It was a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of the city, simple from the outside, heavily fortified from the inside, with almost fifty armed mercenaries waiting for another chance to get at Calise.
Apparently, their first attempt had been on the small side, to avoid drawing attention by having half a military convoy traipse through downtown Milan.
They were currently in the “wait” phase of “hurry up and wait”, cleaning weapons, playing cards, or even getting high on alchemical crap that worked even through their Fortitude.
And then, a man marched straight through the wall, phasing, taking damage from the mana in the wall, and finally healing as he proclaimed, “Hey, I heard you guys were looking for me?”
The whole room froze, staring at the man whose eye was currently returning to white as a burst blood vessel was being repaired and the blood removed.
“So, like I said, you guys were looking for me. The Ghost. Going right after my most distant acquaintance, top-notch strategy, you guys!”
He flashed them a thumbs up even as the wards around him flared up into full power.
Laughter was his only response.
“Come on man, it’s fifty against one, just surrender,” the mercenary commander said, clearly struggling, “I’ll give it to you, that was a badass entrance, but come on, the boss wants you alive and healing you up after the fight is going to be a pain. Do you have any idea how expensive limb-regrowing potions are?”
Then, he suddenly stiffened, and slumped over, blood pumping from three holes, one in the back of his head, his neck, and the spine in a spot where the blad had likely also gone through the heart.
“Yeah, fifty to one, could you have made this any easier for me?” Jason commented. In his head, of course. One-liners were fun, but so was not getting killed due to stupid mistakes or giving away the element of surprise.
[Perfected Strike] really was perfect, a combination of all previous [Strikes], even including a certain degree of auto-targeting and information about how often it needed to be used to do the deed.
And [Rogueish Avatar] wasn’t so bad either. A semi-tangible copy that couldn’t really do much, and quite specifically couldn’t attack, but it was oh so useful. Springing traps, both the mechanical and ambush-based ones, dropping one-liners in situations where he should already be long gone, acting as a distraction, and, you know, walking into an ambush with eyes wide open while the real him came in from behind.
And these pussies didn’t even go all out against him, either afraid to harm their prize, or their boss, except he was already dead. Not that it would have done them any good.
This was 5th Evolution legendary against mid-4th mercenaries with delusions of grandeur. No real contest.
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[Flickering Dodge] to move so quickly he might as well have teleported, [Blade Fan] to carve through that group, [Retrieve Blade] to jank his blades through that other group, [Piercing Strike] through that guy’s spine … the hard part was ensuring that the people were alive enough to answer questions.
And things were simple as pie from there.
***
Gregorio Zambon opened the door to the warehouse and slammed it shut the instant he was inside, it would not do to have anyone see the mess inside.
A little telekinesis pushed away the nearest pool of blood so he could avoid stepping into it and tracking it everywhere, and then, he was standing in front of Jason’s prisoners.
“So, let me explain the situation here: I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or you’re going to find out just how badly I don’t like hearing the word ‘no’. You’re all fully aware of what my boss is capable of when you piss him off, and we can track down your loved ones as easily as we did you.”
Gregorio forced a twisted grin onto his face as he watched the slowly mounting horror on the captives’ faces as he listed off the people they loved in decreasing order of importance, complete with names, addresses, and the point of greatest vulnerability.
“Like I said, this isn’t a question of whether I’ll learn what I want to, but how high of a pile your loved ones’ skulls will have made by the time I do. So, question one: who hired you.”
“We don’t know, it was all done over …” the first captive was already shouting, likely about to jump into begging for his daughter’s life. Not like they’d be going after anyone’s kid, Jason had an excellent illusion [Skill] so they’d be able to fake it as long as they had a name, a face, and a good story about the murder.
“I believe you,” Gregorio grinned, the expression perfectly authentic despite being utterly fake, “And you’re lucky I do. Buuuuut you still went after the boss, so you’d better have something you do know, or …”
“Look, we had some kind of stupid deal with some shadowy client who wanted to get his hands on the Ghost. Contact info would work, but if possible, we should capture them and take them to a location, we’d get more information from there.”
“Address, message history, timeline …” Zambon prompted. But when the response wasn’t instant, he turned to Jason and stated that this guy’s daughter should be getting out of school just about now. That sped things up real quickly.
Was the whole affair cruel beyond measure? Sure. Then again, a mere glance at his surroundings gave him proof of half a dozen war crimes, one supported genocide, and enough standard criminal activity to earn these guys several life sentences, each. And these fine examples of humanity were the only ones affected, they hadn’t so much as visited the family members whose lives were being threatened.
It took a frustratingly long time to put everything together, the client had covered their ass incredibly well, but he was up against a [Truthspeaker], a legendary [Class] capable of obliterating any attempts at information security, even if he occasionally had to be a bit patient.
Ian Menton, holder of a whole lot of doctorates, with quite a few nasty notes in his various files about rather unusual misdemeanors, including but not limited to getting handsy with female students, skipping steps during research, and ignoring various safety-based SOPs.
An asshole to be sure, but just looking at his regular record would never have made Gregorio expect something like that out of him.
Jason looked over the information gathered and nodded.
“Thanks for your help, I’ll deal with it for now, but I might need you later.”
“I’ll be in the area,” Gregorio nodded, “I think we’re done here. Do you have anything else you need? Once we call the Carabinieri, we’re not going to be able to come back to this town for a looooong time.”
“Yeah, we’re done,” Jason nodded and marched out of the door while dialing the police. Just one more thing to do, and this whole affair would be settled.