Chapter 26: Desperado
With regards to the sheer horror his uncle Miller felt, the name of the Masked Twin Blades had been his absolute living nightmare ever since his sudden return to Tanchapel.
He had never expected that he would be forced to face such an apex predator under his own roof. In his mind, he had originally assumed that this rogue assassin was merely an exclusive adversary of Diapheis and the Bleakhollow Gang, having only liquidated his younger son in passing during that faction war.
After all, a freelance executioner of this caliber was notoriously cruel. To secure his own position, Miller had already reached out to an elite contract killer from the Shadow Spider Network to permanently erase this masked threat.
It’s just that...
"That wretched mercenary! I paid him a king’s ransom, and he still had the audacity to claim he had other high-profile contracts to settle first, promising he would only track down the Masked Twin Blades later tonight!"
Miller wasn’t just consumed by boiling rage; he was completely paralyzed with fear.
How had this monster breached the estate?
What about the high-tier sentry pickets stationed all around the courtyard?
What about his expensive mercenary guards?
"Do not waste your remaining seconds thinking about them. They are already cold," Xander delivered the line with absolute indifference.
Miller let out an involuntary shiver, his bloated frame instantly retreating to cower behind his two towering barbarian bodyguards.
Gnashing his teeth, he spat out, "Who... who is the one that funded your contract?! Are you not aware that I command unimaginable wealth? If you hadn’t slaughtered both of my sons... we could have brokered a highly lucrative partnership!"
His eyes had already turned a bloodshot crimson. Both of his heirs had been wiped out just like that! This masked killer’s execution methods were entirely too ruthless and vicious.
There was no turning back.
"Slaughter him! Cut him down! I want every piece of his flesh fed to the hounds!" Miller shrieked hysterically.
At their employer’s command, the two massive barbarians smoothly unslung their heavy battle-axes from their backs.
Each juggernaut gripped his primary weapon in his right hand while subtly positioning his left hand near his belt, where two balanced throwing hatchets hung ready.
Xander meticulously cataloged their micro-movements.
Through the vast lens of his historical combat experience, he knew with absolute certainty that second-rank barbarians specializing in ranged throwing axes were exceptionally lethal in close quarters.
"Who funded my contract?"
Xander calmly shifted his weight half a step backward, an intentional maneuver that immediately locked the focus of all three adversaries directly onto his silhouette.
"Who is it?! Give me a name!" Miller gestured wildly, temporarily halting his barbarians from launching their immediate physical charge.
"Who else could it possibly be?" Xander’s voice dripped with biting ridicule as he slowly adjusted his posture. "Is it truly possible that you fail to recognize your own bloodline simply because I wear a piece of dark fabric over my face?"
"My dear Uncle?"
"Did this scenario never cross your mind when you systematically poured slow-acting poison into my father’s cup?"
"When you collaborated with the Bleakhollow Gang to orchestrate the total annihilation of my homeland and plot against my very life, did your calculations fail to predict that the Masked Twin Blades would come knocking?"
Xander’s vocal cords shifted back to his normal, unmasked resonance.
Miller’s entire face drained of color, frozen in absolute shock.
"This is impossible!" he gasped, his voice cracking as the familiar tone registered in his ears. "How do you possess this knowledge? You are definitively a useless waste! You have zero arcane aptitude and absolutely no physical martial capability..."
Xander skillfully spun his curved dagger between his fingers, his gaze freezing into chips of ice.
"This merely demonstrates that your analytical capacity misjudged me completely. Just as I once misjudged your character. I found it profoundly difficult to believe that a man could ruthlessly murder his own brother."
Miller’s chest heaved erratically as he struggled for breath.
Within moments, his panicked expression warped back into a sinister, predatory sneer.
"You discovered the truth... so what? I spent a fortune hunting for your corpse across the frontier. Who would have imagined that you would foolishly deliver yourself straight to my doorstep? The moment your life is extinguished here tonight, Redoak Vale becomes my permanent property, along with the grand cosmic secret buried deep beneath the castle tunnels..."
He abruptly severed his own sentence, his pupils violently revolving.
His laughter transformed into something deeply unsettling, cold, and hollow.
"What do two dead sons matter? As long as I secure that ancient relic... Haha! Perhaps your grand intelligence failed to note that I have already been anointed with the divine blessing of the great Serpent-Tongue Cult! You are divinely predestined to perish tonight!"
"Flay him alive!"
He unleashed the final execution order.
The microscopic, slithering vipers rotating inside his irises pulsed with an incredibly bizarre, unnatural energy.
Executing Miller’s absolute command, the two massive barbarians launched a coordinated pincer movement—one surging from the vanguard, the other cutting off the rear flank.
Even though the master study was spacious, it was entirely too claustrophobic for a high-velocity clash between optimized class-holders.
Woosh!
Before the leading barbarian’s primary battle-axe could even close the distance, a pair of throwing hatchets ripped through the air like silver lightning!
These specialized axes were honed to a razor’s edge. For a agile Ranger like Xander, a single clean impact from such a heavy projectile would either result in immediate death or leave his fragile vessel permanently crippled.
Miller’s face twisted into an incredibly smug, malicious grin.
To him, Xander was already a corpse.
To don a dramatic mask merely to terrorize the local peasantry... hmph! You can only play those psychological parlor tricks on unsuspecting civilians.
In reality, however, Xander’s tactical focus had been pinned entirely onto the micro-muscular shifts of the barbarians’ wrists from the very beginning.
The exact millisecond their throwing hatchets left their fingers, he executed his counter-maneuver.
"Ha!"
With a sharp, focused exhale, Xander’s entire physical frame executed a high-speed motion that completely defied the standard laws of gravity.
Launching himself off the solid framework of the window ledge, his boots made seamless contact with the upper ceiling, walking inverted across the room.
In that fleeting split second, not only did Miller freeze, but even the two seasoned barbarians stared upward in absolute, blank bewilderment.
This was the maximum 20 Dexterity threshold specialization skill:
[Anti-Gravity Steps]!
Furthermore, because he was actively engaged against multiple high-threat targets simultaneously, Xander’s specialized combat title, [Chaotic Battle Expert], was active, triggering its passive bonus of [+1 Dexterity].
His physical form became as light and uncatchable as a swallow.
Nimbly traversing the ceiling masonry, he surged forward with preternatural speed, dropping down like a hunting predator from above.
"ROAR!"
The barbarians bellowed, consuming a profound wave of humiliation.
To think that two elite, second-rank combatants were completely unable to pin down a single low-level Ranger was an absolute insult to their martial pride!
They pivoted violently, raising their weapons to cleave Xander as he descended.
Suddenly, two dark streaks erupted from the shadow-casting columns flanking the room, moving like twin phantoms born from the abyss.
Their execution speed was as blinding as fork lightning, impacting the barbarians’ flanks with pinpoint precision.
In a fraction of a second, Xander’s system interface registered both barbarians entering an incredibly compromised, critically weak state.
The tactical layout is successful!
Xander’s mind flared with satisfaction as he perfectly adjusted his trajectory mid-air, plummeting straight into the blind spot of his crippled foes.
With a twin silver gleam flashing from both hands, his curved blades executed a clean, unhindered trajectory, shearing both barbarians’ heads from their shoulders in a single fluid motion.
Plop! Plop!
Arterial blood erupted in violent torrents, completely drenching Xander’s dark stealth attire in a deep, crimson wash.
He casually wiped the flat of his daggers against the fabric of his trousers, his cold, unblinking gaze locking instantly onto the trembling Miller.
In that moment, he looked precisely like a demonic sovereign emerging directly from a fresh pool of slaughter.
"How... how can this be real?"
It was as if Miller was staring directly into the visage of an old god of death.
Watching his two high-tier [Berserkers] get liquidated before his eyes like simple livestock, his mind completely rejected the reality of the battlefield.
This had to be a high-level hallucination!
Stumbling backward three paces, his legs gave out, and he collapsed heavily onto the velvet cushions of the sofa.
It was only then that his frantic eyes caught sight of two faint, exhausted silhouettes slowly disentangling themselves from the barbarians’ corpses.
They were elves.
Both of them appeared to be in an exceptionally deteriorated physical state, their postures swaying unsteadily as they leaned against each other.
"You have executed your parameters flawlessly. Evacuate to a secure safehouse, stabilize your vitals, and undergo complete recovery before reporting back to my position," Xander instructed in a flat, even tone.
Kael Amber and Sera Agate offered a weak nod of acknowledgment, melting back into the ambient shadows as they supported each other’s weight.
A wave of realization finally washed over Miller’s panicked mind.
Xander had intentionally utilized his own high-velocity ceiling maneuver to monopolize the barbarians’ visual field, allowing his two hidden elven assets to creep up their flanks completely unmonitored.
Under normal circumstances, given a barbarian’s freakish physical constitution, if they had successfully initiated their active class feature, [Ancestral Blessing], their damage mitigation would have rendered them just as difficult to assassinate as an armored vanguard unit of the same tier.
However, they had fundamentally underestimated a Level 3 Ranger.
They had focused 100% of their operational awareness on Xander, leaving their blind spots wide open to the creeping executioners in the dark.
This was the absolute tactical mastery of a legendary former player.
Xander never engaged in reckless, unstructured brawling; his tactical formulas and strategic traps were always engineered to the highest professional tier.
The elite Phantom Assassin class possessed a high-risk, game-breaking capability: [Desperate Strike].
[Class Skill Activated: Desperate Strike]
[Skill Parameters: Systematically bypasses 100% of a target’s physical and magical defensive values, instantly forcing the target vessel into a near-death/critical state.]
While it was undeniably a god-tier execution feature that drew countless players to the assassin class in the old days, its mechanical drawbacks were exceptionally severe.
Upon successful activation, the user’s vessel was automatically forced into a profoundly weakened state for a minimum of fifteen days.
This implied that Xander’s two elite elven retainers were completely locked out of the theater of war for the next half-month, their own survival metrics entering a highly vulnerable threshold.
Furthermore, [Desperate Strike] did not guarantee a 100% mechanical hit rate.
Had those barbarians been even slightly more cautious and pre-emptively activated their physical blessings, they might have narrowly avoided the fatal drop triggered by that life-gambling capability.
Xander’s strategic deployment had been an immense gamble.
Fortunately, his battlefield RNG was immaculate, and the execution loop closed perfectly.
[System Notification: High-Value Targets Neutralized — 2x Level 6 Berserkers]
[Battle Experience Allocated: +480 EXP Secured]
That classic, high-tier feeling of securing the perfect last-hit was profoundly satisfying.
Command over two bound subordinates possessing this degree of absolute loyalty convinced Xander that sacrificing his hard-earned divine offering to the altar had been an incredible investment.
"What remaining arguments do you wish to present to the court?" Xander asked, his cold gaze pinning Miller to the sofa.
Every ounce of loose fat on the merchant’s body trembled violently.
"You... you cannot execute me! I am a consecrated brother of the Serpentine Cult of Doom! If you sever my life-thread, Sir King Cobra will utilize our dark tracking hexes to hunt you down and transform your living carcass into a mindless thrall!"
Miller seemed to clamp his jaws around this final shard of desperate hope, thrashing wildly against the cushions.
"That’s right! You lack the courage to strike me down!"
A nervous, unhinged laugh bubbled past his lips as his bravado returned.
"I personally counseled your arrogant father to submit his lineage to the grand mysteries of the Serpentine Cult of Doom, but the old fool actually dismissed our divine faith as nothing more than an unholy heresy! It was only natural that I engineered his assassination! He possessed the audacity to insult our supreme order—he earned his grave! And you are nothing more than a wretched little bastard. Sir King Cobra will exact a terrible vengeance for my blood!"
Xander looked down at the screaming man, his eyes reflecting nothing but cold pity.
"Completely brainwashed by a low-tier heretical cult... Do you honestly believe an experienced player like me would initiate a raid without checking the operational counters? The Serpent-Tongue Cult indeed possesses an esoteric spiritual hex designed to track an executioner’s biological signature. But I am deeply sorry to inform you—I happen to hold perfect knowledge on how to completely insulate against it."
Xander delivered a devastating strike to Miller’s jaw to silence him, before drawing a clean, jagged dagger from his belt.
Without a shred of hesitation, he drove the steel ruthlessly into the merchant’s eyes, piercing the two ethereal slithering vipers rotating within his pupils.
"AHHHHHHH!"
A blood-curdling, agonized shriek echoed through the grand room.
And right outside the shattered bay window, the brilliant amber flames of arson were already roaring into the midnight sky.
Chaos had officially consumed the estate.
