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Chapter 254: Death Behind the Mask
🕑 Added 2025-08-27 19:31:02 +0000 UTCNight had fallen, but Luke hadn’t stepped into the fortress. No one from Bastion had come after him either, which was strange. Still, it gave him time to do what he always did before facing something new: train.
Delaying the mission meant sharpening himself and, more importantly, preparing Princess Charlie. She needed to master Force Infusion. If she was going to duel the Warden Captain, she had to be ready for it. Luke passed her on the training grounds. Charlie was hacking at rocks, cleaving through trees, her sword cutting with raw power. At her current strength she could already manage that much, but with Force Infusion flowing through her, her destructive potential was terrifying.
She charged with her blade raised and slammed into a half-collapsed structure. Stone burst apart, chunks flying in every direction. Luke analyzed the display with a cold eye. The Wardens’ ability to hurl their spears with such brutal speed and power was likely tied to a skill similar to Force Infusion. That explained why, back when he was weaker, he’d seen them carve through squads like butchered cattle. They were masters of stamina manipulation. And, ironically enough, it was that very skill he’d used to kill his first Warden.
While Charlie trained, Luke hunted. A guttural roar split the air. Charging at him was a pack of enormous crocodiles. He remembered them from his days fleeing the orc general, beasts like these had once guarded the dam he destroyed.
[Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
Even at level thirty, their sheer size made them dangerous. Luke sprinted across the terrain, the monsters barreling after him, and focused on what he really wanted: testing the limits of his Acid Blood Arrow.
He conjured one in his hand, drew back, and fired. The arrow hit the ground ahead of the charging crocodiles. A hiss split the air as a green mist erupted, swallowing them whole. The creatures shrieked, thrashing in agony, their armored hides bubbling and splitting open.
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
The third one hurled itself into the river, vanishing beneath the surface.
“Smart creatures…” Luke muttered.
The river boiled with life. It was swarming with crocodiles now, likely left unchecked ever since the orcs abandoned the lowlands for the mountains. No one remained to cull the threat.
Luke conjured another arrow in his palm, studying it carefully. He’d learned his boundaries: three in quick succession. Push for a fourth, and his heart screamed in pain. Worse, he couldn’t store them. They weren’t items; they were mana given form. The arrows rejected storage, dissolved if placed in his storage item, and faded within ten minutes if left unused. He couldn’t even keep them in his quiver. There was another problem he hadn’t ignored, the cost.
Each blood arrow devoured a thousand mana. An absurd, dangerous price to pay in any real fight. For a moment, he realized just how reckless he’d been back in the Safe Zone, firing them off without even tracking his mana reserves. If he had bottomed out, things could have gone very, very badly.
His mana pool was 4500. Four arrows alone were enough to leave him with little mana left, the bar dipping close to empty. That was the curse of an epic skill: overwhelming power, paid for in blood and spirit. Each shot drained 100 HP from his own body, and his heart could only withstand conjuring three arrows in quick succession. And on top of that, there was the high mana cost.
They weren’t weapons to be used freely. They were trump cards, meant for moments that demanded a killing blow. He weighed the limitations and found himself almost grateful the price in blood wasn’t worse. A hundred HP per arrow was dangerous, sure, but if it had demanded a thousand instead of mana? He would’ve written the skill off as worthless, an epic skill wasted on something he’d never dare use.
If only the system displayed mana costs when presenting skill choices. That single detail would make every decision so much easier in the future.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. The cost was steep, yes, but the destruction those arrows unleashed more than justified it. And, as a bonus, being rare-tier meant they could also be amplified through Mana Infusion. He pulled up his system interface.
Name: Luke
Level: 47
Race: Half-Demon
Rank: F
Class: [Demonic Predator (Lvl 57)]
Profession: [Guardian Botanist of Mother Freya (Lvl 60)]
Titles: [Dark Lord]
Bloodline: [Bloodline of the Dark Demon]
Health Points (HP): 3913/4130
Mana Points (MP): 2128/4450 (4500)
Stamina: 2111/2570 (2770)
Soul Fragments: 87/1000
Stats:
Strength: 658
Agility: 478 (528)
Endurance: 257 (277)
Vitality: 413
Perception: 434 (444)
Intelligence: 445 (450)
Free Points: 12
Class Skills: [Advanced Blade Handling (Uncommon)], [Profane Knife Throwing (Uncommon)], [Twin Blade (Common)], [Basic Dark Dash (Rare)], [Basic Blood Regeneration (Rare)], [Predator’s Mark (Rare)], [Demonic Blade Dance (Rare)], [Wraith Form (Ultra-Rare)], [Force Infusion (Rare)], [Advanced Stealth (Rare)], [Assassin’s Tracking (Rare)], [Mana Infusion (Rare)], [Basic Archery (Common)]
Profession Skills: [Herbology of Mother Freya (Ancient)], [Precise Extraction (Common)], [Basic Potion Crafting (Common)], [Corrupted Plant Growth (Rare)], [Plant Sensor (Uncommon)], [Botanical Bond of Mother Freya (Rare)], [Seed Conversion (Rare)], [Plant Manipulation of Mother Freya (Rare)], [Corrupted Blood of Mother Freya (Ultra-Rare)], [Thorn Mutation (Uncommon)], [Soil Analysis (Uncommon)], [Botanical Purification (Uncommon)], [Acid Blood Arrow (Epic)]
Race Skills: [Identify (Common)], [Demonic Perception (Uncommon)], [Dark Blood (Uncommon)], [Meditation (Common)], [Demonic Endurance (Uncommon)]
Bloodline Skill: [Servant of the Dark Lord (Unique)]
Servants: [Princess Charlie (Skeleton) - Lvl 27], [Servant Slot Available]
Luke had never cared this much about his mana pool. Not until now. One Acid Blood Arrow cost a full thousand mana, which meant he could only conjure four of them. Four. The skill was far too powerful to be shackled by such a limit. He had wiped out ten assassins with only three arrows. And if he could conjure twenty? The thought made him reevaluate the true worth of mana.
He had twelve free points left and didn’t hesitate to funnel them all into Intelligence.
Stats Updated:
Intelligence: 445 (450) -> 457 (462)
Free Points: 12 -> 0
[Mana Points (MP): 2248/4570 (4620)]
Satisfied with the allocation, he let the menu fade and tightened his grip on the Acid Blood Arrow in his hand. His new goal was simple: become a factory for these devastating arrows.
“Come on, Charlie.”
He loosed the arrow skyward. It arced and landed among the trees, detonating in a cloud of hissing green. Crocodiles burst from hiding, fleeing the spreading acid fog. Some stumbled, others collapsed mid-run, their hides peeling as the corrosive mist ate through their flesh.
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
[You have slain a Crocodile Commander – Lvl 30]
A guttural roar snapped his attention to the side. Another crocodile barreled from the brush, tail lashing like a whip. Charlie sprinted straight at it, vaulting high with her blade. She spun midair, cleaving off one of the beast’s legs before it could react. The creature snapped its jaws, lunging to swallow her whole, but Charlie met it with a brutal punch across the snout. The crocodile rolled, belly exposed. She drove her sword deep and pummeled it again and again until the thrashing stopped.
[Princess Charlie has slain a Crocodile Commander Lvl 30]
The [Pugilist] 2nd Class of Princess Charlie has reached Level 32! (+3 Strength, +2 Endurance, +2 Agility, +2 Vitality, +2 Perception, +2 Intelligence, +2 Free Points.)
*[Princess Charlie has reached Level 28! Skeleton (Rank F)] (+1 bonus point to all attributes, +1 free point)*
The monster lay dead. Luke pulled a potion from his pocket dimension.
[Healing Potion (Common): Restores 150 HP]
He drank it down, the bitter liquid spreading warmth as torn flesh stitched itself back together.
[Health Points (HP): 4063/4130]
That had been his last stockpile potion scavenged from Safe Zone chests. He had drained them all during the siege. Now, he had only three left, ones he’d brewed himself.
[Healing Potion (Common): Restores 503 HP]
“Better than nothing,” he muttered.
Those three would be reserved for emergencies. Once the second fortress was cleared, weekly chest rewards would solve that problem. Charlie strutted over, beaming, pointing at the crocodile’s corpse and then at her fist, raising it like a trophy.
“Yes, you took that thing down cleanly,” he admitted.
She was glowing with pride, but he could tell she was also remembering the dungeon in the temple, how close they’d come to dying to a crocodile half that size. Luke pulled up her system interface, ready to allocate her new stat points. By nightfall, once he meditated, they would step into the fortress.
Name: Princess Charlie
Level: 28
Race: Skeleton
Rank: F
Class: Death Knight (Lvl 35)
2nd Class: Pugilist (Lvl 32)
Title: [Servant of the Dark Lord]
Health Points (HP): 2030/2030
Mana Points (MP): 1570/1570
Stamina: 1920/1920 (2320)
Stats:
Strength: 304 (374)
Agility: 159
Endurance: 192 (232)
Vitality: 203
Perception: 133
Intelligence: 157
Free Points: 9
Class Skills: [Basic Weapon Handling (Common)], Heavy Strike (Common), [Basic Spectral Charge (Rare)], [Crescent Slash (Uncommon)], [Whirlwind Strike (Uncommon)], [Spectral Chain (Rare)], [Spectral Barrier (Rare)], [Doomblade (Rare)], [Mark of Doom (Rare)], [Force Infusion (Rare)]
Second Class Skills: [Advanced Hand-to-Hand (Uncommon)], [Steel Fist (Rare)], [Stunning Punch (Uncommon)], [Battle Roar (Uncommon)], [Concentrated Kick (Uncommon)], [Power Punch (Uncommon)], [Pugilist’s Leap (Uncommon)], [Muscle Reading (Uncommon)], [Movement Echo (Uncommon)], [Flame (Common)]
Race Skills: [Demonic Servant Perception (Uncommon)], [Basic Bone Regeneration (Rare)], [Bone Endurance (Rare)], [Iron Bones (Ultra-Rare)]
Rune Skill: [Berserker Flames (Rare)]
That was one of the main reasons he wanted her to land the killing blow on the Warden Captain. The gap in power between them was a canyon.
Stats Updated (Princess Charlie):
Strength: 304 (374) -> 313 (383)
Free Points: 9 -> 0
If they hadn’t already been discovered, he might have waited another day or two. Maybe pushed Charlie to hunt Midnight Wardens in the Wild Zone, grind a few more levels before throwing her against a level 70 monster. But time was gone, the chance wasted. The plan had to move forward now. And he trusted her. More than that—he had a few cards hidden up his sleeve.
“Looks like all our loose ends are tied up,” he said, watching her shadowbox, fists cutting the air with her newfound strength.
She nodded once. And together, they headed toward their objective.
***
Luke stopped at the fortress gate. Charlie remained within his soul space. He had spent the last few hours sitting in meditation, refilling both stamina and mana. Now he drew the bow from his inventory. This would be his tool to dismantle the fortress alarms. He couldn’t risk alerting the Wardens too early. Stealth was everything if his plan was to succeed.
“The bow of Angelica…” he muttered, staring at it.
With this weapon, he would activate the second mechanism. He would finish what she couldn’t, complete the mission she had left behind. He took his first step inside. A crow’s harsh cry split the night. Something cut through the darkness from his right. A knife.
Luke shifted back, dodging just in time. Behind him stood a woman.
The ninja!
“Are you actually stupid?” Her voice carried irritation, sharp and clear. “I told you to wait for me before barging into this place.” She lowered her mask with one hand, flicking open a fan with the other.
Luke raised his bow, arrow drawn, his tone cold and threatening. “Tell me who you really are, and how you found me.”
She smiled faintly, snapping the fan shut.
“My name is Evangeline. Like you, I’m a fugitive from Bartholomew. And I’m also one of the four survivors who activated the first mechanism.”
***
The day before, while Luke was running through the Wild Zone, Eleanor moved briskly through the Safe Zone, playing her part as if on patrol. In truth, it was all for show. Most still believed Luke was hiding somewhere in the district, and soldiers were tearing through houses and shops in their hunt for him. Out of caution, she had switched her outfit through the system, making sure no witness could connect her with the woman who had helped him escape.
Shooting Kruger had been a crime. She knew exactly what that meant. But was the story about James being a criminal actually true?
The fact that Kruger and his assassins had gone after him inside the Safe Zone didn’t fit the narrative being spread around. Rumor had it Luke was in league with the surviving Renegades, trying to activate the mechanisms recklessly, dooming everyone in the process. Most wanted him alive, if only to learn the truth about those mechanisms. No one would kill the man who had actually managed to find them after eight long years of this tutorial. But Kruger? He had tried to kill Luke. That was suspicious as hell.
Luke had done bad things, sure. But he hadn’t killed anyone from Ronan’s camp when he left the fortress, though he had hacked off arms, legs, and fought Ronan head-on. From his perspective, he had crossed the barrier and run into a military squad trying to capture him.
The only people he killed were Kruger’s soldiers.
Those deaths stood out. And then there was the reckless stunt of sneaking into the Safe Zone, pretending to be a lumberjack. Eleanor couldn’t make sense of it. It was so absurd, so illogical, that no one even thought to look for him working right under Bastion’s nose, hidden in plain sight. It was exactly the kind of idiotic move that had kept him undiscovered for more than two weeks, while everyone else wasted their time combing the Wild Zone.
Her judgment was split. She had known James, the fool, and then discovered he was also Luke, the wanted criminal.
I’ll have to find Jack. He knows something.
The duality between his two identities was too strange to ignore. But she had seen Luke fight. The first time was near Ronan’s camp, when he clashed with her commander and she had tried to kill him with an arrow. The second was his escape from the Safe Zone. In both cases, the only ones he killed were Kruger’s men.
Eleanor hadn’t known their true identities, but their reputation was common knowledge in Bastion. Butchers. They killed for sport. No one dared question it, since Kruger was Bartholomew’s right hand. Fear was his weapon, keeping order in the Safe Zone. As long as they only targeted criminals, people tolerated it. After all, many of those assassins had once protected them from the Renegades. Everyone claimed to share the same goal: going home.
It had been four years since Eleanor was dragged into this world. Since then, she had climbed slowly through Bastion’s ranks, earning recognition for her precision with a bow. It was the only path available. If she wanted even a chance of returning to Earth, she had to stay on the “right” side. The Haven had grown comfortable in its illusion of survival. The Renegades were seen as nothing but doomed criminals. Which left Bastion, with its iron-fisted politics, as the only real option. If she tried to live as a civilian, she would be swallowed whole by apathy, like so many others.
“Search every house on this street again! Break down the doors if you have to!” a soldier barked as he sprinted past her.
Eleanor crossed the empty market. Most of the townsfolk had locked themselves indoors the moment the alarms rang. But a thought gnawed at her. Do Bartholomew and the others really have no intention of activating the mechanisms?
That question wouldn’t leave her mind, and it made too much sense to ignore. If James truly knew the location of every mechanism, why would they try to kill him outright? She had seen the assassins hunting him, and she knew them well enough to recognize their intent. They hadn’t come to knock him out. They had come to finish him. That was why she’d stepped in. She needed to understand what was really happening.
Looking back now, it all felt staged, like they had been trying from the very beginning to make it look as if James had launched some kind of attack inside the Safe Zone. Word was that Kruger had gone to talk, to negotiate. But before long, he was hurled through the wall of the inn, chaos erupted, and in the confusion the assassins moved in.
If James died during the pursuit, it would all be easy to explain. He attacked, they defended, and Bastion walked away with the clean story: the lone madman, another Marshall, stopped before he could drag everyone into disaster.
That would be the tale told. James refused to negotiate, cut down soldiers in cold blood, and had to be contained. But reality hadn’t matched the script. James hadn’t killed any of those trying to capture him. The only ones who fell were Kruger’s assassins, and their bodies had disappeared. Someone in Bastion had made sure of that. Eleanor could guess why. Maybe they didn’t want anyone knowing Kruger’s men had been beaten. Maybe they didn’t want Bastion’s image of untouchable strength to crack. Whatever the reason, the truth had been buried.
At least she knew one thing: she’d done the right thing. She’d pulled James out of the Safe Zone, kept more people from dying. Whether the story about the mechanisms was true or not, she had chosen to give him the benefit of the doubt.
More than ever, I need to find Jack Bean. He’ll know something.
She kept moving along her patrol route when something slammed into her back. The impact threw her against a wall, pain flaring through her ribs. By instinct she spun around, just in time for more bolts to tear into her. Three buried themselves deep in her stomach. She staggered, fighting to pull her bow free, when a shadow loomed in front of her.
A hand clamped around her throat. Cold steel pressed against her neck. Kruger.
“Bitch.” His voice was a growl, dripping venom.
He slammed her harder against the wall, eyes blazing.
“You think I didn’t notice?” he snarled.
“What are you talking about?” Eleanor forced the words out, her voice steady despite the agony radiating through her body.
Kruger raised the knife and drove it into the wall beside her face. His masked features were twisted, and through a tear in the fabric she glimpsed raw flesh, half-rotted, half-burned.
“Before that masked archer hit me, I marked him,” Kruger hissed. “And guess who’s carrying that mark now?”
His grip on her throat tightened, cutting off her air.
“One way or another, I’ll take a life tonight.”
He ripped the blade free. The knife arced downward. Eleanor’s eyes went wide. She tried to move, but her body was too slow, too broken. The last thing she saw was the gleam of the blade descending toward her face. Then nothing but darkness.
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Comments
Steph
Damn if only she hadn't stopped him from killing Kruger 😭
AturatoWriter
That was a tough chapter ending to write
DanielLionheart
nooooo
