why, but D-Delta only seems to speak in commonly known phrases. He's never been like this before, though he's only been here for around a month."

Gagaran turned back towards the gold plate with a more analytical gaze this time. For good reason, Evileye thought- that would average out to something like a quest a day. Very few people could manage something like that day in and day out.

Pieces were just not connecting here. Conservative, strange gear, phrase-level speech patterns, fast completion rates…

The most damning piece of evidence was the lack of blood.

Evileye was a vampire through and through, hence the mask and concealing clothing. Like most vampires, she could reasonably detect if blood existed in something.

There was no blood in that thing.

The possibility that it was another species skyrocketed with that conclusion.

That, unfortunately, just opened way to a whole host of new questions, the most pressing one being why it would even care to cooperate with the guild. Money? Fame? Information?

Evileye was an exception to the rule; As far as she was concerned, she was one of the only exceptions. For something like it to just up and appear in the middle of the world without garnering more attention was slightly concerning.

She ultimately decided it would be best to keep tabs on Delta, and what better way to do that than to follow through on his request? Worst comes to worst, they could probably handle it.

Evileye stepped up beside her teammate. "So you've got a problem and you want someone to follow you so they can help?" She surmised.

"Shorty?" Gagaran muttered curiously.

He nodded with his entire upper body as if his neck was partially paralyzed, sparing no regard for his knife's proximity to his possible saviors.

"Lead the way then." She pointedly ignored the looks her comrades were giving her. "I'll explain later." was codeword for 'there are people around who can't hear this'.

As they followed at an awkward walk/run through the dimly lit alleys and streets, Evileye filled them in on her discovery regarding Delta.

"I wish you wouldn't make decisions like this so lightly, but it was a fair point." Lakyus conceded, sighing.

"I know we may be getting in way over our heads here, but I don't think we could've let anyone else go in our stead. If we can't defeat it, I doubt anyone else could." Evileye pointed out.

No one argued the obvious, but Evileye felt it was worth stating to make sure her points were received. The diverse background that made up Blue Rose meant that what may seem obvious to her would be much less so to some of the others, and vice versa. They were still able to function as a great team regardless due to their experience and protocols, but the diversity could poke holes in their collective common sense.

Speaking of the obvious, it was blindingly obvious how often Delta seemed to bump and crash straight into things and continue completely unscathed. He would even just run into the corners of buildings sometimes, as if he was trying too hard to be efficient about his movement.

The journey thankfully did not take long, the destination being a set of large iron-wrought gates. Cemeteries were not places Evileye particularly enjoyed, but the addition of undead sprinkled all around both sides of the gates had her wondering what the hell was going on. Undead didn't just spawn outside of gates, especially in these numbers. The guards who were there had already been overrun, the remaining few having taken defensive positions farther from the gates. It was clear they were losing, but even dwindling the existing numbers would prevent a few more wasteful deaths.

Still, you'd think a dozen guards would be qualified to handle a few undead. Another place where Re-Estize fails, she supposed. Still better than Slane.

Tia and Tina made quick work of most of the fleeing skeletons while Gagaran and Lakyus took care of the ones front-and center. Evileye went to clean up the skelet-

A crank-like windup came from Delta's position followed up by the sound of thunder. Evileye whipped towards the source to find a… gun? It had been so long since she had seen one, but the telltale sounds and sights just seemed to further her suspicions.

And hurt her hearing, but that was another matter entirely.

After getting over the initial shock that was a gun the majority of the remaining skeletons were already piles of bones, a few shots taking care of multiple skeletons at a time. She grimaced at his accuracy. Probably had some experience, though where and how still managed to elude her.

"Can you make your weapon any quieter?" Lakyus asked as politely as possible, knuckles white against her sword. Clearly the noise had rattled everyone, even her leader.

He nodded and expelled something from it before switching to a larger, heftier weapon. The switch happened instantaneously- Evileye couldn't tell when he holstered the other weapon in favor of this larger one, but something about the way he prepared his equipment screamed experience.

Evileye tried to push her thoughts on Delta to the side for now. It was clear the more pressing issue was dealing with the graveyard. She refrained from handling the current undead until she knew the situation at hand, leaving them to the rest of her party.

Given the incompetence of the guards they decided to rush up to the towers on each side of the large, wooden gates to find thousands of dead waddling towards them. Child's play to beat, but none of this made any sense. Necromancy on this scale was unprecedented in this age, but it was the only thing that made any sense. Natural spawn rates would only generate a dozen a day, at most. Based on the retreating guards and lack of backup, these likely all spawned within the last few hours.

Evileye glanced back down at the pile of undead climbing the walls only to spot Delta flinging himself down it like a slide, zooming off to god knows where.

She imagined several hypotheticals, all of which ended in his untimely death.

Evileye instead transferred that anger into several casts, decimating the undead attempting to climb the walls.

Gagaran let out a genuine laugh, jumping down and crushing her own set of undead as Blue Rose started the long walk forward.

More shots, this time with more treble and increasingly rapid, came from a couple hundred feet ahead of them. This one rang out for much longer (though thankfully was quieter) and wiped out all undead surrounding Delta, though he had to stop prematurely to avoid pelting his comrades. Not that they would've done much harm to high tier adventurers like themselves, though Tia and Tina may have sustained some damage with their agility-oriented attack styles.

They continued forward like this for a while, with Delta leading the way while Blue Rose played a rather frustrating game of catch up whenever he decided to gain some momentum.

Delta was frustratingly efficient at destroying everything in eyesight with that thing, and Evileye found it likely that he chose his weapon for this specific case. This, unfortunately, implied that he owned at least a few other weapons of similar quality that were more specialized for killing single opponents. The previous weapon he used was probably one of them, though it was quite small. Maybe a backup weapon?

It also implied that while Delta was powerful, he figured that something else existed that at the least could put up a good fight against him. As much as Evileye loathed to admit it, Delta had to be Mythril at the least. The fact that he looked for reinforcements instead of just mowing down these undead himself implied a shortcoming on his end or an unexpected increase in enemy strength. If he had also come to the conclusion that there was a high-tier caster or enemy in the vicinity, he had good instinct.

Regardless, they made good progress in quick time. Unfortunately, they had also come in loud and clear to their potential opponents, Delta's gun giving any sentient enemies a decent indicator of where the party was at all times.

The mausoleum they found themselves quickly approaching was massive, made to look even larger when compared with the open fields they had been traversing up until this point. A ring of cultists were waiting for them, garbed in long, dark cloaks. All of them held wooden quarterstaffs.

Magic casters, then. Evileye doubted they were on her level individually, but they still managed quite the impressive feat here.

The leader, garbed in red, held a pulsing purple ball, one that seemed to radiate extreme levels of negative energy. His bald head seemed to reflect the moonlight, and his pale, wizened features were muttering something. The outfit was completed with a long gold necklace adorned with three small skulls.

Their approach caused the casters pause, and the leader came a few steps forward to converse.

"The esteemed Blue Rose," he sneered, "and… whoever you are." not so much as glancing in Delta's direction.

"Big talk for an egghead like yourself." Gagaran stepped forward. "I'd tell you to turn yourself in, but by this point I don't think that's an option."

"Like I'd even-"

BANG.

And then his head had a hole in it.

"Well, that's certainly one way to deal with things." Evileye deadpanned, rubbing her ringing ears. To be fair, the dude was obviously nuts and the ringleader of the whole thing. Not like he deserved any honor in a proper fight anyways.

Delta pointed the barrel at Blue Rose and lowered it down to the ground, as if his body language would serve as an apology for startling them again. The smoke still trailed in wisps off of the front of his gun, a reminder of its power.

The cultists stared at their fallen leader and then immediately started acting like headless chickens, some scattering and some flinging spells in their general direction. None of them hit anything, and all were swiftly taken down without issue. Some of them even offed themselves with intricate daggers, curiously enough. Evileye wondered what sort of fates they were imagining to even consider doing so.

Once the relatively anticlimactic battle was taken care of, they started into the mausoleum. Delta had gone back to flinging himself about, vaguely leading the party towards it. While the now broken crystal looked like a key part of their plans, it couldn't hurt to check out what was likely the enemy hideout.

As they walked up the rather massive staircase, Evileye mentally bumped up the 'backup weapon' a couple notches. Undead were a piece of cake. Killing a real human being, as squishy as magic casters tended to be, was something relatively substantial. Especially given how clean the projectile had passed through the cultist.

It was also mildly concerning that a gun worked as a direct counter to any mage. Evileye felt vaguely threatened at the notion but ultimately dismissed it. If Delta wanted her dead, he would've tried already, and he was the only living person she had talked to who even owned one in the past several decades.

The mausoleum looked quite empty, shadows covering most of the environment. Occam's Razor dictates that people stupid enough to show themselves to the enemy and die wouldn't be launching an ambush, but Evileye stayed more than wary of the way the darkness seemed to close around the entrance.

As soon as Delta flew into the imposing structure Evileye's sixth sense started blaring. "Delta, come back here." Evileye started, as if scolding a child. "We should enter it together in case of an ambush" really just meant 'I don't trust you to not do anything stupid when you're out of our sight'.

"Delta?" Lakyus called out into the mausoleum.

Delta launched himself to the entrance and perfectly stopped directly in front of it. He quickly turned from them to the mausoleum and back, as if he wanted them to hurry up.

Unfortunately, Evileye's warning was not enough to save Delta from several stilettos now prodding his neck.

The team froze as the assassin's blond hair came into view, along with armor seemingly made out of… adventurer's plates.

Fuck.

"Looks like I've got you real good." She taunted, an unnatural grin spreading across her face. "You did poor Khajit in real well, and so I just couldn't resist!" She pushed a stiletto into Delta's chin, forcing his vision up. "While Mister Delta here is a bit of a rude boy, I would rather we have some civilized discussion, hmm? Introduce yourselves, Blue Rose."

"Tch." Evileye glared. It'd be a damn shame if he died here before she could interrogate him. Excluding his rather odd nature, he was still a gold plate. That was worth something. "Evileye."

While the others followed, she thought about some way, any way to get him out of this mess without both of them dying. Evileye couldn't even imagine what the assassin could want in the first place. She was clearly experienced, given her plate armor, and seemed to have masochistic tendencies. She acted differently from the rest of the cultists though, had a sort of strength about her that the others didn't seem to share.

The assassin's voice snapped her back to attention. "I'm Clementine! Nice to meetcha." She leaned over Delta's shoulder. "How did you find this place?"

"I dunno, maybe the couple thousand undead ticked us off." Evileye deadpanned.

"What do you want?" Lakyus followed up, ever the diplomat.

"Oh, who said I wanted anything~" Clementine adjusted her grip on her stilettos, relaxing them back down to Delta's neck.

Delta's head moved down slowly to look at the rest of his party. It was always a little hard to tell where he was looking, but she felt as if his gaze was boring into her.

Evileye matched it with her own, searching for something, anything.

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

She felt what little color she still had in her undead face drain away.

There was no way he was telling her to deal collateral damage, right? He wouldn't be so dumb as to throw his life away this easily. No. He surely realized the risk she presents, but…

"Come now. Let's stick to the mission." Came Delta's response to her unasked question.

"Oh so you do speak~" Clementine moved a stiletto up to his cheek, tapping his mask lightly. "You know, I always wondered what was under that mask with you people. Always trying to hide yourselves to seem a teensy bit more mysterious. Well, I admit, you got me curious!"

She poked and prodded around the mask's edges, attempting to lift it.

As Clementine was distracted by the seemingly impervious mask, Blue Rose readied their weapons almost imperceptibly. Evileye started preparing to cast under her breath, the twins' hands started inching towards their shurikens. He must have some sort of counter, something to dodge this. He's legitimately asking for it.

Clementine changed tactics and started to cut the straps only for Delta to flinch. His entire upper body rocked forward at the cut as blood somehow splattered onto the stone floor. Evileye paled at what was very much real blood, her vampiric senses going off. Even Clementine looked a little surprised and amused at Delta's rather visceral reaction to having his mask strap get cut.

Evileye capitalized on the collective shock with a well timed Crystal Lance in their direction.

Delta tried to jump out of the way but the jump was prematurely ended by the stiletto still held to his neck, the lance piercing through him. He fell limp in Clementine's grip.

It continued as if he wasn't there straight into Clementine's torso.

Shock registered on her face as the lack of armor came to bite her in the ass, stumbling backwards. Her front was covered in blood.

Delta's blood.

Tia and Tina threw projectiles of their own but Clementine still had enough sense to dodge them. Clearly weakened, Blue Rose seized on the moment to obliterate her. A combination of Tia and Tina's deft movement and Evileye's magic boxed her in while Gagaran and Lakyus dealt the real damage. Invulnerable Fortress only lasted for so long, and Greater Ability Boost was a bit harder to sustain with her organs scrambled around.

A few Resist Weakenings combined with some well timed bashes and slices had her bleeding out on the floor.

No respite for the mass murderer.

Lakyus led them over to Delta's body. He had collapsed into himself, his legs and arms folding under his torso. Oddly enough, the lance didn't seem to leave any notable marks on his body.

Lakyus' Raise Dead was Blue Rose's ace in the hole. The fifth tier spell had been used to raise friends, both in and out of the team. It would drop the vitality of the user, but given his status and power he would be fine, Evileye thought. Delta could handle it.

They began to gently prepare him for resurrection when his body straight up disappeared.


A/N: Thanks for all the support!

Responding to reviews:

Q: Is he lvl 10 faceit? yay or nay?

A: He is a level 10 faceit player hardstuck in FPL-C D:

Q:Door stuck when?

A: Eventually™