BXBX NOVEL Chapter 801: They're Still Around
Then that could only mean one thing…
I pulled out my Light Sword and called up Eins, Zwei and Drei while making sure the rest were ready to pop out from my shadow at any time.
If this guy was able to sneak all the way inside the palace and open the vault without anyone noticing, I wasn\'t going to take any chances.
Levianne seemed to have the same idea as well since the aura around her suddenly changed and she was no longer smiling either.
I took the lead and slowly pushed open the door that led to the vault.
The well oiled hinges made no sound as the door swung inwards, allowing us to step inside.
The first thing I noticed was that the room was in a complete mess. Things had been thrown all around the room like a tornado had blown through the room.
The next thing I noticed was the fact that there was a hooded guy currently tossing things around and making an even bigger mess of the place.
There was no doubt this guy was responsible for the state of the room so I immediately called my Shadow Guards to rush towards him while I shot a [Static Bolt] at him.
I would think that Levianne preferred capturing him alive to interrogate him so that\'s why I was using a non-lethal spell against him.
However, the thief noticed my spell heading towards him and he quickly dodged it by stepping to the side.
My Shadow Guards quickly fired their own [Static Bolt] at him as well, their magic spells flying towards him from different directions.
The thief didn\'t even panic as he deftly avoided all three shots by dodging and weaving through them.
I took that opportunity to try and use [Screened] on him, only to frown when I saw what was displayed in front of me.
[Name: Error
Title: Error
Race: Error
Gender: Error…]
I shut off the screen since the rest of it was pretty much the same.
This guy managed to either find a way to render [Screened] ineffective or that he has some kind of artefact that hides it.
Whatever, let\'s just beat him up first.
I surrounded him along with my Shadow Guards and all of us rushed towards him together.
I attacked him from behind while the other three lunged towards him from his front and the sides.
The three of them were trying to hit him with [Static Shock] which he should not be able to dodge while I was aiming to strike his legs with my sword. If I manage to strike him, I should be able to break his legs and stop him from running at all.
As I swung my sword towards his knees, he suddenly moved and I felt myself flying back even though I felt nothing hit me.
Eins and the others seemed to have experienced the same thing as well as all three of them were now several feet away from the thief instead of being directly in front of him.
What did he do? Was this another artefact or was this a skill?
He turned to me and I quickly realised that his face was somehow hidden by a wall of shadow that blocked out the light from reaching him.
I\'m guessing the cloak he was wearing must be what\'s preventing me from using [Screened] on him.
He reached out his hand and a short sword materialised in his palm out of thin air.
He then gave it a few twirls before he lowered himself to a stance and made a come hither motion at me.
Is he really taunting me?
No, wait… He\'s asking for a duel…
Fine then, let\'s do it this way.
I twirled my own sword and lunged towards him, stabbing the tip of my blade towards his chest.
But before it reached him, I pulled it back to swing it over my head and changed the thrust into an overhead slash instead.
Obviously, I was aiming the flat of my blade at him instead of the edge so that I don\'t actually decapitate him with this attack but knock him out instead.
Unfortunately for me, he managed to see through my feint and he swung his sword up to parry it, knocking my sword aside.
He then lowered himself into a thrusting stance and I quickly spun my sword in a circle just in time to knock his sword thrust to the side, his blade missing my side by mere inches.
Damn, so he\'s quite proficient in swordfighting too.
I leapt back to create some distance between us but he wasn\'t letting me escape as he lunged after me, his sword pointed at my chest.
I knocked his sword away with the flat of my blade before trying to punch him in the face, only for him to catch my fist in his palm to hold me there while he swung his sword back to slice at my neck.
The sword sliced off a few strands of my hair as I managed to avoid it by ducking my head low.
I flipped my sword to hold it in a backhand grip before thrusting forward, striking him in the abdomen with the pommel of my sword.
There was a pained grunt from under the hood and he stumbled back a few steps, one of his hands clutching at where I had struck him.
I tried to chase after him but was forced to leap back when he slashed his sword in an arc in front of me, forcing me to abandon my attack lest I get cut.
The only reason why this guy is still standing is only because I needed to capture him alive while he had no qualms in killing me.
That… And also I was fighting him one on one of course.
I\'m still surprised that he is able to match me though, which means that this guy is pretty strong.
"Are you gonna talk?" I asked, trying to see if I could get something out of him.
Unfortunately, it does not look like he was interested in talking as he leapt into the air with his sword raised above his head.
I jumped back to avoid the attack which seemed to have been the right move as earthen spikes shot out from the ground the moment he smashed at where I had been moments ago.
I\'m guessing he wasn\'t talking because he was busy chanting.
While he was still recovering from the earlier attack, I charged in and stabbed my sword towards his side, aiming to impale him with my blade.
He swung his sword in an arc to deflect my blade away and I tried to punch him again.
As I had expected him to do, he caught my fist in his hands to block the blow but that was where he made the mistake.
"[Static Shock]," I whispered, pretending I had been chanting a spell this entire time.
His body tensed up as he tried to pull back from me but that was too late as the spell was activated through my fist and the electrical current jumped from me to him, paralysing him for that short moment.
That moment was enough for me to pull back and spin myself three hundred and sixty degrees to smash the flat of my blade against the side of his head.
The thief was sent flying through the air but I still wasn\'t taking any chances so I shot a [Static Bolt] after him, the projectile hitting him right as he landed back down on the ground and paralysing him again.
I leapt towards him and raised up my sword before smashing my pommel to his face, only to hear a loud crack that did not sound like what a bone breaking would make.
The hood finally fell away to reveal a male Mahun looking at me with a confused expression on his face.
I was just about to question him when I realised that my blow had broken something that had rolled off to the back of his hood.
I snatched up the things that were broken to inspect it and I felt irritation welling up within me when I realised just what I had broken.
It was the same mask that that stupid brainrot Off-Worlder had used to control other people to do his bidding back at the border of our kingdom.
God damn it… That means there\'s actually more than one of that stupid artefact and this break in was perpetrated by the same group that I had thought I had dealt with…
Does this mean there is someone else that is also part of the group within the capital city itself?
Or… Maybe the leader himself is actually right under our very noses?
Either way… It looks like my work isn\'t over yet.
Fuck…