The criminal writhed on the floor, a raw howl echoing off the ruins of the old structure. Blood streamed from the stump where his hand had been, spattering the gray stone a vivid red. His eyes, glassy and blown wide, flicked upward, and terror swallowed his face whole. His pale chin trembled as he stared up at the two figures looming over him, Luke and the armored knight at his side.

The knight's black armor and helm crowned with two burning red lights like live coals made the criminal's breath hitch. For a moment he thought he was looking at a Midnight Warden. Luke leaned in, the weight of his kukri resting against the man's throat. The cold edge made the criminal flinch.

"Who sent you? Was it Bartholomew?" His voice was low and even, sharp as the blade itself.

"B-Bastion? No!" The man lifted the bloody stump as if it could shield him. "Help me, please, it hurts like hell!"

Luke answered with a flat punch to the face. The sound cracked through the narrow alley.

"Answer. Who sent you?"

"Nobody! All right? We just heard about the new Safe Zone and came for the chests!" Blood flecked his lips, hands shaking.

Luke's expression didn't change. He twisted the blade and drove it into the man's thigh. The scream was almost animal. Another punch, something in his nose snapped with a wet pop. Luke pressed a finger to the man's swollen eyelid, the nail digging into tender flesh.

"Nobody? You really going to lie to me? I'll rip your eye out with my fingers," he murmured, too softly to sound like a threat. It came out like a promise.

"Wait!" the man gasped. "I'm not from Bastion or any of that crap! We're just a big gang going after the loot! I'm not alone, there are a lot of us out here. Please, don't kill me, I'll cooperate!"

"There are more of you?"

"Yes! Come on, I'm talking!"

Luke exhaled slowly. He stepped back, easing the blade.

"All right," he said at last.

But before the man could register relief, Luke reversed the kukri and drove it clean through his skull. By reflex the man tried to raise the hand he no longer had. He was dead before he hit the ground.

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

Luke wiped the blade on the corpse's cloak.

"Well. If there are more bastards out there, I'll just pick another prisoner," he muttered, stepping away.

Eleanor appeared out of the shadows, bow already in hand, eyes scanning. Snow clung to loose strands of her hair.

"I'm going to see where the rest of the attacks are happening," Luke said, sliding the kukri back into place.

"I'm coming with you." She adjusted the quiver on her back.

They ran side by side through the narrow streets. In moments, bells began tolling from different corners of the Safe Zone, iron voices echoing off stone walls. An alarm. A warning. The attackers were everywhere. Luke frowned. This wasn't random. It was coordinated. Whoever planned it not only knew about the Safe Zone, they'd timed it perfectly.

Maybe Bartholomew is behind this, pulling strings through some gang leader, moving pawns around the board. If that's true, there's a good chance these goons don't even know the real objective behind tonight's attack.

It didn't matter. For Luke, only one thing did: helping. The more allies who fell, the harder it would be to survive what was still coming. He climbed the ruined structure in a rush, using broken beams and loose stones as makeshift steps. Across from him, Eleanor had already drawn an arrow, sighting along the direction where one of the bells was ringing.

"I'll go ahead," Luke called back, his voice low and hard. "I'm faster."

He didn't wait for an answer. His boots hit the parapet and, in one smooth motion, he triggered the Spider Leap. The world tilted as he sprang, cape snapping open to catch the air. He glided from rooftop to rooftop, each landing a springboard into the next jump. From below, he was just a streak of black darting across the buildings, fast, predatory, relentless.

When he reached the source of the alarm, chaos waited. Haven soldiers crouched behind piles of rubble, trying to weather a barrage of fireballs. Farther ahead, a knot of raiders had broken from the main fight and were swarming a Safe Zone chest, cracking it open like carrion birds picking at a carcass. Classic misdirection: noise on one side, theft on the other.

Five of them were already pawing through the loot.

Luke pulled a bow from his inventory. Time to test something new. These idiots would make perfect targets.

[Mana Points (MP): 4759/4780]

He began shaping an Acid Blood Arrow, Dark Blood merging with Mother Freya's blood. Two dark liquids coiled together into a spine of venomous thorns. He pushed further, flooding it with mana until it quivered on the edge of collapse.

The blood stopped drinking mana. The arrow had formed, different now, blacker at the tip, trailing a smoky haze as though the air itself was corroding around it.

[Health Points (HP): 4200/4200] [Health Points (HP): -100] [Health Points (HP): 4100/4200]

[Mana Points (MP): 4759/4780] [Mana Points (MP): -1500] [Mana Points (MP): 3259/4780]

Instead of the arrow consuming 1,000 mana as it normally would, it took 1,500 to conjure. Yet Luke could feel something was different now. The tip of the arrow was even darker and releasing a black vapor, as if the acid itself were evaporating. Luke's mouth curved into a thin smile. The acid's power no longer just pulsed inside the arrow, it was swelling, saturating every inch of it. Its glow had turned a sickly, lethal green, pure acid given form.

He drew the bowstring back slowly, feeling the pressure build, mana coursing through his veins as the weapon trembled with potential. His breath stilled. For a heartbeat the world narrowed to a single point: the raiders clustered around the chest.

He released.

The arrow didn't just fly; it hissed through the air like a living thing, cutting through the darkness. When it struck, the world cracked open in an explosion of dark green acid. The thick cloud rolled outward, choking and corrosive, devouring air, stone, and flesh alike.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The raiders screamed, clutching at their throats as the burning worked its way inside. Panic shoved greed aside, breaking their formation. On the rooftops, the fireball casters spun toward the chaos just in time to see a black shape drop among them. Luke landed on the tiles with both kukris drawn, descending like a verdict delivered in steel.

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

From the chest came more strangled cries. The green mist ate everything. Bodies staggered, clothes and flesh melting off bone before they toppled.

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

[You have slain a human] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

[You have slain a human…] [+1 Soul Fragment acquired]

The stench of acid thickened the air. Even at a distance Luke could see shredded faces, exposed tissue, pale bone gleaming through. The acid hadn't only eaten them from the outside. Their screams made it clear it was devouring lungs and organs too.

He drew a long breath. It had worked. The new version of the arrow was far deadlier than before. Luke landed with surgical precision, wiping the blood from his kukris onto a fallen enemy's cloak. Silence crept back over the street, broken only by the ragged coughing inside the green haze.

"You all right?" he called to the three soldiers crouched behind the rubble.

"We're… alive, but my leg's broken," one of them muttered, face pale and drawn tight with pain.

Luke's gaze slid to the other. "Can you get him back?"

They nodded, eyes still locked on the carnage spilling out in front of them.

"Go straight. Forget the chest. I'll finish sweeping the area," he ordered, voice flat but unyielding.

"Thank you," one whispered before limping off, supporting his injured comrade. Shock clung to their faces.

The cloud began to thin. A cold wind stirred, spreading the metallic, acidic stench across the street. As the haze cleared, the aftermath revealed itself: bodies warped beyond recognition, faces turned into raw masks, clothes rotted down to stringy tatters. Some arms were nothing but bone. The arrow's lethality had gone far beyond what he'd imagined.

"They suffocated on the acid," he muttered under his breath. "Lungs, organs… all gone."

"Hahahaha," Franky laughed. "I just remembered myself, oh how fun it was to throw acid at my enemies."

Luke didn't answer. He sheathed the kukris and moved on, senses sharpened. The attacks hadn't stopped. Somewhere nearby, others were still fighting for their lives, and he needed to get there before it was too late.

***

The night offered no reprieve. Five attacks erupted at once across the Safe Zone, and by the time dawn began to bleed over the horizon, the toll was grim: four wounded and one dead from the Haven's side. The captured raiders all swore to the same story—they were hunters drawn by rumors of the new Safe Zone, camped nearby to scout and wait for the Reward Event. They claimed they hadn't come to kill, only to distract and snatch the chests while everyone else was looking away.

Maybe it was true. Maybe it was just the kind of convenient story cornered men tell. Either way, the tactic had worked. In multiple pockets of the Safe Zone, chests had been looted without a fight. And no one knew if the assault had been ordered directly by Bartholomew or was simply a probe—an experiment to test the Haven's response, chart its weaknesses, measure its powers.

Luke turned the thought over while moving through the wreckage. Frost crusted the ground, mirroring a starless sky. Whatever the king of Bastion's intentions were, Luke cared far less about motive than about outcome. If the chance ever came, Bartholomew would not get a clean death.

His mind drifted toward darker possibilities: cutting off the king's arms and legs, leaving him behind in Bastion on the final day while everyone else escaped. Letting him rule over nothing, starving, abandoned. It felt almost poetic— a king without a kingdom, a throne made of ash.

But first, there was Kruger. The assassin who'd slipped away. After him, yes… then Bartholomew.

***

"I just hope we don't regret this later," Mason muttered, breaking the silence that had settled over the hall. His voice was weighted, as if it already carried the consequences.

The group had gathered inside the old hotel, now converted into a makeshift headquarters. They hadn't chosen the spot only for its neutrality. It sat on the edge of the Safe Zone, far from Bastion yet familiar to all of them. The building offered escape routes, vantage points for lookouts, and memories that could be turned to their advantage.

Snow drifted past the windows in slow, lazy flakes. Outside, ordinary residents moved about with hopeful expressions. To them, this meeting was a milestone, a step toward returning to Earth, a sign of progress. They had no idea how close their leaders stood to the blade's edge.

Luke remained by the window, scanning the streets below. He caught glimpses of discreet patrols, people positioning themselves on rooftops and corners. Eleanor, Allison, Mason and the other leaders were spread throughout the hall. At the center, a long table had been laid with food, empty chairs waiting for their guests.

His mind churned through contingencies: abduction, ambush, a frontal assault. Bartholomew was a living chessboard in his head, and he was already plotting ways to dismantle him. Cut off his legs, drag him into orc territory, leave him in the mantis cave. The scenarios spun like blades.

"They're here," someone called, stepping inside.

Luke shifted away from the window, a chill tightening his stomach, not fear but calculation. He knew that during the meeting he wouldn't have the focus to dodge an arrow from some hidden window. He had to be ready.

"No weapons in sight," someone barked outside.

As if that would change anything.

The door swung open. Soldiers from Bastion crossed the lobby with steady, deliberate steps. Silence deepened. Ronan was the first to enter, his eyes sweeping the room, taking stock of every face.

"Lady Rhiannon," he said to Allison, "I come on behalf of Bartholomew to confirm there will be no attack from our side. Can you give me your word you won't try anything?"

"You have my word," Allison answered without pause. "Is Erza with you?"

"Lady Grimhart doesn't bother herself with matters like this," Ronan replied. "But she did find it amusing that one of you infiltrated Bastion disguised as one of her servants. She sent word that she won't tolerate it again."

With that, he stepped back out the door. For a moment, the Haven's leaders exchanged looks of quiet relief. Erza's absence meant one less immediate threat. But danger still lingered. The group arriving next would be Bastion's elite, powerful people, maybe as lethal as Luke with his Acid Blood Arrow. The tension in the room buzzed like static.

"You seem awfully calm," Eleanor murmured.

"I'm thinking about caves to relax in," Luke replied, eyes fixed on the entrance.

He could feel the weight of the promise he'd made to himself. Paul was dead. Kruger and Bartholomew were next. Only then would Angelica be avenged.

Ronan reappeared, this time flanked by two soldiers. And then, just behind them, Kruger stepped through the doorway. Every leader in the room went rigid, the air shrinking until it felt like the walls were closing in. Kruger wasn't just another killer. He was the kind who could slip through space itself. Luke sharpened his senses like a predator catching a scent. Charlie was tucked safely inside his soul; he couldn't risk exposing her now.

"Hello, Eleanor," Kruger said, his voice dripping venom. "How's the little rat these days? I knew I should've killed you back then."

"The only rat here is you," Luke cut in, his tone like ice. "You're the one who ran from me with your tail between your legs."

Kruger's gaze snapped toward him, fingers curling tight, but Luke didn't blink.

"But if you want to pick up where we left off, be my guest. Just don't run like last time," Luke said.

Eyes turned toward him. Even Allison's brow ticked upward in warning.

"Sorry, Kruger," Luke went on with a faint smile. "See? They're starting to pity you."

"You bastard," Kruger snarled. "You just got lucky that day. Nothing more."

The tension thickened, electric. Then the door behind them opened again. The rasp of metal against stone and the hush that followed said everything about who was coming. Bartholomew, king of Bastion, stepped inside. The door shut with a heavy thud. Torches flickered, stretching shadows along the walls. Smoke and cold drifted into the room, biting at the edges of every breath.

Bartholomew lifted his chin, opened his mouth to speak, and said…

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