The last leg was always going to be the hardest. Not only were his boots drained, robbing him of their passive speed boost, but he had just spent the last twenty minutes in a near constant sprint. Fatigue built up, the full head mask he wore made breathing difficult, and worst of all his bag weighed almost half his body weight. It was one thing to transport goods; it was a whole other thing to transport heavy goods. And whatever that second thing was, it wasn’t his thing. Him and his muscles were in agreement on that point.

Almost there now. Almost there.

Interrupting his self-motivation, a knife narrowly missed his leg. He barely saw it coming, just glimpsing a shadow raising its arm.

The Nightwatchers were on him again.

His quick dash to the side was all that saved him from an unwelcome guest in his thigh. His spine tingled as the images of what would have happened if he didn’t react in time played through his mind. The throwing knives were ineffective on the rooftops, he was too quick for them then. Right now… he could only pray they took his miraculous dodge as a sign to not waste their energy on it.

Just keep moving!

Thankfully, before more knives flew, Kaiz arrived at his destination. He took a sharp right and barreled into a dark alleyway. It would have been a stark contrast, coming from the well-lit street, but halfway into the alley there was a lantern attached to the side of a building. It gleamed in the darkness, much brighter than the usual street lantern. Once he reached it, Kaiz turned towards the building and dove into one of its windows. He scurried across the barren room and waited by an opposing window, his bag held tightly to his chest.

“He went t—”

Suddenly, the ring of wood meeting bone reached his ears. The sounds of a scuffle followed closely behind. It persisted for a fair few minutes. He couldn’t see the fight itself, but he spotted familiar armor. The dull green chitin armor could only belong to one gang.

“Come on you filthy tanlars! You think you can take me?!”

They got one?

From the panic in the voice that would seem like the case, but Kaiz wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions. He didn’t fully grasp the situation outside. Even if one of them had a lame arm, they were still Nightwatchers. They were level [15] at a minimum, more likely above [20]. To say nothing of the ludicrous boosts their cloaks gave them on top of that. He’d wait until things died down before choosing his next course of action.

He spent the time going through breathing techniques, staving off exhaustion. For as grueling as the run had been on his body so far, he was trained to handle it. The added weight made recovery more difficult, but it didn’t take too long for him to find just enough strength to finish the job.

“You—”

“Kill’em!”

“For his h’eye, you goat! Don't spoil the cloak.”

Kaiz recognized the voice immediately. There were few in the slums who wore their ‘H factor’ so shamelessly.

“Strip‘em.”

That was the sign Kaiz was looking for. He rushed to open his bag and search through. He located the items he needed and moved them from his main bag and into another, smaller one. Outside of the window he sat next to he spotted a mess of broken wooden barrels with a pair of similarly small bags. He discreetly dropped his own into the mix, camouflaging it. Content with its hiding place, he closed his bigger bag and ran back across the room. A quick peek out the window revealed a couple of familiar men standing amidst quite a few corpses. The most prominent of the corpses were currently being stripped clean.

He brought a lot of men.

And he was unhappy, “Treerat, get h’out here.”

Kaiz obeyed, hopping through the window he peeked from. He looked at the face of the man who called him. It was light, an uncommon characteristic in Goldfrucht, but also heavily scarred. The complete lack of hair only served to highlight each scar that marred his skin. Along his jawline, across his scalp, in between the eyes. Scars featured everywhere. It was a miracle both of his eyes still worked. They were quite the stand outs, being the only normal aspects of his appearance. To Kaiz, his functioning sight was a testament to how far you could get while never dodging. Or wearing a helmet.

“Job done, abi?”

Conan just stared, “Two?”

Three, actually.

Kaiz would hold that information close to his chest, though. If Conan knew the truth, it would be war and not the kind of war they had any hope of winning.

He played up his fear, “Yeh. They no dey play at all. Almost scatta my leg.”

Conan walked up to Kaiz with doubt in his eyes, “Na so?” He paused just in front of him, “I look like a fool to you?”

Conan wasn’t a particularly tall man, only an inch or two taller than Kaiz, but his scarred face and wide frame made for an imposing figure. To some.

Kaiz backed up anyway, “How?”

“How, ke?” The doubt grew.

An eerie silence prevailed as Conan continued to scrutinize Kaiz. The only acoustics were the muted sounds of clothes being carefully removed from dead bodies. It was equal parts unsettling and calming. That is, until those muted sounds got even quieter and the distinct tone of footsteps were mixed in.

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“The sack.” He pointed at Kaiz’s bag, “Wetin you take?”

Kaiz tried deflecting, “Jus’ some trink’s and tools. Nottin’ too much.”

Conan looked thoroughly unconvinced though, “Ehh? Viz said, ‘Take nottin’ too much,’ abi? Toh.” He shrugged, “Show me then.”

He tried to back up again, but he bumped into one of Conan’s lackeys, “We no gree that one.”

Conan didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he continued to stare as his men steadily surrounded Kaiz. They took their time, making sure to well and truly encircle him. If he still had mana in his boots, all their efforts would be for naught, but as he was, he could only lament the fact he wasted it on making sure they didn’t get wiped out.

He shook his head internally as the last few men shuffled in.

Once they well and truly besieged him on all sides, Conan spoke, “Correct. H’also.” He pointed at the two brown bodies in only undergarments, “We h’agreed on one. Rat. What. Is. In. That. Sack?”

Conan’s calm deteriorated with each syllable. Kaiz could understand why. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure with the crowd blocking his view, but he counted at least fifteen of Conan’s men scattered across the ground. Most wore the same chitin armor, marking them as his enforcers.

Conan himself donned a similar, stronger set. It wasn’t enchanted, but it might as well have been. Famed around the north for being unbreakable, the crack along its shoulder was noteworthy.

Kaiz clutched the bag to his chest, “Two cloaks betta for you, no?”

Someone behind him spoke up, “No make this trouble.”

Murmurs about just killing him and moving on proliferated through the mob. Most seemed in agreement, some even had the balls to inch towards him. Kaiz kept his eyes on Conan though. He knew this was mostly a bluff. They wouldn’t kill him or cause any permanent harm, but there were a number of nonlethal things they could do.

They could threaten to take off his mask. Would Conan actually push that far? He didn’t know, but Kaiz had already accomplished his main goals and he valued his anonymity too much to risk it. The anger in Conan’s glare certainly wasn’t fake.

He dropped the bag.

“Good boy.”

A goon picked it up and handed it to Conan. He untied it, still staring at Kaiz, and rummaged through. It only took a few moments for his eyes to light up. He chuckled to himself, “Nottin’ too much, eh?”

He pulled out a diamond-shaped, iron badge with an orb embedded in the center, “A Nurfium Star.”

Kaiz looked away as Conan continued to inspect the item. He knew the orb’s true appearance was something akin to a rainbow, but it merely shone a dull white for him.

“This, this go make two of these bastards move.”

Conan dropped the badge back in the bag and handed it to another of his lackeys, “Praise your god, rat. Tomorrow you fit be a fool h’again.”

Before the bastard let Kaiz go though, he signaled to someone behind him. It didn’t take long for Kaiz to find a foot on his spine. He tried to stay on his feet, aware the attack was coming, but the power forced him to his knees.

“Tell Viz eh?” Another kick came. That one more of a stomp, “If he even dreams of this h’again, no god go save him.”

Threat made, Conan and his goons left him to writhe on the ground. With the two Nightwatchers’ corpses looted, they moved to picking up the fallen members of their gang.

The sight made Kaiz smile inwardly. Tonight would hurt Conan’s operations for months. Even if he got some temporary hands, he’d have to scale back his activity for a while. That alone was worth far more than the contents of his bag. Sadly, that knowledge in no way soothed the back pain.

Guess messing up with the Nightwatchers worked out.

Not willing to wait around for anyone to get particularly sore on that subject, he labored to his feet. He quickly dusted himself off and lumbered into the dark, his job complete for the night.

Or so he thought.

Kaiz was a very hard person to shadow. To say he was perceptive would be an understatement. To say he was paranoid would be an even bigger understatement. The care in which he watched his back could be called extreme.

Not tonight.

Instead of heading home, Kaiz wandered into his crew’s little slice of the slums. While not all of the Zones was terrible, the areas immediately adjacent to the wall were rather decent, the vast majority of it was. There were no roads out here, just misshapen paths usually filled with garbage and debris.

This far from the wall and the main street, those ‘paths’ were just wherever homes weren’t and those ‘homes’ were anything with at least one wall and a roof.

He didn’t make it a habit, but every time he had to walk through such conditions, it reinvigorated him. He refused to live like that. Never again.

Five or six minutes later, he walked into the part of their turf they had actively rebuilt. Paths got wider, buildings got sturdier, and street lanterns got more frequent. It was still the same slums he knew, just a bit more maintained. Of course, he didn’t miss the group of three ‘homeless men’ laying under a shack. He gave them a discreet sign and kept moving.

It’s past 2 now. Who’d be there now? Lamar’s tracking a shipment. Code’s probably passed out in a pool of piss somewhere.

Kaiz went through the list of people that would be at the closest hideout. It didn’t look promising. There were only three people in the crew besides Viz that knew Kaiz. The rest just knew that he was a runner and he never took off his mask. His body lagged with each step and his mind slowly followed. Now was not the time to have to play mysterious, but a slave did not choose their master.

Fate sealed, he trudged towards the hideout anyway. He took some wrong turns and wide paths to continue to give the appearance of oblivious caution. He even threw in a curious peek over the shoulder for good measure.

His stalker’s location was never truly in doubt. Enchanted gear rarely found its way this deep into North West, and whatever this stalker wore, it shone just as brightly as a Nightwatcher’s cloak.

He wasn’t too worried they were one, though. Nightwatchers were strictly male, and the person tailing him almost certainly female. The real question was, what group did they belong to? Was it another gang? A noble? A merchant? A guild? They were very careful with the jobs they took and the people they crossed. Corpses had no use for gold, so strategically picking their battles was a core principle of their crew.

Even the insanity he’d just completed had many, many safety measures. The retaliation for it wouldn’t come for a while, if it came at all, and in the unlikely event that it did, they’d set Conan up to take the heat.

While they had been slowly flexing their muscles more and more of late, they were still just some ‘talented tanlars’. No one would believe they could take on and defeat three Nightwatchers.

Hopefully Conan doesn’t tell Snake about the second one. We’re going to have to put faith in his greed. He should be desperate to keep the nurfium to himself, especially if he has to do a bit of reshuffling, but if Snake cared to look into it he wouldn’t buy that one Nightwatcher killed fifteen of Conan’s men. We’re already putting a lot of faith in him not caring enough to look into what items were stolen. Ugh. So many unknown factors, so many ris—huh?

Kaiz peeked behind him. His tracker had disappeared, or at least the glow from their gear had. He casually scanned his surroundings, making sure to not miss a sign or a step. Nothing. As far as he could tell, there were no eyes on him anymore. Not one to be anything less than thorough, he circled back around to the last place he saw them. He carefully inspected the area, but found nothing. They didn’t even leave footsteps in the sand.

He sighed.

Another unknown.