Three days after the groups reunited, they reached their next target, a larger supply center deeper in the Demon Territories. Unlike the previous bases they hit, which only had around a hundred guards or so each, the supply center was much larger. There were at least three to four hundred guards positioned there, including a fourth-tier warrior, as well as a larger number of civilian staff.

Like the previous time, Esperanza ambushed a guard in the middle of their night patrol when they left the group to answer a call of nature. This time her target happened to be a Ragah-fiq, whose furry body made it easier to hide signs of her infiltration. Esperanza could only target larger people since she needed to cram her whole body into theirs, after all.

When she returned to the patrol, she greeted them with an annoyed grunt, as Esperanza had taken some time to learn the mannerisms of her victim from the soul she captured as well. Being able to reply to a few people by their names and keeping the same mannerism helped eliminate their suspicions about her slightly jerky movements, which she played off as an old injury acting up.

Esperanza had been fortunate that she had gotten another relatively taciturn victim. Had her victim been a talkative one, she would have risked revealing herself by either being too quiet, or accidentally saying something the victim couldn’t have known or would have never said. It was far easier to play a quiet persona instead, as all she had to do was to shut her mouth and play along.

Even while they continued along the patrol route, Esperanza kept contact with the rest of her group, mostly through her connection to Dali and Gordy, combined with [A Glimpse of Understanding]. Her compatriots knew that her pets were smart enough to relay her commands, and they had decided on a system where she would command them to draw simple shapes to relay those thoughts since they couldn’t speak.

Fortunately, at the level she was at, she could relay those thoughts from within the supply center. The rest of the group mostly waited for her signal before they would proceed. Since they planned to leave no witnesses, the soldiers who went out on patrol would need to be eliminated, but their failure to return might warn the supply center that something was wrong, which placed them on a tight schedule to act.

As such, Esperanza waited until she had entered the supply center proper and entered her disguise’s room to rest, pretending to sleep for the night as her shift was done. She waited a couple more hours to make certain that her infiltration had not been detected before she got up, pretending to go to answer a call of nature, whereas in truth she headed deeper into the supply center.

It was not particularly hard to guess where the fourth tier warrior would be. Any fourth tier combatant would be treated as an elite, so they would be given the best accommodation in the area for certain. In the supply center’s case, that likely meant somewhere in the small three-story keep that dominated the central region of the place.

Through [Soul Sense] Esperanza felt a soul that was notably stronger than all the others in the supply center, at the third story of the keep, much like she expected. Quietly, Esperanza snuck towards a nearby building from which she could smell food, and it was the kitchen as she expected. There were a couple cooks and servants still busy despite the late hour of the night, who turned upon her approach.

While she couldn’t help but to feel bothered about it, Esperanza hardened her resolve and sent out a tentacular limb from the mouth of her disguise. The limb moved faster than either cook could react and ended their lives instantly, their bodies crumpling to the floor like marionettes with its strings cut. A painless death was the most Esperanza could offer for them, as she knew that her mission to end the world would cause the end of many, many more lives, most of which would be innocent.

The least she could do was to spare them the suffering.

Once she finished hiding the bodies – there were plenty of places to do so in the kitchen that Esperanza was reasonably sure they wouldn’t be discovered before she made a bigger commotion – she dressed her disguise in the clothes of a servant and picked several pieces of snacks as well as a jug of wine and brought them on a platter.

The guards on the keep allowed her to enter easily enough when she mentioned that she was bringing some “midnight snacks” to the “esteemed lord”.

Apparently no matter the world, it was not an unusual practice for some servants to try to climb up the social ladder by offering themselves to some high-ranked people. The guards had clearly mistaken her intentions as that sort of approach, and just shook their heads while mumbling to themselves. She wasn’t the first to do it either, it seemed.

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Esperanza made her way up the spiraling stairs of the keep quietly, acting like a nervous servant worried about disturbing her betters. It was easy enough to find her way through the keep thanks to [Soul Sense] since she could tell where every living person was located, so she avoided the guards other than the ones she had to pass by on her way up.

Once she reached the third floor, finding the room of the fourth tier warrior was not a difficult thing to do, as his soul shined bright in her senses. There was also a second soul in the room, right next to the suspected fourth tier, so he apparently wasn’t alone in his bedroom. It would appear that the guards were so nonchalant as Esperanza was not even the first to have that sort of idea that night.

At least if the fourth tier was distracted it would make her job easier.

As she approached the bedroom, Esperanza’s hearing – even muffled under the dead body she wore as a disguise – caught the telltale moans and heavy breathing of a couple entwined in a passionate embrace. It would appear that she would have to be particularly rude that night, to interrupt their private moment, as luck would have it.

When Esperanza was around ten steps away from the door, it opened itself. Apparently the fourth tier was used to women seeking his attention at night under the guise of bringing in some “midnight snacks”, and had some sort of skill that enhanced his senses. He clearly didn’t detect Esperanza inside her disguise however, otherwise he wouldn’t have opened his door so easily.

Inside the room, on a soft-looking bed large enough for half a dozen adults to sleep together at the same time, was a particularly large and burly Ragah-Fiq male passionately entangled with a gangly Nevilosk woman – both completely naked – who seemed both annoyed and relieved when she saw Esperanza walk into the room. Apparently the fourth tier warrior was a passionate one and the Nevilosk woman had bitten off more than she could chew, given the way she looked as if she was about to give up the ghost.

“Ya came at the roit time, dis’ one about to lose ‘er mind already!” grunted the burly man cheerfully. He had yet to detect the danger, and was still engrossed with the woman in his embrace, paying little attention to Esperanza’s disguise.

So she struck before he could notice anything amiss, her amorphous body flowing out of her disguise’s mouth, with several tentacular limbs at the forefront, most tipped with bone blades as hard as steel and as sharp as a razor, other than one which held her dagger instead. The fourth tier warrior managed to react at the last moment, but it was too little too late by then.

Esperanza’s dagger tore through half of his throat even while her bone blades skewered through the bodies of both the fourth tier warrior and the woman in his arms. The Nevilosk woman died, likely before she even realized what happened, but apparently the fourth tier warrior was made of hardier stuff as despite his gruesome wounds he still managed to grab Esperanza’s limbs with his hands and hurled her across the room with brute force that was far greater than what she could muster.

If she still needed to breathe, Esperanza would have had the breath knocked out of her when she slammed hard against the far wall of the room. Fortunately the wounds she left on the fourth tier was severe enough that it prevented him from immediately pouncing at her. Nor could he yell out a warning as his throat was still torn and gushing blood at a rapid pace.

Clearly the man had a high constitution and likely some sort of rapid regeneration skill, though, as even then his wounds were visibly closing up. He rushed towards a weapon stand where a massive, two-handed mace rested and hefted it in his hands, even as Esperanza struck once more with her limbs, scoring more wounds on the man’s body, though none proved fatal yet.

What surprised Esperanza was that the man’s soul held steady, despite her every strike being coated with [Soul Armament]. Her opponent seemed to be one of those types of warriors who were hard to kill, ones who sacrificed killing power for being nearly unkillable themselves in an even battle. A less defensively oriented fourth tier would have been killed already by Esperanza’s attack.

Her guess proved itself correct when the man swung his mace at her, the blow powerful but not reinforced by any sort of offensive skill. She simply allowed the blow to land, her body shifting to disperse the force of the blow and rendering it harmless, even while she landed more injuries on her opponent, who seemed mostly unperturbed by the wounds she caused.

That was a rather unexpected and rather annoying development, as while Esperanza had planned to make a ruckus – which their battle was already doing, as it had alerted quite a few of the guards in the keep – she also intended to finish off the fourth tier before he could get others to help him.

As such, Esperanza decided to start the second phase of the plan early. Even as she slithered around another blow from her opponent’s hefty mace, she stopped covering [Far Down the Deep End]’s side effect, and instead manipulated her aura to amplify its effects. The result was instant, as the fourth tier warrior stumbled and stepped back unsteadily, seeming as if someone had just punched him hard right in the face.

At the same moment, Esperanza also noticed a dangling weak point that she hadn’t – or perhaps mentally refused to notice – before, partially obscured by the man’s long fur. After a brief moment of hesitation, she sent one of her bladed tentacles in that direction, while the rest struck at the man from many different angles to make full use of the momentary opening she caused.

Whereas most of the other injuries he had taken – even the ones that pierced straight through his chest – had not seemed to bother the man much, when Esperanza struck him below the belt, directly slicing off an organ most men would have considered vital, the fourth tier warrior reacted in a greatly exaggerated manner as he fell on his back and curled into a fetal position.

Right at the same time, the wound on his throat apparently healed enough to allow him to make a sound once more, and a shrill, pained scream full of indescribable agony echoed through the supply center that very moment. Needless to say, the demons that had yet to notice anything were alerted – some woken from their sleep – by the loud, piercing scream.

Esperanza guessed that it should hopefully be a large enough ruckus for the others to make their assault unhindered, and she quickly moved to finish off the fourth tier warrior before he could recover.