Chương 145: Taking Out The Trash

Cal immediately fished two Mana potions out of his belt pouch and thumbed off their stoppers, tossing them back. The replenishment hit a heartbeat later as a flood of icy energy topped up his Mana font and pushed the ache behind his eyes back into manageable territory. Then he raised his hands to cast [Soundless Isolation Field]; all to aid in his efforts at stealth.

[Your proficiency with External Casting (E) has increased to Practiced] [Your proficiency with Rune Stabilization (E) has increased to Practiced] He crossed to the woman the dead bandit had been approaching while she continued to look through him. Cal knelt and extended a focused beam of his [Spiritual Perception] into the lock at her right wrist, building out a grayscale blueprint of the three-pin mechanism in a heartbeat. He forged the shape in his mind then raised his fingers and drew the runes for [Mana Key].

The construct of compressed air formed as a near-invisible distortion, the teeth of the Spell folding the air into an exact mold of what he'd visualized. Slipping the key into the lock, he twisted it with a touch of Intent. The tumblers aligned. The cuff barely opened and he had to reach down and pry the stiff joints apart, glad for the sound dampening effect. The left wrist cuff followed a few seconds later. The woman sat there, freed but uncomprehending, staring at something a thousand yards beyond the tent wall.

Ok… I think I'm going to need some help. The last thing I want to do is man-handle these poor ladies through the portal after whatever horrors they've been through. What I need is— Cal turned to the next woman down the line and noticed she was watching him. —a helper… She was younger than the first woman, maybe late teens, her dark hair a tangled mat against her shoulders. Hollow cheeks and clear brown eyes dominated her features, and she tracked his every movement, haunted and terrified though she was.

As Cal crossed to her, they locked eyes above the runic cloth covering his face. He saw a change come over her features. The fear remained, but underneath it something shifted. She extended her chained wrists toward him without a word. Cal knelt and went to work. The locks were all the same make, and her cuffs fell open in his hands.

She scrambled across the dirt to the first woman the moment she was free, gathered her up under one arm with the gentleness of someone handling a child, and guided her unsteadily toward the portal. Pausing at its edge for just a heartbeat, she glanced back at Cal, then stepped through into the fading light of the forest beyond. She deposited the catatonic woman on the moss and was back through the portal a breath later, already searching for the next chained captive.

Without a word, she became his second pair of hands and they moved down the line. The third woman was older, perhaps in her thirties, and she watched the proceedings with brittle, exhausted gratitude, looking from Cal to the open portal in stunned disbelief. The fourth had a knot of scar tissue across her temple and moved on legs that barely held her weight. The fifth was so thin Cal could see the bones of her wrists through her skin. His helper handled each of them.

She walked them, half-carried them, whispering things into their ears across the portal that were beyond Cal's hearing and what he needed to know. The procession of freed women transitioned from the hell of the tent into the unknown of the forest. Through all of it, Cal kept a sliver of his perception locked on the two E-tiers outside. One leaned against a tree, idly tossing his cudgel while the other paced a lazy circle. Both paid no mind to the tent or the absent bandit who had walked inside it minutes ago. Good.

Stay bored. I'll get to you soon enough. The sixth woman. The seventh. Cal worked the last cuff free and stood, absently noting the lack of pain in his knees from the prolonged kneeling. That was nice. His helper guided the seventh woman through the portal, then turned and waited at its edge for him. He waved her on and she slipped through. Stepping after her, Cal released both Spells, letting the [Portal] collapse behind him with a soft inversion of air, leaving the fetid tent sealed.

The cool breeze of the Virethane filled his lungs. Seven women were clustered in a close knot on the moss, the catatonic one cradled between two of the others. His helper stood slightly apart, watching him. Cal pulled a third Mana potion from his belt pouch and drained it, then raised his hands and began to cast again. [Portal] opened to a copse of birch and young hemlock just outside of Deadfall's eastern gate, the glow of the village's rune-lit streets visible through the trees beyond. Cal gestured emphatically.

First to the portal, then through it to the distant lights of Deadfall winking between the dark trunks. The helper woman stepped forward and began gathering the others. One by one she ushered them through, the catatonic woman first, then the scarred one, then the rest. They moved mutely, heads down, none looking back at the man who had rescued them. The helper turned at the edge of the portal. She looked at Cal, then past him, back the way they had come.

"You're not coming, are you?" she whispered. Cal only shook his head, trying to preserve as much anonymity as he could. The woman read the rest in his eyes.

"Thank you," she continued, tears brimming in her eyes.

"And good luck. Make… make those bastards pay." She turned and stepped through the portal, and Cal let it collapse behind her. He folded down into [Meditation] in his hiding spot, resupplying his belt pouch with Mana potions for the fight to come. Twenty minutes later and Mana was full. Raising his hands for the final bit of recon, he cast [Portal] to drop him back inside the empty slave tent.

The aperture opened and he stepped through, the foul air closing around him again, but this time the chains lay loose in the dirt and he was the only living thing inside the canvas walls. He sat down cross-legged on the dirt floor one last time, and when he stood, his spiritual energy was full and he was ready. It was time to take out the trash. He picked up his spear and stepped outside the tent, this corner of the camp barely lit by a small campfire.

The two E-tier guards stood twelve feet apart, both facing away from him. [Flicker Step] Appearing a yard behind the right guard, he thrust his spear upward in a simple motion. Its Mycari steel tip pierced the base of the man's skull, severing the spinal column and the bandit collapsed wordlessly on the mossy ground. The sound made the second guard pivot, but Cal was already coming for him. A [Dash] put him in front of the man and the spear plunged through his neck, choking the shout in his throat.

The man slid from the spear and fell. The entire exchange had taken less than two seconds. Next, he stowed the spear into his void ring with the bow and arrow, even putting Bael'zhar and his belt pouch and pack in as well. A long weapon was a liability for infiltration, potion bottles could shift and knock to make sound, and the shortsword could get tangled in who knew what. Man, I wish I hadn't needed to sell Cillian's daggers. The heavier blades were probably more fitting for what comes next…

He shivered as he had that thought, then used [Perfect Memory] to remember what he had seen in that tent. Relived the paternal rage that had burned in him the moment he saw what was going on. Sometimes a man needs to do hard things, Cal. Let's get to work. Drawing his harvesting knife from his belt, he oriented himself toward the nearest cluster of bandit tents and crept forward. [Your proficiency with Stealth (E) has increased to Practiced] The first tent held a lone F-tier sleeping in a hammock.

The harvesting knife slit his throat easily enough, but Cal dragged the knife back and forth while pressing hard to make sure the grisly work completed. The body barely moved before the man expired, and Cal was back outside in nine seconds, covered in blood. [New Skill Gained: Knife Saw (E) - Novice] He tried to distract himself from the nausea he felt after what amounted to forcing himself to become an executioner, despite how justified he thought it was.

Is it just me, or is the World Soul throwing even more generic names now that I know how that part works? Not that it'd make this gruesome work any better, but come on Vox; Knife Saw? That just feels lazy. Maybe if I think of it like this… Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. [Your Knife Saw (E) has been renamed to Throaty McSlit (E)] The second tent held two F-tiers.

The first died with a hand clamped over his mouth and another slit throat, but the other man somehow woke to the struggle. He sat up and met Cal's knife through the eye. [Your proficiency with Knife Thrust (E) has increased to Practiced] Nope. Nope! Somehow that definitely didn't make it better! Cal moved to the third tent. Then the fourth. And fifth. [Your Throaty McSlit (E) has been renamed to The Heron Shears the Reed (E)] Hmm… I thought it sounded cool, but something about it feels like deja vu…

The work devolved into grim repetition as he stealthed from tent to tent, but the absurdity of renaming his murder-skill helped him compartmentalize the macabre work. [Perfect Memory] kept the camp's layout clear in his mind, and every place he'd cleared got checked off one at a time. [Your proficiency with The Heron Shears the Reed (E) has increased to Practiced] He was on the eleventh tent when another near-miss came. The aura inside was E-tier.

Cal eased the tent flap aside with the tip of his knife and slipped in. The bandit lay on a proper cot. A heavyset man with a thick black beard, his chest rising and falling in the slow pattern of deep sleep. His axe leaned against the cot within easy reach. Cal stepped close and raised his knife. The bandit jerked awake as he opened his eyes and recognized the threat, drawing breath to shout. No! Cal lunged the last foot.

Clamping his left hand down over the man's mouth, he dug his fingers into the beard and used his palm to create a seal. He drove the harvesting knife down with his right hand into the neck, trying to find something vital. The bandit thrashed, and his hands came up. One caught Cal's wrist with surprising strength, gripping hard enough to grind the bones together as he tried to pull Cal off. His back arched off the cot, his legs kicking the blankets into a tangle. Cal twisted the knife. The man's grip spasmed.

A muffled gurgle vibrated against Cal's palm, desperately fighting against the seal. Then a second wrench of the blade and the body went still beneath him. [Your proficiency with Knife Stab (E) has increased to Practiced] [Your proficiency with Grappling (E) has increased to Practiced] Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Cal held the corpse down for another five to be sure. He withdrew the knife, his heart hammering in his ears, before wiping the blade on the bedding and slipping back out into the dark. That…

was too close, he thought, panting. Heck, maybe the World Soul knows me better than I know myself? [Your The Heron Shears the Reed (E) has been renamed to Knife Saw (E)] He was approaching the next tent when a shout split the night. It came from the direction of the slave tent. Likely a bandit who had stepped inside expecting bored sentries and chained women and found three corpses and seven empty chains. Cal pulsed his [Spiritual Perception] wide as the camp came alive.

Gasto's D-tier aura flared as the man came awake and marshaled his power to prepare for combat. Two E-tier signatures also quickly roused, the last of his lieutenants. Across the camp the auras of the thirteen remaining F-tiers began to bustle around, the spiritual equivalent of a kicked anthill. You could walk away, you know. The women are safe. The odds that this decimated band of marauders attacks another caravan before the Legion gets them is slim to none. You've done enough, haven't you?

Cal considered the sentiment for exactly two seconds before he remembered the vacant eyes of the slave woman once again. He couldn't imagine what she had been through; and frankly, didn't want to. It was enough that he could make them pay. He pulled his weapons and equipment from his void ring with a thought, re-equipping then grabbing his fel-oak spear with his right hand while he drew the runes for the [Flashbang] Spell with his left.

Cupping the spellwork in his palm, he used his Intent and a thin thread of Mana to carry the runes with him as he exited the tent and walked out into the central clearing of the camp. The few remaining bandits exited their tents in various stages of undress, swords drawn and spears wavering, eyes wild. A panicked murmur spread through the camp as they took stock.

"W-Where's Yorb? Didn't he make it back from the ambush!" one man called out. Another answered from further on.

"I just checked his tent! His bloody throat be cut!" It was into this rising panic that Cal walked. They saw him then, a lone masked figure striding through the dying glow of numerous cookfires, further illuminated by the soft light of the Spell knot in his palm. They shouted to one another; the words were laced with more bravado than conviction.

"Who the—""Oi, there's only one a him!"

"Let's git the bastard!" A ragged circle formed around Cal. Fifteen bandits with weapons leveled, but their line was hesitant. They shuffled on their feet, their eyes darting to Cal and the men beside them. No one took the first step. They're afraid, Cal realized. Fifteen to one, and they're of little old me. Well, I guess I did give Yorb something to be scared of… His slow advance had unnerved them. A man who walks into an armed camp alone is either a fool or something far more dangerous.

They were low-tier thugs, sure, so it was only natural they'd wait for their leader. The flap of the largest tent in the camp tore aside and Gasto finally emerged. He was bigger than Cal remembered from the road. Six and a half feet of corded muscle and old scar tissue, his torso bare to the waist and a huge battle axe held casually in one large hand.

"Who the hell are you?" He spoke in a deep bass rumble that immediately silenced the babble of the surrounding bandits. Absurdity rose in him despite the seriousness of the moment, pulled along by the humor he'd used to keep himself sane through his killing spree. A wry corner of his brain noted that this was the part of the action movie where the hero said something cool. The line he queued up was the kind of line that would have made him roll his eyes in any other context. He embraced it anyway. It felt right.

"I am… your reckoning." He thrust the glowing knot of runes straight up into the night and fired the Spell. The world flashed white, followed by a concussive crack that sent the bandits reeling. Having already squeezed his eyes shut, Cal opened them to a camp of lurching, blinded men. [Your proficiency with Combat Casting (E) has increased to Practiced] Now. [Crimson Overdrive] [Dash] [Lancing River] Cal exploded into a sequence of coordinated violence.

His aura flared red and he closed the distance to Gasto with a sudden burst of speed, the wind of his passage whipping a flap of canvas as he flew past. When he came out of the movement his legs were already gathering power for [Lancing River]. The kinetic chain wound through his thighs, surged up his hips, ignited his core with rotational torque, funneled through his shoulder, and ripped down the haft of his fel-oak spear. The Mycari steel drove for Gasto's heart.

The D-tier captain should have been incapable of reacting. He should have been blinded, deafened and half-staggered, his battle axe hanging loose at his side. But even as Cal's spearpoint closed Gasto snapped his head toward him, his unfocused eyes tracking a target they couldn't see. Holy mackerel, he's following my aura! Cal realized with a shock of alarm. That spiritual warning was all Gasto needed. He wrenched his torso aside with all the desperate strength he could muster.

The spear whistled past the spot his heart had occupied and punched into the meat of his right collarbone, the Mycari spearhead shearing through bone and erupting from the back of his shoulder. Gasto roared. He swept the battle axe up with his left hand in a reflexive arc, the blade carving a horizontal slash at Cal's hip. Cal threw himself backward, but he was too slow; the bandit's inherent attribute advantage too high.

The axe blade caught him above the left hip, slicing through the black leather of his armor and biting deep into the muscle beneath. The pain hit a half-second later, a blinding shard of agony that opened from his ribs to his pelvis, his entire left side suddenly wet with hot blood. [Your proficiency with Ignore Pain (E) has increased to Adept] [Your proficiency with Pain Tolerance (E) has increased to Adept] At the same moment, something else surged from Gasto in a burst of Mana.

Black tendrils of shadow boiled out of the man's back, six of them, then eight, each as thick as Cal's wrist and twisting with an oily life of their own. They lashed forward and clamped around the haft of his spear where it still protruded from Gasto's collarbone. What the ham! Is that a bloodline!? The tendrils lengthened. His spear ripped backward out of Gasto's body and out of Cal's grasp in a violent yank, getting thrown somewhere in the distance behind him. At the same time, Gasto stomped.

Cal's perception caught a bizarre discharge of power from the bandit captain; a torrent of Stamina laced with a formless, explosive pulse of Mana. The ground buckled under the impact. A shockwave of hybridized energy radiated outward in a ring of dirt and percussive force that slammed into Cal and sent him airborne. Cal hit the dirt eight yards away on his back and rolled. The air went out of him and the wound in his side forced out a cry of pain. Get up! Get UP!

He poured his Intent into his pain management Skills to consciously set it to the side and wall it off from his decision making. The pain remained. He simply chose to push through it with an act of will. Regaining his feet, he crossed the eight yards in a controlled hop of harnessed Stamina, landing inside Gasto's guard before the tendrils could fully track him. He was already reaching across his body with his right hand to the hilt of the ka-vae'zhar shortsword at his left hip.

The matte black blade slid free of its sheath, and Cal poured Stamina into it the way Yorrin had shown him. The red vein down the center of the metal shone slightly. His sword drank in Stamina as it dumped into the blade. The physical energy flowed into Bael'zhar and found a home, the ore harmonizing with his energy in a way that felt natural as the scarlet bar turned into a blazing inferno. The entire blade came alive in his hand. Above him, the tendrils descended as Gasto brought his giant axe around.

Eight black ropes of shadow, each tipped with a wickedly hooked point lashed down at his head and chest from multiple angles. Cal stepped into Gasto's guard. He brought the shortsword up in an unbroken arc, his Stamina-empowered hips and back driving the cut, his shoulders following as the [Severing Slash] technique flowed through his body.

The black-and-red steel hissed as it cut through the descending tendrils, each shadow rope severing cleanly at the point of contact, the upper halves dissipating into oily smoke. The stroke carried upward with its full momentum and Gasto desperately wrenched his battle axe into a defensive position. His block was a fraction too slow, and Bael'zhar's deadly arc continued unimpeded.

It passed through Gasto's unarmored torso from right hip to left shoulder, the ka-vae'zhar blade sliding through skin and muscle and bone with barely any resistance. [Your proficiency with Severing Slash (E) has increased to Practiced] Gasto's body remained in that position for a frozen moment, his eyes bulging out of his head before he fell in two pieces. Bandits cried out and groaned as they clutched at their eyes and ears, the rest of the camp coming back into Cal's immediate focus.

Men staggered blind in slow circles, weapons raised against threats hidden from them. It was still bedlam. Blood poured from the wound in Cal's left side, running down his leg into his boot. He stumbled. His vision greyed at the edges, but he forced himself upright. He found the belt pouch at his hip with his right hand and came back with a healing draught. Pulling the cork free with his teeth, he spat it aside and tipped the vial back.

The potion's magic took hold a heartbeat later, a violent fire that warred with the agony of the wound, his torn muscle and severed vessels beginning the excruciating work of pulling themselves back together. He gasped through the cloth as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead. Around him, the bandits were finding their bearings and the flashbang was wearing off. Some of them began to see again, to track movement, to grip their weapons with returning purpose. He set his feet. It was time to finish this.