The man in the green skirt charged at Hirrus with a roar of anger. Hirrus almost sympathized with him. Like Hirrus, he was free of his decision tree, and had been exposed to everything he hated in adventurer behavior.

It reminded Hirrus of his struggles in Inoha, where he’d been met at every turn with disrespect and dismissal. He had lashed out eventually, too, and he still remembered how good it had felt.

If he hadn’t been working for Rumi, Hirrus would have felt sorry for the man.

Alric had warned Hirrus not to go all-out. He needed to pass for a normal adventurer, and he’d never seen an adventurer stack six or seven buff Arcana at once. They normally employed only one or two. As such, Hirrus had to choose his options carefully. He felt forced to employ Pumped Kicks, though. The Arcana gave him substantial move and attack speed, but it had a second clause that he hadn’t used often. It increased his unarmed damage multipliers to match that of a sword.

Unfortunately, activating the Arcana seemed to escalate the fight. The adventurers started at the display, drawing weapons. One in an armored tuxedo drew a thin rapier, while the other pulled out an oversized one-handed axe. The man in the green skirt, though, seemed too enraged to bother, charging Hirrus with raised fists and a snarl.

The first punch was lightning fast. But the speed offered by Pumped Kicks meant Hirrus had little trouble slipping to the side. The man followed with a vicious flurry of left-handed jabs to try and cover his approach in order to try and drive his right fist into Hirrus’s side in a furious hook.

Hirrus slipped left and right to let the blows pass, and before the hook could connect, he lashed out in turn, driving his fist into the man’s unprotected shoulder. It was a glancing blow, failing to do damage, but turned the momentum of the exchange. Hirrus’s attacks were powered by the Arcana, as as he went on the offensive, his attacks were all the faster.

An angled jab pushed the man’s guard aside, and the second straight punch drove right through the opening. Hirrus wished he had been able to hold back, but the damage was already done.

A single punch, doing five thousand damage, would have made it very clear that he was no mere adventurer.

Hirrus’s luck held, though. His foe was either unfamiliar with what standard adventurers should be capable of, or he was too blinded by rage to notice. His wordless shout of rage sprayed a few droplets of the blood that was running freely from his nose.

“Hey!” one of the guards barked. There was a ring of drawing steel as the trio of guards pulled out their weapons. “Stop this fight immediately, or you will be bound by law!”

Hirrus grimaced at that. He didn’t want to have to harm them, but if they were going to join the fight, he wasn’t going to have much of a choice. He could try to use Melisune’s Eye to take them out of the fight, but he knew that would give him away. As the fight escalated, he would just have to stand his ground. He had plenty of hit points to spare, though. His only duty was to make enough of a fuss to draw the attention of the main guard of the camp. If he had to take on a half-dozen foes at once, he would.

The warning gave the man in the green skirt pause, but that only meant that the adventurers rushed in to join the fight. A thin rapier darted at Hirrus’s face in a zig-zagging attack almost too erratic to predict. The speed offered by Pumped Kicks let him keep up, though, and the blade sliced only air instead of taking out an eye. It was distraction enough that the man with the bare midriff brought his axe across, slamming against Hirrus’s back in a cruel kidney shot.

“Jesus Christ,” the man said, backing off immediately, raising his axe in front of himself defensively. “What the fuck?”

“What’s wrong?” the other adventurer asked, backing off as well.

“I rolled high on damage but I still only did like two thousand. He’s a fuckin’ tank and a half, man!”

“That just means his damage output is gonna be shit,” the man with the rapier shot back. He surged forward in a reckless attack, rapier lancing out again.

Hirrus wanted to land a solid attack against the adventurer in retaliation for his carelessness, but he stopped himself. If the adventurers knew what numbers to expect from him, he would give away his identity if he touched them. He just had to keep his hands off of them and the plan wouldn’t be ruined.

So many foes at once would be overwhelming as the fight continued, and so he elected to activate Tonner’s Swiftness. It would give him a little extra speed, and he could hope that it wouldn’t be too much power on display.

The man with the rapier was attacking almost entirely heedlessly. He was completely unconcerned with what Hirrus might do to him in return. The man with the axe came in much more tentatively, indicating that he suspected foul play. Their attacks were almost laughable, chipping away under two thousand damage per hit. But they created a huge distraction when the man with the skirt launched his next flurry of attacks, and those blows landed for much meatier hits above three thousand damage each.

The fight was certainly happening, which was to plan, and it was escalating, but a larger alarm wasn’t being raised. They were drawing a small crowd of rubberneckers, but they needed to draw more guards.

“I said break it up,” one of the guards snapped. He stepped forward, reaching out towards the man in the green skirt.

Hirrus saw his opening.

His opponent turned to look as the guard grabbed his shoulder, and Hirrus lashed out immediately. He stepped past the man in the green skirt and landed a solid punch in the guard’s unsuspecting face. The haymaker pounded six thousand damage into him. Hirrus stepped up, using the speed offered by his combined Arcana to land a high front kick in the guard’s gut, doubling him over with just over five thousand more damage.

Hirrus brought both hands together and slammed them down in a vicious hammerblow on the man’s head, sending him to the ground with another six thousand damage.

It was enough damage fast enough to break the threshold in his decision tree, stunning him briefly.

“Alarm! Alarm!” one of the other guards yelped. “To my aid! To arms! Alarm!” Accompanying the call was a faint buzzing sensation in Hirrus’s mind. The other guard had activated their Raise The Alarm ability, a natural ability imparted by the guard profession. It would notify all guards in the area of their position and state of panic.

It also notified Hirrus, which was an unexpected twist.

He wondered if Nidra had also felt the Alarm’s sensation.

Whether or not she had, Hirrus had effectively done his job. Guards all over this side of the camp had been notified of the alarm. Even if they didn’t all abandon their posts and rush here, stations manned by many guards would no doubt dispatch reinforcements here, thinning their own defenses.

Nidra had said she’d only need a few seconds to complete her task. Raise The Alarm had no corresponding ability to announce an all-clear, so Hirrus could make good his escape now without fouling Nidra’s end of the plan.

Or he could have, if the remaining guards hadn’t joined the fight now, moving to encircle him in their standard procedure for arrest of a violent adventurer.

Looking around quickly, Hirrus saw the situation devolving rapidly. The adventurers seemed confused and unsure of how to facilitate Hirrus’s arrest. Other adventurers were stepping up to join the fight, though, even as the first of the other normal guards arrived. Some of the new arrivals weren’t dressed in standard-issue armor, though, and Hirrus knew that those must have been more guards freed of their decision tree.

Just as Hirrus heard the Alarm, they must have as well.

This was going to get very ugly very fast.

At least it looked like Alric had run for the hills already, perhaps using Fire’s Arcana to escape notice.

And despite the altered situation, the man in the green skirt just voiced his rage again and lunged at Hirrus for another attack. A flurry of angry fists sent Hirrus further into the camp, towards the oncoming wall of reinforcements.

Hirrus could easily escape at any moment. Rapid Rip, Split Second, and even High Jump could get him out of this situation, but he didn’t want to use more Arcana, in case it gave away his identity. He would have to ask Alric later how many Arcana were normal to wield in case they needed him to impersonate an adventurer again. If he was getting out of here, it would have to be by going through his foes the old-fashioned way.

Reversing direction, Hirrus accepted a punch to the chin that sent stars flashing across his vision. The damage was inconsequential compared to his hit point pool. What he wanted - and what he gained - was a grip on his foe. He wrapped one arm around the man’s forward arm, getting it into a rudimentary lock. His other hand closed around the man’s throat, the speed offered by his Arcana boosts making it too fast to avoid.

The man in the green skirt tried to twist away, but Hirrus followed his momentum, leaning forward and driving him on. He became a human wedge, and as he grasped at Hirrus’s hand, trying to break his grip, Hirrus shoved him bodily forward. One of the guards tried to step up to stop them, but the man’s flailing attempt to escape turned the attempted assistance into a speed bump. Hirrus’s grip turned, and he swung the man to the side, bodily slamming him into the adventurer in the armored tuxedo.

It cleared a path. Hirrus let go, and the man in the green skirt staggered back, coughing.

With the last few seconds of his speed-boosting Arcana running, Hirrus bolted for the ruins of Shemil, hoping to avoid pursuit long enough to meet up with Alric and Nidra again.