Chapter Eight: Killing Night
2014-11-28
Author: Floating Tower
Creak. A villain with a hooked nose stepped out, cursing, “Damn it!”
“If you’re not willing to use your mouth, I should teach you a lesson just because I see you can still make some money!”
He turned around the railing and entered a narrow alley, then pulled out his weapon intending to urinate. There were almost no designated toilets in the slums, which were even more filthy and foul-smelling than 19th-century London. Walking along a narrow alley between roofs, one could easily step into someone else’s excrement, so basically, no noble or rich people came here, and even guards were too lazy to patrol.
They were completely left to their own devices in the slums!
“Damn it!”
“I’ll make you pay!”
Just after the villain with the hooked nose finished speaking, he suddenly felt a chill in his neck. Before he could draw his weapon, one arm covered his mouth, and a dagger glinted in the darkness, cutting his throat in an instant. Blood poured out far and wide, bubbling out as a figure behind him held onto his neck, releasing him only after the body stopped convulsing. At this time, Soren’s figure emerged from the shadows, expressionless and resembling the god of death.
Once in combat mode, he showed no mercy. If he had, he wouldn’t have made it into the Legendary Domain alive!
He dragged the corpse into the alley, blood staining the ground, thankfully concealed by the darkness.
“Where’s Cabot?”
Another thug came out swearing, dissatisfied, “He’s taking too long to piss!”
“The boss needs him.”
The thug glanced around and sensed something was off; he had just fought with another gang two days ago. Vigilantly, he drew his dagger and approached the alley.
A whiff of blood came!
The thug’s face changed dramatically as he opened his mouth to shout, but in an instant, the shadow twisted.
A dagger pierced through his back, a powerful arm constricted around his neck, stifling the shout that had reached his throat.
“Shadow concealment successful!”
“Backstab activated!”
“Backstab successful *2, dealing 16 points of damage to the target!”
“Target dead!”
“Extracting target soul energy, gaining 30 experience points.”
………………
Soren dragged the second corpse into the alley.
Having killed two people in a row, the smell of blood was very strong inside. The nearby residents sensed something was wrong and quickly locked their doors tight. Clang!
Soren picked up another dagger, wielding weapons in both hands as he stepped out.
The smell of blood was strong on him.
Continuing to hide was pointless; the enemy would soon grow alert.
There were not many experts in the slum gangs, and those with professionist templates were even fewer. Taking down the two he did was enough.
Thud!
Soren jumped up to the wall for leverage and landed on the roof.
With an incredible agility of 20 points, he made no sound while walking. He picked up a tile and threw it down, instantly startling the other inside. Three armed thugs emerged, and at the forefront was Garis, whom he had seen during the day. He cautiously looked around, then gestured for the others to move towards a nearby alley.
“Ah!”
A chilling scream echoed.
Soren swooped down like an eagle, pouncing on the lagging person, the dagger cutting from the back down to the waist, then his other hand flashed through with cold light, stabbing into the skull through the gap of the opponent’s chin.
Without hesitation.
Soren kicked the corpse away, then threw his dagger, hitting the second enemy in the heart.
“It’s you!…”
The leading warrior shouted, drawing his longsword to strike down, with an ugly expression, “Are you out of your mind?”
Clang clang clang!
Soren’s dagger traced an eerie arc, consecutively intercepting the incoming strikes, as he said darkly, “You shouldn’t have your eyes set on Vivian.”
“Thus, you all will be sent to hell!”
Thieves absolutely cannot engage in prolonged battles with warriors!
Soren had always remembered this clearly, so after his opponent executed a three-hit combo of military swordsmanship, he sidestepped and delivered a sliding kick while a strange cold light appeared in his palm, opening a cut in the enemy’s side.
Garis was a vigilant guy!
Ever since returning from an adventure injured, he slept in leather armor, and the tough cowhide-made armor couldn’t be penetrated by daggers.
You could only attack places not covered by the armor.
Blood seeped out.
Garis covered his waist with his hand, feeling a numbness there, his face extremely pale: “Poison!”
He remembered clearly.
Soren shouldn’t have received any formal training—how could he be so familiar with the military swordsmanship that Garis employed?
In the blink of an eye, he spotted the flaw in his technique!
Yes.
Perhaps Soren didn’t know in the past, but for the current Soren, Garis’s swordsmanship was all too familiar.
Even including advanced techniques like cross-swordsmanship, white crow tactics, reverse slash swordsmanship, etc., Soren could be said to be exceptionally knowledgeable; having participated in battles hundreds of times as a legendary thief, if he didn’t even know the opponent’s moves, how could he survive until the Legendary Domain? Garis was just a thug from the slums; unless he had some special encounter or could afford expensive training fees, the only swordsmanship he could master would be low-level military techniques.
A technique that, once mastered, increases base hit by 3 points, and is a fundamental sword technique.
Clang!
A spark flew out.
Soren’s foot traced a strange trajectory, suddenly moving from the front to the enemy’s back, then stabbing into Garis’s neckbone and then twisting the dagger around.
Thud!
Garis’s corpse fell to the ground.
Soren paused for a moment and then softly said, “To die beneath the shadow step is worthy of your professionist status.”
This was the ability of a legendary thief.
But now, Soren had no power to wield shadow energy; the real shadow step should cross the shadow plane to appear behind an opponent. What he just did was merely using technique and the moment of shadow concealment to confuse the opponent’s line of sight and then go around. A legendary thief has understood the essence of shadows, allowing him to use the power of shadows to cast many spell-like abilities during battle. If it weren’t for his extraordinary agility of twenty points, Soren wouldn’t have been able to simulate many of his initial combat techniques and wouldn’t have so easily come to take down these thugs.
In less than two minutes, there were three more corpses on the ground.
In the shadows of the night.
Everyone nearby was hiding; the women were trembling in fear behind the doors.
Soren picked up a corpse and burst through the main door; while there were many people in the gang in the slums, the true core consisted only of these few; the riffraff brought in to pad the numbers were utterly useless. With Soren’s current skills, he could take care of those ruffians like cutting vegetables, and the vast majority of professionists could easily handle ten ordinary people.
Whoosh!
The sound of a crossbow being fired came.
The corpse Soren was carrying trembled, and he immediately let go and lunged forward, surprisingly using the wall to perform a three-step run before landing and pouncing toward the enemy in front of him.
This extraordinary technique left the enemies momentarily stunned!
Before they could react, two people clutched their throats and collapsed, blood gushing out.
Soren’s reflexes were incredibly sharp; he narrowly avoided a descending long knife, then kicked a stool into an enemy’s face and swiftly restrained the arm of the enemy before slicing through his tendons with his dagger. With a scream of pain, the flying dagger glided with cold light, slicing a half-foot-long cut across the throat.
Blood gushed out profusely!
Thud!
Soren lightly hooked his toe, grabbing a crossbow into his hand, quickly fiddling with it before kicking open a door and firing into the front.
A crossbow bolt shot out!
A muffled grunt came from inside the room, followed by a cry of pain.
“Soren!…”
“Don’t kill me!… I’ll make you the boss!… You’ll be the leader from now on!…”
Cole was a dark, middle-aged man, but at this moment, he covered his arm, fear etched on his face, continuously pleading, “Don’t kill me!”
“I’ll listen to you from now on.”
A flash of cold light.
Soren expressionlessly slit his throat and then frowned at the blood all over him, starting to search for valuables in the room.
There were a total of eleven people.
Almost all of the current core members of the gang, three of whom had advanced to become professionists.
Unfortunately, they were all level one.
Aside from the initial Garis who could block a few of his moves, the others were basically no match!
After all, one could not expect there to be any experts in the slums.
The people here lack food and have even less wealth and energy to train, and those who become professionists mostly do so because they’ve been through too many street fights.
A formally trained level one warrior could face two or three in a head-on duel!
Soren grabbed a sheet and rolled all the valuable items into it, finally tying it into a large bundle and carrying it as he made his way out.
Some people peeked out stealthily.
But none dared to come out; this wasn’t their business to handle.
Once Soren left,
several men immediately approached, casting a fierce glare at the women nearby, then began looting the wealth from the corpses, before darting into the house to take away anything valuable.
This gang had been wiped out.
Tomorrow, another gang would take their place; if they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity now, they’d have no chance in the future.
This was the slums.
Such things were commonplace.
………………
