Chương 56: The Great Adventures of the Dark Supreme Crow Thief of the Eighteen Nebulous Stars

By the time Lio arrived, the Mayor's residence was quiet, the guards having all rushed outside to deal with the incoming threat. The outer wall was a thick barrier of grown fungi, its surface having petrified over decades into something like stone. Two guards had been posted at the main gate when Lio had observed it from the rooftop, but both of them were gone now. The new plan had all come together rather beautifully. Lio hadn't just told Lamb that his name was Lackspur Lavigne for no reason after all.

In reality, that was the Mayor's full legal name. Mayor Lackspur Lavigne, sitting governor of Trestfall, for the past eleven years. Which meant that the moment Lamb had started howling that name through the streets, every guard in the settlement had heard it and had been duped into a false conclusion that the killer was after the mayor. And so, every available guard had converged on the residence, rushing inside and sealing the perimeter.

Then they escorted the Mayor to a secret bunker, leaving everywhere else empty. Lio scaled the outer wall in just three seconds, utilizing [Mach Heart] to carry him up and over without making a sound. He dropped into the interior courtyard. He took a moment to look down at himself, quickly wiping away the soot and mud that caked his entire body, making himself look at least a little presentable.

Then Lio hurriedly moved through the courtyard, skirting around the central fountain and heading toward the main entrance. The residence itself was dark, most of its noncombative occupants having fled or been evacuated. The windows had been shuttered, and the decorative lamps outside had all been extinguished. Lio grabbed the front doors and swung them open. They were unlocked, as he'd expected. Of course they were. The guards were too focused on dealing with the insane killer closing on the residence.

And when you—an esteemed government official who didn't know the first thing about fighting—evacuate in a hurry, you don't bother to stop and lock the doors. He strode into the entrance hall. It was a wide and luxurious space, the walls lined with hanging tapestries depicting Trestfall's founding, framed maps of the known floors, and mounted specimens of unusual flora from deep within Ghenna. The floor was dark wood that had been polished to a shine, his boots inevitably making loud footsteps as he walked through.

Lio was following the path to where he knew the bunker was located, having memorized it over several loops, when something caught the corner of his eyes. It was a masquerade mask, mounted on a small iron shelf with two other tapestries. It was a simple but fancy thing, shaped to cover the upper half of a face, lacquered a deep burgundy with thin gold trim along the edges. Lio raised an eyebrow, a funny idea popping into his head. For some reason, he was feeling a little humorous today. Well, something close to it.

The spores didn't actually let him feel anything. Walking over to it, he lifted it up and put it on. He continued down the corridor, quickly found a linen closet, and fashioned himself a rough cloak made from a red bedsheet, swinging it around his shoulders with two quick knots. He examined himself briefly in the dark mirror at the corridor's end. A masked figure in a makeshift cloak, covered in mud and sludge, smelling of smoke and burnt hair. He snorted. Good enough.

Lio followed the corridor to its end, then took the stairs downward. The bunker was accessible through a false wall in the wine cellar. The first Trestfall Mayor had commissioned it decades ago after a series of Delver riots, and no more than a handful of people even knew it existed. One of those few people was Lio, who had found it a few hundred loops ago by complete accident, when he'd been snooping around the Mayor's residence due to boredom.

The wine cellar was cold and smelled of finely aged alcohol, huge racks of wooden barrels covering the walls on both sides. He moved through it quickly, counting the rack columns from the entrance onward until he reached the seventh, then pressed his palm flat against the wall behind it. Fondling around, his fingers quickly found the slight seam. He stepped back, drew his Adamantine knife, and activated [Pyrolysis] as he nicked his finger, letting a small droplet of blood ooze out.

The blue-gold flames erupted from the blade immediately. He knew that the bunker walls were made of Oblite, a remarkable material found in the lava veins of Floor 7. It had a tensile strength that put surface metals to utter shame and such a resistance to heat that it was close to impossible for normal blacksmiths to manipulate into anything useful. But of course, an Adamantine knife with the mythical fires of [Pyrolysis] could easily cut through it. Lio stabbed the weapon in, and began cutting.

It took perhaps only ten seconds, the blue-gold light of [Pyrolysis] eating hungrily away at the supernatural metal. Then the section gave out, a neat rectangular section of Oblite dropping onto the floor with a loud clang. Lio deactivated [Pyrolysis], and stepped through. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Inside, the bunker was small and utilitarian, a sharp contrast to the luxurious residence just above.

The furniture was sparse and practical, consisting of a single lamp burning on the far wall, a wooden table, four chairs, and a shelf of supplies. The walls were solid Oblite on all four sides, dark and lustrous. Lio grinned, his hands in his pockets as he looked over at the center of the room, where the Mayor was sitting on the table. Draped around his neck was the grey fur of the Prosperous Mantle. And standing to his left was Briar, one of the guards Lio had seen at the tavern muder scene.

Standing to his right was Grandmother. Lio gazed around the room, searching for Demetri, but he was nowhere to be found. Had he been sent to deal with the chaos in the fields? He felt a small frown curve the edge of his lips before shifting his focus to the two guards. They stood frozen, their eyes wide with surprise, clearly blindsided by his sudden appearance. By contrast, the Mayor was the very picture of calmness. If anything, he was amused, a spark of dark mirth flickering in his eyes. His lips twitched.

"Who are you?" Lio gave a dramatic bow, flipping a pretend hat with a fanciful flourish.

"The Dark Supreme Crow Thief of the Eighteen Nebulous Stars," he announced grandly, straightening back up with a loud yawn.

"At your service." Briar and Grandmother exchanged an unnerved look. The Mayor's dark amusement didn't waver. Instead, it appeared to increase, as he raised an eyebrow and smirked.

"Is that so?"

"Of course it is." Lio clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels.

"I do apologize for the entrance. The door was somewhat inconvenient." He gestured at the hole in the Oblite wall.

"I've been meaning to work on my knocking."

"Hm," the Mayor said. Lio's eyes dropped to the Prosperous Mantle draped around the man's shoulders, and wiggled his eyebrows.

"That's a lovely mantle," he praised.

"Thank you." The Mayor touched it fondly.

"I'll be taking it."

"I'm afraid not," the Mayor replied, without breaking pace. Lio's shoulders dropped as he chagrined, letting out a long, mournful sigh.

"I had so hoped we could do this the easy way." He sniffed, theatrically wiping away fake tears. The Mayor slowly stood up. Lio sighed again, even more dramatically this time, tilting his head back toward the ceiling and laying his hand on his forehead. Then his eyes sharpened, a predatory glint replacing his joviality.

"Then you leave me no choice, I suppose." At those words, the spell of shock finally broke. Briar and Grandmother shook themselves out of their paralysis, their training roaring back to life. Briar stepped forward first, reaching into the inner lining of her coat, and producing a small brass badge. She grimly thrust it toward Lio.

"In accordance with Trestfall Residential Ordinance fourteen, subsection three," she said crisply, "pertaining to unlawful entry into a protected municipal residence, destruction of registered architectural materials, and threatening behaviour toward a sitting government official, I will be placing you under arrest." She tucked the badge away.

"Can you just come quietly?" She looked slightly uncomfortable.

"I don't wanna hurt a kid." Lio gave a small snort. What a split personality. He glanced at Grandmother, who still hadn't moved, her eyes watching him closely. Then he looked back at Briar, rubbing his chin as he harrumphed.

"Very thoughtful. Very bookish."

"Thank you." Briar looked slightly relieved.

"So you'll—?"

"But I'm not coming quietly," Lio said apologetically. Briar winced.

"Then I'm sorry about this, kid." She vanished from sight. Lio smirked, then activated [Atropos's Lens]. Every detail of the world crystallized into perfect view, while his perspective of time slowed down, revealing the shady silhouette of Briar, who was mid-teleport, a few inches from him. That was the ability of Briar's rune, called [Liquid Mercury]. It let her dash forward at a godly speed, almost like teleporting, to any location within her direct line of sight, up to thirty meters.

However, in a confined space like the bunker, her maximum range was greatly reduced. Seeing that he had around three subjective seconds left, Lio used one of them to activate [Augmentation], focusing the intense power into his right arm. He used the second to plant his feet while also lowering his center of gravity. Finally, he used the third to wind himself back and drive his fist directly into Briar's midsection.

As time resumed back to normal, Briar's head snapped back, a spray of red leaving her mouth before she was propelled across the room. She slammed into the far wall with a thunderous crack, her rag-like body hitting the Oblite with enough force to crack the metal. She slid down the wall, blood leaking down her face and arms, open eyes glazed over. He turned around, rubbing the back of his neck, looking over at Grandmother, who hadn't moved from her position beside the Mayor.

The Mayor himself was watching from behind the table. The dark amusement was gone from his eyes now, replaced with a cold wariness. Lio rolled his shoulder, feeling the effect of [Augmentation] fade from his arm.

"Your turn." He gave a devilish grin. A stern expression on her face, Grandmother didn't react to the grin. Instead, she simply raised both palms outward, and suddenly, hundreds of wires revealed themselves. Thin as hair, metallically glinting, they were strung everywhere in the room, in an overlapping X pattern that repeated continuously. They formed a dense curtain between Lio and the Mayor, a full cocoon that the Grandmother had constructed silently while Lio had been distracted with Briar.

This was the power of Grandmother's [Fila Cruoris] rune. It gave her the ability to secrete hyper-durable metal wires from the fingertips, nearly invisible until she chose to let them show. She chuckled, her voice taking on a dry, chiding tone.

"Careful now, dearie," she murmured.

"One wrong twitch and you'll be nothing but ribbons." Lio cocked his head at the wires. Then he grinned, drew his Adamantine knife, and drove it straight through his palm. Blood welled up immediately, along with the blue-gold fire of [Pyrolysis], which erupted from the wound and raced up the blade. He slashed in a wide arc, and the nearest wires were immediately burned away.

"Impossible." Grandmother stumbled back, shock enveloping her features.

"My wires can't be cut like that—""Oh, but I just did." Lio activated [Mach Heart], launching himself across the bunker, using the [Pyrolysis] flames to destroy the wires in his path. Raising his arm, he drove his hand cleanly into the side of Grandmother's neck. She gasped, then collapsed. Lio paused, glancing down at her crumpled form on the floor. He let out a soft tut tut and turned his attention back to the Mayor.

"I really don't enjoy doing that to elderly people," he remarked, brushing a stray fleck of ash from his sleeve.

"It feels deeply wrong, in a moral sense." The Mayor stared at him, eyes wide. Lio held his hand out, pleasantly smiling.

"The mantle, please."