B5 Chapter 561: Retrieving Some Books, Finale (Patreon)

Shining steel cleaved through Kaius’s chest with a crunch. Even his armour, a second-tier artefact, wasn’t enough to completely deflect the attack. Deeper and deeper it went, burning him from the inside out with an all-consuming agony.

The simple weight of it drove every scrap of air from his lungs, spraying the cold stone red droplets. He went to gasp, but his lungs filled only with blood — torn open by the trap.

The axe dug deeper. Any further, and his pounding heart would press up on its razor edge.

Kaius gripped the haft of the axe so hard that he could feel the wood splintering under his grip. The trap was a Silver killer — backed by enough force that anyone else would have been cut immediately in two.

Not him. His armour, though torn and broken, slowed the initial momentum of the strike. His ribs, reinforced by Constitution and Brotherhood of Ichor and Animus, nestled his organs in a steel-like cage.

“Kaius!” Kenva screamed from behind him.

Kaius pushed, driving his legs down as he hauled against the axe — stopping it dead before it could cut through his heart. Blood fell from his chest in a wave, welling up around the axe head to flow through intricately carved runes.

Gritting his teeth, he slammed the axe back. It popped out of his chest with wet slap. Health roared, his entire chest boiling as ribs reformed in a series of soft snaps.

The rogue watched on, frozen. Through the haze of smoke and pain, Kaius stared her dead in her amber eyes. She let out a soft gasp.

It was all Kenva needed. An arrow ripped through the smoke, churning up an eddy current in its path. 

The rogue’s left elbow splattered, half of her arm falling to the ground. A damned good shot when Kaius knew that his friend was well and truly firing blind. 

“What’d I get?” Kenva asked as the woman screamed.

“Her elbow,” Kaius replied, bringing his fist down on the thick haft of the axe trap. It shattered, and he tossed it to the side.

“Damn, a low shot. I was aiming for her bicep.”

Kaius barked out a laugh — only for a glob of blood to gush from his mouth. Right, he had a sucking chest wound. 

The rogue ran, clutching at her stump as she stared at them in naked fear. No matter — she’d be even easier to follow now that she was bleeding like a stuck pig.

Kaius gave chase, strands of muscle snaking across the hole in his torso like they were being woven by a legion of ghostly spiders. By the time he had reached the end of the hall, he was whole once more.

The wound was a reminder to pay attention to his footing. The rogue had abandoned any pretence of diverting them with simple alchemicals. Though she still dropped a smokebomb every minute or so, there was no more fire, acid, or anything truly dangerous. 

Twice more Kaius’s Skills latched on to a specific stone, and he slipped past them at pace. Then they rounded a corner and hit a set of stairs. It went down — but through the darkness and smoke, a familiar brick tunnel lay open.

The stormwater drains. They were free — and it was time to put this farce to bed.

Rather than carefully check every stair for another trap, Kaius leapt — sailing clean down the stairwell. At the last moment before he touched down, a Shunt exploded behind him. He sailed out, skirting right above the floor as he shot through the open doorway.

Kaius jolted as he heard a savage scream from his right. 

The rogue, lying in wait. She had a dagger in her remaining hand — its blade warping as she plunged it right for his eye.

Reacting on instinct, Kaius stopped himself dead with the secondary blast of his Shunt. That wave of force alone sent the rogue staggering.

He booted her in the chest at full strength, his heart pounding. Ribs crunched like sugar-glass under his heel.

The amber-eyed woman hit the far wall of the tunnel with a sickening crack, falling to the ground bonelessly. Blood streaked the wall behind her, more pouring in a wave from her mouth.

Her chest was caved in. Shit — he’d hit her way too hard.

The wound was healing. Given the shiny new stump the rogue had, she must have taken a healing tonic at some point while they were running. It might just keep the woman alive — long enough for them to learn a few things, at least.

“Hells, Kaius,” Kenva muttered, staring at the state of the rogue as she reformed from a cloud of leaves at the entrance to the storm drains.

The woman was breathing shallowly, and she spat out a mouthful of blood as she glared in their direction. Kaius had no idea how long that would last. After losing her arm, her health had to be shot — rogues weren’t exactly known for their Constitution. 

Regardless, she wasn’t escaping any time soon. Judging by the way her legs were splayed out at awkward angles, the woman’s spine had broken when she’d hit the wall.

Stepping forwards, he crouched down in front of her.

“It’s over. Give us the books, and tell us where to find Kanmost. We’re not monsters, if you cooperate I'll heal you. You don’t have to end up in the clutches of some lord’s interrogator."

Kaius was under no illusions what awaited the rogue if the guards found her. Clearly, Lord Flowers had taken the loss of Kanmost as a personal attack against him and his house. Nobles weren’t exactly known for being gentle when they thought someone who’d crossed them was hiding something.

The rogue smiled wide, blood staining her teeth a streaked pink. Every breath she took was laboured and painful, but she still chuckled. 

“You’re so fucking green it disgusts me,” she spat, blood tinged spittle mingling with the red that already saturated Kaius’s armour. “You haven’t thought this through, have you? You’re going to what? Hold me prisoner? No you won't — even a blind fool could tell you that is an absurd risk, and I doubt you have the ability to hold me without raising a few eyebrows.”

Kaius simply raised his brow at the rogue. While he wasn’t inclined to, he was damned certain that Guilewind would throw the woman in a cell if he asked. At least for long enough that they could rescue Kanmost. After that? Well, if the guard decided that a killer-for-hire should hang, what did he care?

“Big words for someone who can’t even walk,” Kaius pointed out.

“Go fuck yourself.”

Kenva scowled at the rogue, and lightly kicked one of the woman’s boneless legs. “Just give us the damn books, it’s over.”

The rogue let out a low, wet laugh — wincing as her ribs ground audibly against each other with the movement.

“I don’t have the damned books. My job was to fetch them — you were too, damned, slow,” the rogue hissed, her amber eyes burning with delight. “You’re so bloody clueless. No hope of getting them now — Brokenlight will have them before you ever have a hope of getting them again.”

Gods’ scorn, the other woman must have been the one they’d overhead talking. A moment later, he paused. Brokenlight — that was a Goldname. Useful info, at least, though he was confident that he and his team could deal with that sort of threat.

The rogue mistook his interest for hesitation. She chuckled again, though far quieter this time. “Oh yes. You might be Silver freaks — but Gold? Onyx at that? May as well give up now.”

Onyx? Kaius stared at the woman, his frown deepening. So Flowers really wasn’t behind Kanmost’s disappearance. Still, he wanted more. The Onyx weren’t a monolith — more of a loosely connected web of black market operators. Mercenary bastards to the last, someone must have hired this Brokenlight.

Gods’, if only he could claw the secrets from the rogues skull. It was clear she was only saying as much as she thought would throw them off.

Once again, the rogue seemed to mistake his feelings on the matter.

“What? You scared? You should be. It really should have been obvious from the start that you were in over your head. Who else would have the balls to pull off something like this right under the nose of a fucking Duke?”

Kaius ignored her attempts to shake his confidence. “Who hired you — or Brokenlight, for that matter.”

“You think I know?” The rogue scowled at him, her growing pallor making her look skeletal and twisted in the low halflight.  If he was going to get anything more from her, he’d need to do something about her wounds. 

Flicking through his ring, Kaius pulled out  one of the stronger healing tonics he had on hand — a square bottle of shimmering yellow liquid that glowed faintly in the dark. A moment later, the rogue tensed, clutching at her chest.

Lurching forwards, Kaius was about to pour the tonic down the woman’s throat when the sound of breaking glass registered. He jumped back, landing next to Kenva, who’d already nocked and drawn — the woman was dead if she thought she could pull off another trick.

Instead of an explosion, Kaius saw a noxious green fluid seeping between the woman’s fingers. It dripped straight into her half-pulped chest, vapours rising in steady streams.

A single whiff told him what he already knew.

*Ding! You have Resisted an Affliction! Poison — Wracking End (Tier I)*

“Poison, get back!” Kaius urged his friend, who stepped warily away from the rising fumes.

He stared down at the rogue as she started to seize — her back arching, even as her legs stayed dead and limp. She stared him down the entire time.

“Why would you do that?” he whispered, not quite believing that she had ended all hope of her survival so mercilessly. “I really would have healed you.”

“Fuck you,” she forced out as blood seeped from her mouth. He could hear her throat swelling shut.

It took her a minute and a half to die. Kaius felt compelled to watch, unwilling to leave the rogue's final moments unwitnessed — even if he could hear the distant sound of shouting voices growing slightly louder.

“Kaius, we need to go — if the guards find our trail, it’s going to be impossible to slip the net, even from these tunnels.”

He nodded, before he leaned forward to undo the rogue’s spatial potion bandoleer. Its well-loved leather buckles were slick with the woman’s blood. Unfortunately, he couldn’t put the thing inside of his ring, so it had to come off.

Throwing the bandoleer over his shoulder, he vanished the woman’s corpse. He didn’t have time to search her possessions, and there was a slim chance she might have some stashed away orders or directions. Plus, he didn’t want to give the guards any more hints to their identities than he had to. 

The bandolier would be useful in its own right. Quick access to tonics was valuable, especially when fetching them from a storage ring took time and attention that could better be spent elsewhere in the heat of battle. He’d analyse it later — worst came to worst, it would still sell for a decent amount. Spatial items always did.

“Back to the Crown?” Kenva asked when he joined her.

He nodded, and they set off down the tunnels at a spirited run. “We’ll need to search that journal you found — but regardless, it seems like we’re heading for that ‘Midnight Crater’ they mentioned. Maybe we can grab a mission from the guild to use as cover for leaving the city,” Kaius said.

Even if they couldn’t manage to tail the courier right to their target, they had a location. A high-mana zone. He really shouldn’t have been surprised — where else would a Place of Power be? 

Hopefully it would have a few creatures strong enough for them to gain a few levels en route. Even if he was confident, it did sound like they would be facing off against Gold before this whole search and rescue fiasco was over.