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Chapter 324: The Panther of Shadows
🕑 Added 2025-10-01 06:15:35 +0000 UTCLuke kept the arrow taut, eyes locked on the fallen figure before him. Bartholomew, the so-called King of Bastion, lay splayed on the wet grass, breathing in short, ragged bursts. The blade had found his heart, enough to kill any ordinary man on the spot, but Bartholomew was no ordinary man. A powerful healer, he bled time from the last shreds of mana at his command, stretching each second out like a borrowed life. The fight had ended; now only the inevitability of death remained.
Luke stepped forward, the shadow of his bow falling across the king’s still chest. “It’s over,” he said, voice low and hard. “You die here, forgotten, alone. Not like the woman you stole everything from. Even in death, there are still people who remember her.”
Bartholomew coughed, blood slicking the corner of his mouth, darkening his unkempt beard. Luke did not look away. He had killed hundreds on the way here, but none haunted him like that single memory, the death that should never have been: Angelica.
With monumental effort the king lifted a trembling hand. “Wait…”
Luke drew the string to its limit. The arrowhead gleamed under the moon, aimed true at Bartholomew’s chest. This would not be a clean execution; it would be a fulfilment, a verdict delivered with the weapon that had belonged to the woman he remembered.
“You need to… understand,” Bartholomew rasped, each word soaked with blood. “When you learn the reason… you’ll stand with me.”
He choked on it, forcing the words out in a final gasp. “I only wanted… to protect everyone… from 51. That’s all…”
Luke frowned. “What is 51?”
The king’s breath thinned. He was already at the edge of his last exhale, and Luke had no intention of letting him go without feeling the arrow’s judgment. He let his fingers go slack, the string humming.
A woman’s voice cut across the courtyard, calm and final: “This is as far as you go.”
A sharp sound split the night. The bowstring flashed in the moonlight, and Bartholomew’s head rolled across the grass, severed in a single smooth motion.
Luke froze, the arrow still nocked. Confusion knotted his face as he slowly turned toward the voice. Erza Grimhart stood there, watching with composed detachment, the black thread still vibrating between her fingers.
“What did you do?!” Luke barked, rage breaking through shock. “I had to kill him!”
She stepped forward without flinching, measured as ever, as if the moment’s weight meant nothing to her.
“I have spent months dreaming of driving an arrow into that bastard’s heart,” Luke snapped, advancing half a step, bow still drawn.
Erza paused beside the decapitated body. Then, unexpectedly, a faint smile touched her lips.
“Nice outfit,” she said quietly.
Luke blinked.
“The Acolyte Assassin’s garb, right? The god I serve does not grant it lightly.”
“Don’t change the subject!” Luke snapped, heat rising. “Why did you do it? Why kill Bartholomew?”
She regarded the corpse without haste. Her voice was dry, almost indifferent. “Because I had to kill him.”
Luke still held the string taut, but the grip had lost its certainty. Shooting her would not bring him peace. He felt, suddenly, that even a finished arrow could not pierce the knot inside him.
“Why the theater, then? If you were going to kill him all along?” His voice carried a raw edge of frustration.
Erza crouched beside the corpse, her fingers brushing the earth before she answered. “The agreement was simple. I would protect Bartholomew as long as he remained within the fortress. Outside it, my protection no longer applied. And I kept that promise.”
Luke ground his teeth.
“I would have let you take the kill,” she continued, her tone flat, almost clinical. “Especially since you wear that garb. But months ago my master, Siegfried, received a directive from Lakarion himself. The order was clear: when the moment came, I was to end the King of Bastion. That moment arrived tonight.”
From her storage item she produced a blackened skull crowned with a stub of candle. The stench of iron and spent wax clung to it, the unmistakable aura of a ritual tool used far too many times.
“To the great Lakarion,” she intoned, voice shifting into litany, “God of Assassination, Panther of Shadows… I deliver this soul.”
She placed the skull beside the body and lit the candle with a snap of her fingers. The flame cast her face in flickering relief, shadows deepening her presence until she seemed less mortal and more avatar.
Luke exhaled hard, turning away. The bitterness still burned, but it was drowned by futility. He turned the bow over in his hands, thumb tracing the worn wood. When he called the system’s identification spell, the window appeared with words etched into memory:
[Angelica’s Bow (Common)
Description: A simple training bow, issued during Boot Camp when Angelica chose the Archer class. Though basic, it marks the beginning of her journey into precision and discipline.]
His chest tightened. The day he received that bow, he swore to avenge her death. Swore every last name would be crossed off—Paul, Kruger… and finally Bartholomew. With this weapon, he had nearly fulfilled the vow.
Erza continued her whispered devotions to her god, unmoved by the world around her. Luke held the bow a moment longer before sliding it back into his inventory. It didn’t matter whose blade had severed the neck. Every arrow loosed, every corpse felled by Angelica’s bow had led to this end.
That was enough.
He closed his eyes, and Angelica’s face rose in his mind—peaceful, frozen in that first instant of death. Within the pocket dimension her body remained untouched, preserved as if awaiting a dream that would never end. He pulled the cover back to see her once more, then replaced it gently.
The circle was complete. He moved away, crossing the silent courtyard until he stopped beside a cluster of overturned crates. Drawing in a long breath, he lifted his gaze to the full moon overhead.
“It’s over.” The word carried like both a sigh of relief and a dirge of defeat.
The system window flashed before his eyes, cold and clinical:
[Health Points (HP): 327/4340]
[Mana Points (MP):: 7/5100]
[Arrows in quiver: 1/20]
He studied the numbers with a faint, weary smile. Less damage than he had expected. Compared to Ronan, his condition looked enviable. The poison and disease that had once shredded him hadn’t left him with bleeding eyes, frozen muscles, or the grotesque boils that usually marked exposure. Only the steady tick of lingering damage, already fading. His body was learning. Adapting.
A dull thud broke the silence. Luke looked up just in time to see Charlie drop from the fortress window.
Luke raised a hand to calm her before she reached him. "It's all right, Charlie," he said, exhausted.
Artemis, ever blunt, added, "Physically, as far as possible, he's fine. Psychologically? When has he ever been fine mentally?"
Charlie moved close, hands running over his chest and arms, searching for anything worse than shallow wounds.
"Don't worry," Luke repeated. "I just can't fight right now. If someone hits me, I won't survive the first blow. I don't have HP or mana for it."
She lifted her sword and clenched a fist with resolve, ready to stand guard. Luke felt the absence of the race-level notification—no sudden full heal this time. That complete recovery was gone. This was his new normal. He would have to find a way to raise his HP; mana could be recovered more reliably than flesh.
"I'll have to count on Jack," he muttered, thinking ahead.
Despite the fatigue, he smiled at Charlie. "But it's over. Now there are no more obstacles to going home."
The moon watched them from high above. Luke let himself linger in that silver light for a heartbeat, the thought of family folding around him like warmth.
A voice cut the quiet: "So it's finished? Your enemies are dead?"
He recognized the tone. It was Franky. Luke kept his gaze on the moon.
"I think so," he said. "The final mission remains, but I feel only indifference about that. Bartholomew, Kruger, Paul… I wanted them dead. I wanted to watch life drain from them slowly, painfully. Too bad some of them were quick."
He dropped his eyes to the ground. "You and I are the same, aren't we, Franky? You want revenge on me the way I wanted it on mine."
The snake flicked its tongue, a cold, sharp sound.
"I'm serious," Luke pressed. "If you had to be carried like a stone by Bartholomew, Kruger, or Paul, I'd understand hating that. We'll never be friends; that won't change. But I can't keep you bound to me after everything."
From the pocket dimension he drew the Familiar Rune and held it out, the little stone heavy in his palm. "I'll hand you to someone else. No friendship pact required. Go with someone new. Maybe you'll try to get your revenge on me someday, or maybe not. It doesn't matter. It's time we take different paths."
Silence hung for a moment. Then Franky answered in a rough, almost resigned whisper, "Whatever..."
Luke slipped the stone back into the pocket dimension. He pushed himself up, bracing a hand on the cold stone wall. Charlie stood close, sword ready. Together they watched the fortress gates swing open.
Figures emerged from the shadows: members of the Haven, a few servants, familiar faces. Allison, Mason, and Evangeline moved toward them, hurrying, then slowing as their eyes took in the scene. Bartholomew lay headless on the grass. Erza remained at his side, the ritual still in progress, candlelight flickering against the dark skull she had set down.
“Looks like it’s over, then,” Luke said.
“Bartholomew really is dead,” Evangeline replied, her voice flat. “After all this time… it feels strange to say.”
“I still can’t figure out how you and he ended up outside the fortress,” Mason muttered.
Allison stood silent, eyes narrowed as she studied Luke. In that look alone he understood, suddenly aware of what he was still wearing. The outfit.
Before he could stammer an explanation, Allison spoke. “I’m glad you survived,” she said simply. “What matters is survival, by whatever weapon you must find on the way.”
Her meaning was layered; the look in her eyes demanded answers he hadn’t prepared to give.
“It’s strange for me,” Evangeline said as she eased onto a crate, voice soft. “I took this fortress eight years ago on a night like this, with my old friends. It’s odd to imagine one of you becoming a Bartholomew. Makes you not sure whether to feel relieved or what? I still don’t know if I should be happy he’s gone.”
People drifted closer. The chaos in the Safe Zone had eased once the mechanism activated and the immediate threat receded.
“Only I survived,” she said quietly. “Marshall died, Kruger died, and now Bartholomew. I just hope nothing else stands in the way.”
“I need to close the gates,” Mason said, already moving toward the fortress wall.
The Bastion army would withdraw soon. How they would explain their leader’s death was another matter entirely, the soldiers outside had no idea the king himself had engineered the chaos.
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Comments
AturatoWriter
You had commented on the chapter and I let out a laugh, thinking, ‘I think he might have figured out what I planned’
VirulentShade
I knew it. I knew Erza was going to do that.
