I think neither Sierra nor Adrian have chosen to follow me—I planned on this, given that they’ve freshly recovered from demons taking up residence in their body—though I can’t bring myself to care.
Having allies is helpful, but I need to advance. There are cases where others may be conducive to that, but tonight?
Tonight, I hunt.
I hope I haven’t vastly misjudged myself here, but I think I haven’t. While Sapphire might be a little irritating with her propensity to leave me in life-threatening situations, her adage has proven to be correct so far.
If I don’t let this demon-filled city break me, I’ll forge myself once more. Each and every one of them has the potential to heal my soul locked within them. I just need to Devour them all.
That’s easier said than done, though. On this street alone, a small ravine has formed, ragged cracks through the center of the road allowing demons of all shapes and sizes to make their way out.
They’re not very numerous to start, maybe five coming out in the first minute—that explains why the areas around us have had time to bar up. We’re not exactly in the center of the city, where I presume this outbreak is centralized.
Still, I get the feeling that mundane bars aren’t going to be enough to stop all of them. From the sounds of destruction deeper into the city, I’m probably right.
Interestingly, the demons don’t immediately turn to attack me as I emerge, dashing for the nearest one of them. Given the ferocity with which they’re assailing the buildings closest to them, I can assume that it’s not because they’re actually meek or something.
The reason is likely Demonic Heritage. According to Sapphire, my soul is part demon. Unsurprising, then, that the demons are largely leaving me alone.
At least until I attack them, that is.
My first target is a twisted four-legged one that resembles a jet-black boar with tusks, though enough tusk-shaped protrustions jut out from its body that I would believe it if someone told me it was a porcupine.
I know the last set of demons I fought were nigh-unaffected by physical attacks, but I recall the demons at Site-17. I think those were demons, at least—the light-stealing sheen of midnight black that shrouds their bodies is similar.
The point is that those were affected by bullets, so the majority of these should be affected by knives.
Appraise failed!
Figures. I hope Appraise starts working on these things at some point—it’d be nice to know how strong the enemies I’m against are.
The boar-demon finally notices me when I’m halfway to it. The street we’re on is fairly long, and all of the five demons currently on it have chosen to find easier prey than the boarded-up doors of the Enchanted Rose—there’s a couple buildings whose doors are barely reinforced, and one of them has already been partially knocked down.
It takes me a few seconds to catch up, and the spiky tusked creature manages to turn all the way around by the time I’m there, moving its head from one side of its body to the other.
I open with Blood Echo, manifesting a crimson copy of myself in the space next to me. She charges forward first, forming her arms into blades, and with the two seconds that the skill now lasts, my copy slashes at the boar’s snout.
Hardened blood finds more resistance in the demon’s tough scale-like skin than in soft human flesh, but the echo manages to draw blood before it collapses.
As soon as my echo loses independent will, I activate Shape Blood to take control of it along with the blood streaming from its fresh wound.
Blood Echo provides me with my body’s weight in the liquid, which is extremely convenient in its synergy with my manipulation skill. I form a wall of spikes, serving a triple purpose of obscuring me from its sight, attacking it, and providing a deterrent to its charge.
Sure enough, I sense the boar halt itself, its speed abruptly disappearing in an instant.
As soon as it does, I send the blood-spears surging at it and duck low, hiding behind my wall of impromptu weapons and relying on my Stealth to mask my position.
It lowers its head, brandishing its tusks, and it roars, a deep rumble that I can feel in my chest.
My wall of blood falls apart, formless blood dropping to the ground and coating me in an instant, but I haven’t wasted my movement in the meantime. I hit the ground, sliding over cracked cobblestone slick with fresh blood. Knifefighting guides me as I stab upwards with the borrowed ornate dagger from Sierra’s room, and I strike true.
Black blood spills forth once more, splattering my face and staining the ground beneath me. I twist the knife, activating Woundshape as I do. With the enhanced level, I should be able to push a cut to a more vital part of its body.
It lets out a rumbling roar this time, deeper than the last. Somehow, I get the sensation of panic from it.
Woundshape fails. A moment later, Enhance Bleed fizzles away as well.
This demon has a way to cancel skills. They might all have a way to do so.
That doesn’t stop me from bleeding it dry. I stab it again and again, gripping onto one of its many tusk-spikes to stabilize myself. Its skill-canceling power apparently has a cooldown, because I’m able to Shape Blood to get the ink-colored liquid off me. Woundshape still doesn’t work, and neither does Enhance Bleed—did it make itself immune?
Whatever the case, it’s dead within the minute. I roll out from under it as it begins to collapse to the ground, its body sagging as the last of its life exits it.
None of the other demons await me once I’m finished with the first one, and it doesn’t take a genius to find out why.
During the time I’ve spent killing the first one, the others have been busy at work. A trail of destruction and torn-up cobblestone leads to a building with a torn-apart entrance. A watchmaker, by the looks of it.
A flaming demon corpse comes flying out of the smashed-open door, green fire sticking to it like oil. As I watch, shattered steel pieces pick themselves up from the floor, restoring themselves into a set of bars that protects the door.
Hm. So the demons aren’t all immune to skills, then. Either that or the flame is nonmagical.
Before I can ponder the subject more, the sound of rumbling catches my ear.
The rift in the ground is growing wider, and more demons are already beginning to crawl through. Still not that many, and they’re not very powerful, but they’re here.
I waste no time in Devouring the boar, wincing in irritation when its foul-tasting flesh burns my tongue.
Devour granted +71 XP!
Targets devoured: [3/???]
Less than I’d hoped for, given its size. Also, I am still not receiving temporary skills from my Gold-tier Devour, which is rather annoying. I wonder why I was able to get them from the demon-touched dragons but not the demons—maybe because those weren’t fully demonic?
It does mean less power and fewer options for me, sadly, but I continue onwards anyway.
My soul feels ever so slightly more intact, but I could be imagining it. Soulless lets me survive with any amount of soul damage anyway, and I lack an innate sense to determine how healthy it is.
It doesn’t feel like enough. This entire area isn’t enough.
I need to go deeper in.
Off in the distance, something ignites. I can’t see the fire, but I can see the choking black clouds rising.
Looks like I’ve found my next target.
The streets wind too much for me to find a way to the center. Though I remember some of the city layout thanks to Sierra guiding us through it, I’m not quite sure I know how to get to the thick of the action.
It’s a good thing I’m not limited to taking the streets.
As the newest demons ignore me even with the blood of their brethren coating the cobble around me, I start climbing.
Demonic Heritage is really coming in handy here, I muse. I can pick and choose my fights, which is an incredible boon.
I scale the side of a barred and barricaded flower store easily, some part of my soul amalgam providing me the muscle memory I need to clamber upwards, dragging myself up hand over hand as naturally as walking.
The last part of the climb is made slightly more difficult by the chunks of stone that’ve been knocked out of the walls, loosening every handhold I have. Someone’s errant attack must’ve hit it.
I’m able to bypass it with a Bloodstep, my increased magic regeneration enabling me to use my skills more freely.
As the red fades and I return to normal, I find myself on the roof. The tile is largely untouched by the demons, red brick barely shifting under my light footfalls, but the same can’t be said for every roof I see.
The city is on fire.
My statement is partially figurative—deeper into the city, some of the streets run red and black with demon and human blood both—but it’s equally literal. Plumes of black smoke rise from buildings around the city. The nicer sector that I’m in right now is largely untouched, but an area off to one side that I recognize as a set of slums has been nearly entirely set ablaze.
Defense? Poorly secured oil reserves? Fire attacks?
I won’t be able to tell until I get closer, so I do. The rooftops here aren’t designed to be run across, but that doesn’t stop me. Jumping is enough to clear the spaces between roofs, but once or twice there’s an entire street between me and the closest building. Bloodstep patches up those gaps, my faster Magic (Regen) compensating for the intensive use of the skill.
Bloodstep advanced to level 9!
As I start to draw closer to the city center, I see more and more signs of combat. There’s corpses on the ground now, both human and demon. Evidently, anyone that dies outside is being left there until the situation’s cleared up.
I stop once when I see a single wounded wolf-shaped demon dragging itself by its two functional forelimbs, trailing black blood behind it for a solid hundred feet. It doesn’t know to fear me yet, my demonic scent or biomarker or something throwing it off.
Phantom Shape guides me down, my favored scythe-like spider limbs making climbing down easy, and I try to end its misery with a swift set of blows to the area that I think its neck is.
As it turns out, it doesn’t have the same body composition as a human—not surprising, since my physiology is obviously different—so it takes about a minute longer than expected to kill it.
Once it’s well and truly dead, I eat it quickly. The area I’m in is substantially grimier than the posh streets by the Enchanted Rose, and the walls are practically painted in shades of crimson and midnight. Some of the buildings have collapsed, beset by demonic attack, and I think I can see human corpses lying half-eaten here and there.
I don’t want to be caught off guard here.
Devour granted +17 XP!
Targets devoured: [4/???]
Pitifully small. Again with the disproportionate returns from that. Is the amount of XP I need to earn truly that much more than everyone else? Or do demons just work differently?
My soul is ever so slightly mended. Devour is putting in work there, at least.
XP: 689/900
I might be able to hit level 10 by the time the night’s through. That does put a smile on my face.
“That was our kill, you know,” a man says languidly.
Twenty feet behind me, give or take. I can’t believe I didn’t check this area for living humans.
I turn around slowly, and I see the source of the voice standing in the gap between a half-ruined tavern and a proudly-barred bank.
He wears plate armor that is almost entirely black thanks to the coat of demon blood adorning it, but no helm.
And he’s not alone.
“Looks like a little bitch lost her way,” an archer says from just behind him, her bow nocked but not drawn. Se spits at the ground. “Took what’s rightfully ours.”
“We’ll show her,” says another. I can barely make him out—it takes me a second to spot him even with my demonic eyesight. A cloaked figure in the dark with a too-wide smile that carries serrated daggers that don’t catch the dying light. “Tear her to shreds.”
I think that’s all of them. A quick scan around me both with my eyesight and Shape Blood reveals neither human nor demon.
“Matter of fact, looks like we found ourselves a dead lady lost to demonic corruption,” the plate-armored man says. “What a shame, eh, boys?”
I think back to the Medic I met at Outpost 17. Alder, the one who’d helped me for no clear reason.
He’d complained about adventurers, made them sound like murderers. At the time, I instinctively agreed, but I had no experience proving it.
These three are doing their best to change that.
While the three of them talk each other up, I Appraise them.
Name: Ross Needlebrook
Age: 24
Race: Human
Class: Warrior
Level: 9
Last Used Skill: Armored Charge
Name: Christine Rottel
Age: 27
Race: Human
Class: Archer
Level: 8
Last Used Skill: Sharpshooter
Name: Kennit Lyris
Age: 24
Race: Human
Class: Thief
Level: 10
Last Used Skill: Stealth
Around the same level as me, then. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m significantly more powerful than those at my level, especially since I have a class evolution while these three clearly do not.
I almost hide my derisive snort, but I decide not to, letting my laugh ring out loud and clear. It might be attracting the attention of any nearby demons, but they won’t attack me first. Besides, if even these idiots can fend them off, this area can’t have very powerful ones.
“Demonic corruption,” I muse. From what I’ve heard of their conversation, they’re crafting a threadbare cover story on the spot to justify whatever violence they wish to inflict upon me. “How astonishingly on the mark you are.”
That disquiets them, I can tell. Ross, their Warrior, hefts a greatsword sticky with demon blood.
And, I notice, the rusty red of dried human.
“You can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Ross says, but I can see the doubt in his eyes.
I turn all the way towards them, activating Phantom Shape to spread my spider-limbs out once more.
That gets a rise out of them. The Thief reacts more strongly than the others, flinching back into the shadows. He whispers to his team in a language that I can’t understand—adventure colloquial, I think it’s called—frantically.
Objective: Reap the night
Kill 10 beings with levels before the sun rises.
Targets killed: [0/10]
Reward: Trait
Perfect timing. I was wondering if I would get a quest for this. I flash them a broad smile, taking pleasure in the way that the Thief’s smile has utterly disappeared.
I hear the word “Baron” in their little discussion, and the smile on my face grows even wider.
Relentless hasn’t even triggered. This fight isn’t anywhere near impossible to win.
Before Kennit can tell his little group to run, I charge forward. It’s immediately evident that my speed easily eclipses his—he doesn’t even have his sword all the way up before I casually bat it aside.
Christine looses an arrow, her aim thrown off by my sudden movement, and she clips my side. Nothing to worry about.
My knife doesn’t penetrate Ross’ armor, but I came prepared for that.
As my first strike rings off against hardened steel, I cast Soulknife, using the recoil of my first attack to flow into another. This one cares not for a layer of armor between it and its target, and the glowing red blade sinks deep into the Warrior’s flesh.
Objective: Reap the night
Targets killed: [1/10]
He’s dead before he hits the ground, confirmed by my sharp Phantom Shaped limbs stabbing straight through his neck, eyeballs, and mouth. I let his body drop to the ground, retracting my limbs.
I look at the other two, pleased with myself. Christine has another arrow nocked, but she’s definitely not killing me with that.
“Disappointing,” I tell them, shaking my head. “This is the part where you run.”
They try.
I think neither Sierra nor Adrian have chosen to follow me—I planned on this, given that they’ve freshly recovered from demons taking up residence in their body—though I can’t bring myself to care.
Having allies is helpful, but I need to advance. There are cases where others may be conducive to that, but tonight?
Tonight, I hunt.
I hope I haven’t vastly misjudged myself here, but I think I haven’t. While Sapphire might be a little irritating with her propensity to leave me in life-threatening situations, her adage has proven to be correct so far.
If I don’t let this demon-filled city break me, I’ll forge myself once more. Each and every one of them has the potential to heal my soul locked within them. I just need to Devour them all.
That’s easier said than done, though. On this street alone, a small ravine has formed, ragged cracks through the center of the road allowing demons of all shapes and sizes to make their way out.
They’re not very numerous to start, maybe five coming out in the first minute—that explains why the areas around us have had time to bar up. We’re not exactly in the center of the city, where I presume this outbreak is centralized.
Still, I get the feeling that mundane bars aren’t going to be enough to stop all of them. From the sounds of destruction deeper into the city, I’m probably right.
Interestingly, the demons don’t immediately turn to attack me as I emerge, dashing for the nearest one of them. Given the ferocity with which they’re assailing the buildings closest to them, I can assume that it’s not because they’re actually meek or something.
The reason is likely Demonic Heritage. According to Sapphire, my soul is part demon. Unsurprising, then, that the demons are largely leaving me alone.
At least until I attack them, that is.
My first target is a twisted four-legged one that resembles a jet-black boar with tusks, though enough tusk-shaped protrustions jut out from its body that I would believe it if someone told me it was a porcupine.
I know the last set of demons I fought were nigh-unaffected by physical attacks, but I recall the demons at Site-17. I think those were demons, at least—the light-stealing sheen of midnight black that shrouds their bodies is similar.
The point is that those were affected by bullets, so the majority of these should be affected by knives.
Appraise failed!
Figures. I hope Appraise starts working on these things at some point—it’d be nice to know how strong the enemies I’m against are.
The boar-demon finally notices me when I’m halfway to it. The street we’re on is fairly long, and all of the five demons currently on it have chosen to find easier prey than the boarded-up doors of the Enchanted Rose—there’s a couple buildings whose doors are barely reinforced, and one of them has already been partially knocked down.
It takes me a few seconds to catch up, and the spiky tusked creature manages to turn all the way around by the time I’m there, moving its head from one side of its body to the other.
I open with Blood Echo, manifesting a crimson copy of myself in the space next to me. She charges forward first, forming her arms into blades, and with the two seconds that the skill now lasts, my copy slashes at the boar’s snout.
Hardened blood finds more resistance in the demon’s tough scale-like skin than in soft human flesh, but the echo manages to draw blood before it collapses.
As soon as my echo loses independent will, I activate Shape Blood to take control of it along with the blood streaming from its fresh wound.
Blood Echo provides me with my body’s weight in the liquid, which is extremely convenient in its synergy with my manipulation skill. I form a wall of spikes, serving a triple purpose of obscuring me from its sight, attacking it, and providing a deterrent to its charge.
Sure enough, I sense the boar halt itself, its speed abruptly disappearing in an instant.
As soon as it does, I send the blood-spears surging at it and duck low, hiding behind my wall of impromptu weapons and relying on my Stealth to mask my position.
It lowers its head, brandishing its tusks, and it roars, a deep rumble that I can feel in my chest.
My wall of blood falls apart, formless blood dropping to the ground and coating me in an instant, but I haven’t wasted my movement in the meantime. I hit the ground, sliding over cracked cobblestone slick with fresh blood. Knifefighting guides me as I stab upwards with the borrowed ornate dagger from Sierra’s room, and I strike true.
Black blood spills forth once more, splattering my face and staining the ground beneath me. I twist the knife, activating Woundshape as I do. With the enhanced level, I should be able to push a cut to a more vital part of its body.
It lets out a rumbling roar this time, deeper than the last. Somehow, I get the sensation of panic from it.
Woundshape fails. A moment later, Enhance Bleed fizzles away as well.
This demon has a way to cancel skills. They might all have a way to do so.
That doesn’t stop me from bleeding it dry. I stab it again and again, gripping onto one of its many tusk-spikes to stabilize myself. Its skill-canceling power apparently has a cooldown, because I’m able to Shape Blood to get the ink-colored liquid off me. Woundshape still doesn’t work, and neither does Enhance Bleed—did it make itself immune?
Whatever the case, it’s dead within the minute. I roll out from under it as it begins to collapse to the ground, its body sagging as the last of its life exits it.
None of the other demons await me once I’m finished with the first one, and it doesn’t take a genius to find out why.
During the time I’ve spent killing the first one, the others have been busy at work. A trail of destruction and torn-up cobblestone leads to a building with a torn-apart entrance. A watchmaker, by the looks of it.
A flaming demon corpse comes flying out of the smashed-open door, green fire sticking to it like oil. As I watch, shattered steel pieces pick themselves up from the floor, restoring themselves into a set of bars that protects the door.
Hm. So the demons aren’t all immune to skills, then. Either that or the flame is nonmagical.
Before I can ponder the subject more, the sound of rumbling catches my ear.
The rift in the ground is growing wider, and more demons are already beginning to crawl through. Still not that many, and they’re not very powerful, but they’re here.
I waste no time in Devouring the boar, wincing in irritation when its foul-tasting flesh burns my tongue.
Devour granted +71 XP!
Targets devoured: [3/???]
Less than I’d hoped for, given its size. Also, I am still not receiving temporary skills from my Gold-tier Devour, which is rather annoying. I wonder why I was able to get them from the demon-touched dragons but not the demons—maybe because those weren’t fully demonic?
It does mean less power and fewer options for me, sadly, but I continue onwards anyway.
My soul feels ever so slightly more intact, but I could be imagining it. Soulless lets me survive with any amount of soul damage anyway, and I lack an innate sense to determine how healthy it is.
It doesn’t feel like enough. This entire area isn’t enough.
I need to go deeper in.
Off in the distance, something ignites. I can’t see the fire, but I can see the choking black clouds rising.
Looks like I’ve found my next target.
The streets wind too much for me to find a way to the center. Though I remember some of the city layout thanks to Sierra guiding us through it, I’m not quite sure I know how to get to the thick of the action.
It’s a good thing I’m not limited to taking the streets.
As the newest demons ignore me even with the blood of their brethren coating the cobble around me, I start climbing.
Demonic Heritage is really coming in handy here, I muse. I can pick and choose my fights, which is an incredible boon.
I scale the side of a barred and barricaded flower store easily, some part of my soul amalgam providing me the muscle memory I need to clamber upwards, dragging myself up hand over hand as naturally as walking.
The last part of the climb is made slightly more difficult by the chunks of stone that’ve been knocked out of the walls, loosening every handhold I have. Someone’s errant attack must’ve hit it.
I’m able to bypass it with a Bloodstep, my increased magic regeneration enabling me to use my skills more freely.
As the red fades and I return to normal, I find myself on the roof. The tile is largely untouched by the demons, red brick barely shifting under my light footfalls, but the same can’t be said for every roof I see.
The city is on fire.
My statement is partially figurative—deeper into the city, some of the streets run red and black with demon and human blood both—but it’s equally literal. Plumes of black smoke rise from buildings around the city. The nicer sector that I’m in right now is largely untouched, but an area off to one side that I recognize as a set of slums has been nearly entirely set ablaze.
Defense? Poorly secured oil reserves? Fire attacks?
I won’t be able to tell until I get closer, so I do. The rooftops here aren’t designed to be run across, but that doesn’t stop me. Jumping is enough to clear the spaces between roofs, but once or twice there’s an entire street between me and the closest building. Bloodstep patches up those gaps, my faster Magic (Regen) compensating for the intensive use of the skill.
Bloodstep advanced to level 9!
As I start to draw closer to the city center, I see more and more signs of combat. There’s corpses on the ground now, both human and demon. Evidently, anyone that dies outside is being left there until the situation’s cleared up.
I stop once when I see a single wounded wolf-shaped demon dragging itself by its two functional forelimbs, trailing black blood behind it for a solid hundred feet. It doesn’t know to fear me yet, my demonic scent or biomarker or something throwing it off.
Phantom Shape guides me down, my favored scythe-like spider limbs making climbing down easy, and I try to end its misery with a swift set of blows to the area that I think its neck is.
As it turns out, it doesn’t have the same body composition as a human—not surprising, since my physiology is obviously different—so it takes about a minute longer than expected to kill it.
Once it’s well and truly dead, I eat it quickly. The area I’m in is substantially grimier than the posh streets by the Enchanted Rose, and the walls are practically painted in shades of crimson and midnight. Some of the buildings have collapsed, beset by demonic attack, and I think I can see human corpses lying half-eaten here and there.
I don’t want to be caught off guard here.
Devour granted +17 XP!
Targets devoured: [4/???]
Pitifully small. Again with the disproportionate returns from that. Is the amount of XP I need to earn truly that much more than everyone else? Or do demons just work differently?
My soul is ever so slightly mended. Devour is putting in work there, at least.
XP: 689/900
I might be able to hit level 10 by the time the night’s through. That does put a smile on my face.
“That was our kill, you know,” a man says languidly.
Twenty feet behind me, give or take. I can’t believe I didn’t check this area for living humans.
I turn around slowly, and I see the source of the voice standing in the gap between a half-ruined tavern and a proudly-barred bank.
He wears plate armor that is almost entirely black thanks to the coat of demon blood adorning it, but no helm.
And he’s not alone.
“Looks like a little bitch lost her way,” an archer says from just behind him, her bow nocked but not drawn. Se spits at the ground. “Took what’s rightfully ours.”
“We’ll show her,” says another. I can barely make him out—it takes me a second to spot him even with my demonic eyesight. A cloaked figure in the dark with a too-wide smile that carries serrated daggers that don’t catch the dying light. “Tear her to shreds.”
I think that’s all of them. A quick scan around me both with my eyesight and Shape Blood reveals neither human nor demon.
“Matter of fact, looks like we found ourselves a dead lady lost to demonic corruption,” the plate-armored man says. “What a shame, eh, boys?”
I think back to the Medic I met at Outpost 17. Alder, the one who’d helped me for no clear reason.
He’d complained about adventurers, made them sound like murderers. At the time, I instinctively agreed, but I had no experience proving it.
These three are doing their best to change that.
While the three of them talk each other up, I Appraise them.
Name: Ross Needlebrook
Age: 24
Race: Human
Class: Warrior
Level: 9
Last Used Skill: Armored Charge
Name: Christine Rottel
Age: 27
Race: Human
Class: Archer
Level: 8
Last Used Skill: Sharpshooter
Name: Kennit Lyris
Age: 24
Race: Human
Class: Thief
Level: 10
Last Used Skill: Stealth
Around the same level as me, then. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m significantly more powerful than those at my level, especially since I have a class evolution while these three clearly do not.
I almost hide my derisive snort, but I decide not to, letting my laugh ring out loud and clear. It might be attracting the attention of any nearby demons, but they won’t attack me first. Besides, if even these idiots can fend them off, this area can’t have very powerful ones.
“Demonic corruption,” I muse. From what I’ve heard of their conversation, they’re crafting a threadbare cover story on the spot to justify whatever violence they wish to inflict upon me. “How astonishingly on the mark you are.”
That disquiets them, I can tell. Ross, their Warrior, hefts a greatsword sticky with demon blood.
And, I notice, the rusty red of dried human.
“You can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Ross says, but I can see the doubt in his eyes.
I turn all the way towards them, activating Phantom Shape to spread my spider-limbs out once more.
That gets a rise out of them. The Thief reacts more strongly than the others, flinching back into the shadows. He whispers to his team in a language that I can’t understand—adventure colloquial, I think it’s called—frantically.
Objective: Reap the night
Kill 10 beings with levels before the sun rises.
Targets killed: [0/10]
Reward: Trait
Perfect timing. I was wondering if I would get a quest for this. I flash them a broad smile, taking pleasure in the way that the Thief’s smile has utterly disappeared.
I hear the word “Baron” in their little discussion, and the smile on my face grows even wider.
Relentless hasn’t even triggered. This fight isn’t anywhere near impossible to win.
Before Kennit can tell his little group to run, I charge forward. It’s immediately evident that my speed easily eclipses his—he doesn’t even have his sword all the way up before I casually bat it aside.
Christine looses an arrow, her aim thrown off by my sudden movement, and she clips my side. Nothing to worry about.
My knife doesn’t penetrate Ross’ armor, but I came prepared for that.
As my first strike rings off against hardened steel, I cast Soulknife, using the recoil of my first attack to flow into another. This one cares not for a layer of armor between it and its target, and the glowing red blade sinks deep into the Warrior’s flesh.
Objective: Reap the night
Targets killed: [1/10]
He’s dead before he hits the ground, confirmed by my sharp Phantom Shaped limbs stabbing straight through his neck, eyeballs, and mouth. I let his body drop to the ground, retracting my limbs.
I look at the other two, pleased with myself. Christine has another arrow nocked, but she’s definitely not killing me with that.
“Disappointing,” I tell them, shaking my head. “This is the part where you run.”
They try.
