Aiden almost rolled his eyes at the irony of Feira’s words. In his past life, Zen had always wished that the Order would never take an interest in his sister. Now, here she was, showing an interest in the Order.
Rometo looked at her. “You would like to join the Order?”
This time Aiden did roll his eyes. “I know she is talented, Rometo, but you and I both know that you only extend the offer to them because of me and my brother.”
“Your brother is interesting enough, but he would not work with the Order.”
“And that is not what I…” Aiden’s voice trailed off as something entered the range of his awareness. It was a simple slip up, a falling rock, maybe even a pebble. “Anyway, that is not what I meant. If you want Feira, understand that you have to accept her regardless of me.”
“You still don’t want to join the Order?” Feira asked, and he looked at her as if she was stupid before he could stop himself.
“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”
“I just figured you didn’t want to join because you didn’t want to leave the group,” she said.
Melvet shook her head. “You will be better guided by the church, child. The Order is not fitting of you.”
“But it can make her something great,” Rometo disagreed.
“It can fit her to itself,” Aiden challenged. “It will not make her great. It will make her a part of something great. There is a difference. She would lose herself to it.”
“The girl shows a strong sense of self,” Rometo disagreed, eyes darting away momentarily to a spot on the wall. “She will stand.”
“He is right about that,” Melvet added, “she just might survive.”
Another piece of rock fell from nowhere. It was followed by a sound that Aiden couldn’t quite put a finger on. He already knew what it was, though. His senses were already going through the dark crevice they were currently in, seeking a way out.
“She won’t survive,” he said simply. “Everyone thinks they have a sense of self strong enough to survive the Order until they blink and its five years later and they have no will of their own, no true will.” He fixed his attention on Rometo. “The version of them before the Order would look at who they have become and not recognize them.”
The Order did not turn people into something evil. It turned them into something more powerful than what they were before they came in. The problem was that it did not mean that they were the same person. There was a reason Order secrets were never spilled. Aiden didn’t know what the reason was, but he knew that whatever it was, it was strong.
Something about the Order just changed people. Maybe it was about the people. Maybe the Order saw something in a person that made them more fitting for the Order. Aiden didn’t know what exactly it was since he had only ever recruited three people into the Order.
Rometo looked away again and Aiden knew that it had nothing to do with the conversation. Next to him, Feira looked at Zen.
“Would you come with me?” she asked.
Zen shrugged. “I can’t say. But I will if you want me to.”
Aiden sighed. Rometo was recruiting.
Wasn’t that fun?
“Question,” Ted said with a raised hand like a child in school. “May I ask?”
Rometo looked at him. “I haven’t known you to not speak when you want to.”
“How cute.” He thumbed at Rometo as if everyone wasn’t already aware of his presence. “Look at this guy, I like him everyday.”
“Fjord,” Aiden said, “we need a fire going.”
He was hoping it wasn’t what he thought was happening, but if it was, he would rather prefer everyone in the room was able to see clearly.
“So,” Ted continued as Fjord bent and made a fire on the spot he had been standing with twigs summoned from a spatial ring and a minor fire spell Aiden had no idea he had learnt. Then again, the boy had the [Mana Mastery] skill so it wasn’t very surprising that he had learnt a spell. And Ted knew a few spells. “Why exactly doesn’t the Order want me?”
“Because the only authority you work well with is your younger brother,” Rometo answered without missing a beat, as if he had since thought about it or the Order had since thought about it. “You also make for a poor leader to some extent. You do not like to lead or follow.”
There was another irony to that. If only Rometo knew that he was talking to a man that had become a [Demon King] and had led a horde of demons to almost bring Nastild—both sides of it—to its knees.
It had taken the interference of a [Sage] to stop him.
Ted looked at Aiden, then at Rometo. “That’s just unfair. I like making friends too.”
Rometo paused. Clearly he was weighing Ted’s response to see if heh was actually being serious. In the end, he settled for a shake of his head, discarding Ted’s opinions. Ted saw it and understood it.
“Just so you know,” Ted said. “You guys aren’t having my brother, even if he wants to join you.”
Telma looked at them. “What about oldie over there.” She nodded to Valdan.
Rometo looked at Valdan, assessed him.
Valdan was too old to be an Order recruit. The Order rarely recruited people like him. But the word of focus was rarely. There were always situations that led to special circumstances.
“He has shown some—”
“No,” Aiden said simply. “Valdan will not be joining the others.”
Melvet’s face took up a look of intrigue and Valdan showed nothing in the way of an objection. Valdan was not the kind of man who would last in the Order. His sense of honor would eat him alive.
“Why?” Rometo asked.
“Because I have a different organization in mind for him,” Aiden answered. It was an organization he’d had in mind after their spat with Nosrath and after discovering Valdan’s new mana affinity. They were also an organization best fit for him. “Valdan will have no relationship with the Order.”
Rometo and Melvet looked at Valdan and the knight shrugged. “I guess nobody wants—”
“Guys,” Telma called, interrupting him and drawing everyone’s attention. Aiden and Rometo rolled their eyes already aware. “We have company.”
Rometo pulled out an orb from his pocket as if nothing important was about to happen and activated it. Aiden knew the tool. It was an advanced dispel tool. It seemed that the people coming for them had been watching and waiting, just as he’d expected.
“Alright then,” he muttered, drawing his sword from its sheath. “Feira, Zen, Fjord, to the back.”
He stepped forward and placed his finger on the flat of his sword as the others obeyed and Telma nocked an arrow to her bow. Thinking better of it, he took his finger from the weapon as she aimed at the entrance knowing that whoever would come in would have to spend at least three to four seconds wiggling their way through it… unless they were a child.
When someone finally made their way in, still invisible to Aiden’s senses, it happened too quickly.
They slipped through the crack like the slipperiest thing. In the blink of an eye, they’d blown past Telma, cut through the distance and lost their head to a swing of Valdan’s sword. The head spun over to cascade past Aiden and Rometo. Aiden saw it in passing, a woman’s head.
Aiden sighed as another person slipped through the crevice once more, moving faster than the crevice was supposed to allow him. It seemed like they knew the crevice itself and how to deal with it. Then again, they had mostly made a home of the mountain already.
He stepped forward, slamming a fist into the man’s face just before he passed him. It made the man tumble through the air before hitting the ground.
“Zen,” Aiden called out. “Stab him in the neck.”
The man moved quickly, trying to escape. Rometo moved first and pinned him down with a foot on his chest.
“Stay and die,” he commanded him just before Zen pierced his sword into the man’s neck.
Aiden held his hand up and his fingers weaved a sign.
[You have used Class skill Lone Weave]
…
[You have used Weave of Lesser Speed]
Let’s get this over with.
At level one hundred and forty-nine, there was no point in being the one doing the killing. “How many?” he asked nobody in particular as the number of people on the mountain and close to the crevice began to pop up within the sphere of his awareness. Rometo’s item had done a good job in revealing them.
“Eighteen so far,” Rometo announced.
Eighteen was a good number. Aiden only counted twelve, though. Somebody slipped through the crevice again. This time, Telma’s arrow took him in the neck before he passed her. She nocked another. It seemed like she was adjusting to the speed of their entrance.
“Zen, Fjord,” Aiden commanded. “To me. I need you two a step behind me.”
Melvet and Valdan exchanged a look when the people stopped entering through the crevice. They waited, wondering what would happen.
“They are strategizing,” Rometo answered.
That was a no-brainer. “I know,” Aiden said. “What I want to know is if they are also waiting for reinforcements of any kind. I also want to know if they are the Acul tribe or the Nevanti.”
The latter would be a waste of time and the former would be a source of pendants to help speed along the levels as long as the leaders of the group showed up.
Rometo shook his head. “Just the eighteen for now.”
“Alright then.” Aiden stepped forward. “Telma, I need you behind me too.”
Telma didn’t look back. In fact, the only sign he saw that proved she had heard him was the slight relaxation of her drawn bow.
“Are you sure?” she asked, rising to her feet where she had been down on one knee and moving back. “They are fast fucks.”
Aiden nodded absently, walking forward. “I’m sure.” He passed her moving forward as she passed him moving backwards. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he began. “They will go through—”
Someone slipped through. They were fast as a striking snake. Aiden’s body moved, muscles reacting. His hand shot up at the last second while he noticed how the man’s feet did not even touch the ground beneath them. His open palm slammed straight into the man’s jaw and sent him cascading through the forest.
“Fjord, kill him,” Aiden commanded, eyes still on the entrance, awareness sharp.
The people outside were strategizing. But what was their plan, he thought as the sound of someone drowning in their own blood filled the air.
“We can’t fight them on the mountain,” he continued, “so we will face them here.”
“They can’t fight us on the mountain either,” Valdan added.
“You sure about that?” Telma asked. “They seem quite comfortable on the mountain.”
“He’s right,” Rometo said. “They waited for us to stop moving before coming after us. They are not confident in a fight on the mountain. If they—”
Aiden moved, stepping forward as another person blitzed through the air, slipping once more through the tight entry as if it did not matter one bit. His sword came up and separated the man from his right arm. Blood sprayed through the air, staining it with the smell of iron and splashing crimson against the wall.
“Zen.” It was Rometo that had spoken. “Kill him.”
Death descended once more.
“I do not need the level,” Aiden continued. “I am at a cap. However, you all do. So, tonight, I’ll show you something we call power-leveling. I’ll put them down and Zen and Fjord will finish them.”
He twirled his sword, then held it in both hands. He had to be sure not to deal too much damage like what he’d done with dismembering the last person so that Zen and Fjord got more of the life-force than was allotted to him.
“What about us?” Ted asked.
Aiden shrugged. He stepped forward as another person entered. This time they were two, and they came at him from above and below. He switched his hold on his sword, moved his feet, and stepped forward.
The man below took a clean knee to the face, before sliding past him while Aiden parried the knife that flashed at his neck from the man who came from above. Somewhere amidst the sound of his sword and the knife meeting, he heard Rometo casually call on Fjord’s name.
“Savage!” the man with the knife barked, loud enough to reach beyond the crevice as the parry sent him staggering back.
The first thing Aiden noted was that the man was weak.
[You have used skill Detect]
He saw the man’s face wrinkle as the skill washed over him, showing his discomfort. Weak, Aiden thought before the information came to him, appearing above the man’s head.
[Runner Lvl 42]
If the man had been strong, he would not have reacted so strongly to the [Detect] skill from someone of Aiden’s level. He did not like to make a habit of using the skill on people because of the courtesy of civilization. If he made a habit of it outside of civilization, he could always find himself slipping up inside the confines of civilization.
The [Runner], reoriented himself, then tried to attack from a different angle. Aiden removed one hand from his sword and slapped the man. The attack moving in a blur of motion so fast the man did not register it. The [Runner] reeled back from the force of the blow. Aiden’s hand moved once more, striking him in the neck with enough force to ruin his air flow. The man dropped to his knee, choking from the pain. He had made sure he’d used enough force to stun the man but not enough to damage him.
“Zen,” Rometo said.
Aiden stepped to the side and Zen was suddenly there, his sword piercing into the man’s heart. From the momentary wince on Zen’s face, Aiden knew the boy did not like how things were currently being done. He did not like the idea of killing the defenseless.
“Runners,” Aiden said simply.
“Oh.” Rometo stroked his jaw. “That explains how they are doing it.”
“I don’t understand,” Zen said, stepping back and away from the corpse.
“The [Runner] class,” Aiden explained, attention still on the entrance, his place in front of the flame Fjord had lit casting a long shadow that reached it, “is a class that prioritizes speed above all else. A few of the skills, when used together and properly, can allow the person to slip through tight spaces without losing any speed or causing any discomfort, as long as they can normally get through said spaces.”
“It’s stupid,” Rometo muttered. “They are sending non-combat classes after us.”
Telma looked stupefied. “Why?”
“Because they are testing us,” Aiden answered.
Another person blitzed through the air and Aiden caught him by the neck before he past him. Normally, he would’ve broken the man’s neck.
[You have used skill Detect]
The information did not surprise him.
[Runner Lvl 32]
Rometo called Fjord’s name, and Fjord appeared from behind Aiden to stab the man in the side. Whoever was sending these people in here, taking command of the group, was either very stupid, or cared nothing for their men.
“Another one’s coming,” Rometo said.
Aiden knew.
This was going to be a night of easy farming for Zen and Fjord.
He stepped forward and the woman’s momentum threw her face straight into his raised elbow.