Chapter 23: Wreaking Havoc in the Thieves’ Hideout

Chapter 23:
Wreaking Havoc in the Thieves’ Hideout

 

SEVERAL ROOMS branched off the corridor on the second floor, but one of the doors was half-open. All the merrymaking seemed to be happening in there. Emma and I peered through the gap. A group of five red-faced thieves were drinking and chatting. None of them seemed particularly strong and they were all drunk, so we just charged in. Emma flung the door open and, when they looked our way, I fired a Lightning Strike.

“Gyahh?!”

“Damnit! Who the hell are you?!”

“If you must know, I’m Emma.”

Emma punched each of the thieves in the stomach one after the other as they rushed her. I stood back and supported her with magic. Before long, we’d knocked them all out. Unsurprisingly, we weren’t perfectly silent, but fortunately, none of their comrades came to their aid. We tied them up, then woke one of them by smacking him in the face.

“Where are the hostages?” I asked.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Wanna have another taste of that lightning?”

“No, anything but that, I’ll tell you. Just spare meee!”

Give it a rest, man. Although, on closer inspection, he looked kind of young… Anyway, he coughed up on the information we were after. The hostages were on the first floor, so Luna had made the right call by searching there. The other thieves were asleep in their quarters. Meanwhile, the boss was in the room at the far end of the second floor.

“We can leave the hostages for Luna. I think we should go ahead and take out the rest of the thieves.”

“Good idea. It’ll be easy if we can attack them while they’re sleeping.”

“All right, let’s keep going, but be careful.”

We checked each room, one after the other. Each one had about four people sleeping in it. It was almost shocking how easy it was to take them out, and, with each room we cleared, we reduced their fighting strength. We left the boss for last.

“Okay, Emma, remember, this last guy is the most dangerous.”

“G-got it. I’m kinda nervous now.”

“We make a good team. I’m positive we can beat him if we work together.”

“Let’s do this, Noir.”

We braced ourselves and opened the door. It was pitch black. Maybe he was asleep? We readied our weapons and approached the bed, but it was empty.

“He’s not here…”

“Wh-where did he go?”

We wondered aloud if he might have just not been in the room, but I had a bad feeling, so I looked up—and found a man on the ceiling, clinging to it like some kind of spider.

“Emma, look out!”

“Eeek!”

I narrowly saved Emma from the enemy above. That was close.

“I thought I heard something suspicious. So we do have intruders.”

The man glared at us in the dark—he was tall and had a toned, muscular body. His aura was overwhelmingly powerful; it was suffocating to be in the same room as him. He wasn’t wearing any armor and was lightly dressed. He only had a single knife, but I was so tense I couldn’t move a muscle.

I did have the courage to use my Discerning Eye. His name was Ahgalga Burrone. He was thirty two years old and Level 118. Just as I’d feared, he was on a completely different level from the other thieves. He had a ton of skills too: Night Vision, C-Grade Level Break, B-Grade Short Swords, Pillar of Fire, Faithful Short Sword, and C-Grade Pocket Dimension.

I was curious about that Level Break skill, but I didn’t have time to check it out. Ahgalga dropped into a low stance and swooshed toward us, brandishing his knife. He wasn’t just swinging randomly either, every one of his attacks was meant to inflict a fatal wound.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“What do we want?” I said. “What would you do if I said we just wanted to let loose and have a little fun?”

“You’re one cheeky bastard, kid.”

Ahgalga grazed my bangs with his knife, giving me a slight haircut. Everything about him was razor-sharp. Emma and I fought back, but we were losing ground. Every time I tried to create enough space to cast a spell, Ahgalga closed the distance and tripped me up. Nothing could have been more irritating.

As Emma and I exchanged looks, Ahgalga inexplicably turned tail and ran.

“Huh? Why did he run?”

“I wonder… oh! He might be going for the hostages.”

“We have to hurry!”

We dashed for the first floor, keeping our eyes peeled for any surprise attacks. As we descended the stairs, we heard a gunshot. Ahgalga had found Luna. We flung open a door and they were going toe-to-toe. About ten anxious women cowered behind Luna.

“Tsk, you just don’t know when to quit, do you?” Ahgalga snapped at us. Nevertheless, he could tell the odds weren’t in his favor, so he escaped through the window.

“These are the people they kidnapped,” Luna told us breathlessly.

“Thought so. I’m glad no one seems hurt.”

“Is the chief’s granddaughter here?”

“That’s me… So my grandpa hired some adventurers after all, huh?” She was utterly lovely and, to be honest, didn’t resemble her grandfather very much at all.

“We lost the boss,” said Luna. “What should we do next, Sir Noir?”

“We gotta go after him.”

I didn’t want to let the boss get away. We’d taken out the rest of the thieves, so we left the women in the hideout and headed out. To our surprise, Ahgalga was waiting for us just outside. His eyes gleamed with intimidating force.

“I considered escaping, but then I realized I couldn’t stand the thought of handing a victory to a bunch of pipsqueaks like you.”

He was brimming with confidence, but I guess you’d have to be to make it as the head of a band of thieves. I saw the situation as an opportunity, so I was more than ready to take him up the challenge. If he thought he stood a chance in a three-on-one showdown, he really was fearless.

However, the source of his confidence became abundantly clear when I looked into his skills in more detail.

Level Break was a skill that forcibly lowered the levels of all living creatures within a fifty-yard radius. Even the C-Grade variant caused a 20-level drop and, when I checked, we’d all been affected. It wasn’t a passive skill, so he was actively using it. Ugh, I knew I’d felt weird. I should have noticed that my strength, agility, and magic were all reduced! I made sure to warn Emma and Luna.

“That’s cheating!”

“What a pain in the ass.”

“Tsk, you pipsqueaks have someone with Discerning Eye? That explains how so few of you managed to sneak into my hideout.”

“Sir Noir,” said Luna. “I’m going to step back.”

“Yeah, please do.”

Luna scurried off to escape the range of Ahgalga’s skill. Our close-range spells were basically useless, but Luna could launch a powerful attack with her magical firearm from outside the affected area. I couldn’t tell if Ahgalga realized exactly what we were up to, but he readied himself to pursue Luna all the same.

“I don’t—”

“—think so!”

Emma and I shot off spells to stop him from pursuing our cleric.

“Why you little!” Ahgalga threw his knife with a snap of the wrist, but both Emma and I evaded. It flew between the two of us and Ahgalga clicked his tongue. “You aren’t even worth my time. Look up at the moon, silently watching over our battle to the death. What does our future hold? Will I die or will you? Isn’t it exhilarating?”

Oookay, he wasn’t right in the head. It sent a chill down my spine.

“Huh?! Noir!” Emma suddenly knocked me out of the way.

“What in the…” Something shot past me. The pain informed me that I’d been cut. “The knife…went back to him?”

“He he he…” Ahgalga gleefully snatched the handle of the knife as it returned to him. That seemed to be his Faithful Short Sword ability. If Emma hadn’t pushed me out of the way, I might have lost my head. My senses really were dulled. Another effect of my reduced level? What an irritating skill.

“You really saved me,” I said.

“Well, you saved me earlier. Now we’re even,” Emma said with a smile.

“Healing Shot!” cried Luna.

A ball of white light sank into my wound and I was healed in an instant. Luna wore a cool smirk as I flashed her a thumbs up.

“Oh, that half-elf girl isn’t half-bad.”

“The name’s Luna Heela, you better remember it.”

“I’ll consider it, if you manage to threaten my life even a little. I remember everyone strong enough to try to kill me.” Ahgalga wasn’t scared or even flustered. Conversely, his sublimely casual demeanor instilled more than a bit of fear in me. He hardly seemed human. We had managed to take out all of his underlings, so numbers-wise we had the advantage, and yet…

Skills aside, I guess you had to have a certain amount of nerve to get through so many battles. Ahgalga’s attitude wasn’t something a total chicken like me could understand.

“With your abilities and mental fortitude,” I said, “you could be a total success in a more upstanding line of work. You could make a living doing something else.”

“You seem to have a pretty high opinion of me, pipsqueak. Why do people always think they have the right to lecture others about their way of life when they don’t know a damn thing about them?”

“Maybe because they don’t know anything about them?”

“It’s all just self-aggrandizing crap. But if you must know… Heh. I was born in another kingdom. Ever since I can remember, I lived in the gutter. I never even knew my parents. What do you make of that?”

I just stared at him without responding, quietly looking him over.

“I saw other children murdered like they were nothing. So, when I turned seven, I made up my mind. I wasn’t going to be a victim, I was going to be the one doing the taking.”

I felt a little bad for him, but to be honest, I wasn’t actually listening. I wanted him talking to buy us some time—time that I could use to calmly and carefully use Editor on him.

“Are you listening, pipsqueak?!”

“I heard every word. As someone who was raised by loving parents, I was just stunned by the difference in our upbringing.”

“Heh, good. Well, I give less of a damn about my parents than yesterday’s breakfast. Lemme tell you about the time I took down the boss of the slums.”

Luckily for me, he kept going, and I got a few more precious seconds to try and find a way to break his most troublesome skill.