Chapter 193

Elypso (I)

The group managed to reach the fortress much earlier than Cain estimated as they only rested once during their journey, for the lunch. The fortress itself came with rugged and slightly aged walls corralling a fairly large body of water within. The green of the trees broke through the walls and into the outside world, with the pair of towers looming over everything else and standing tall on the diagonal edges.

It was easy to spot the patrol walking the ramparts and the pairs stuck into the towers, though most of them were either drinking or just lazying around, hardly expecting to be struck in the middle of the desert. From what Cain understood, they grew their own crops while often hedging out and playing the trading routes through the deserts between the native tribes for the other goods. On occasion, they’d also go to the City to sell off and resupply.

There were roughly thirty ‘bandits’ inside, and if Cain and the group attacked from the open, they’d all be alarmed immediately and they’d have to face Elypso and every other bandit at the same time -- which would be impossible even if Cain restored all his levels and items. As such, they’d have to go through the fortress methodically -- and, luckily, they had with them likely the best Assassin in the world at the moment.

“Daniel,” Cain said as they withdrew back over the hill and into the dip, hiding. “We’ll wait for the night; then, you’ll sneak inside and start taking out the patrols on the walls and in the towers. Afterwards, the rest of us will sneak in while you scout out the optimal route for us to take toward the central building. We can’t be spotted -- none of the bandits should get a chance to yell out.”

“What about their health?” Daniel frowned. Even though he was confident in his damage, if any of the bandits had just over 20,000 health, then no matter what he did, even if he burned every single cooldown he had, he wouldn’t be able to kill them. And that was just on one target -- if there were two together, he may as well just not even try.

“From stealth, they work as normal people would,” Cain elaborated. “So, you know, stabbing their throat doesn’t deal like 100 damage or something, but kills them.”

“Oh... wait, really?” Daniel asked with suspicion.

“Yup,” Cain nodded. “That’s actually the case with every ‘normal’ mob and creature you’ll run into. You just need to know their vital spots, and bam.” the general ‘raid theory’ in Cain’s past life was to always have at least 4 Assassins, or Classes with long-term ‘Stealth’ skill, as the ‘forward clean-up crew’. While the Assassins thinned out the mob packs, the main group moved in their wake and killed the much easier groups of creatures. This was especially helpful on the 55th floor as, essentially, the entire floor was one big, boss room with literal tens of thousands of creatures spread about in such a way that it was impossible to get to the floor boss without killing every single one of them. During this period, there was a mass recruitment of Assassins and alike to the point that even the low-level Assassins were being taken in and force-trained. “Anyway, you’ll have to be careful since there’s like one second grace period between them ‘seeing you’ and their normal health coming into play.”

“... how many are in there?” Daniel asked with a frown.

“How the heck should I know?” Cain shrugged. “Your job won’t be to kill them all, just the ones preventing us from going in. Once in there, we can figure the rest out.” Cain ‘failed’ to mention that even if they were discovered inside the fortress, it would be easy enough to just kite the massive group of bandits by moving in-between the buildings and slowly thinning them out.

He’d said a bit too much already, anyway, drawing strange looks on himself, but choosing to ignore them. Luckily, seemingly everyone who joined the group was ‘too smart’ to start asking questions, and they opted into blissful ignorance instead.

The party quickly formed a camp and waited for the nightfall to overwhelm the desert; even at night, though, it wasn’t nearly as dark as an actual night, and it lasted less than four hours before the sun would begin to peak beyond the horizon, signaling the start of a new day. As such, they didn’t have a lot of time, prompting Daniel to immediately clad himself in shadows and vanish forward, trekking some four hundred yards between their camp and the fortress as speedily as he could.

He used the ruined front of the walls to scale them and land on the ramparts with ease, where he saw roughly four separate groups lining them; each of the four had three members, though what made it easier for him was the fact that only two in total were actually awake. Furthermore, the groups were far apart enough that as long as he made his way through silently, others shouldn’t realize anything was awry before it was too late.

He moved in on the first group; all three were ante-Human, lazily slobbering whilst leaning against the inner battlements. Choosing to trust Cain, Daniel dipped to their level and, within a singular motion, cut with his two fanged daggers across the throats of all three. Blood frayed out, but the three didn’t even wince, and noticing the experience gain -- signaling that the three did indeed die -- Daniel grinned. This, after all, opened up a whole world of possibilities for him.

He hid a bit further back as he waited a few seconds for his Stealth to refresh before dipping back into it, transmorphing into a silent shadow that invisibly moved forward like a cold hand of death. The second group had one person awake, which was why Daniel first went behind the man and, with the surgical precision, cut the man’s entire head off in one motion as he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Immediately after, he used his other hand to stab through the throats of two that were asleep. Unluckily for him, the cut head rolled askew and away from him, landing onto the stone with the rather silent thud. However, as it was the dead silent of the night, the thud was rather loud and Daniel immediately cursed under his breath as he heard “Hm? What’s going on there, Ashter?”

Rather than waiting for his Stealth to refresh naturally, he forced himself back into it with a Skill ‘Shadowmorph’, sprinting forward toward the last group. Luckily, the one who was awake didn’t wake up the other two; it wasn’t strange, however, as someone actually infiltrating this place and killing off the patrols one by one was likely the last thing on his mind.

As such, Daniel sighed in relief as he caught up to the man who’d just stood up, seemingly ready to walk forward and inspect the noise; without allowing him to, Daniel glided through the shadows and appeared behind the man without making any noise, scaling out of the shadow like the grim reaper itself, slicing the man’s head off clean from the neck and grabbing it all in one motion before swiftly turning around and ending the lives of those still asleep.

Putting the head down gently, he proceeded to then first loot all three groups, ending with some pointless scraps and a single piece of rather awful gear -- well, awful by the standards of this group anyway. He’d done some research on the outside and realized that this group was so far ahead in terms of gear from even other ‘top groups’ that it was a joke to even try and compare them. For instance, the armlets Daniel picked up, while junk in his eyes, could likely go for a few hundred thousand in terms of cold cash on the outside. Even with the ever-growing inflation, few hundred thousands was still far from just any pocket change.

Refocusing, Daniel quickly located two routes into the towers -- luckily for him, it looked like those stationed in the towers had all fallen asleep as, if they’d actually observed keenly enough, they’d be able to spot something was off. Not anymore, however, as Daniel had fashioned all corpses back together as to make it seem like they were all asleep.

Still in Stealth, he first waited for a few minutes for ‘Shadowmorph’ to come off-cooldown in case he had to bolt if something went wrong, and then rushed over to the nearest tower, using the age-carved chunks in the stone to scale it effortlessly and vault inside. There, he saw two men lying against the stone and snoring, bottles of what smelled like some really strong booze strewn near them.

Sighing, Daniel crouched and stabbed through their throats, immediately ending their lives. What made him happy was that the experience didn’t seem to be lowered just because of how he was killing them; as such, he was fast-approaching a level-up and suspected he should achieve it by the end of this ‘dungeon’, so to say.

Without wasting any time, he rushed over to the other tower and did the same thing; in the other tower, instead of two, there were actually four people -- two men and two women, all four stinking of booze and all four at least half-naked. At least their last memory will be a good one... Daniel mused as he looped their heads off quickly.

He killed fifteen in total, and after quickly scouting inside the walls, went back to the front to signal the others it was clear to approach. The real battle, he knew, would only begin now.