Chapter 156.1: Welcome to the Kingdom: Entering
PART 1/2
Keiki stood at a door in a dank, cold sewer. After tailing several suspicious individuals in the city of Fronttown, this was the only place of interest she’d found. Everyone else retired to their homes for the night, or something similar. But one of them came here. Down into the sewer, walked for probably a few hundred paces, and then went through this wooden door.
But when she tried it…
“It’s locked,” she said.
According to Asmo, everything Keiki heard, the earpiece would hear, too. That little device they’d stuck down into her ear canal. It felt weird, but she was getting used to it. And so she’d been narrating her mission back to command through whispers to ensure the operation went smoothly.
“Attempting to bypass lock.”
After listening for noises coming from the other side to ensure nobody was there, she drew her sword from its sheath and carefully inserted it into the boards making up the door. It was sharp enough that she didn’t need to apply much pressure to slice through the wood, though her Strength certainly also contributed to that ease.
Slowly, she cut around the hinges of the door, separating those pieces of wood attached to the frame from the rest. Then, she cut around the doorknob and the lock as well, so that the door was simply sitting free on the ground. Reaching out, she placed her hands on the door, and gently pushed forward.
Before the door could clatter to the ground, she stepped up and grabbed it mid-fall, gently lowering it to the sewer floor without a noise. Through the door was another hallway, though one that was clearly different from the sewer before it.
“Stone brick halls, new,” she muttered. “No sign of enemy combatants.”
She glanced around. There were some more doors lining the hallway, plus a larger, grander one at the end. Probably her destination.
“I believe I have located what is likely an important location. Proceeding into that location will likely put me into contact with the target. Shall I proceed?”
She paused, awaiting orders.
“...Yes.” A voice came through her earpiece. It wasn’t Asmo’s—though Asmo had been the one to write it—but rather, a synthetic voice made by the earpiece. Everything Keiki heard and said was transcribed by the earpiece and sent to the control room, and everything written on Keiki’s Message Paper in the control room would be read out into her ear. That was the inner-workings of these interesting little devices. The Demons had their Communication Crystals that they used, but for the Humans to imitate that technology, they’d clearly needed to take some interesting measures.
But, in short, it meant that Keiki had received confirmation to move forward with the mission.
“Proceeding.”
She crept forward, sword drawn, though the wide hallway, boots only barely echoing across the otherwise silent floor. The bricks passed beneath her, and she soon stood before the door.
With a slight push, she cracked the double-doors open, and put her ear up to listen.
A man laughed within the room. From the sound of the echo, it was large. Maybe twenty paces by twenty paces. “Man, shut the fuck up with that shit, man! I got, like, eighty silver from that last hit. Eighty, man! They were so scared, man, I probably coulda convinced them to pay me a fuckin’ gold! Fuckin’ nobodies, man, don’t know shit about shit. Don’t know what the business is like.”
Another laughed back. “Eighty?! Man, you’re fucked up, man. You had to be, what, holdin’ ‘em at swordpoint or somethin’ man, right?”
“Nah, man, I don’t hold clients up. Sword’s for the targets, you know what I’m saying? Guess they probably did see the blood on it though, huh?” He laughed. “Clients pay well when you show them the fruits of what they’re payin’ you to do, I guess.”
“I should start bringing heads as proof, man! I’ll start getting gold coins per body from those fuckers!”
“Quiet down, you two,” a new voice said. It was deep and gravelly, filling the entire room with every word. “And you will not show fucking heads to our fucking clients. We have to at least pretend to have standards.”
“Right, sir.”
“Uh, yeah, uh, sorry, sir.”
The room quieted down after that. Three voices total. Three threats. One of them—the deep one—was most likely the target. That meant two enemy combatants? However, there could be more that were silent during that conversation.
“Mission time?” Keiki whispered.
“...Zero one two nine.”
It would likely be unwise for her to stay and wait to find out if there were more threats within. Not only was the time ticking away, but there was also the chance of someone entering the hall she was in. She would simply have to make due with limited information. And, really, her assessment of these individuals was that they simply weren’t threats. The way they spoke, the way they seemed to act, it was clear they were completely unprofessional. And someone who couldn’t act professional—someone without standards—was simply incapable of acting with enough competence to ever pose a threat to anyone who knew what they were doing.
Keiki pushed the door open a hair wider, so she could peek through. Her initial assessment on the room’s size had been right, she saw—though it was longer downward than she thought. Running down the two side edges were canals of water from the sewers, and sitting around at tables scattered haphazardly throughout the whole room were individuals. The people she’d heard talking, plus some more.
And sitting down at the far end of that room was a chair, with a desk. And sitting in that chair, at that desk, was a large man with a large beard. His skin was browned and bumpy, though his head was smoothly bald.
“Someone get me a glass of ethanol, huh?” his gruff voice shouted out to the room.
There were some grumblings, but two individuals stood up and walked over to a bar at the side of the dark room. If he was drinking straight ethanol, his Endurance was probably sky-high. Though he could also just be a mid-Level drunkard.
While those people were grabbing him that drink, Keiki slipped into the room. It was borderline completely devoid of light, thankfully, only lit by sparse torches—not even magical illumination. And she was, of course, wearing her Shade Cloak, meaning she’d be scarcely spotted unless she entered the brighter spots near the tables.
As she crept across the wall by the door, she counted threats.
“One, two, three, four, five…six, counting the target,” she whispered. “Engaging in attempt to bring down to…two, before negotiations.”
Slowly, she moved up toward the first threat, nearest to her. Older male, probably aged fifty-five. No weapons, meaning either Unclassed or Magic-Type. Elderly Magic-Types were always troublesome, of course, due to all that time that can be spent practicing for Spell XP. Though none of that practice could ever get them any more Health, so they were practically begging to be the first victims in an ambush.
As a Hybrid-Type, the Samurai Class got the privilege of receiving both Martial Arts and Spells—however at a reduced rate for both. But Keiki’s particular blend of ingredients in her Status cooked up a particularly swift, and unnoticed, death. For just about anyone who caught themselves on the wrong end of her blade.
First up was her Spell, Silence.
The room around her went dead quiet. Though nobody was trying to speak right now, so it went unnoticed.
Then her second Spell, Guided Strike, greatly increasing the damage of her next attack.
Next up would be her first Martial Art. One which also greatly increased the damage of her next attack—even more than the Spell—but only if the target wasn’t looking at you when you hit.
So she waited a moment, then another, then another, for the perfect time to activate…and…
“Engaging.”
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