Chương 268: Work that needed doing

"Not that I'm complaining about the nice pavilion Braid made for us but could someone please remind me why we aren't bunking at the compound of Little Crow and his clan?" Amica Steiner asked softly as she, Kite and a few of Wander's bodies were making their way through the eastern parts of the city after having fetched the final member of their little group for the evening from his family compound.

"Politics, my dear. Us being seen housing the members of the guild that has set itself up as an alternative to the established order would simply draw too much attention to a family who very much likes for it to remain elsewhere," Little Crow replied amicably from where he floated arm in arm with the telekineticist.

"Seeing how fancy your place was, I am beginning to think that I might simply say politics be damned."

"You know, after all of this is over and done, I promise that you will have a standing invitation."

"Oh? I might just hold you up to that promise." Kite and Wander could only shoot each other a look at the flirting pair who hadn't exactly been subtle with their affections in the last months, with Wander's tiny rat body rolling her eyes while Kite smiled fondly.

"What? Why the smile~?" she hissed softly, a bit annoyed as she saw his expression.

"Oh, nothing."

"That wasn't nothing~."

"Honestly? I just find them sweet. But given your reaction, I'm also starting to suspect some jealousy."

"Huh? Well- why I never-" Wander started in response, huffing and puffing indignantly.

"Let's- let's just get on with this, okay? So far the warehouse where the meeting was to take place is empty, but a meeting table has already been set up. There's even wine and all. Who knows, I might just be wrong about this whole thing~."

"If everything seems to be in order, then we'll just move on to help the rest sort through all the other leads you've found out. Gods know that they'll have a busy evening. As will many warriors around the city, I suppose," Kite said, looking out towards the city proper where plentiful auras could be felt in conflict.

With the dueling part of the Proving now moving into the main arena, the other temporary ones had been opened for use by the public, and there were still a lot of knocked out contenders looking to prove themselves. And as their numbers far exceeded the arenas available, there were plenty of other places in the city where clashes were currently taking place as gold-ranked supervision became even more lax.

"Should we set up inside and wait for an opportunity, then?" Little Crow asked as they followed Wander towards the building.

"See if there is anything for us to be concerned about and otherwise move out?"

"A wise approach. Can the two of you enter and let Amica sweep the place from up close? If your aura senses can't find anything, we should be able to set up the formations to obscure us."

"Leave it to me. And you, my little plaything, can have the honor of watching me work," Amica said to little Crow with a flirtatious wink, the celestine following in her wake like a smitten puppy as his obscuring powers enveloped the pair in half-seen ripples.

These visual cues would disappear after a few moments, but enough of them lingered when the pair passed over the threshold to the warehouse for Kite's attention to lock onto something most concerning; the ever so faint lights of hidden formations flickering slightly into visibility as the ripples of Little Crow's power came into contact with them. Formations that should definitely not be present in a warehouse such as this.

Knowing that words would be too slow, Kite used a quicker means of communication that his training with Gauntlet had drilled into him; his aura. He let it carry his surge of urgency towards his allies while one of Matra's descendants appeared in his hand as he targeted the place where he had seen the formations with a Disrupting Strike. Even that most swift intervention proved insufficient however, as the formations burst into glowing life before Little Crow and Amica could react to his warning.

A network of script flickered across the whole building while a barrier appeared to block off the entrance that had been open mere moments before. And while Kite's strike did leave part of the magical formation sputtering and flickering slightly, it was merely a dent in the veritable bastion of magical defenses that had sprung to life.

"Wander, what's happening?"

"I don't know. Whatever formation that is, it even broke my connection to my bodies inside. Cursed crap, that's spooky. I wonder what those small pieces of me will be up to in there without- incoming~!" Thanks to Wander's warning, Kite directed his focus outward towards his surroundings just in time to catch the slight flickering motion of an incoming projectile.

While there wasn't enough time to turn or dodge it even for a late-stage silver-ranker like himself, Kite had by now become a warrior very hard to ambush properly. The tattoos of his mantle flashed to life, a spectral arm carrying his tower shield appearing in the path of what turned out to be an incoming shadowy arrow. The projectile shattered upon contact with the barrier as the feedback of Pattern-Shattering Counter sent mana drain and transcendent damage back to the still unseen attacker.

While all of this was happening, Kite also managed to command his armor to manifest from the armband at his wrist, the pale light of its appearance having barely winked out before the protective metal came under assault as another unseen attacker appeared from some kind of cloaking effect. The person wore dark combat robes and a mask completely blank except for a fanged, demonic smile painted as its only features.

Judging from build alone, Kite suspected the assailant to be a human, runic or elf male, but any more such ponderings were discarded as pain and a distinct sense of wrongness emanated from where the man's hooked sword parted Kite's armor with disturbing ease. The strike itself had seemed slow, more like a meditative motion than actual attack, yet it had still somehow managed to connect before Kite had managed to muster additional defenses beyond his armor.

The Regalia of Elevenfold Unity had at least helped turn the blow somewhat, but that did little to negate the afflictions that the strike had left behind.

"Something most foul indeed," part of Kite's mind managed to note even as he swung to counter. There was some power at work that attempted to slow down his attack, as if the world itself tried to impose calm upon the conflict, but Implacable Motion let Kite move unhindered as he made a twisting thrust with his chiming staff while a spectral arm deflected a follow-up strike just in time to cause the special attacks within the hooked sword to wink out.

His attempt to follow up with a flurry of additional attacks was interrupted, however, as more arrows started coming in from the distance. Each struck erratically from different angles and directions in a way that defied the normal workings of the world - even a magical one such as Kite's own - and that along with the slightly bland sense from his closest opponent's aura that Kite had learned to recognize by now let him make an educated guess at the allegiance of his opponents.

"So, finally past sending your minions? Or have we exhausted them all already?" Kite called out to his assailant while he tried mustering a defense against the dual assault. At this distance, the arrows were so far more a dangerous distraction than severe danger, but they kept harrying Kite in a way that even his path found challenging to deal with while also engaging with the more close-ranged assassin. His opponent did not fall for the taunt, simply re-engaging to further push Kite's defenses.

In the first few exchanges, Kite started to get some kind of feel for the path of his foe, even though those insights were more troubling than reassuring. There was this pressure that tried to push a forced, unnatural serenity upon him while the man's moves carried a deceptive slowness that belied their actual speed in a way that Kite found hard to predict even with his accumulated experience.

He also seemed unbothered by the mana-drain leveraged against him while the strikes that hit carried extremely unpleasant afflictions. This was also merely scratching the surface, and Kite would make sure to bring out and suffocate everything that he could. At least he wanted to, if those cursed arrows stopped coming at him.

"Any progress?" he whispered under his breath to the rat still nestled inside the collar of his armor. He would have been most surprised if Wander had been idle during this first half minute of what had turned out to be an ambush that had turned the empty area around the warehouse into a running battle between the two clashing silver-rankers.

"The archer is slippery. I'm working on cornering them. I've warned the others, but they seems to be dealing with unexpected troubles of their own~."

"Understood. Anything from inside?"

"Nope~""Then I'll try and hold on until they emerge. Together, we can decide whether to attack or retreat." While his opponent should not have been able to hear the exchange, he was apparently sharp enough to notice Kite's distractedness, however slight it might have been. With a dash that seemed to be empowered by the way it bent and warped the enforced stillness, Kite suddenly found the man inside his guard.

All three of his vortices had long since locked onto the foe, meaning that it wasn't a teleportation, but whatever its source it let his foe find a position to strike straight towards Kite's chest with his empty hand that took on a distinct pallor that made the limb seem almost translucent. But not in any way pleasant or beneficial.

"Curses-" The icy pain that exploded from where the hand passed straight through Kite's armor was as numbing as it was distracting, barely letting Kite raise a barrier to block a duo of arrows in time. Fortunately, he was able to pivot the cracked barriers towards his opponent after the arrows had deflected off of them and counterattack with the spear gifted him by Ardent.

This took his foe somewhat by surprise, enough for Kite to land a Disrupting Strike that managed to find purchase and erase some ongoing effect that had the man's motions lose a lot of what had given it that hard-to-read, deceptive slowness.

"Wander, can you ask my wife to please share her flames?"

"On it… There~!" Through the link provided by his armor, Kite gave the mental command for his armor to change which boon he was attuned to from the ones on offer from the other nearby members of the Elevenfold Unity. In a flash, River's perfect balance, Wander's ability to increase her capacity for simultaneous action and other similar effects flowed through Kite's mind until it locked onto the rising heat that was his wife's path.

Afflictions had long been one of Kite's worst matchups as Sage's limited cleansing could rarely deal with them all quickly enough, but since receiving their prize from the Queen's Gate he had been able to tap into something that at least gave him a lot more time to take care of the problem.

Dragonfly's inner flames, even the lesser variety shared through the link, would buy him a lot of time as each moment of being withered down by what seemed to be a kind of resilient necrosis also provided him with additional power, speed and recovery. That warmth spread through Kite's body to counter the invading chill as he sent a few more attacks the way of his opponent who was forced to give some distance as he circled Kite in the open space before the warehouse.

It was only a temporary measure, but one that also let Kite's mind catch up enough for him to put together another piece of the puzzle that was his opponent's path.

"That feeling… His path carries the death essence, no doubt about it," Kite thought. Task group Gauntlet went up against users of restricted essences all the time, and out of all of them the death essence was probably the most common. Many of Undeath's followers carried them, of course, but plenty of others did too as they seized whatever power that was available to them.

While his opponent had so far not shown any hints of undead transformations or the like, it also made Kite wonder even more what hid beneath that mask. And what was transpiring inside the warehouse, still alight with the entrapping formations. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Fortune bless Amica and Little Crow. I'll see what I can do to help you," Kite thought in fleeting prayer as his foe re-engaged in tandem with another flight of arrows that broke Kite's stride.

"Or perhaps I'm the one who'll find myself in need of aid." Both Little Crow and Amica whirled in place as they felt Kite's and Wander's auras flare with alarm, only to find that the entrance to the warehouse had suddenly been covered by an opaque barrier shimmering like the surface of a soap bubble. The same flickering sheen could be seen from all around the spacious room, indicating that it was not just the doors and windows that were sealed off.

Not only that, but the bodies of Wander that could be seen spread out around the room all fell limp at the moment of the barrier's appearance. At the same time, multiple things happened at once. Crates all across the room - mostly filled with such cargo containers as warehouses were prone to be - split open to reveal what looked like rough armors of calcified bone filled with some kind of viscous black liquid that rose from their shielded confines.

At the same time, other casks burst as some kind of vicious-looking purple gas started spreading from within that the pair's aura senses quickly revealed to be some kind of gaseous entity with a mind of its own as it spilled towards the living.

But this had all barely gone on for a second before a surge of both aura and mana from Amica created a telekinetic wave powerful enough to turn the nearest sections of shelves into a hail of debris and projectiles that washed across the interior of the warehouse in a growing half-circle of carnage.

She did feel a brief pang of guilt over the few bodies of Wander caught in the blast, but had already worked enough with the swarm user to grow inured to being a bit cavalier with pieces of the outworlder when the situation called for it.

"Such initiative! I'm impressed!" Little Crow called out, his usual cheeky smile on his face as he was already following up on the initial wave with plenty of exploding needles of his own.

"Enough contracts with Gauntlet does teach one when to strike first and ponder later," Amica replied, grabbing one of the undead monsters as she started slamming it into a few of its fellows to hamper their attempted charge.

"But there are a lot of them, and those- gah!" Her words were interrupted as the living clouds of gas managed to flow forward to envelop the two in vapors whose toxicity was high enough to start eating through any exposed parts. Little Crow's needles punched glowing holes in the purple masses but weren't the most effective alternative against the barely corporeal entities.

This forced Amica to change her approach, creating a telekinetic field that pushed outwards from both of them that was dense enough to even expel the creeping vapors for a moment.

"Anything?" she asked, voice a lot more terse than before from the strain of keeping such amorphous foes at bay.

"Yes. This," the celestine replied, reaching into a spatial bag and retrieving a fistful of paper talismans that he threw into the air where they straightened themselves out and stopped on their own. A moment later, each of the talismans were pierced by a needle, turning the needles' glow to a distinct blue.

The following detonations of disrupting force tore greater holes in the gaseous forms of the living vapors, but before Little Crow had the chance to produce a second wave, the skeletal monsters had already reached them, diving in with bone swords swinging with bestial brutality.

"We met these before. How many have they managed to smuggle into the capital? Amica swore, remembering the strike against the unliving barge along with Kite and River. The presence of so many of these undead spelled bad news unless this was an isolated incident. And the sheer pressure of over twenty of them in the cramped environment would soon leave little room for the pair of adventurers to maneuver at all.

Along with the vapor-creatures gathering themselves again after the previous onslaught, their odds of making it through this were rapidly waning according to Amica's internal calculations.

"We need to do the thing."

"That thing?"

"It worked during practice. Go!" the telekineticist shouted, making another pulse in every direction to briefly give them some space again before she started rotating a vortex of force around them that whipped up the freshly launched debris again.

This in itself would do little to dissuade the tough undead or the vapors for long, but the spinning tornado soon started to be filled by glowing streaks as Little Crow started adding his own additions to the churning mass as needle after glowing, volatile needle was thrown into the spinning field as fast as he could conjure them.

The first undead that threw itself into the vortex was impacted by two needles before managing to pass through, the added force from Amica's powers letting them pierce deep before exploding to tear off chunks of bone armor that had the dark fluids inside spill out. The pair then started moving as one, Amica leading the way while Little Crow kept refilling the vortex with the explosive projectiles.

This ripped through both the gathered undead and what few crates and containers that remained, and while it did severely damage some of the foes enough were starting to make it through the combined defense that Little Crow was forced to momentarily pause his barrage to jab larger needles into the things before kicking them back out, often while having to accept a blow or two for expediency's sake.

Their destructive vortex was working as intended, but not well enough, especially not as another wave of the things started extricating themselves from the rubble.

"We won't- hrraah! - be fast enough," Amica soon called to Little Crow, only pausing to shove another undead back out through the vortex.

"A shame. It was fun," the assassin agreed, throwing out another handful of needles before opening his parasol with a flourish.

"We'll just have to go a bit more overt if we want a shot at this. Hopefully Kite can forgive the mess we'll make." Steps Marked in Fallen Fate had to admit to himself that coming in person to assess the threat of the members of the guild had proven worthwhile in the end. They had planted several seeds at once in the rumor mill of the city, and their pursuers had taken the bait as they struck against two of the supposed plots that were only ambushes in disguise.

Other operatives were currently trying to assess and - if possible - end a few of the interlopers elsewhere, but Fallen himself had decided to test the capabilities of one of the guild's most infamous members. The so-called Pathbreaker had made quite a few local splashes during his career, and as Fallen was currently trying - and still failing - the wrest control of their clash from the man with the glowing tattoos and spectral arms, he could understand why.

"We should have focused our attentions and operatives here," he thought to himself as the man uncannily managed to twist and block yet another of the incoming arrows from Fallen's companion while letting its twin deflect off an armored forearm using that most resilient armor of his that had appeared in a flash at the start of the conflict even though the Pathbreaker reportedly had never fought using conjured equipment before.

"Because I'm unsure if the two of us will be enough to take him out in a timely fashion." Just leaving was an option, but a costly one as someone like the Pathbreaker might be able to help break through the entrapping formations keeping his two companions inside along with the assets acquired from their allies in the church of Undeath. The trap had been meant for all of investigating adventurers, with Fallen and his companion set to finish off anything that might survive the onslaught inside.

But the premature discovery had forced their hand, leaving Fallen no choice. The creed of Discord was that where there were people, there was opportunity, and Fallen was still pondering ways to turn these events into a path forward. A deft block from the man's chiming staff thwarted another of Fallen's attempted strikes, dragging more mana from him as a prize for failure.

This was at least still within manageable levels, with Fallen's serene essence providing him with enough self-cleanses and mana recovery to fight effectively for some time longer. Even he would find himself pressed eventually, but that was then. As for now, Fallen needed to find an opening to land another Pallid Touch.

"There!" Using Distorted World, a gift from Discord's divine awakening stone merged with Fallen's corrupt essence, Fallen once more subverted his own domain of still tranquility as his path lent him a brief but immense surge of power and speed born from the temporary corruption of the concepts within.

This let him reposition and strike in a flash that took him in close, weaving around one of the man's conjured circular barriers while his glowing hand struck towards- A sharp sting of pain interrupted Fallen's strike as one of the many shards of barrier that the man had started to revolve around himself to deal with the incoming arrows suddenly sped up greatly, slapping Fallen's hand aside a hair's breadth before he made contact.

Realizing the trap, he stepped backwards only to find that the other panes of force had moved to block his retreat as they boxed him in.

"Troublesome," Fallen thought as Steps of Unhindered Calm let him sidestep anyway, rippling through the barrier as nothing could stop his solemn stride. A strike of his blade managed to connect with the outstretched arm of the man to deliver more of his afflictions that were bound to be eating into the Pathbreaker's body quite well by now, though it was usually hard to tell with silvers until the effects reached a critical mass.

While performing this strike though, one of those rippling waves produced by the man's attacks managed to sneak past Fallen's defenses to dig further into his reserves and active magic. The boon from another of his powers called Tranquil Touch of Death winked out again, much to Fallen's rising frustrations as he was once again forced to disengage or suffer more such attacks from the other spectral arms.

"Hopefully we can soon retreat," he thought while sparing a glance towards the barely visible windows of the warehouse, the barrier revealing little more than the flashes of essence powers and deathly miasma inside. When that fell still, they would know that their work was done.

"Found him! Or her? Hard to tell with the mask and robes. Very unflattering to the figure, those ones~!" The sudden loud, squeaking voice interrupting the otherwise silent battle, that had so far only spoken through the clash of steel and the hum of magic, was a stark contrast to the tone of the encounter, especially as the speaker - a brown rat peeking up from the collar of the Pathbreaker's armor - also waved its tiny forepaws in triumph.

Unfortunately, Fallen could also see the cause for its words as a swarm of rats formed a small wave that descended upon a seemingly empty rooftop off in the distance, only to force Fallen's fellow operative out of their hiding place. The arrows harrying the Pathbreaker ceased at that moment too, as the rat swarm Fallen had assumed was some kind of familiar or summon turned out to be far more coordinated and potent.

That was also when every window, doorslit, crack or similar opening on the warehouse suddenly started radiating a white-gold light for a brief moment before the roof of the warehouse erupted like a hidden volcano, the cacophonous sound of the explosion rolling out over the nearby neighborhoods that caused every single being with ears within a good distance to suddenly have a rude and painful awakening from their night's sleep.

Fallen could also sense the auras of the two adventurers rising among the rubble, unstable but alive and conscious, and knew that he had found his moment. This was not the outcome he had hoped for this evening, but it might be something they could work with. After all, this was far from the last attempt they would make at disrupting the guild's efforts. Kite was thankful for the resilience that came with his rank as the sudden detonation would otherwise permanently have deafened him.

One moment he was carving out some ground in an attempt to seize some kind of proper initiative against his masked attacker - a clash that had been concerningly even given the archer's support - but as soon as the detonation sent everything into even more disarray just as Wander had found and started distracting the archer, Kite's mind kicked into a completely different gear.

They were fighting in the city, after all, and the amount of debris that had now been sent flying was concerning, as were the unknown insides of the previously sealed warehouse. That was why it was an easy choice to let the masked man disengage and retreat as Kite started running up into the air upon a trail of conjured barriers for all that he was worth.

Had he not already been forced to boost his recovery with the help of his regalia, he would have boosted his speed as he needed to do something, anything, to lessen this damage. His training with Gauntlet would allow little else, but his path wasn't the best for this. Perhaps if he placed his barriers well, he would-"I've got it! Focus below!"

Amica's voice cut through the din as all of the pieces of wood and tiles - both those still ascending as well as those that had turned to fall downwards again - suddenly stopped in place in an impressive feat of telekinetics. Kite could see her floating in the air, propping up a barely conscious Little Crow with one hand while her mind and magic took care of the rest even though he could feel her aura wavering beneath the strain.

Below, in what remained of the warehouse with its flickering, failing formations, Kite could see remnants of familiar undead bone soldiers as well as something more ethereal.

"No, wait? Gaseous?" Kite thought as he changed direction after once more confirming that the masked agent from before had indeed disappeared. While the immediate danger of the debris was handled, the sudden presence of silver-ranked monsters spreading out in the urban environment would be worse. Fortunately though, the monsters were all a lot more affected by the explosion than the two adventurers, with plenty of the skeletal creatures broken and scattered while only one of the purple, vaporous creatures remained.

Kite assaulted the latter first, using the last, lone charge from Sage while feeding the astral gatherer energy from Potential of Stolen Power. This left the familiar hovering in his wake as it started shooting out a cascade of blue motes that covered most of the warehouse before detonating in a ripple of disruptive force. This had limited impact against the rigid bone monstrosities but the main target was the vaporous wraith which flickered and dispersed in a hissing whisper beneath the assault.

A moment later, one of the more intact skeletal soldiers leapt up from beneath and Kite met its calcified blade with a swing of his staff as the air around them shuddered from Unyielding dispersing the force into it.

"This… went both better and worse than it could have," he thought as he felt more auras locking onto their location from the surrounding city now that the conflict had become so overt.

"But I foresee no end of troubles from hereon. We need to gather and plan our next steps accordingly. First things first though…" With those thoughts, he threw himself downwards toward the remaining undead. No matter the politics, schemes and ambushes, protecting the city from them was adventurer work that needed doing.