Chapter 35: Executioners of the Number Caste
The glowing red iron hinges of the wooden warehouse door did not just melt. They exploded. A massive blast of heat instantly turned the thick wooden door into burning splinters and gray ash. The shockwave threw Sili hard against the brick wall. The skinny information broker yelped in pain, quickly scrambling on his hands and knees to hide under the collapsed halves of the wooden table.
Kanos did not flinch. He did not even blink. He kept his eyes locked on the empty air in front of him. His hands moved frantically like a madman, pulling the invisible shadow threads to complete his deadly trap.
Through the burning doorway, three tall figures stepped into the basement. They moved with terrifying synchronization. They wore identical silver helmets with the single pierced eye emblem carved deeply into the metal. Thick gray cloaks covered their heavy metallic armor. The air around their bodies shimmered slightly, warping the light due to the extreme heat radiating from their gear.
"Target anomaly verified," the man in the center spoke. His voice sounded entirely robotic, completely stripped of human emotion and muffled by the heavy helmet. "Commencing eradication sequence."
Belida roared loudly. The giant knight did not wait for the enemy to finish their sentence or cast a spell. He lunged forward with explosive speed. He swung his massive black steel sword with both hands in a wide arc. The heavy blade cut through the thick smoke in the room, aiming straight to decapitate the center Executioner.
The Executioner simply raised his left arm. A heavy metal gauntlet glowing with bright orange runes caught Belida’s sword head on.
CLANG. The sound of metal hitting a magical barrier echoed violently, making Kanos’s ears ring. The sheer force of Belida’s heavy swing made the stone floor beneath the Executioner’s boots crack instantly. But the masked man did not take a single step back. He absorbed the impact completely.
Sili covered his ears under the table ruins. "Boss! Those are Aegis cloaks!" Sili yelled in absolute panic. "They have passive kinetic barriers! Pure physical attacks will bounce right off their center mass! You have to aim for the joints!"
"Pest," the Executioner muttered coldly. He shoved his glowing palm forward.
A blast of pure kinetic fire slammed squarely into Belida’s chest. The giant knight was violently thrown backward, his boots skidding across the stone floor. He crashed hard into a thick wooden pillar near the corner of the room. The pillar splintered under his massive weight, dropping more dust from the ceiling. Belida coughed violently, patting down the burning embers on his leather armor.
Papuyu moved. The injured hitman darted out from the dark shadows behind the intruders. She completely ignored the agonizing pain from her burned shoulder. She slid gracefully across the dusty floor, aiming her dark steel daggers right at the tiny gaps in the second Executioner’s knee armor.
Sparks flew wildly. Her daggers bounced right off an invisible force field surrounding the silver armor. The second Executioner looked down at her. He casually swung a heavy iron mace downward, aiming to crush her head. Papuyu kicked the floor and rolled away just in time. The mace smashed a deep crater into the stone floor where her head had been a second ago.
Papuyu leaped back, breathing heavily. Her daggers were slightly chipped. Sili was right. These royal dogs were built like walking tanks.
Kanos gritted his teeth. The headache was splitting his skull into tiny pieces. Blood continuously dripped from his nose and chin, staining his gray shirt. His vision was blurring badly. He only needed three more seconds. The pitch black threads of the Bone Cutting Puppet String were almost perfectly woven across the entire room. He just needed to lock the final anchor points firmly to the stone floor.
The third Executioner noticed Kanos standing in the back of the room. The masked man raised his right hand, pointing an open palm straight at Kanos’s face. A blindingly bright orange light gathered rapidly in the center of his glove. The air crackled with raw magical energy. He was preparing to fire a high density heat ray right at Kanos’s head.
"Belida!" Kanos shouted. His voice cracked terribly from the extreme mental strain.
The giant knight forced his aching body up immediately. Belida threw his massive frame right into the direct line of fire. The heat ray blasted forward with a loud screech. Belida raised Kanos’s black greatsword horizontally like a makeshift shield.
The blinding orange light hit the broad side of the sword. The extreme temperature instantly heated the black steel. The intense heat bled straight through Belida’s thick leather gloves, severely burning his palms. The giant man grunted loudly in deep pain. He planted his boots firmly into the stone floor, grinding his teeth together, completely refusing to let the deadly beam bypass him and hit Kanos. The smell of burning leather and singed flesh filled the cramped room.
"Got it," Kanos whispered hoarsely.
He pulled his left hand down sharply. The final invisible knot locked perfectly into place. The entire complex web of shadow threads tightened across the room simultaneously.
"Down!" Kanos yelled with all the air left in his burning lungs.
Belida instantly dropped his sword and threw his massive body flat onto his stomach. Papuyu kicked the brick wall and launched herself backward, flattening her body completely against the dusty floor. Sili squeezed his eyes shut and hugged the ground under the broken table.
The three Executioners did not understand the sudden command. The one in the center took a highly confident step forward, raising his glowing gauntlet to finish Belida off while the knight was down.
The moment his heavy iron boot shifted forward, he triggered the invisible trap.
A horrifying, high pitched screech of metal scraping aggressively against metal filled the basement. The pitch black shadow threads caught the tiny gaps in the Executioners’ armor joints. Knees. Elbows. Shoulders. Ankles. Necks. The incredibly thin threads snagged onto everything moving in the room above ground level.
The center Executioner tried to force his arm forward to cast another spell. The thread did not snap. The extreme density of Kanos’s pure smoke ink held firm. Instead, the hair thin shadow thread easily sliced straight through the magical kinetic barrier. It bit deep into the heavy silver armor and cut mercilessly into the flesh and bone underneath.
The man let out a muffled scream of pure agony. Bright red blood sprayed forcefully from the tiny gaps in his silver armor. He instinctively tried to pull his leg back to retreat. That panicked movement only caused the invisible threads around his knees to tighten further, cleanly slicing through his leg tendons.
Within two agonizing seconds, all three high level Executioners were completely frozen in place. They were tangled helplessly in a deadly, invisible web. Every single tiny movement they made caused the heavy shadow threads to cut deeper and deeper into their muscles and bones. The glowing runes on their gauntlets slowly dimmed and died out as their focus shattered from the extreme pain.
The chaotic room suddenly went completely dead silent. The only sound left was the heavy, exhausted breathing of Belida on the floor, and the steady dripping of blood hitting the cold stones.
Kanos stood up slowly. His legs were shaking terribly from the massive mana drain. He wiped the fresh blood from his nose using his thumb. He walked slowly past Belida, carefully stepping exactly in the safe zones of his own thread pattern. He stopped right in front of the center Executioner.
The masked man was trembling violently. He was trapped standing up, completely unable to even twitch a single finger without slicing his own throat open against the invisible wire pressing against his neck.
"Level sixty," Kanos said coldly. His empty, tired eyes stared deeply at the bloody silver helmet. "You dogs rely way too much on your system stats."
Kanos reached out his left hand. He grabbed the front of the Executioner’s silver helmet. The metal was still searing hot from the magic, but Kanos did not care about the heat burning his palm. He pulled his face closer.
"Now," Kanos whispered with a chillingly flat tone. "Tell me exactly how many more of your friends the Bureau sent to my city."
