Chapter 43

Captain Janor was in a bad mood.

It would seem illogical. Only a week ago, she had finally been promoted to the rank she had striven for her entire life: the rank of Captain. After years of being a mere field lieutenant, she had finally received a nomination from a current high-level captain and had successfully passed the test, ultimately getting promoted.

As a newly-promoted young captain of the Sunrise City militia, directly responsible for over a thousand soldiers, she had been anticipating a new career of excitement and high-level military action.

Unfortunately, reality wasn’t that exciting.

As the new lowest ranking Captain, she was mainly responsible for patrol duty of the city. Every day, she would direct small teams to periodically patrol around the forest surrounding Sunrise City, checking for any suspicious activity.

If it was just this, it wouldn’t be that bad. However, according to the regulations, she herself was required to personally go on a full patrol with a group every morning. Not only did she have to pointlessly get up early every day, it was incredibly time-consuming and mind-numbingly boring! So far on the patrols, in the past week, she had walked for miles but still hadn’t seen a single thing out of the ordinary, save for some animals.

It was such a waste of time. Someone as powerful as her, a captain, had to go on daily menial patrol walks like that?! It was ridiculous!

Currently, she was out on yet another monotonous morning patrol in the forest surrounding the city, followed by a small group of lower-level soldiers. After walking around for a full hour and seeing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in the surrounding woods, she had slowly become very cranky.

“Fuck this!” Captain Janor finally had an outburst and angrily kicked up a stick that was resting on the forest floor. “I didn’t become a captain for this!”

“C-calm down, Captain…” a Sunrise City militia uniform-garbed man behind her attempted to calm her down. “Patrols are important for guaranteeing the safety of the city. Furthermore, if we spot and report any illicit or dangerous activity that could threaten the city, we could get rewarded handsomely!”

“Oh, we can get rewarded, huh?” The Captain responded sarcastically. “These super huge, lucrative awards? Let me ask you something, Lenny.”

She paused, and then suddenly turned and yelled at her subordinate. “In your five year career, have you seen suspicious activity before?! Huh?! Have you? In the past five years, have you ever heard of someone spotting any suspicious activity?!”

“...N-No… I can’t say I have,” Lenny stammered in response. He lowered his head. “...B-but still, we have a responsibility to keep the city safe from any possible danger. Even if the city seems safe now, we can’t abandon our duty...”

“Duty?” Captain Janor groaned and brought her palm to her forehead. “Our duty is to take these… leisure walks every day?”

“N-No…” Lenny stuttered. Pausing for a moment, he gathered himself. “B-but you know, don’t you remember? Twenty years ago, the city was attacked on a large-scale by mysterious forces. We barely survived… it was after that that this patrol was established.”

“SHHH! Be quiet,” Captain Janor suddenly interrupted, bringing her index finger to Lenny’s lips. She paused for a moment, as if listening for something.

‘Hm?’ Lenny blinked twice.

Captain Janor didn’t bother to respond, continuing to seemingly focus on something.

Suddenly, her eyes lit up. ‘Could it be…?’

Signaling her patrol team to follow, she crouched down stealthily and began to steadily work her way through the thick forest.

‘I definitely sensed it! A distinct trace of spirit energy…’ Captain Janor thought to herself, beginning to quicken her pace. ‘And this spirit energy signature is no joke either…’

She couldn’t help but crack a silent laugh. ‘Finally, something interesting is happening!’

Although unsure about what their captain was doing, everyone in the group also crouched and began to silently follow her.

They traveled for a bit, following Captain Janor’s lead, many looking at each other in confusement.

However, they had only traveled for a short while before they slowly began to hear distant yells and explosion sounds.

Boom!

“Hah!”

Pa! Pa!

At this point, it was clear that something big was happening. Everyone’s eyes widened.

“Hahaha…” Captain Janor couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s a high level battle of some sort. Let’s hurry go and watch!” She began to go faster, eager to see what was going on.

“C-Captain…” Lenny stammered. “Shouldn’t we go and report this first?”

“Oh shut up, Lenny,” Captain Janor snorted. “We’ll be fine. You have me with you.”

Lenny nodded and proceeded to speed up as well.

It was only about a minute later that they finally reached the source of the sounds.

Slowly approaching, they saw a large ring of bronze and silver masked fighters surround a fight. Because of this surrounding ring, they were unable to see the fight clearly.

“Huh… masked fighters? The Dark Mask?” Captain Janor murmured. “What are they doing here?”

“The Dark Mask?” Lenny questioned, tilting his head.

“Hm… oh, yes, you wouldn't know about it,” Captain Janor replied. She paused for a moment and rubbed her chin. “I honestly don’t know much myself. From what I’ve heard, it’s a mysterious and powerful assassin organization. Anyone you want killed, for the right price, the Dark Mask will get it done.”

“They’re identified by the different color masks they wear. However, from what I’ve heard, they don’t usually gather in such numbers. Furthermore, they usually wouldn’t go after targets stationed near major cities like ours. I wonder what’s happening?”

“Huh…” Hearing this, Lenny furrowed his brows.

“Let’s get a better vantage point,” Captain Janor noted. She chose a large tree and began to climb it, stopping only when she found a suitable branch and stepping onto it. The others followed, climbing the same tree and each choosing a different branch to watch from.

She peered down onto the fight, and instantly, her eyes widened.

Three gold masked and one silver masked fighters - one wielding a hammer, one wielding a gauntlet, one firing spirit projectiles, and one wielding a knife - were teaming up against one small black-cloaked figure, who had no weapon.

Weaving and bobbing back and forth, the black cloaked figure dodged every attack that came its way. This included well-coordinated spirit projectiles, knife stabs, gauntlet punches, and hammer strikes!

However, although the black cloaked figure was very fast, some of its moves seemed awkward, unpracticed, and unstable… almost amateurish. It occasionally produced almost comically exaggerated movements and would stumble over itself.

Yet, it could afford to do this because its speed was just way too high - it would recover almost immediately!

‘Fast!’ Captain Janor was amazed. ‘But… why is he moving so exaggeratedly?’

However, the longer they watched, the better the black cloaked fighter became. As the fight dragged on and the black cloaked fighter continued to dodge and weave, the movements became more controlled, becoming smaller and smaller. Eventually, nearly half an hour later, it reached the point that the figure would sometimes dodge by just barely an inch, a weapon nearly grazing its skin!

In fact, as time passed, the black cloaked figure seemed to lose its sense of urgency and become comfortable - almost like he was starting to play with the masked fighters, leisurely sparring with them to hone his skills. His figure started to become elusive as a shadow, seemingly barely moving to slightly dodge each deadly strike, as if he was playing a game: testing the limits of how little movement he could get away with without getting hit.

Captain Janor let out a breath. ‘He’s crazy! What if those strikes hit them? He would be finished!’

She glanced around and discovered that there was a small group of regular people behind the short black cloaked figure: one girl, one boy, one old man, and one large twenty-so aged man. The twenty-so aged man seemed to be beaten up and exhausted, but even so, she could sense a slight aura of spirit energy coming from him.

‘Hm… seems like that man fought first and was defeated,’ Captain Janor reasoned. ‘Now, this black cloaked person is fighting for him and the others. I wonder who the Dark Mask is targeting that they would send so many people?’

Suddenly, at that moment, the black cloaked figure stopped evading and began to counterattack! It almost seemed like it was finished testing what it wanted to test and finally wanted to finish things quickly.

BAM!

It easily and smoothly sidestepped the gauntlet-wielding fighter’s punch and clobbered the man in the side of the head.

“Gaaaaah...” The gauntlet-wielding man could only let out a short scream as he was sent flying into the air, crashing onto the ground and losing consciousness.

“What?!” The other masked fighters seemed shocked, and they instantly went on high alert.

ZZZIP!

The gold-masked fighter not wielding a weapon sent out a dark grey spirit bullet straight toward the black cloaked figure.

Not even bothering to dodge, the black-cloaked figure merely raised its hand, instantly creating a clear barrier in front of him.

Boom!

The spirit bullet crashed into the barrier and exploded. A moment later, it dissipated, revealing that the barrier had not even been cracked.

“Wha…?!” The gold-masked man was completely floored. Yet, he didn’t even have more than a moment to do so.

The next moment, the black cloaked figure charged forward at lightning speed and uppercutted the defenseless man in the jaw.

“Ahhhhh…” Flying into the air and then crashing violently onto the ground, this gold-masked man also instantly lost consciousness.

As this happened, the silver masked man and the hammer-wielding fighter attempted to flank and double-team the black cloaked figure, rushing up on each side of his body and attacking, each with their respective weapons.

The black cloaked figure easily sidestepped both blows and whipped around, elbowing the hammer-wielding fighter in the back of the head. Not missing a beat, he then leaped the other way and sent a vicious hook into the side of the silver masked man’s head. Bam! Both fighters crashed onto the ground and then also lay still.

Silence.

“...whoa…!” Captain Janor couldn’t help but let out a breath. Who was this person? He had originally been hiding his true speed, it only coming out now. Those moves were so quick that she could barely track them with her eyes!

Expert!

She didn’t know why the figure had seemed awkward in the beginning and had spent so much time just dodging back and forth, but after seeing how quickly it had dealt with the four enemies, she was very sure that the figure was an expert.

‘Maybe he’s practicing some sort of movement technique,’ Captain Janor reasoned. However, who would practice a new technique in a high-stakes fight? This amazed her.

Still standing in the middle of the ring of masked fighters and ignoring the strange atmosphere, the black cloaked figure dusted its hands off and then glared around at the surrounding ring of masked fighters, as if saying: ‘Attack me if you dare.’

After a moment of stunned silence, the masked fighters realized that if they didn’t run, they would be done for. They weren’t even a match to their gold-masked superiors; even if they teamed up against this black cloaked figure, they wouldn’t stand a chance!

Thus, in one moment, they all suddenly turned tail and scrambled away, desperate to get out of there. The sounds of tens of scurrying feet filled the air.

It was a funny sight. Tens of powerful masked fighters, frantically running away from one tiny black cloaked figure?

Within a few moments, all of the masked fighters had fled, not a single conscious one in sight. The forest had turned quiet again.

Captain Janor glanced toward her subordinates and smiled. ‘Should we?’