Corvayne put a solid chunk of gold on the table, tipping something like two hundred percent of the coffee, steak, and salad he ordered. Close to a hundred percent, actually, since Rio didn't put anything down for the coffee, bbq pulled pork bun, and sweet and sour beef noodle plate.
"Hmm. You sure you don't want to hear my story?"
"After we bust these guys, we'll have time. I want to scope the place out more before too many people show up." He felt pretty happy about giving her the important details without giving away his game with [[Unity]] or the time looping.
The club in the nearby strip mall, 'Heavens Palace - Cultivators Club', wasn't open yet. Corvayne did a lap. A few people were parking out back, some burly guys and a few girls wearing loose clothes that hinted at more risque things underneath.
They did a longer loop around the block and Corvayne found a building a block away to park and spy on the building.
Corvayne hadn't thrown out any [[Unity]] links to start converting enemies. He had been pretty sure they were a branch of Red Liners looking for Little Wing, but it didn't fit with attacks that had happened before he arrived. The two types of death suggested to him instead that there were two actors doing the killing. This place wasn't the actual killing grounds, he was pretty sure. There wasn't any blood lust leaking out. Mostly boredom, a few hints of nervousness or confidence, but he didn't know if that was just the usual emotions of girls about to strip.
“Rio do you recognize anyone?”
She was looking at the building, glasses doing some work for Corvayne's tastes that he needed to quash. No matter the dangers in the building, it would be nothing compared to pissing her off.
Corvayne threw his senses wide. There was bored vigilance from the concrete city wall. He didn't sense anyone paying attention to this side. He scanned the rooftops, looking with essence vision for a sign of someone otherwise hidden. A few bright blue spots suggested people hiding on the roof.
“Do you have electronic and visual stealth?” He asked as he activated his cloak. She switched from her denim outer robe to her own cloak, fading slightly as she looked up.
“What do you see?”
“A few places where enchanted items are just sitting on the roof. I assume they have their own watchers looking for trouble.”
“This is a criminal operation. We should crush them.”
Corvayne thought about it. “They might not even be the main branch. We can either try to figure out who's in charge here and follow their movements, or we follow a victim and counter-ambush them. You can also pull sect resources to try to do everything.”
“We ambush the killer.”
More waiting as the club opened and a few Cowtivators came up to visit the club. Some of them clearly knew the names of people, joking with the bouncers as they came in. No hostility, no blood lust. He also tried to find hunger, but it was hard to pull it out of the lust that was growing from the men going in.
“Eyes on the inside?”
Corvayne sighed. He was being volunteered. “I know you don't want to loose anyone, but if we grab too fast, this will slip away.” He also was worried a hypothetical luck drain or bad luck effect happened in the building, and he wasn't confident he'd have a proper defense.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
So they waited. Eventually the people coming in moved to a trickle. A stakeout wasn't very exciting, but Corvayne was playing with [[Unity]] and his class. Was there a way to send out something hostile with his link?
He got a feeling from Gylwin. She'd help mark everyone. Corvayne flipped to working on logging faces. “I wish we could just get access to the buildings security systems.”
“The cameras have a cover on them.” Rio responded. “You'd be wasting your time.”
She had nice eyesight. He couldn't make it out. “I'm going to use a sneaky skill to get bugs on the cars that came.”
“Did you count everyone who went in?”
“No. I'm sure I'll notice if there's action.” he tapped his eyes.
The sky was turning dark as moons started to rise. He saw a few men leave, but looking with essence he didn't see anything wrong with them, though at this distance if there was something smaller scale than the main channels he may have missed it. He suspected that the color of the essence would be wrong.
An hour passed, and there was very little movement out of the club. Night had fallen and the city was now blaring light as the numerous neon lights and screens flared to life. The clubs pink sign mixed with blue lights from other stores... there!
A cowtivator, looking drunk, coming out with his arm around one of the girls. Corvayne saw a blond girl, dressed at the very edge of being exposed with a pink leather bunny suit.
“Bombshell. Hmm. She was someone I was suspicious of. She works at the stables.”
“I want to see what happens.” Rio said. Corvayne nodded. Hopefully it wasn't just sex.
They followed their marks as they slipped into an alley next to the building they were waiting on and entered a parked car and, well, it was just sex.
On the other hand, Corvayne felt a spike of sudden fear from the club. He gave Rio a small nudge. More alarm.
“Main club, something's going on.”
Rio smiled and cracked her knuckles. Corvayne saw the big guys outside put bar on the door to lock everyone in. He responded by using Grasping Shadows, throwing an arm and pulling the bar off the door, hitting both thugs in the head. Of course, they stood back up, and a moment later Rio was there. Corvayne saw her gear switch a dozen times in a second, flashing between her clothes, robes that glowed red, and a set that looked like diamonds. It was the same pattern... for each punch. She didn't need to do much more, laying both of the enemies out.
Corvayne was making his way across the parking lot, they rushed into the door and came into a hallway with a lot of brass posing as gold and velvet. Some of the girls were running for the door, looking terrified, but others were pinning running men down and baring fangs, faces turning horrific and dog-like as they latched onto their victims both male and female. Something of their essence was being sucked away.
Corvayne couldn't really do anything, as Rio was so fast that she turned the first four targets into piles of meat before he could swing his sword once.
He looked at part of a monster woman's face. “Chupacabara...”
Moving into the main showroom, there were Cowtivators trying to fend off topless women with dog features and failing, mostly. One man had managed to decapitate his attacker, but another woman grabbed him from the wall and started pulling him by the ears up to her maw. Corvayne marked all the targets, then swung his blade.
One moment, the club was full of monsters and screaming cultivators and new girls whom were part of the menu. The next, a wave of gold orbs flew out, tiny ion trails leaving blue lines as they unleashed hundreds of laser attacks, searing and cooking the monsters in the club. Two of the more durable ones howled and issued a challenge to him, wading through the cloud of laser blasts until Rio appeared and unleashed [Hummingbird Strikes] a few hundred times in the blink of an eye. It looked like something had sanded the monster's shoulder neck and face away.
The second one backhanded Rio, but she switched to what looked like a gold osode and heavy armguards, absorbing the damage, then countered with [Springwind], delivering a brutal punch that created a hurricane in the dog-monsters body then popping back into vision next to the door to backstage. They passed a dressing room where a topless woman was sobbing while a monster was eating her friend, Rio just shot it once with a gold revolver that blew the monster into a red mist.
Two Cultivators, wearing red robes, broke through the walls to flank with two other charging with spears. Corvayne used his shadow hands to switch weapons as he pulsed his shadow shield and gravity, knocking them back. Rio used what Corvayne suspected was the third tier of sweep on them, chopping their legs off with a glowing dragon and causing them to start rolling forward, spears clattering. Corvayne leaped onto the ceiling and then used [Leap Strike] to cannonball one. At the same time he was turning one thug into a crater he used [Juxtapose] with the back of his spear, then [Cross-Skill: Hummingbird Strikes] over and over, not nearly as fast as Rio but with the benefit of his black crystal spear leaving a few dozen holes in the man. He finished the attack off on the reeling warrior with [Cross-Skill: One Inch Punch] to gory results as he fired his spear in a very small motion forward that carried some sort of stored charge up, resulting in the man flying through a wall.
“All four dead.” Rio confirmed, as two more figures appeared. One of them had a third burning green eye in his bald head, wearing robes that suggested he was a higher up in the Red Stripes. He had a curved blade that looked to have been carved from a single huge bone. The other...
She didn't recognize him, but Corvayne knew the woman in black armor. Her blood-soaked veil gave it away. The naked blood-soaked bride who had caused his last death by decapitation. Corvayne's shadow hands put the hive greatsword into his hands as he switched from his armor to the general robe. A grim smile crept onto his face as he got ready for payback.
He said “She's mine.” at the same time Rio called out “I got baldy.”
A moment later they all charged.