- One Hour Earlier.
Luger stumbled out of the Guild’s infirmary while leaning his entire dead weight on Laro’s scaly shoulder.
His chest was wrapped tight in layers of bandages with healing jellies beneath, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony of his shattered pride.
He walked with his head down to hide his face from the passing adventurers while his party members formed a protective wall around him.
He had been robbed of his prized sword, humiliated in front of the entire Adventurer’s Guild, and forced to surrender to a rookie.
So just like the small man he was, he went to the only place he knew he could possibly get his revenge.
He limped away from the main thoroughfare, dragging his team into a narrow, sunless alley that ran behind the Guild’s waste disposal chutes.
It was a place that smelled of rotting garbage and dried blood where a trio of the kind of people Luger wished he was sat in the shadows.
Luger stopped before a large, burly man who was leaning against the wall.
And that man was a tapestry of violence, with thick scars covering every inch of his exposed skin, while his two companions, a lanky Human Mage and an Elven Archer, flanked him with bored expressions.
Luger reached into his pouch with a trembling hand before holding out a stack of coins.
"You must’ve heard what happened... I’ll give you six gold coins," Luger wheezed through his gritted teeth. "Arlath, all you gotta do is kill that son of a bitch. You’re a Tier 4 Mid-Stage Warrior, and those two are Tier 3 Late Stage... It should be easy for you to crush that Tier 1."
Arlath looked down at the coins before a mocking grin split his scarred face.
"Word is that bitch has a Greater Dragon," he rumbled with a voice like grinding gravel. "And a real piece of work for a sister... Do I look stupid to you?"
"Kid’s practically Shinkotsu’s golden boy," the Elven Archer chimed in from the shadows.
"Why shouldn’t we just kill you lot and take that gold off your corpses?" The Human Mage behind Arlath asked with a casual, dead-eyed stare. "It would be easier than fighting Greater Dragon... if nothing else."
"But then you’d miss out on the money he has," Luger spat quickly, desperation giving him courage. "The bastard is loaded. He gave that registration bitch two gold coins without batting an eye, like it was copper!"
He saw the flicker of greed in Arlath’s eyes and pressed his advantage.
"And he’s off to the Goblin Nest in the west... Alone. The dragon’s gone to the west. Listen, you can catch him there... or in the forest. Nobody will know!"
The alley went silent for a heartbeat before-
"Is that right...?" Arlath murmured while his grin widened into something truly grotesque.
He pushed off the wall to loom over the injured man before leaning in close to stare into Luger’s eyes with a gleeful cruelty.
With a pounding heart and a sweat-covered back, Luger’s nod was more a tremble than a nod as he said, "Y-yeah... that’s right."
- Present Time.
Nico slumped against the oak tree, fighting to suck oxygen into his stunned lungs while his vision swam in a nauseating blur of gray smoke and green canopy.
He frantically scanned the tree line for the source of the voice, but the only answer was the high-pitched ringing in his ears.
Although his Ice Reinforcement was already stitching his defenses back together with new layers of frost, it did nothing to numb the white-hot rhythm of the second-degree burns pulsing across his side.
This was the worst pain Nico had ever felt.
[Did I... Did I hallucinate?] Nico thought while wiping soot and sweat from his eyes.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself up, ignoring the scream of his scorched skin as he pushed his knees straight.
He barely reached a halfway crouch before-
-Twish-!-Twish-!-Twish-!
Three sharp whistles ripped through the air, followed instantly by the wet thud of impact as three black-feathered arrows plunged straight into the center of his chest.
"Aahh!"
The choked cry tore out of him as the arrows ripped into his sternum, jolting his body violently backward.
Nico limply slid down the trunk, hitting the dirt with a heavy thud as he stared down with wide, trembling eyes at the wooden shafts protruding from his chest.
Slowly, the cold, suffocating wave of genuine fear washed over him, drowning out even the heat of the burns.
For the first time since waking up in this world, Nico bled.
This wasn’t a duel with rules, nor could he just fly away like before; this was an execution.
And the realization that he was completely alone in the woods with no backup settled in his gut just as the bushes directly in front of him parted.
And from the smoke and dust, Arlath stepped out with a confident stride and a grin on his face.
Nico watched the scarred giant approach through a haze of agony, his body too broken to move and his mind paralyzed by the sheer terror of the situation.
Arlath stopped a few feet away, kicking a clod of dirt at Nico’s boot before glancing over his shoulder.
"You sure this is the brat, Voss?" he asked with a bored voice.
"Yeah," the human mage replied, stepping out from behind a tree to point a finger at the shotgun on Nico’s back. "Look at his soul armament... that design, just like Luger said."
"Luger also said he was wearing a blue Samue..." a sharp voice drifted down from the canopy as the Elven Archer revealed himself on a thick branch above. "Fucking idiot can’t even get clothes right..."
Ignoring the chatter, Arlath turned his attention back to his prey before casually grabbing a fistful of Nico’s hair.
He yanked Nico off the ground like a rag, forcing him to his knees, before his other hand clamped around the shafts of the arrows protruding from Nico’s chest.
And with a sadistic grin, he ripped them out of his chest in a single motion, letting loose a fountain of blood across the forest floor.
-AAAAH-Gulk-!
Nico screamed through the fresh wave of blinding agony that convulsed inside his body, before that scream was choked in his throat from the blood that flooded within.
"No way you’re Tier 1..." he grunted before shoving the makeshift shivs forward.
Survival instinct overrode the pain for a split second as Nico threw his hand up in a frantic, panicked frenzy to catch Arlath’s wrist, halting the bloody arrowheads mere inches from his jugular.
But even through the frenzy, Nico felt his strength draining away alongside his blood as his grip trembled against the overwhelming pressure, while the man above him didn’t even look like he was trying.
"Tough little fucker, aren’t ya?" Arlath laughed, his grin widening as he slowly applied more pressure to crush Nico’s resistance.
While Nico felt his vision blurring with each passing second, and then -
-Ding!
{ALERT!
2nd degree burns, shattered sternum, and rapid blood loss from damaged major blood vessels detected!
The host’s condition will reach critical in 120 seconds.
Ice Reinforcement’s effect is rapidly decreasing due to physical trauma.}