In the rat-infested bowels of the city slept rascals whom even the Houses invested no time to subjugate. Men with no food, no fathers, and no hope, who congregated in slimy alleys for the warmth of barrel fires and bottles of liquid escape from reality.
Come morning, they all went their own ways, looking for the usual things to do, or someone new to shake down. Escapism, after all, came at exorbitant cost for them. Some hunted defenseless innocents — while others hunted violent, wicked men.
Jon had to find just a man like that, and that was why he was back in the alleys, following a trail of bodies. “It’s easy to find the man,” Alyssa had said. “We all fall into the same old habits, after all.”
The name of the man he was looking for was “Damian Quill.” Alyssa had called him a “Theater associate,” even if there wasn’t any official position with that name. Last time Alyssa had spoken to him, he was sputtering some nonsense about carving out an empire in the darkness — which was in character for him. He liked being a stage director.
If the man had been serious, then he should’ve started on it a long time ago. The bodies that Jon examined was evidence that he was serious all along.
The bodies belonged to back alley thugs, all in working clothes stained in grease and blood. Jon pulled out fletched twigs from their bodies, each just about short enough to fit in a crossbow.
Their shafts had the markings of a knife used to shave it down. The fletching looked like chicken feathers stolen from the trash of the local butcher’s. The burn marks up and down the shafts were evidence of how the maker managed to straighten out the unruly material.
More surprising was the sheer power of these improvised bolts. Many of the bodies had an entry and exit wound, and for some of them, the bolts remained lodged in their skull. Their fire-hardened wooden points were sticking out an inch, while the fletchings were stuck halfway in.
Jon’s eyes tracked the trail of bodies, leading deeper into the alley until the foot of a barricade at the end of it. The barricade was more like a pile of compacted and interlocking trash held together by wood scraps. He went closer, but halfway there, twenty meters to the barricade, a voice called out: “That’s close enough, good sir.”
It was a hoarse voice, but firm. Jon noticed the telltale glow of magic through a slit in the barricade. “Damian Quill,” he called out.
A bolt zipped past Jon’s face. His hair fluttered in the wind. “There’s no Damian Quill here, sir,” the voice replied.
Shouting erupted from behind Jon, further down the alley. “Damian Quill! You bastard!” one of the men said. He was the tallest man, wielding a small battering ram, brandishing it in the air.
Jon took one look at the man, then back at the barricade. “Right.”
Damian clicked his tongue. The bastards had learned; they formed a shield wall, completely negating his one defining attack ability. Behind the shield wall, more men brandished molotov cocktails. Guess his little barricade’s going to be a pile of cinders in a few minutes.
He looked back at Jon. The man just might be able to do it, if those little bumps under his suit, around his hip, were anything to go by. He very well knew what pistols looked like when they were poorly hidden, though that might just be it; Jon wasn’t trying to hide them.
He decided to be a little full of himself today, making Jon his errand boy. “Be a good lad and clean them up for me,” he said, “then we’ll have coffee.”
To his surprise, Jon turned right around and closed the distance with the thugs. If he came back alive, he’d be giving the lad a lifetime membership as an apology.
The thugs’ leader smirked. He propped up his battering ram right beside him, resting his elbow on it. “Someone’s off his knockers, boys!” he announced. His men laughed — but Jon didn’t.
He stopped thirty steps away from the line of shield-bearers, and pointed right at the leader with a dagger — an act of issuing a challenge. This place had its own rules, after all.
The leader grinned. “Someone’s really off his knockers,” he muttered under his breath. He picked up his battering ram and started walking. “Move it,” he ordered his men. They were surprised that he’d accepted the challenge, but, well, it was their hulking boss versus a little man.
The leader stopped twenty steps from Jon. “This alright with you, Damian!” he shouted, looking over Jon’s shoulder. “Everything’s gonna be decided right here! He dies, and you open up and fuck off!”
There was silence — good as yes — and the leader grinned. He wielded a battering ram: a log with iron handholds and the sculpted iron head of a goat at the business end. He wielded it like a club, giving it a few test swings, letting Jon hear the deep whoosh of the air as he did.
The leader showed his teeth and spat to his side. He lowered his body, wielding the ram like a bat behind him. “Your move, little man.”
Famous last words, big boy. Jon charged forward, and the leader swung, but Jon stopped an inch short of the leader’s reach.
The leader realized his mistake. He struggled to reverse the momentum of the ram, but by the time he stopped it, his body had twisted too far, enough that his back was showing.
Jon stepped in and slashed at his shoulder blades, slicing the muscles there and taking away several degrees of motion from the leader’s upper arms. The leader dropped the ram and tried to face Jon to grapple with him, but Jon had already stepped further behind him!
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Like a mischievous child’s game, Jon cut up something new, and preemptively stepped into a new blind spot, predicting in which direction the leader would turn, and where the new blind spot would be. He started with the muscles on the back, causing the leader much confusion as he was suddenly unable to support his upper body weight, then he went lower, slashing the inner groin and calves in three consecutive cuts.
The leader fell to his knees. Trying to get up just spiked the pain that was already there.
Jon put a miniscule amount of magic into the dagger, and drove it straight into the leader’s nape, severing the connection between spine and brain. Jon pulled out the dagger, not letting it uselessly linger. It was like butter.
***
Name: Jon Fuze
Level: 5
Kills: 52 → 53
Kills to Next Level: 2 / 25 → 3 / 25
Skill Proofs: 4 3
| Skill Claims |
> Hastened Sight (Unlocks Lvl. 10)
| Skills |
> Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)
***
He turned and eyed the remaining thugs, scanning them, meeting each of their eyes. There were some in shock, some pissing their pants, and others showing their teeth and vengeful eyes.
Jon took a fire stone from a pocket, juggling it between his hands. Small sparks flew from it whenever it passed hands. The thugs finally took a step back. “C-come on, let’s go,” one of them said. One by one, they turned and left, walking in disarray. Some of them looked back, getting one last glance of who must have been the reaper.
Jon returned to the barricade. A cleverly disguised part of the barricade folded down like a drawbridge, and Damian was there, holding a strange crossbow that looked like it was made of shadows. He was a man in a gray suit, but cloaked in black, a hood and theater mask obscuring his whole face. A cane leaned against his leg. “Who sent you?”
“Alyssa.”
“Ah.” The crossbow evaporated from Damian’s hand, and he caught the bolt that fell. “That explains much! Please, do come in. At least half of us are sober here, worry not.” He pulled his cane up and limped back behind the barricade.
Jon stepped on and off the wooden platform, which closed up behind him. There was a small crew of dirty teenagers in charge of pulling up the drawbridge, and there were several other gangmen who acted as guards. Some were wounded; none had bathed in weeks.
Making brief introductions to each other, they turned the corner to find the main part of the camp. Canvas was strung overhead, providing shade for some sort of bar in the alley. Bouncers wielding bludgeons sat on a stack of crates to one side, while customers — beggars, thieves, and indecent creeps — kept to themselves over sand-filled barrels that served as this odd bar’s tables. Young, scrawny women served the patrons with mugs of a steaming black beverage.
Jon and Damian took one barrel-table, and Damian called to one of the bar girls. “For me and my friend here, dear,” he said. The woman cracked a smile that might have been genuine. Her eyes, however, were bloodshot.
In a minute, two mugs of that same steaming beverage were served before them. “Do drink up. It’s good stuff.”
Jon looked at the drink before him, but, well, there were just a few things off here. He took a whiff of it, tasted it, and let its flavor spread across his tongue. “Coffee,” he said.
“Hm? Oh, well, yes. Coffee.” Damian removed the lower part of his mask, revealing scar-filled cheeks and a white-gray stubble. He took a sip, letting out a breath of pure joy. “Nothing quite like it to energize your day! Oh, it gets even better when it’s the mana-amped stuff.”
Mana-amped caffeine. Jon watched the bouncers jump off and tackle an overly energetic and frisky patron. Watching closely, the bouncers themselves were moving like they were about to physically explode at any moment, and the waitresses were zipping between patrons like a fast-forwarded video. Many of the patrons drummed their tables with impatient energy, and others got up, slammed coin on the table, and sprinted off.
He eyed his mug. Damian chuckled. “This one’s just normal coffee.”
“Right.”
“Well then, lad, let’s get down to business.” Damian said. His eyes went from narrow-happy to a business neutral. “If Alyssa is seeking my help, that means the Theater cannot do things on its own. Now, that, I understand, especially after you removed Lastifer from the board — oh? Don’t be so surprised. Of course I would know.”
Damian smiled. Once he saw Jon’s combat ability, it wasn’t such a big leap of logic to think that this guy could’ve taken out a mansion full of mercenaries and killed its lord.
He continued, “I will have to thank you for that, actually. They controlled 20% of Stave’s maritime merchant contracts, and now that 20% is up for grabs.”
“Free-for-all.”
“Precisely, lad. Thanks to prior work experience” — Damian gestured to Jon — “I moved faster than the rest, and I picked out the premium merchandise” — he gestured to the bar — “and now I’m making a killing with just one ship. Now, I’d love to help you, but most of my men are quite busy providing actual protection in exchange for protection fees. I’m not known to scam my clients, of course” —
Jon tapped the surface of the table once, absently glancing down at his coffee. Damian cleared his throat. “My problem is also your problem, in this case. The Houses of Bowyer and Wiz are also making a move to claim Lastifer’s shipping contracts, and it wouldn’t do to watch them strengthen themselves, yes?
“Ah, but here’s the trick. The Houses are contracting the mercantile syndicates to provide for their port and market guards. As you saw, the syndicates then sub-contract the job to gangs, who then wage small wars to claim their own little patches of port and market — but then, you see, the gangs have their own rules of war.” Damian smirked. “They can choose someone to settle things. See where I’m going with this, lad?”
Damian wanted to settle things ... with everyone — to annihilate all competition with nothing but one-on-one duels. This made sense to Jon. He already knew about how a one-on-one could settle things between gangs, but to think that it could be used to decide territorial control on this scale... This just left one last issue: “How many?”
Damian chuckled. “Minus the Blue Rats, there are eight — but worry not, you only need to take care of one!” He tipped his mug forward. “Get the biggest fish and you get the respect of all the reef. They call him the Knight of the Fallen Kingdom. As far as I can tell, he really is of Weissian descent, and his martial skill is a signature of the Lussern Order.”
He leaned in closer. “And as far as I can tell, the Houses are skipping the middleman and hedging their bets on him.” His eyes flitted over Jon’s shoulder for a moment. “The one in the navy blue coat. Follow him.”
Jon finished his coffee and headed out first — hiding nearby, waiting for the man in the navy blue coat to come out of the bar.