Chương 7

Each of Oliver's attackers were dressed completely differently. One girl wore a witch's pointed hat and held a wand, pointed in Oliver's direction. The girl wielding the scythe that had nearly chopped Oliver in half wore an outfit akin to overalls and a straw hat. And the third girl wore the red and white polka-dots of a toadstool and held fist-sized rocks in her hands. A level 31 [Brewer]/[Witch], level 28 [Farmer]/[Harvester] and a level 37 [Forager]/[Spore Mage] according to his Appraisal skill.

Thankfully none of them seemed to have hit level 40 yet, so they all still only had two classes each. While each was a lower level than him individually, they outnumbered him. He had 9 class skills at his disposal. They had 18. Double him. He needed to play this smart. For a second he considered trying to talk his way out of this. But no, they'd opened with a devastating attack intending to kill.

Even if he had 100 points in his speech ability, there would still have been no chance he'd risk showing his back to them after their initial greeting. At his measly speech capabilities, a truce was absolutely out of the question.

"Slink," he said, melding in with the shadows. Meanwhile, he directed his little light fairy off in the opposite direction to draw their attention. It still had a couple minutes remaining in its duration for the day.

"Over there!" one of the girls cried.

"He's trying to slip away!"

"Stop!" A guard demanded up at them.

"You've violated the law! Surrender peacefully or risk death by blade!" Oliver passed over into the shadows of another building's eves. The [Spore Mage] had floated off in the direction of his light fairy, enchanted cloak billowing around her and posed to throw something down as she rounded the corner, disappearing from sight. After watching that cloak maneuver through the air, Oliver regretted not snatching up some of the artifacts that had tumbled out of the broken stall.

He'd been so locked in on escaping into the shadows that he hadn't even considered seizing the opportunity to snag a few new toys. Then Oliver noticed the other two girls arguing with a guard, a second guard running up in their direction. They raised their weapons and shouted at the farm girl about the life she'd taken and the damage to public property. His regrets faded. If he'd stolen something there was a good chance they'd be after him as well. Far better that only his opponents had to deal with the law.

Oliver did genuinely consider fleeing the town and forgiving the attempt on his life. But that would have been stupid. He had no idea what sort of skills this party had and whether or not that had the ability to track him. Letting them live painted a target on his back as well as left them free to hunt other experimentees. Plus, they'd pissed him off and deserved to die. Instead of going directly after them, Oliver circled around to the enchanter vendor.

The enchanter was huddled behind his stall, hands over his head and shaking in terror. Thankfully, he appeared to have completed his work on Oliver's equipment. Silently, Oliver snatched up his boots and threw on his jacket. With the added stealth enchantment on his boots adding to his Shadow Slink skill and years of experience sneaking about, Oliver had no issue from there getting behind the building his two remaining attackers still stood on. They assumed he'd run off.

Their guard was lowered as they argued with the local law enforcement. It sounded like they were trying to insist that their attack on Oliver had been in self-defence. And the girl must have had a decent speech ability because the guards were actually listening to that hogwash. Oliver heaved himself up onto the rooftop. Shadow Slink automatically deactivated as he exposed himself to the sun above. It didn't matter, he no longer needed it.

He was behind them, silently stepping forward, shovel in hand and ready to run them through. They stood on opposite ends of the roof, several yards apart, he went for the closest one first, readying his weapon to cut down the girl in overalls.

"Behind you!" a scream went out from across the market. The [Spore Mage] had returned from hunting his faux fairy. The other two girls started to turn but Oliver's 90 Dexterity wasn't just for show. He was fast. He knocked aside the shaft of the scythe in the hands of the [Harvester], then lunged in, slicing her shoulder. She yowled in pain, her weapon clattering off the roof and down to the dirt below. Oliver briefly took in the fact that her new wound was bubbling and hissing.

Not to the same degree as if he'd struck an undead, but his Silver Potency had appeared to deal additional damage to a normal human and, if her screams were anything to go by, inflict extra pain. He filed that information away for later pondering. As he went for a slice at her neck, the [Witch] cast a spell, forming obsidian daggers that hovered in the air. He had seconds before the blades darted off in his direction.

Instead of going in for the kill on the [Harvester], he dropped his shovel and stepped in, pressing in close to the [Harvester] and locking his arms around her. She tried to squirm free but her strength wasn't high enough to match Oliver's. She kicked at his shins and flailed. He held her in place, steadfast. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. He then pivoted, heaving her to the side and putting her body between himself and the witch.

The obsidian blades sliced into the [Harvester]'s back and she cried out in even more pain. One of the blades sliced into Oliver's arm he was using to hold her in place, he winced. The [Harvester]'s blood stained straw hat fell from her head as she attempted a weak headbutt with her final bit of strength. It was useless against Oliver's Resilience stat. He shoved her off the roof, her use as a meat shield complete.

"Sally!" the [Witch] called out as the girl fell. Her eyes on her falling companion, she didn't see the bullet coming. With a bang, the [Witch] fell to join her friend, blood seeping out from the hole between her eyes.

"You!" the [Spore Mage] howled from across the market square. Even from a distance, Oliver saw her shaking with rage. Oliver dropped behind the roof's slant, only the top of his head exposed as he watched his enemy. Without taking his eyes off her, he ripped out the obsidian shard from his arm and downed one of his recently purchased healing potions. The wound rapidly knit itself together and scarred over. Thankfully, his newly enchanted jacket had kept the [Witch]'s blade from cutting too deeply.

It hadn't even reached the bone. The Spore Mage charged across the town square in his direction. She wielded a mossy ball in each hand.

"You murderer!" she screamed up at him.

"What a farce. Don't bother acting the role of victim here," he said cooly. Despite killing a fellow human for the first time in his life, he felt surprisingly hollow about the act. It felt no different from when he had to kill villagers. He definitely didn't enjoy it, but it was a chore that had to be done sometimes. His own lack of strong emotional concern needled him with worry, but he didn't have time for moral conundrums at the moment.

"You were meant to be an easy kill to help Sally gain a level quickly!" the [Spore Mage] defended herself.

"She wasted the first four years of the experiment farming mushrooms. She needed this!"

"An easy kill?" He wasn't just talking for the fun of it. While he spoke, his hands rapidly reloaded his blunderbuss, sliding another silver bullet into place. His shovel, unfortunately, had fallen to the dirt alongside Sally's scythe.

"Yes! Why couldn't you just die? We promised each other that we'd all get through this together!" The [Spore Mage]'s tirade was cut short as one of the town guards got in her face with his interrogations. She hadn't been directly involved in anyone's murder or damage to the town, but she had been an associate seen with Sally as she killed the vendor. Oliver noticed the notifications alerting him to the fact he'd killed two people. That meant Sally must have succumbed to her injuries.

Not having time to scrutinize the details, he blinked the notifications away and focused on the two new level gains from killing the girls. He put all his free points into Dexterity, boosting his total to 102. That meant passing another threshold. Unlike the other times he passed a threshold of 10, the 100 threshold was immediately noticeable. His body felt like a spring, ready to react and flexible enough to dodge bullets.

The [Spore Mage], now close to his position and having wrenched herself free of the guard, let loose and hurled one of her fist-sized moss balls in his direction. It smashed into pieces on his rooftop. Green fumes exploded out of the shattered moss ball and spread across the building. Fungus rapidly grew across the building's surface wherever the green spores touched. But Oliver was already gone by the time the attack connected with the rooftop, having slipped through a nearby building's window.

Oliver let out another gun shot from his new hiding place two buildings over. Despite his hidden position, he had the bad luck of a nearby guard shoving the [Spore Mage] the exact same moment that he shot. The bullet barely grazed his target. He ducked away from the window and rolled as the expected retaliation hit the building. This time, it wasn't a spore attack, but two summoned creatures that pulled themselves up from the floorboards. Red and white toadstools, just like the ones he'd killed earlier that day.

Oliver cursed himself for dropping his shovel so early in the fight. He put his Strength and Resilience to use as he smashed his shoulder into a back window, shattering the glass and bursting through the building. He tumbled on the mushy mushroom ground then scrambled back in the direction of his weapon. The toadstool creatures tumbled out of the shattered window and waddled in his direction at an alarmingly fast speed. Thankfully, Oliver didn't need to go far.

Reclaiming his shovel, he dispatched the summoned mushroom creatures with practiced ease, dicing them into chunks. His blunderbuss once again reloaded, he peeked around the building to take another shot at the [Spore Mage]. But she was no longer there. Guards from all over the town were trampling through the square in the direction that she must have headed off in.

"Great. Another angry experiment subject hunting me down. Exactly what I needed." Despite his irony coated words, Oliver felt a bit relieved about not needing to kill another person. While he felt calm and collected after the two deaths he'd delivered, he didn't want to kill more people like him. Nobody chose to be trapped in this sick experiment.

"But they chose to play along," he muttered to himself. If anything, he was frustrated at them. Those dead girls played the idiotic game set up by the experimenters and suffered the price. He decided to make himself scarce before the town guards showed up and slowed him down. The [Spore Mage] had gone off in a different direction than the one the [Technomancer] had been heading in, leaving Oliver's path open.

Hopefully the girl had learned her lesson about targeting fellow experimentees, but Oliver wasn't holding his breath. He'd have to stay more alert than ever from now on. Before he left town, he had one more thing to take care of. He wouldn't be much of a [Grave Robber] if he didn't loot the bodies. It was one of the greatest joys of winning a confrontation, second only to the joy of surviving said confrontation. The scythe, as it turned out, wasn't enchanted.

It must have been a skill or a spell that she used as the opening attack. Unsurprisingly, the [Harvester] only had a dozen Mel on her and nothing else of significance. According to the [Spore Mage]'s rant, she's only been a [Farmer] until somewhat recently, so he supposed, while disappointing, her poverty checked out. The [Witch], however, had a lot more interesting equipment on her. First of all, her wand was crafted out of some special rare mushroom tree.

While useless to him with such a low Mental score, it was still worth over half a thousand Mel. She also had several poisons, a vial of acid, a talisman meant to repel insects, and a pouch of mysterious multicolored tablets that his Appraisal skill marked as 'hallucinogens.' Oliver pocketed all that, as well as claiming her hundred or so Mel. And with the dead now successfully looted, Oliver set out, using the shadows to slink out of town unimpeded and unnoticed.