Chapter 81: Hunting the Hunters

The team was at a moral standstill.

“Nara, do you have any thoughts on the matter?” Sen asked. His voice was even, cautious. He didn’t expect her to have a different opinion than John. They both seemed from a similar social group, even from different nations of their world—one that was not involved in bloodshed.

There was a pregnant pause before Nara finally spoke, her words slow and thoughtful.

“I don’t really have much against vigilante justice. I think our world let far too many criminals go because they were rich. I haven’t seen enough here to know the cracks in the system, but its no better nor worse than what we have, is it?” Another pause, gathering herself. “What I’m trying to say is, I don’t care if you want to kill them, I just don’t know whether I’ll personally be able to—it’s not a question of morality. No matter what I think morally, what I can bring myself to do is an entirely different matter. Even if I think someone should die, I don’t know if I can go through with it. I’m dangerously unreliable here.”

She paused, still sensing the auras beneath her in the bunker, now at rest.

“We know these guys are criminals. At least in this case, its undeniable. We could also take a middle ground.”

“Middle ground?”

“If they want to surrender, they can.”

“We don’t have the capacity to restrain a bronze ranker,” Sen said.

“We can manage an iron ranker though, right?”

“I have a few suppression collars,” Encio offered.

The teammates with Encio stared at him.

“Those are restricted items,” Sen said, “Highly regulated by the Adventure Society. We aren’t supposed to have them.”

“Adventurers run into situations like this often. It’s one of those ‘keep quiet about it and no one gets in trouble’—an open secret. Are you going to tell on me?”

“…No, I will not.”

“So? Do you have a bronze rank suppression collar?” Eufemia asked.

“Actually, I do.”

“Do I want to know what your highest rank suppression collar is?”

“I don’t know, do you?”

“Not really.”

“If you don’t ask, I won’t say,” Encio said, a sly smile playing at his lips.

“Ah,” Nara said, “I love plausible deniability.”

The banter diffused the tension that had built up. The team was still nervous, but with the option of suppression collars and surrender, they decided to go through with defeating the bandits.

Nara was able to escape a bronze rankers’ detection, but that couldn’t be said for the rest of the team, shitty as Graff was at aura control. Just by virtue of higher rank, Graff had an advantage that was hard to make up. It was the different between a wolf and a dog—training, numbers, and tactics could take down the wolf, but the wolf always had an innate advantage over the dog. If they wanted to track Graff’s movements outside of the ruins, they weren’t likely to succeed without being discovered. Graff’s next destination was Shanyin, a location John knew well, but who knew if he wouldn’t decide to opportunistically murder an iron ranker on the way there if he saw the chance. Nara could follow. But by herself, she’d just be unwilling witness to any murders they committed on the way. She’d have no power to stop them.

Sen explained his plan to the team.

With the bandits four floors below, the team was as undetectable to the bandits as the bandits were to them at ground level.

Sage and Nara’s initial scouting of the ruined town revealed several other entrances to the bunker. Most of them were destroyed. There was only one entrance, which lead outside of the city, that was still functional. The rest of the team headed for the second entrance while Eufemia headed towards the first one Nara had found.

Nara met Eufemia at the entrance, where Eufemia copied Nara’s node teleport. She was just barely able to squeeze her aura to the other side of the heavy metal door in order to node teleport to the other side.

“You made that look a lot easier,” Eufemia said.

“You made that look a lot harder,” Nara responded, shrugging.

Eufemia glared, but there wasn’t any venom, just annoyance.

Eufemia copied Nara’s armor conjuration for the bonus stealth, and together they slunk down the softly lit yet ominous hallways, littered with fragments of abandoned history. Their destination wasn’t far down, only the stairs connecting the second and third floors.

In the midst of an infiltration, Eufemia marveled at the versatility of her ability set. By copying weapons and armors, spells and special attacks, she could shift her role. At the core, her abilities remained the same, no matter how they—she—changed. It was reassuring.

She had copied Aliyah’s Rune Trap, and began to place explosive runes in the hallway and stairwell.

“Emplace a mark of power,” she whispered. The rune flared to life, shimmering with the promise of a heat haze born of explosive power, before it faded, a silent, invisible, intangible symbol a layer beneath stone that plucked only at her own senses.

With Convenient Copy, she copied her Prodigious Sorcerer ability so she could place two Rune Traps per minute. The rune placed was in a language Eufemia didn’t understand, although she guessed it meant ‘explosion’.

Even doubling up, the high mana consumption meant that Eufemia couldn’t place many traps. She washed down a grape flavored mana potion, one of the ones Nara looted, and continued placing the traps. She preferred wine—maybe after the fight? She certainly felt like she deserved one. John always complained she was a messy drunk, and he didn’t give into the vices. Something about ‘setting a good example for children’. Whatever. (She wouldn’t drink in front of his children, if she ever met them).

The bunker was created to shelter the residents from monsters, but the array protections in the stone had long since faded, no longer maintained by ritualists and spirit coins. Chrome used his sword to slice up the stone on the first and second floors, introducing failure points. The stone used for the bunker was just ordinary stone, normal rank to iron rank material at best, with no additional special properties (with no arrays reinforcing them). It was a bit of effort even for his resonating-force damage swords, but he only needed to weaken the material. The sound of metal-stabbing-stone echoed down the hall, a piercing sound in narrow emptiness, but the bandits did not stir.

Sen could detect the runes, but his perception ability was rare (Eufemia would say odd. Sen was odd). According to Nara, the bronze rank bandit leader they needed to watch out for had a strong-man’s build, one clearly focused for power rather than finesse. Sen was an exception: Most frontliners didn’t have standout detection abilities.

While Eufemia and Chrome executed the first part of Sen’s plan, Nara descended down into the bunker.

*****

“Fucking finally,” said one of the bandit lackeys, “This place gives me the creeps.” The stark, grey stone, the hollowness of the echoes of life, the cold, stale air: It grated on the nerves, and unsettled their sleep.

“I’ll miss this place,” said Chester, looking around the room. He was still tired and wanted to sleep more, but his big brother said they needed to leave, “Large. Pretty clean for our standards. And it’s got that cozy, lived in feel.”

“Only you could possibly think an abandoned bunker is ‘cozy’,” Lala said, “The remnants of a ruined town, and you want to stay longer?”

Graff snorted in disdain.

The bandit team of seven made their way towards the exit, passing corridors of stone. Decrepit toys and decaying clothing were occasionally seen in quiet corners. They ascended, and the stale air gradually lightened. In the past, magic was used to circulate and refresh the air, but now the air vents were unpowered, stagnating with the rest of the air around them, only disturbed by their passage through the halls.

“What is it, boss?”

Graff stopped in the hallway, experiencing a growing sense of foreboding. The same dusty corridors they had descended stretched in front of him, the stairs to the floor above within reach. The corridors were illuminated softly with still functioning light artifacts—a long refined invention that without the stresses of time. Graff couldn’t detect anything amiss. He frowned and once again moved forward, beckoning the group with a casual hand signal.

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In the next moment, a chain reaction of explosions resounded, and the floors above them collapsed.

*****

Graff coughed, clearing the stone dust from his lungs. His head rung. He pushed his focus past it, evaluating his aching bones and muscles, then processing his situation. There had been a collapse. From…an explosion. He paused for a moment, expecting another ringing explosion to damn them to a stone grave, but none came.

His large and sturdy body had protected the bandits closest to him, Lala and Chester. Stone weighed atop of him, and he felt blood drip from his head, stinging his left eye. He tentatively shifted the stone on top of him, testing if it’s weight could be tossed aside safely. Hearing no unpleasant creaks or groans of shifting stone, he let the stone slide off his back, booming onto the stone floor. He tensed for an apprehensive moment as he expected a chain reaction of tumbling stone to crush his body, but none occurred.

“Report!” he yelled through the darkness, the lights now destroyed.

“I’m alive,” yelled Tan.

“Still here,” said Scar Throat.

“Alive too,” said Hao.

There was no other response.

“Lasso’s dead then,” said Lala simply. There wasn’t much companionship between the bandits, but she felt a pang of pain or the death of someone so close. It could have been her.

Graff removed a lantern from his dimensional bag, illuminating the collapsed hallway. The rubble was around them. Graff’s body had formed a small pocket of protection. His abilities were nothing if not tough and powerful. Today, it saved him.

“Injures, report,” demanded Graff, moving onto the next most logical item on his checklist.

“I’m uninjured,” said Chester, “Thanks for that bro… b-boss .”

“Also uninjured,” said Lala. It seemed her mouth was at least efficient in times of crises.

“I’m hurt,” Tan said, “A blow to the head. And my foot’s crushed.”

“Also injured, Shoulder is badly hurt,” said Scar Throat.

“Same here,” said Hao, “Shoulder injury. A concussion too…I think. My head’s ringing.”

“Use the potions,” said Graff, “We’ve been ambushed.” It would take a while for the potions to heal, but they needed the healing to start sooner rather than later.

Graff began to shift rubble, clearing a space for the separate members to group up. He looked towards the upper floor, and back to the bottom floor, deciding their next course of action. Only one had died, and the others were recovering from their injuries. For an ambush, they got off lucky. Lasso’s death didn’t mean much. He wasn’t close to the best fighter, not even better than Chester.

“Do you think it was them bronze ranked adventurers boss?”

“Would it kill you to think Chester?” said Lala, “If they were bronze rank, they would’ve just waited for us to leave then killed us all.”

Graff agreed with her assessment. If they were bronze rankers, they wouldn’t bother and just slay them where they stood.

“Assuming they’re iron rank,” said Graff, “We stand a chance. Otherwise, we may wish we died to the cave-in.”

Essence abilities weren’t known for their lack of pain. If Graff had to choose, he’d chose crushing death to having his flesh rotted off his bones as he lived.

Two floors of rubble would be too difficult for Graff to remove, even for him, and he risked collapsing the structure further.

The group began to pick apart the rubble leading back into the bunker. Thanks to the dimension pouches and bags they looted, they had a variety of equipment, even pickaxes. Many local adventures came from quarry villages and kept a pickaxe on them, like their most recent kill. Each time the broke apart a stone, the whole structure groaned and creaked. They all shuddered, waiting in silence for the stone to collapse down upon them. They were getting lucky. Graff hated getting lucky, hated the lack of control.

If luck lasted, it wouldn’t be called ‘luck’. Luck would end.

They were caked in stone dust, chips, and loose fragments, but had made it through the collapse. Lala normally would complain about the dust that covered her and her blistered and cut hands, but she was mercifully silent.

“The exit is just above Boss. What do we do? A-are we going to die here?”

Graff glared at Chester. “You think I can’t win against some iron rankers? And all of you—are you all deadweight?”

“R-right, boss.”

The bandits gazed up; their nerves taut. Graff had expended a large amount of energy shifting rubble, and a slow and cautious trip back to the alternate exit had exhausted them. Thankfully, their slow pace had afforded time for the potions to work. Hao’s foot was much improved, although he still moved with a quiet wince and a limp.

“M-maybe that was it,” Chester said, “That’s the only plan they had?”

“That’s at least possible. If they are a bunch of iron rankers, failing to kill us there means they could have retreated,” Scar Throat analyzed, “If I was them, I’d be terrified. At least they can run home to their families with their pride that they got one of us, well done.”

For a bandit, Scar Face was far too obsessed with pride, Graff thought.

They began to ascend, slowly, floor by floor. Each member had weapons and armor equipped, undoubtably looted from the adventurers they had killed. Most were average in quality; pieces to tide the adventurers over until they had the capital to purchase better equipment. Not every adventurer had a looting ability or a rich family, and they did not target those adventurers either. Far too risky.

Light peeked through the gaps in the heavy metal door, streams of illumination in dusty rays. Graff leaned into the door with his massive frame, pushing it open. He cautiously searched outside with his senses, detecting an adventuring team lying in wait. Their aura control was good, but it would not match up to bronze rank aura detection. Or so he thought.

“A fight?” grinned Graff, slowly walking outside the bunker. He would give them a fight. “I hope you pose a bit of a challenge. Unlike the ones before you. Run now, and I’ll spare you.”

A frantic scream behind him interrupted his building focus, his energy climbing for the brawl ahead.

“What?!”

*****

Nara had never left the bunker, staying on the bottom floor to put all the bodies in her inventory as the bandit team ascended. Unfortunately, that meant she saw them for herself, smashed into boxes with no care nor respect, stripped of all human dignity.

Most were just teenagers.

Nara steadied herself on a wall. The nauseating smell of rotting corpses pervaded the storeroom.

Roan was there too. He was just a young adventurer. A good member of his town, studious and hardworking, protecting the people he loved from the threat of monsters. Monsters—human and non-human.

Nara doubled over as if she was about to vomit. She was glad she had no stomach.

“Benefactor,” Sage said.

“I’m alright…” Nara muttered.

Her skin felt clammy, although she didn’t sweat.

The Adventure Society provided specialty caskets for body retrieval contracts. They maintained the conditions of corpses to prevent them from rotting, as well as eliminating smells. They were only provided with one. She set the casket down on the floor, removing the lid.

She looked down at Roan’s body, cold and unmoving.

She felt herself weeping.

Nara lifted his body from the crate, and set him down in the casket. She moved the casket and body to her inventory. She conjured identical caskets for the other bodies, although without the fancy effects of the society provided ones. The older bodies were in considerably worse shape. By the end of moving all the bodies, Nara’s robe was speckled with maggots, rotten flesh, putrid fluids, and dried blood.

She could have put them directly into her inventory and spare herself the mess and disgust. Nara didn’t want to treat them like Graff and his bandits did; items to be packed away. This process was to soothe her own heart. They weren’t just objects she was storing away; they were once people with friends and families, hopes and dreams.

She teleported to another room with its door closed. She sucked stale in repeatedly, calming herself with breaths she didn’t need as she cried. She didn’t want to smell the foul air of decomposing bodies. Thanatos laid across her lap, comforting her with his softness and weight.

“I’m okay now. I let it all out,” she said out loud, as if to convince herself she really was okay.

She made a quick trip to her Astral Domain, cleaning herself and Thanatos of the smell, maggots, and fluids.

She was okay—for better or for worse. When her parents fought, when she fought with her sister, when emotions ran high, she could always pulls hers down. Sometimes she let them run wild—when she wanted to feel anger. But, when she wanted that cool simmer, she could pull the emotions back down, and let the flames die to embers. To her, there was the option of choice—of control—in emotions. Nara had wondered before if she was a mild sociopath, or if she just had the self-awareness that temper was unproductive, that it made you look bad (Everyone backs away from the screamer, the yeller. Everyone dislikes the child throwing a noisy tantrum. Never be the one to yell in public). It didn’t necessarily come from a place of kindness—the calmer one in a heated argument looked better (as the second child, she learned that manipulation went a long way when her sister’s direct teenage rebellion didn’t). She’d feel better too—she had the morally higher ground. She wasn’t insulting the other person to win.

She had asked herself if this calm, this control, was from her essences—a changed self. Perhaps, the new strength of it was (she hadn’t really thought that she could do this in front of a corpse). But there had always been a part of her that could ignore the emotions and toss them away—when they served her, and when they did not.

She let the emotions pass, flowing into a new calm.

The explosion that rocked the top floors of the bunker sent bugs and dust skittering about, shaking them loose from crevices like pepper from a pepper shaker.

“Alright, phase two.”

*****

Nara sprinted forward, her shadow boots eliminating the sound of her footsteps on stone. She had looted the shadow boots from the shadow weavers, back during the adventure society examination, although she hadn’t checked for them at the time during the chaos.

-------

Item: [Shadow Silk Boots] (iron, rare)

Classification: Equipment, Shoes

Dark silk boots as quiet as night.

Effect: Footsteps are muffled.

Effect: Can walk lightly over unstable terrain such as sand and silt.

Effect: Can adhere to surfaces allowing for wall-walking for a low mana-per-second cost.

-------

She rapidly approached one of the five remaining iron rank bandits, her footsteps skipping steps in the stairwell. The explosion had killed less than the party planned for. They would need at least three people to handle Graff; four was preferred. Nara’s role was a contingency. Sen didn’t ask her to kill anyone, just to disable some. Severing vocal chords was something Nara could manage, and more than enough to stop some unpleasant abilities (and if she cut too deep…well). Trained casters could chant spells internally, but it still and concentration required for it wasn’t found until bronze or silver rank. At iron rank, vocal chords were a vulnerability.

Other than that, she could sever a limb. Many of the bandits had already used a healing potion which prevented them from consuming another otherwise they’d suffer potion toxicity, equally debilitating.

As she swung Nirvana towards the bandit closest to her, she felt as if time slowed.

Should she really only go for debilitation? She didn’t care for these bandits more than she cared for her teammates. They were scum. They killed young adventurers—teens—which cascaded with consequences for the villages, towns, and families they were a part of.

The plan was in motion and there was no turning back. Those bandits would die today—Sen would make sure of it. And if Sen did not, Sanshi would make sure of it. She was already accessory to the murder of one of them, what difference did the second make?

More importantly, Nara knew how delicate iron rank adventurers were, The Way of the Traveler: Hunter told her as much. Sen and Encio were skilled, but any fight where they were outnumbered was a lethal battle. That’s how it was in her world too—the wrong sort of concussion, a shard of bone against the wrong organ, the wrong artery in the leg. Any slip up, any unexpected abilities, and one of them could die, just like those other adventurers. Adventurers could heal from much, but they couldn’t heal from death.

Nara mind wavered; Her body made the decision for her. Instinct and training took over. The Way of the Hunter was a fighting style focused on debilitating attacks to create an advantage. At iron rank, the greatest advantage was created with death.

The path of her sword angled up, cutting towards the neck of the first bandit. Enhanced with resonating-force, the blade tore through the flesh, pushed through the bones of his neck, and decapitated him.