Chapter 22—Blades in the Fog.
Chapter 22—Blades in the Fog.
The fog hanging over Gate 3 did not feel natural. It rolled in heavy and suffocating, dampening the metallic scent of iron and the distant chatter of the campus guards.
Tsubaki stood near the wooden watchpost, his fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of his rapier. His knuckles were white, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth throbbed. Since Kaelen had siphoned a portion of his ancestral core during their previous ordeal, Tsubaki could feel his mana lagging—sluggish, unstable, and entirely unfit for an encounter with Imperial assassins.
"Keep your posture straight, Lord Tsubaki," Kaelen whispered from two places behind him. Kaelen’s hands rested casually at his sides, his eyes lowered in the traditional posture of an obedient attendant.
Yet beneath his dark coat, his newly evolved E-RANK Refined Core pulsed with silent, concentrated power. Thanks to Shadow Veil, to any external eye, he was nothing more than a mana-less servant shivering in the dawn air.
"Easy for you to say," Tsubaki ground out under his breath, adjusting his posture just as two Enforcers walked past them on the stone battlements.
"Malakor sent us here to be slaughtered. Look at the guards; they’ve been stationed at the outer perimeter, completely oblivious."
"That is why you are here," Kaelen replied softly.
"You are the noble authority of Gate 3. As long as you stand tall, the guards will look to you, not the shadows."
Before Tsubaki could respond, a subtle shift in the air pressure swept through the archway. Kaelen’s system interface flashed inside his vision with a sharp, warning crimson hue.
[ HOSTILE INTENT DETECTED ]
[ APPROACHING TARGETS: 4x Obsidian Rose Shadow-Blades (Rank 3 Specialists).]
[ TARGET OBJECTIVE: Silent Elimination of Gate 3 Personnel.]
"They’re here,"Kaelen murmured.
Four shadows detached themselves from the thick mist beyond the iron portcullis.
They moved without making a sound, their bodies wrapped in dark leather coats, their faces obscured by bone-white masks. In their hands, slender daggers coated in paralyzing darkness mana gleamed under the dim morning light.
The lead assassin lunged toward the two outer guards stationed by the heavy lever.
Before the guards could even draw their swords, two dark arcs of mana sliced through the fog, severing their windpipes instantly. The men collapsed without a scream.
"Guards" Tsubaki gasped, his hand instincts taking over as he instinctively drew his rapier, stepping back in terror.
"Stay behind me, Tsubaki!" a sharp, female voice broke from the shadows above the guardhouse.
A silver blur descended from the upper wooden beams. Lyra landed gracefully between Tsubaki and the oncoming assassins, her silver rapier humming with precise, refined wind mana. Her sudden appearance caught the remaining two Shadow-Blades by surprise.
"Lyra" Tsubaki stammered, his eyes wide.
"What are you doing here?"
"Tracking Malakor’s lapdogs," Lyra said coldly, her piercing gaze never leaving the masked intruders.
"I knew the moment he assigned you two to his dead-end post, he was setting a cleanup squad in motion."
"Focus on the left two!" Kaelen called out, stepping up right beside Lyra. He didn’t pull a flash sword or cast a loud spell; instead, he gripped a short, standard-issue guard dagger he had slipped from the fallen soldier’s belt.
Lyra cast a swift, skeptical glance at Kaelen.
"Stay back, kaelen! You don’t have the mana to face Rank 3 assassins!"
"I’ll manage," Kaelen said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
The lead Shadow-Blade darted forward, his dagger aiming directly for Lyra’s throat with lethal speed. Lyra parried with an expert flick of her wrist, her wind mana deflecting the strike with a sharp metallic clang. But the second assassin flanked her right side, aiming a low strike toward her exposed waist.
Boom!
Kaelen moved.
His physical speed, buffeted by his E-RANK core and the +25% attribute boost, surprised even him. He slid past Lyra’s right shoulder, his movement so fluid it seemed as if he vanished into thin air.
He intercepted the assassin’s wrist with his left hand, locking the assassin’s joint, and drove his short blade straight into the guard’s collarbone.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: Mana Drain (Level 2)]
The instant Kaelen’s palm touched the assassin’s arm, a violent suction force activated.
The assassin’s dark mana was forcefully ripped from his circuits, flowing like a rushing river through Kaelen’s arm and directly into his Void Core. The Shadow-Blade let out a muffled gasp of horror as his knees buckled, his strength instantly draining away into nothingness.
Lyra’s eyes widened in sheer shock as she executed a swift thrust that pierced the heart of the first assassin. She spun around just in time to see Kaelen disarm the second assassin with terrifying efficiency, snapping the man’s neck with a cold, calculated twist before the assassin could scream.
In less than twenty seconds, all four Shadow-Blades lay dead on the blood-stained cobbles.
Silence returned to Gate 3, broken only by the heavy breathing of Tsubaki and the rustle of wind through the battlements.
Lyra lowered her rapier, her eyes fixed entirely on Kaelen.
The way he moved, the absolute lack of panic in his posture, and the lethal precision of his counterattack destroyed any illusion that he was a simple attendant.
"You..." Lyra breathed, stepping closer to Kaelen, her eyes narrowing with intense curiosity and suspicion.
"That wasn’t the movement of a servant. Who are you really, Kaelen?"
Tsubaki hurriedly stepped forward, wiping cold sweat from his forehead, trying to recover his noble composure.
"Lyra, he—he’s trained extensively under my family’s guards! He’s just naturally gifted in close-quarters combat!"
Lyra didn’t break eye contact with Kaelen.
She could tell Tsubaki was covering for him, but the faint, dangerous smile playing on Kaelen’s lips made her realize something deeper: Kaelen wasn’t Tsubaki’s servant. Tsubaki was following his lead.
"Keep your secrets for now," Lyra said softly, a subtle gleam of respect flickering in her eyes.
"But Malakor won’t stop here. When this squad fails to report back, he will send the full force of the delegation."
"He won’t get the chance," Kaelen said smoothly, wiping the blood from his dagger with a cloth.
"He thinks he’s hunting us. But in reality, he’s just running out of time."
Suddenly, Kaelen felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck—a cold, heavy weight pressing down on his senses from high above.
He slowly raised his head, looking toward the dark stone spire of the Academy’s old bell tower towering over the fog.
Standing on the narrow stone ledge at the very top of the tower was a tall, slender silhouette draped in a dark leather cloak.
The morning fog drifted around the figure, but two sharp, glowing crimson lights burned through the haze.
The man with red eyes.
He was not participating in the fight. He was merely watching. His gaze locked onto Kaelen across the distance. A faint, razor-thin smile appeared on the man’s face before he stepped backward off the ledge, his body dissolving seamlessly into the swirling mist like a ghost.
Kaelen’s eyes narrowed. The red-eyed man now knew that Malakor’s cleanup attempt had failed—and more importantly, he knew Kaelen was the core piece on the chessboard.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ]
[ ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT FOILED! ]
[QUEST STATUS UPDATED: The Mole’s Desperation.]
[Time Remaining to Expose or Eliminate Malakor: 41 Hours 12 Minutes.]
Kaelen turned back to Lyra and Tsubaki, his voice firm and decisive.
"Clean up the bodies. Malakor’s panic is about to reach its peak... and that’s when we strike."
Kaelen reached beneath his dark coat to secure his blade, naturally moving toward the inner lining where he had tucked the ancient registry, their single critical weapon, the physical proof linking Malakor directly to the Obsidian Rose.
His fingers brushed empty cloth.
Kaelen’s breath hitched. He reached deeper, feeling the torn seam of his inner pocket. The heavy parchment was gone. In its place, tucked neatly into the lining, was a small, burnt scrap of paper stained with fresh blood.
Kaelen pulled it out, his eyes narrowing as he read the single handwritten sentence scrawled across it:
" Nice effort, player. Looking for this?"
Kaelen snapped his gaze back toward the dark spire of the old bell tower. The fog had swallowed the ledge, but the implication was clear. The student with red eyes hadn’t just been observing from the tower. While Kaelen was focused on the Shadow-Blades, that red-eyed rival had slipped past his perception, looted the registry right off him, and left him completely empty-handed against Malakor.
The heavy silence that followed the clash was suffocating, broken only by the cold morning wind whistling through the iron portcullis. Lyra stood frozen, her silver rapier trembling slightly as her wind mana dissipated into the mist, staring in utter disbelief at the lifeless bodies.
She struggled to process the terrifying speed with which a supposedly unawakened servant had dismantled elite Rank 3 killers without breaking a sweat.
Beside them, Tsubaki swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously against his high collar as every breath tasted like cold copper in his throat. The raw power Kaelen had forcibly siphoned from his ancestral core left hollow, sickening emptiness that made his knees tremble, forcing him to realize that he didn’t truly know his servant at all.
The Shadow-Blades had proven their fluid group tactics during the ambush, sweeping with serrated daggers coated in corrosive dark mana, yet Kaelen had moved through their lines with lethal, effortless precision. Now, as the scent of blood washed away into the fog, the system counter continued its relentless countdown in Kaelen’s peripheral vision, a glowing crimson reminder that their margin for error was shrinking with every passing minute.