"I need to get these to him," Anthierin said.
Flinn looked at her. At the cloth-wrapped package across her lap. At the town square below them — the bonfire, the kneeling locals, the twenty rogues in formation, Brunks at the center of it all, and Lexel already inside the circle with his hands in his pockets and the smirk on his face.
"Now?" Flinn said.
"Before it starts," Anthierin said.
"It's already started," Flinn said.
"Before the fighting starts," Anthierin said.
Flinn looked at the square. At the twenty armed men surrounding one unarmed man. At the one unarmed man who appeared to find the situation mildly interesting.
"What did he just say to them," Flinn said.
"I don't know," Anthierin said. "But they're laughing, which is either very good or very bad."
"With him it's usually both," Flinn said.
Below, the laughter peaked and something shifted — the name Seravine dropping into the square like a stone into water, the ripples moving outward through the rogues and the locals simultaneously in completely different directions. Hope among the kneeling. Recalibration among the standing.
Then Cresty's voice cutting through from the alley entrance.
Then Carol behind her with the gold in his pocket.
Then Brunks asking the question.
Anthierin watched Carol's jaw tighten. Watched his hand close around the pouch he'd been holding since he ran from his own people with tears on his face. Watched him look away from Cresty's eyes.
She lied.
"The window's closing," Flinn said quietly.
"I know," Anthierin said. She held out the greaves. "Hold these until there's a moment. You'll know when."
Flinn took them. Weighed them in his hands — Silver, worked to a quality that Silver didn't usually achieve, the craftsmanship of someone who had been given a proper forge for the first time and had used every hour of it. He looked at Anthierin.
"You made these last night," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"While processing everything that happened yesterday," he said.
"I work better when I have something to process," she said. "Are you going to hold them or keep asking questions?"
Flinn held them.
---
Below, the two words landed.
She lied.
The square absorbed them. Brunks' cruel smile returned — the smile of a man whose read on the situation has been confirmed by the one variable he was testing. The rogues' confidence snapping back into place, the brief uncertainty of Seravine's name dismissed, the formation tightening.
The kneeling locals who had just felt something fragile and precious felt it go.
Cresty looked at Lexel.
Lexel was looking at Carol.
The smirk was still there. But the temperature behind his eyes had changed — the specific shift of someone who has made a decision and is in the moment between the decision and the action, which for Lexel was not a long moment.
Carol didn't finish processing that Lexel was moving before Lexel had already arrived.
So quick! thought Brunks and Flinn at the same time. The rogues couldn't even ignite their brains to process it.
Cresty looked at Lexel. There was a different smirk emerging from his face. This kind, this one kind, froze everyone's spine.
Carol looked up, "W-What are you up to?"
Lexel's eyes sharpened before a brisk of shadow moved. His four fingers stabbed Carol's neck, then turned around. He walked back toward Brunks.
"Ghuh, Gghg,Gh!" Carol could no longer breathe. His gold spilled against the paving roads. The roads he once called home. His knees slammed down, hands covering his penetrated neck, but it was useless; blood kept gushing out between his fingers.
The square went very quiet.
The rogues looked at what had just happened. At the man on the ground. At Lexel standing over him with the easy posture of someone who had completed a task and was moving to the next one.
The kneeling locals —
An old woman turned her face away. A man who had watched Carol run gripped his neighbor's arm. A child looked at the scattered coins without understanding. Some of them knew the reasons — the partner killed during watch hours, the capital's silence, the specific darkness of someone who had run out of other choices. Some of them had been sold by him. The square held both of those things without resolving either, the way the square had been holding things all night.
Brunks looked at what had just happened. At the man on the ground. At the coins. At Lexel.
The curious dangerous assessment of a veteran.
"So," Brunks said. "That's what you are."
"Yes," Lexel said pleasantly.
Brunks looked at him for a long moment.
"Men," he said.
Twenty rogues moved.
Not a mob — the organized deployment of experienced fighters who had formations and knew when to use them. They came with everything they had, because the man who had just moved like that with his hands in his pockets was the kind of threat you didn't meet halfway.
A rogue on the left unleashed a skill — [Shadow Step], the rapid displacement of a high-agility fighter blinking from one position to another, appearing behind Lexel with a blade already in motion.
Lexel turned before the blade arrived. Not because he saw the skill coming — because he had read the rogue's weight distribution three seconds before the skill activated and knew the destination before the departure.
The blade connected with nothing.
From the right, two rogues coordinated — one throwing a net of electrical magic, a caster-rogue hybrid who had been hanging back specifically for this, the crackling web expanding to cover a radius that should have been unavoidable. The second coming low behind the net.
Lexel moved through the gap between the net's edge and the wall beside him. The gap that existed because the caster had aimed for center mass and not for the specific position Lexel occupied when the net arrived, which was not center mass.
The second rogue, following the net, found nobody in the net.
Found Lexel beside him instead.
"Level up," Lulu said, through the Anti-System. Not during a pause — in the middle of the engagement, her voice arriving with the flat efficiency of someone reporting a logistical fact. "SP available. I'm putting it into STR+++ and Quick Counter depth. Don't argue."
"Fine," Lexel said, between movements.
The system window opened and closed in the time it took him to deal with the rogue who had followed the net. Lulu's hands — metaphorically — moving through the SP allocation with the decisive speed of someone who had been watching his skill tree and knew exactly what the next fight required.
[Level Up — SP Assigned: STR / Quick Counter Depth]
A third rogue activated [Berserk] — the Warrior subclass rage skill, doubling attack speed at the cost of defense, the specific choice of someone who had determined that staying at range wasn't working and was committing to the gap close. He came in fast. Genuinely fast — the doubled attack speed of a skill making him difficult to track.
Lexel let [Quick Counter] do what it was built for.
The window opened in the dodge — 0.3 seconds, the follow-up strike arriving before the Berserk rogue had finished the motion that preceded the counter. The rogue went down. The [Berserk] skill didn't help much when the person you were attacking wasn't where you were attacking.
"Another level," Lulu said. "This faction is high enough level that the EXP is decent. More STR. And I'm unlocking the next tier of Tiger Stomp — it has a wider radius at this SP cost and you need area coverage."
"You're enjoying this," Lexel said.
"I'm being useful," Lulu said. "Different thing."
[Level Up — SP Assigned: STR / Tiger Stomp II Unlocked]
A mage at the back of the formation — positioned specifically to be last, specifically to have line of sight while the melee fighters occupied Lexel's attention — began a channeling spell. The specific sound of mana accumulation, the air tightening around the focal point of a spell that needed two seconds to build and would be significant when it released.
Flinn, on the rooftop, was watching this.
He produced a knife. The professional efficiency of someone who had been waiting for the correct application and had found it. The knife left his hand before the mage's second second arrived.
The mage's concentration broke. The spell dissipated. The mage looked at the knife buried in the wooden post three inches from his head and made a professional decision about continued participation.
Anthierin looked at Flinn.
"I thought you were holding the greaves," she said.
"I'm holding the greaves," Flinn said, the package still under his other arm. "I'm also holding a knife. Separately."
The formation was breaking. Not by choice — by arithmetic, the number of people still standing doing what numbers do when they keep decreasing. The rogues who were still operational were making the individual assessments that fighters made when a formation stops being a formation and becomes a collection of individual problems.
Some ran.
Some didn't get to make the choice before Lexel arrived at their position.
[Tiger Stomp] — Tier 2. Wider radius. The ground registering the event with the honest opinion of stone that has been asked to accommodate a force it wasn't rated for. Two rogues who had been trying to flank from the left went down simultaneously, which was the point of the wider radius.
"Third level," Lulu said. "AP is holding. You're not burning Fire Marble so the reserves are intact."
"Good," Lexel said.
"I'm going into DEF this time," Lulu said. "The Warrior class fighter used a skill earlier that would have done real damage if it connected. You're not untouchable."
"I know," Lexel said.
"Do you?" Lulu said.
"I dodged it," Lexel said.
"You barely dodged it," Lulu said.
"Barely counts," Lexel said.
[Level Up — SP Assigned: DEF ++]
The last rogue standing looked at the square. At the twenty positions that had been occupied by his colleagues. At what those positions contained now. At Lexel standing in the middle of it all with the Silver greaves still not on his legs and the smirk still on his face and the specific easy posture of someone who had completed nineteen tasks and was about to complete one more.
He ran.
Lexel watched him go.
Didn't follow.
"You're letting him run," Lulu said.
"He's not a threat," Lexel said.
"He could report back to whoever sent this faction," Lulu said.
"Yes," Lexel said. "That's useful."
Lulu considered this. "You want them to know you're here."
"I want them to know Merciless is here," Lexel said. "Different thing."
The square was quiet. The bonfire still burning. The kneeling locals still kneeling — some of them looking up now, the crossbowmen on the timber towers having made their own professional assessments when the formation started breaking. The crossbowmen were no longer on the towers.
Lexel looked at Brunks.
Brunks looked at Lexel.
At the twenty positions. At what occupied them. At the man standing in the middle of the square with his hands at his sides and the easy posture and the smirk that had been there since the gate and had not left.
On the rooftop, Flinn weighed the moment.
The square below. Brunks still standing — the last variable, the significant one, the Warrior class commander who had watched his twenty fighters get processed with the specific quality of someone updating a model that had been wrong and is now correct and is not happy about being correct.
Lexel standing alone.
The greaves still not on.
Flinn looked at the window. At the specific stillness of the square in the moment between the last rogue going down and whatever came next.
Now.
He threw the greaves.
The arc was calculated with the precision of someone who had excellent dexterity and had been watching the target's position for the entire fight and had a clear sense of where Lexel's hands would be when the package arrived.
The cloth-wrapped Silver greaves dropped through the air.
Lexel's hand came up without him looking. The catch — automatic, the reflexes of someone for whom not expecting something was irrelevant because the reflexes applied regardless. He unwrapped them in one motion. Silver greaves, worked to a quality that Silver didn't usually produce, the craftsmanship of a blacksmith's daughter who had been given a proper forge and one night and had made something with both of them for the person who had given her the workspace.
He looked up at the rooftop.
Flinn raised a hand. The pleasant wave of someone who had held something until the window and had used the window correctly.
Anthierin, beside Flinn, said nothing.
But her hands, which had been holding the cloth since they left the capital, were empty now. The specific ease of someone who had a thing they needed to do and had done it.
Lexel put the greaves on.
[Arsenal] registered them. Silver, doubled — the stats of the grade amplified by the passive, the craftsmanship making the Silver perform at the upper limit of what Silver could produce before the doubling pushed it past what Silver was supposed to be capable of. Not Mythril. But not nothing.
He stood up.
Looked at Brunks.
Brunks looked at the greaves. At the rooftop. At the man who had just equipped armor mid-standoff with the easy movement of someone adding something to what they were wearing and finding the addition adequate.
"Ready?" Lexel said.
The square held the question.
The bonfire burned.
The Jaar banners lay in the mud, waiting.