novelraw Chapter 18 : [The Failed Infiltrator and the Crimson Sword]
Chapter 18 : [The Failed Infiltrator and the Crimson Sword]
Chapter 18: [The Failed Infiltrator and the Crimson Sword]
The cold Twin Moons and the stars hung high above the sky.
The rust-stained copper moon seemed unusually large tonight, half-veiling the pale white moon beside it.
The two moons overlapped halfway, their outlines melting together into one—like the copper moon was devouring half of the white one.
The High Tower Mages of the Human Lunos Academy called this overlapping lunar phase the “Soul-Devouring Moon.”
The Elven stargazers, however, named it “Rieldaevan-Aeva”—a complicated and elegant Elvish term that literally meant “Lovers’ Eyes.”
In ordinary use, it referred more to “the fleeting glance of lovers parting,” or “the gaze of two lovers clinging to each other, reluctant to part.”
As for the Dwarves… they were a pragmatic race.
Living year-round within towering fortresses and mountain peaks carved into cities, the shape and posture of the moons held little meaning for them.
At most, they would mutter coarsely, “The copper’s stuck to the white stone.”
Because under the Twin Moons, the copper moon’s light was faint, most of the illumination came from the white one. Thus, when the copper moon obscured half of the white moon, the brightness of the night dimmed significantly.
“The ‘Soul-Devouring Moon’ phase makes the moonlight especially dim,” Elliot said, holding his telescope as he explained to the teammates behind him. “A good opportunity—for infiltration and assassination.”
“…Troublesome,” Thaleia muttered.
“It’s nearly dawn. Most of the campfires have gone out. We should move.” Randall flexed his limbs, adjusting his hunting bow, quiver, and paired blades. “Through the telescope, I can see three entrances to the bandits’ camp. Two of them have three guards each, all awake. The third entrance has only two—and one of them is dozing off.”
“We’ll infiltrate through the weakest third entrance. But to prevent being flanked from behind, someone must stay to guard the rear.” He lifted his head, scanning the group.
“The two monks are the strongest among us—the sharpest blades, and the last insurance for everyone’s safety. Brother Samo seems better suited for confined or indoor combat than Brother Talan, so—Brother Samo, you, I, and Elliot will infiltrate from the front. Grad, you’ll be on lookout in the middle. If the bandits approach, warn us immediately to prevent a rear ambush.
“Ruby and Selina, since you’re weaker in close combat but excel in ranged attacks, you’ll stay with Brother Talan to guard the rear, and be ready to provide ranged spell or potion support.”
“You’re putting me, the strongest fighter, at the back?” Thaleia swung her hammer-spear like a club, the heavy head whistling through the air.
“Uh… where did you get the idea that I’m good at confined-space combat?” Samael asked reflexively.
He didn’t remember ever being good at fighting in narrow spaces.
“Your knight sword is designed for foot combat—it’s been shortened. Uncle Robin said it was modified that way to avoid striking walls or obstacles in tight quarters.” Randall parroted what Guard One had told him before.
“Ohh… that’s what it was…” Samael blinked. “He could tell that just by looking? That guard’s got sharp eyes.”
Xia Mo’an had been a veteran player of Dark Souls I in his previous life.
The game’s terrain was always narrow and treacherous, and it had that notorious deflection mechanic—if your weapon hit a wall or rock, it would bounce off, leaving you open and drained of stamina, ripe for enemies to rush in and shred you.
Experienced Dark Souls players often chose vertical-swing or thrust-type weapons to avoid hitting walls—but such weapons were rare and hard to get.
Most powerful early-game weapons still relied on wide swings.
Before Samael forged his Nether-Copper sword and shield, he had just crawled out from the underground Earth-Devouring Worm Tunnels.
The cramped, suffocating passages had reminded him of those “joyful” memories of being tortured in Dark Souls by the infamous alley boss fight—“two dogs and one goat.” Maybe that was why he subconsciously shortened his knight sword a little—to keep it from getting stuck mid-swing.
For even a guard to have that kind of observational skill… Adventurers, who made their living through exploration, must be even sharper.
Samael pondered.
Pretending to be an adventurer was likely far harder than he’d imagined—much harder.
They weren’t idiots, nor were they brain-dead NPCs.
It wouldn’t be long before they caught on—what then?
“Brother Talan, it’s not that we don’t want you in the front line,” Elliot explained, “but once the bandits detect us, they’ll quickly attempt to encircle from behind. I’ve dealt with bandits before—they’re skilled at raiding caravans, dividing and isolating guards, then breaking through. Like wolves, they instinctively surround their prey. Once they sense an enemy, they immediately try to flank from the rear. We need you to protect our supports and ranged fighters.”
“Also, your weapon—the hammer-spear—is better suited for open-area group fights than stealth in narrow ruins,” Randall added. “Defending against a bandit counterattack will better fit your style.
“Thanks to your presence, we don’t need to assign extra guards to Ruby and Selina, so we can focus entirely on the infiltration.”
“Dividing the team like this will also prevent us from crowding into the narrow walls of the ancient Imperial watchtower ruins—where we’d only get in each other’s way, or worse, hit our own allies.”
“Fine,” Thaleia huffed, standing beside Ruby and Selina with her weapon in hand.
“We’ll try to silently eliminate as many bandits as we can first,” Randall said, raising a bone whistle hanging from his neck. “When you hear one whistle, it means we’ve been spotted. Grad, fall back to join the rear guard. Ruby, release a flare. When you hear three whistles, Ruby and Selina begin ranged bombardment. Everyone advance toward the watchtower gate and regroup.”
“Got it.” Everyone moved into position.
“Uh… Randall, my brother,” Samael whispered as he stuffed scraps of cloth into the gaps of his armor to muffle the metal. “I’m… not really used to killing people, you know? Never actually done it before. Maybe I can knock them out—and you guys can, uh, finish the job?”
Elliot frowned beneath his dark red scarf, eyes narrowing slightly in disbelief.
No—this man clearly wasn’t a demonic hunter, nor some strange cursed sorcerer.
Hell, he didn’t even seem like a bad person. This is ridiculous, Elliot thought.
He really was just a monk from some remote monastery, as pure as a Lunos Academy noble student who’d never left the glittering capital of Floren.
Maybe he was overthinking it.
Spending too much time around that rascal Randall was making him paranoid. Elliot rubbed his temples.
Tch! I’m starting to sound like an idiot too!
Randall paused—not surprised, nor mocking.
He just sighed quietly.
“Brother Samo… you’ve probably only recently left the monastery, haven’t you? Haven’t seen what these people do.” Randall said softly. “Even within the Empire, bandits and brigands roam freely.
“The Imperial law can’t reach every corner. The desolate roads are filled with murder, robbery, theft, and rape—and most of those crimes are their doing.”
“I admire your compassion and righteousness, Brother Samo,” Elliot added. “But for people like them—mercy is wasted. They’ve long ceased being human.”
He said the words respectfully—but inwardly cursed.
What a bleeding-heart fool.
Typical clergy—same holier-than-thou nonsense as those damned Light Priests.
“…Alright,” Samael murmured hesitantly, raising his kite shield and knight sword.
The three reached their ambush point quickly.
Thanks to the rags Samael had stuffed into his armor joints, his movement was nearly silent.
The bandit camp was surrounded by a circle of sharpened wooden stakes. Inside lay a mess of tents, broken wagons, barrels, and sacks of grain.
At one gap in the barricade, two bandits stood guard, one with a broad short sword and the other with a dagger.
One had been sneaking drinks, his mind wandering; the other was already nodding off.
The moon’s a fickle bitch, always changing her face.
The tipsy bandit yawned, staring blankly at the dim sky.
This wasteland’s no place for humans—like beasts fighting over scraps in the dirt.
When will I ever get back to the livable zones? Even if bounty hunters are waiting there…
How many years until the wanted notice expires? Then he could go back, hide his name, and start over. He counted on his fingers.
He had to admit—he’d been lost for too long in the numb swirl of dice, cards, cheap liquor, blades, and scoundrels.
Long enough to forget how many years had passed.
The wasteland turned men into beasts—noble or vile, it made no difference.
It had all started with a game of cards. Then came a debt. Then a larger one. Then—murder.
The rest was a blur.
All he knew was that he was still gambling, still killing.
How had things come to this? It didn’t matter anymore.
When he was fourteen, he’d seen men commit evil and profit from it without punishment. So he followed—and he too was never punished.
In time, it stopped feeling wrong.
Evil became his most efficient way to survive—eventually, his only way.
Like a blade driven through a victim’s chest—the longer it stayed, the more the blood flowed.
Even if you tried to stop it later, it was already too late.
In the next instant, he felt a chill run down his spine.
He bowed his head and looked at the tip of the serpentine curved sword that had pierced out of his chest, stained with blood and glowing faintly with bluish venom.
Numbness spread quickly through his body, then darkness.
The curved sword slowly withdrew from his chest.
He slowly fell, his soul gradually sinking into a thick, cold darkness.
His last thought was that the wanted notice would expire in three years.
Elliot gently set the corpse down and nodded to the other two.
Randall shook the blood from his sword, laid the dozing bandit’s body on the ground, and motioned for Samael to follow.
Samael raised his shield, crouched low, and guarded carefully at the flank.
The three crept into the camp and, following a narrow, cluttered path, edged toward the largest tent—their goal was to reduce the enemy’s numbers as much as possible before alerting anyone.
They stumbled through the camp; the ground was strewn with bricks from the old city wall, looted debris, Riftclaw bird bones, what looked like severed human fingers, and splashes of blood. Conjoined to tents were wagons; the terrain was complex and chaotic.
Clack.
With a strange, light sound, a figure suddenly sprang up from the ground!
A drunk bandit was lying there! Randall had accidentally stepped on his calf!
The next instant, Samael’s reflexes were sharp; with a hand like an iron clamp he seized the drunk bandit’s throat with one hand, while his other arm used a wrestling choke to pin the man’s body against his cold Nether-Copper arm.
The Nether-Copper armor was immensely strong; to Samael now, gripping a burly man with one hand was like squeezing a chick.
Randall exhaled.
Ding!
A faint sound.
he drunk bandit fumbled his belt and drew a short dagger, thrusting it backward toward Samael’s abdomen.
The murder blade struck the hard Nether-Copper and snapped into two pieces.
“Ugh… urgh…” he made choking, dying-animal sounds from his throat.
The cold iron clamp held his neck fast; the fingers, full of terrifying strength, had nearly crushed his windpipe.
His torso was embraced by Nether-Copper’s arm and breastplate—an awful cold numbed his muscles; a rigor-like chill seeped into his joints; the necromantic halo of judgment under the Soul-Devouring Moon descended upon him.
“Did you… did you ever kill an innocent person?” Samael asked softly. “If you have, it would make me feel a little better.”
Was this judgment? the bandit struggled in the darkness near death. He had not believed in gods, but now he wavered.
Even running all the way to the Wasteland could not escape the fate of the death angel’s judgment.
“Please, monk, don’t torture him or me—put him out of his misery.” Elliot hissed low. “All clergy are so bloody sappy! That’s why I hate teaming up with fanatics from the Holy Light—knights and priests alike! And you, Randall, if you’re clumsy don’t try these stupid infiltration plans—this whole team only had me with any decent stealth ability!”
Randall lowered his head in apology.
Samael was silent for a moment.
Snap—the faint crack of bone. He laid the body, whose neck had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, flat on the ground.
“Weird feeling,” he said softly. “Colder than I imagined.”
“Stop dawdling, move faster!” Elliot hissed. “I should have known! This whole infiltration plan was rotten! Idiot Randall, you and Brother Samo have almost no stealth ability and insisted on this damn plan—following me in for a stealth kill! You’ll ruin us—”
The next second his breath choked off and his face went pale.
A blood-red blade had been driven through his chest, piercing out the other side; the crimson alien tip with hooked barbs grinned as it probed and then slowly withdrew from Elliot’s body, pulled out from behind him.
“Elliot!” With Randall’s shocked cry, Elliot’s figure sank slowly to the ground, revealing behind him a burly man holding a crimson greatsword.
The man chuckled softly, shivering slightly with ease.
The blood on the greatsword was being absorbed into the crimson blade; a dim, dark-red gleam flickered as if some beast within the sword were drinking.
“The Alliance really did look down on us—what rank of adventurer thinks they can come and clear bandits?” The burly man wore a fur-edged wasteland hide robe and gripped an ornate crimson hilt; he tapped the greatsword against a nearby wooden barrel with leisurely motion.
Thud thud.
With the tip’s tapping, the densely scattered torches around them flared to life abruptly, like luminous eyes of a wolf pack in the dark.
The bandits laughed and surrounded them.
Most of the bandits had not been asleep at all!
“What level assassins are these? Third or fourth? Has anyone told you I used to be a level-five adventurer?” the burly man asked as he lifted his boot and kicked at the perhaps-still-living Elliot. “Oh—almost forgot—the Alliance couldn’t care less about adventurers’ lives. Level-five adventurers going missing or turning outlaw doesn’t matter; missing crucial info on a high-rank mission sheet happens all the time.”
The surrounding bandits hooted and jeered.
“Resting so close to our camp, and at the windward side? Do you think we’re deaf, blind, and nose-less? Who here wasn’t carved out in the Wasteland?” the burly man sneered. “Stupid greedy for loot, huh? As a level-five elder, let me tell you, kid—survive first, then talk spoils—though you won’t be needing that experience anymore.”
He casually raised the crimson greatsword and, with a ghostly speed, thrust toward Randall.
Clang!
The blade was met and stopped dead by a rusted-copper kite shield thrust out across the path.
Crimson steel met the ghost-green of the rusted-copper shield; sparks flew, leaving a bluish scratch across the shield’s face.
The bandit chief inwardly startled!
This was a demonic weapon obtained through a deal with that lord; ordinary armor should have been torn to pieces by such a blade! It was because of this sword that they had easily slaughtered caravans. How could a rusted copper shield possibly block it?
The next second, a ghost-green sword wind with cruel cold rushed out like a falling star.
Relying on his level-five swordsman experience, the bandit chief took a backward step and retreated quickly, barely dodging the icy edge! The tip slammed into the ground, slicing through an Imperial watchtower stone slab.
A plain knightly sword had swung with the momentum of a greatblade.
Cold liquid ran down the bandit leader’s face. He wiped it with his hand; his cheek stung; his palm was cold with blood—the sword wind had grazed him. What sort of monstrous strength was this?!
“You killed the innocent…” the armored, sissy-sounding man said softly, “then… what I’m about to do will be much easier. Randall, blow the whistle—go treat Elliot first.”
Randall did not wait; he blew the bone whistle and threw himself over Elliot, grabbing the potion kit to apply emergency treatment.
A shrill whistle echoed in the night. In the distance a potion bottle was tossed into the air, shattering and bursting into a blinding light.
The light sphere hovered over the bandit camp, illuminating below as bright as day.
Samael raised his shield in one hand and his sword in the other, stepping forward in the light. His hood covered his helmet; beneath the slit of the helm his eyes were a hollow void.
“Shield?” the bandit chief sneered. “Do you think adventurers came to fight? Or are you some full-time guardian—”
The rusted-copper shield flashed across.
Before he finished, the bandit chief was launched backward, smashing through half a tent.
Samael had swung the shield sideways and, with a backhand, slapped the bandit chief away!
“Come.” He looked around and invited gently.
Two bandits leapt up.
One jumped onto Samael’s back from behind, stepping on his shoulder and driving a dagger viciously into the seam at his neck; the other’s broad short sword flashed and stabbed into Samael’s waist.
The bandits sneered and reached to pull out their blades to let him bleed, but found the blades jammed fast in the armor seams.
[Foreign object detected in joint; forceful adhesion activated.]
With a shower of sparks and clanking, the plates of Samael’s armor locked together; the rags he had stuffed into the joints for stealth were ejected, and the dagger blades were neatly sheared off by the hard edge of the Nether-Copper plates—the break looked like marks left when a crude steel slab was pressed through an industrial rolling mill.
Samael did not dodge; he raised his shield and swept overhead, smashing the dagger-bandit’s ribs amid screams.
The dagger-bandit fell; the shield, like a heavy guillotine, pressed down toward the bandit’s neck with its blunt rim!
The bandit wailed, clawing at the dulled edge and trying to push it away, but to no avail.
The ancient necromantic force crushed down; though the shield’s edge had no blade—thick and flat like a chopping block—by sheer terrifying strength the rim ground through the bandit’s neck, spine, and flesh in a sudden, final scream.
Clang, clang!
The clash of armor rang recklessly across the camp like roaring war-chariots!
He turned with a quick step, flicked the bewildered short-sword bandit aside, and neatly cleaved him in half at the waist!
Screams echoed; the upper half writhed in a pool of blood, crawling half a meter before Samael’s Nether-Copper knight sword was driven through its skull.
“Come.”
Samael pulled his bloodstained knight sword free and repeated the motion.
Blood on his body, sword, and shield trickled bit by bit.
The Nether-Copper automatically repelled the blood, shedding it to the ground where droplets froze into a thin sheet of blood-ice at his feet.
The bandits shuddered and simultaneously retreated.
“Back… back! Idiots! Back—this isn’t something you can handle! Don’t waste men!” The bandit chief, slapped and sent flying by the shield, struggled amid the collapsed tent debris, coughing up blood. Half his face bore the imprint of the shield’s pattern; his cheekbone was broken as he cursed hoarsely.
He pulled a healing potion from the chain at his waist and tilted it back, then hefted the crimson greatsword. “You lot go clean up the unguarded fools outside the camp. I’ll deal with this heavy-armor freak!”