He stood in the shadows as a Noble briefed the huge number of newbies of the mission. He snorted at the lies the Noble was spewing, such as the raid was a ‘Preparation raid to prepare you all for future raids’. With a snort, he walked into the alley, and made a few confusing turned, before reaching the Spy Master blocking the path in front of him.

“They won’t be happy.”

“My master did this to me. At the very least, I should save someone talented in return, right?”

“He’ll scold you for wasting your life.”

Dusk smiled at the words, “I’m prepared for that.”

Both of them knew that Dusk could in fact, quickly escape after the mission.

Both of them knew that Dusk would be murdered by assassins.

“Who’s the person?” The spymaster said as he leaned against the wall, letting Dusk past.

“An engineer who goes with the name of Shiina.” Dusk smiled as he left.

The spymaster sighed as he remembered what his father did to Dusk’s mentor. ‘Why him? He isn’t the strongest.’

His father asked Dusk’s mentor, and he simply smiled, ‘You could find a person who could fight anywhere, but finding someone who knows where to point his sword is a different matter altogether.’

Standing in the empty streets, he sighed. “Shadows, to me. We should at least secure an escape path for him.”

Dusk looked down the pit, rapidly estimating the numbers of monsters. His explosion worked well, and there was noticeably less monsters outside the pillar. He guessed that quite a number of monsters retreated into the pillar.

Now he would need to wait. His plan, in fact, was simple. During the start of the raid, he would warp in, with a slow card ready. The monsters in the cave would try to run out, and get cut down by him. He had also confirmed that the dark lizard would not walk out of the chamber, convincing him that he would need to defeat it to reach the magical artifact.

Hanging on the left his belt were two decks of cards, and he had another set of eight cards in his right pocket. Each deck has a hundred cards, and each of the 8 cards allow him to summon a deck of cards from his house. 1000 cards seemed enough for the raid.

Although he understood fully that it wasn’t. Less than a quarter of the 1000 was offensive spells, and most of them were short duration slows or hastes to support melee combat. With only a total of 150 attack spells, he would have to rely on his swords a lot.

He sat down, with [Space distortion] active, and waited.

The raid group appeared 3 hours later, by noon. It was a good time, as the undead were drastically weakened with

the sun blazing down on them for the next 3 hours, at least.

[Two way portal: First activation]

The space around him shimmered, and a magic circle was left on the ground. As the distortion cleared, he was in

the cave, and there was a goblin in front of him, sleeping.

He heard the battle starting outside, and the goblin started to get up, still not noticing Dusk in front of him.

After dispatching the goblin, he walked through the caves, killing the small fries with his swords. Even so, it was quite tiring for him to kill that many monsters in such a short time, but Dusk knew he would have such a problem, and activated a card. [Stamina restore].

What a broken cheat.

He glanced out a few times, but the newbies are still fighting the main force. He frowned at the battle. Their choice of tactics were good, for beginners. The archers and engineers stayed at the top of the pit, firing attack to the main army while the rest of the melee units charged down to fight the enemy army.

But it was also bad. They failed to notice that it was simply a bait. Enemies of this level isn’t so stupid to give you a clear ground to shoot from. And they had no defenders on the archer’s side, save the few assassins to guard the back.

As expected, a few arrows flew from some caves at Dusk’s side, and a few archers fell.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

On a side note, a bronze golem quickly stepped forward to protect a certain engineer.

Dusk went back in, and ran towards where the archers are. He reached a few fast enough. There were 2 archers firing arrows with 4 of them in reserve, but all of them are standing close to the entrance of the cave, a little too close.

[Space Blast]

6 skeletons flew out beautifully, probably dying as they landed.

There was a wave of explosions as I was running towards another group of archers, which caused quite a few kills.

There was only 4 skeletons in front of me, two of them preparing to fire arrows.

[Slow][Space blast]

The skeletons flew. Dusk didn’t stay behind to look though, there were still quite a number of skeletons he had to deal with. Luckily, he knew the layout of the caves, and destroyed most of the skeletons. As the number of skeletons dropped to safe amounts, he saw a certain engineer aiming up, and knew that they didn’t need any more help from him.

He rushed towards the dark lizard, ignoring the huge explosion behind outside.

“Good afternoon,”

“Hiss….”

“I’m here to help you warm up before your dinner, just some light exercise, to boost your appetite you see. I’ve been told, after all, that you have been skipping on dinner recently. Also, I’m here to announce that the venue of your dinner had changed.” Dusk said, as he loosened his sword scabbard slightly. His hand was on the hilt, and he was in a position that he could draw and slash in a blink of an eye.

“Hiss!”

“The venue for your dinner…. Is HELL.” Dusk said, as he flooded the room with killing intent. The dark lizard was unfazed, as he as expected, and he charged while activating a card on himself.

[Force]

Force, an energy spell that increased his acceleration to a direction by a small amount for a short duration.

It is also a dangerous card, one which can possibly lead to his own death when used repetitively as humans can’t handle the extra force.

The sword met the spear, and he back flipped by kicking on the shield of the Dark Lizardman. The lizard didn’t miss the chance, and stabbed forwards towards Dusk while he was still flipping.

A normal person would have become meat.

[Blink][Weight+] With a spin, his sword slammed into the back of the lizardman, although there was no visible damage, the attack still staggered it slightly. Not enough for him to followup, but enough for the lizardman to not be able to counter as Dusk smoothly landed and jumped back.

Although he calmly smiled at the lizardman, inside, he was worried inside. He used 3 cards already, out of his remaining 800 cards, but there was not even a tint of visible damage on the lizardman, save the rage generated from the strike, which isn’t actually damage.

He took and stance, and readied a few cards, waiting for the lizardman to charge him as he circled the lizardman.

The lizardman simply hissed, and stepped forwards, lunging towards Dusk. He sidestepped quickly while parrying the attack with his sword, and activated one of the cards in his hands, [Time stop]

It stopped the lizardman for a bit, giving Dusk a chance to activate his second card from above, [Gravity blast]

The lizardman was instantly smashed downwards, with the time stop being broken. As it did, it swung the spear at him, but he had predicted that, and blocked the attack using [Shield Barrier], and swung down on the lizardman, and as he did so, he activated a card on his sword.

[Gravity +++]

And it created a gigantic crack on the ground. He stepped back as the lizardman wildly swung its spear above itsef.

The Lizardman simply stood back up, slightly bruised but without notable damage, and smirked at me. And again, both of us raised our weapons.