Walking through the corridor, there were many branching paths leading from it, many doors dotting the walls left and right, with the sparse lighting, made it the perfect place to hide for a rogue. Many people think there is nowhere to hide in a corridor, while at the same time, almost no one ever looks up. Along the ceiling of the entire corridor run a very narrow ledge, hidden in the shadows.

This place may have looked like a bandit cave, but it was a well-prepared death machine to the oblivious, Mark was getting more and more excited, it was a long time since he found a worthy opponent, the marksman from the attack on the Young Miss was pretty decent, even able to threaten his life a couple of times, but this was different.

He has long ascertained that he is already much more powerful than he ever was on Earth, he is faster and stronger, and his reflexes, which were almost inhuman on Earth have improved even further, that was why he has increased his daily workouts and worked out along Donny lately, he would not allow his control over his body to ever be a reason for a mistake.

And yet with all his newly found strength he still felt an incredible sense of danger the moment Vesthia turned her eyes towards him. He felt a thrill of competition he stopped feeling since he beat all the other kids and even a couple of his instructors at the training facility in his teens. He was always obsessed with being the best in those times, but over time this obsession dulled, and with no one to compete with it became meaningless. It took going to another world to once again awaken it, and it awoke hungry.

His insides were trembling with anticipation as he traveled along the ledge. It must have been created so that the rogues can move around unseen by the other bandits, meaning he had to be careful as there could be some of them that used it at this time.

He walked for about three minutes, during which time more and more bandits ran past him below, running away from the fight that was still going on ahead. It seems like Vesthia has lost control of them, and the guards must be much more powerful to rout them despite her ruthlessness. Finally, he went over a bend in the tunnel and found himself at the mouth of the cave.

Before him, he saw a desperate struggle between the guards and bandits, but it was desperate from only one side, the bandits fought like a bunch of animals, all semblance of tactics completely gone, even their training as cohesive parties no longer applicable, everyone fought for himself, while the guards pushed them back and back again formed in a tight formation, shield to shield.

He also saw Torrento in the middle of the guards' frontline, the shield wall creating a hole just for him, understandably, he was wielding an enormous black halberd like it was a stalk of grass, the ax cleaving through several bandits with every swing, no one could even get close to him.

Then out of nowhere, between the bandits, a silhouette jumped out in between his swings, two swords aiming toward his face. Torrento didn’t even blink, nor did he falter in his rhythm, and before the woman could stab him with her weapons, a black shaft lodged itself in her heart pushing her back with its momentum.

Behind the guards stood the archer squad, pelting arrows at the bandits, and every time someone broke through Torrento’s maelstrom, Sergeant Sarah released an arrow, silencing anyone capable, or stupid enough to aim for their leader. Mark also saw Donny among the archers, loosing arrow after arrow at the bandits, his eyes red completely lost in his killing.

Mark could only shake his head at this, the boy completely forgot the most fundamental of rules, never lose the perception of everything around you. But he guessed this time it would fly, of course, he would chew him out for that after the operation.

Finally, he saw Vesthia, for an assassin, she wasn’t hiding at all, standing at the back looking at Torrento with hate, unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything against him, Mark was sure the beastman could probably snap him in half, he was out of this world, no matter how hard Mark looked for openings, every time he found one, his head throbbed with pain, telling him not to fall for this.

She seemed to know this as well, as after seeing that her bandits could no longer win the confrontation, she gathered her rogues and moved in the direction of the cave Mark was hiding in, and it was highly likely that at least some of them, if not all, would use the ledge he was standing on. He could not allow them to find him now so he moved deeper in until the first intersection, where he jumped at the ledge across the one they would be using and waited.

He massively increased the Stamina output of his Stealth, knowing that Vesthia had some sight skill, and was a much more experienced rogue than her subordinates. Soon enough he saw Vesthia, still not hiding heading right at the intersection, a couple of women surrounding her and a few others walking along the ledges.

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They continued walking while Mark went after them. He knew Carrey would not let this go, and was sure he was going to follow them. Sure enough, not long after, Mark felt a presence closing in on them from behind. Carrey was never going to escape their notice, so when he was detected, they would protect Vesthia, making an opening for Mark to strike.

As they traveled down the corridor, the light was becoming sparser and sparser, the cave walls more natural, and the moisture in the air rising. The walls here were covered in water, droplets of water constantly dripping from the stalactites on the ceiling, the ledge becoming more and more slippery.

Soon enough they entered a big natural cavern, with a little underground lake sitting in the middle. The cave was fairly well-lit, with a few torches here and there. Along the cave walls, a row of rusted metal cages were set up, with people trapped inside. The smell was horrible even in such a big space. Mark soon understood why. In one of the cages lay a badly mutilated, half-decomposed body.

And despite the mutilation, the face was still recognizable, it was the giant leader of the redhead’s adventuring party, and the people in the other cages were the rest of her party, with her cage situated in the middle, right next to the dead man.

She was barely wearing anything, her clothes and weapons taken away, she was left with only a dirty burlap sack as her clothes though, she was visibly unharmed. The rest of the party didn’t fare as well. The man was also badly mutilated though, admittedly, still alive, the other woman in the party, the short ranger, was laying on the floor, completely naked, looking emptily at one of the burning torches, were it not for her chest slowly moving up and down, she could also be mistaken for a corpse.

Vesthia slowly walked over to the red-haired woman. Her facial expression, undecipherable under the mask. Mark wondered what she was trying to do, why visit your prisoners when your base was about to fall, the only thing he could think of was, that she wanted to use her as a hostage, though, he didn’t think Torrento would let her go just because Vesthia had some adventurers as hostages.

It would seem, his conjecture about the redhead being more important than she wanted to seem, was on the mark.

He couldn’t allow her to gain a hostage, but it would seem he didn’t have to reveal himself just yet. The moment Carrey stalked into the room, and saw the redhead, he stirred, almost dropping his stealth, he quickly readjusted his stance, but it was already too late, the rogues following Vesthia noticed him and instantly raised alarm.

“Boss, someone followed us!” With this three of the six women following her lunged at Carrey. Vesthia still didn’t say a word, just quickened her pace, while taking out a key and inserting it in the lock to open the cage and take control over the imprisoned woman. The moment she was about to turn the key, she let it go and jumped to the right. In the place she was standing just moments before, two daggers split the air shining subtly in the torchlight.

Mark knew it wouldn’t be enough, without a second thought he lunged after her sending a quick flurry of slashes and stabs at her vitals. Nimbly, she dodged his attack, parrying a couple with her daggers. Her eyes glowed golden, as she suddenly blurred and appeared at Mark’s flank, one dagger attacking his midriff, while the other attempted to slice his throat.

He parried the dagger going for his throat, avoiding the one aimed at midriff by moving his body just a couple of inches back, just enough to avoid the attack, while allowing him to instantly counter.

In the blink of an eye, they exchanged dozens of attacks. Vesthia was even trickier than he thought. She had two devices on her wrist, that with proper control could send out small needles with the speed of a crossbow bolt, were it not for his Premonition, she would have probably succeeded in surprising him, but he managed to dodge it at the last second.

He had to avoid all the attacks in this fight, in a fight between assassins, even a nick of blade wasn’t allowed. Most of the time the blades were impregnated with different poisons, and he already knew they had some available, he even used the vial he got recently on his blades in this fight.

It was a battle of patience and reaction speed, the first person to falter would fall. But time was not on his side, it took them a couple of seconds, as they directed their attention to Carrey, but the remaining three women soon noticed the fight and moved to intercept Mark. He had to end this quickly.

Deciding to use his trump cards, he faked an attack using a new trick he learned recently. As he found out Lie was much more versatile than he thought, it created an image of you and projected it to your target, while only telling lies, it merely made you look more reliable in their eyes.

But it was so much more, with enough stains, you could project your whole body as if it was doing one thing while doing another, the effect of spreading the ability to the whole body was much more subtle, and lasted way less time, but with a feint from him, it should be enough.

Throwing a feint, Mark made Vesthia turn slightly to the left with her daggers moving in that direction to intercept the attack. At that moment Mark used Quick Step and Bolster in tandem, making the step much faster than it ever was, surprising Vesthia with the sudden increase in speed. Appearing on her right flank he plunged the daggers into her body.

Or he thought so, but suddenly she was no longer there, it wasn’t Quick Step, he was sure of it, no matter how much the Skill sped up your movement, it was still only that, speeding up. You still had to traverse the distance from one place to another. But Vesthia just disappeared and appeared two meters away from him, standing next to her subordinates. Even without seeing her mouth, he saw she was sneering at him with her eyes.

But soon enough there was nothing to sneer about. Her eyes lost the ridicule, looking a little shocked. Mark knew why.

There on the tips of his blades, a couple drops of blood slowly dripped down to the ground.