Chapter 117 - Shadows (Patreon)

Carlos perched in the rafters, shadows clinging to him like a second skin as he watched the exchange taking place far below him. Shafts of soft moonlight illuminated the interior of the ruined building, allowed access via a gaping hole in the roof. Carlos paid it no heed; he was too focused on the task before him. Besides, he’d seen it all before. Jariq wasn’t the best maintained city, and given its location in the heart of the Red Wastes, it experienced its fair share of hardships. Unlike the shining cities of Beacon and Salvation, it didn’t enjoy the benefits of a protective aura; no, if the residents wanted protection, they could only rely on themselves.

Or people like Carlos, who had dedicated his new life to protecting the innocent. He fancied himself something of a superhero. A protector of the night. A menace to criminals and monsters alike. He had even learned to swap between two names – Carlos Alfaro, which was his Earth name, and Asesino de Sombras, which meant Shadow Assassin – so that he could have a secret identity, just like all his favorite superheroes.

But right now, none of that mattered, because he was wholly focused on the transaction taking place below him. The men and women gathered on the building’s first floor clearly belonged to two distinct groups. On one side were the sellers and natives of Jariq. Wearing tattered clothes and with hard expressions that spoke of how difficult their lives had been, Carlos knew they were members of one of the more powerful gangs in the city. Even if he hadn’t known their affiliation, the red sashes they wore at their wastes marked them as members of the Red Eyes. If he looked closer, he knew he could’ve seen the stylized Eye of Horus the members would have tattooed on their cheeks. The rumors were that it would give them the ability to see through illusion skills. Carlos knew from experience how untrue those rumors were.

The other group was comprised of far more affluent individuals. They didn’t look foppish, but their armor was high-quality, their weapons well cared for, and their demeanor marked them as outsiders. Carlos hadn’t had the chance to investigate their origins, but he suspected that they had come from either Beacon or Salvation. They certainly looked soft enough. Idly, he wondered who commanded them. Given what they were trading, it was probably an alchemist. After all, who else had any use for infant hearts? A talented and amoral alchemist could do all sorts of things with such a potent ingredient, though, and they would pay quite a fortune to obtain them. Hence, the contingent of Red Eyes who had created a steady source of income by imprisoning and forcefully impregnating women and harvesting the parts from their babies.

The entire thing was abhorrent. There were no words for how disgusted Carlos was, and he hadn’t even seen the operation first-hand. It had been dismantled by other members of his guild, who’d been hired by The Sultanate to rid the city of its problem. Jariq was not a place of laws, but there were some lines that, when crossed, would not be tolerated. Kidnapping, imprisoning, and raping women so the Red Eyes could harvest their babies’ organs was, unsurprisingly, one of those lines – which was why The Sultanate had hired the Crystal Spiders to deal with the situation.

And they had done so with the extreme prejudice for which they were known throughout the Radiant Isles. But the Crystal Spiders were, first and foremost, a business, and once they’d satisfied the terms of the contract – to dismantle the operation – they had collected their bounty and moved on. To Carlos’s superiors, it didn’t matter that a few stragglers had escaped. The job was done.

Carlos wasn’t willing to accept that, so he’d spent the past month tracking down the last of the Red Eyes so that he could end the organization for good. It was only a bonus that he’d managed to learn about the exchange taking place below him, and he counted himself lucky that he’d get to take care of some of the Red Eyes’ customers as well as finish off the last of the organization responsible for so many atrocities.

They weren’t the only ones, either. For the past few years, ever since escaping his beginning dungeon, Carlos had seen just how far people would go for a little more power. Morals usually went out the window when the stakes were literal superpowers, especially when consequences were few and far between. Back on Earth, he’d always thought that people were inherently good, that they wouldn’t consistently choose to hurt others. Sure, there were plenty of bad apples, people who’d chosen to flout the rules and do whatever they wanted, but they were the exceptions. Most people obeyed the rules, both the codified ones that governed any given society and the unspoken ones that everyone followed because it was the right thing to do.

However, it had only taken him a few months in Jariq to discover the truth of the matter. People were only as honest as they had to be. They were only as moral as they were forced to become. They only followed the laws so long as there were real consequences for failing to do so. And in Jariq? The Sultanate didn’t care much about what people did in their everyday lives. So long as there wasn’t open murder, and The Sultanate’s own interests weren’t infringed upon, they let the population run wild.

And wild, they had run.

Now, the only real authority within the city were the gangs that ran their individual territories. They Red Eyes had been one of them, but as of the month before, that area had gone up for grabs. And thus, it had become a covert warzone between the rival gangs who wanted to annex it into their own territories. Only the Crystal Spiders had sat it out, content with what they had. After all, they had no interest in governing more territory.  Instead, they focused their efforts in other directions.

After a few more minutes, Carlos felt sure that everyone had arrived. So, he took that opportunity to make his move. Concentrating, he embraced the first skill he’d ever chosen, [Shadow Spear], but he didn’t release it. Instead, he used his passive skill, [Channel Mana], to overcharge it until it felt as if it was about to burst. Then, a second later, he released it, aiming at the highest level among the group below.

A spear of condensed darkness erupted from the woman’s shadow, spearing through her chest. At its base, it was almost a foot wide, but it was tapered to a long, thin point that easily pierced through her defenses, driving through her meager leather armor and into her back. An instant later, it erupted from her chest with an impressive fountain of gore. Carlos barely noticed it, because he was already charging up his second [Shadow Spear].

“It’s him!” screamed one of the Red Eye thugs, frantically turning around and peering into the nearby shadows. Notably, he never looked up. “It’s –”

The second spear of shadow impaled him before he could finish his sentence. The skill took him between the legs, thrusting vertically through his body until it exploded through his skull. The thug deserved no less, kidnapping child-murderer that he was. If Carlos could have made it more painful, he would have, but there were eight more people gathered below, and it wouldn’t take them long before they recovered their wits enough to scatter. Carlos couldn’t allow that.

With a flurry of skills, he cast one [Shadow Spear]after another, not bothering to charge them via [Channel Mana]. The raw skill was powerful enough to injure, but it would never kill such high levels. That didn’t matter, though. It was all about volume, now. Quantity over quality.

Safely perched in the rafters, Carlos manipulated the darkness to harry and hamper his chosen enemies until, at last, he crossed the threshold he’d been waiting for. Even as the Red Eyes and their customers began to flee, Carlos grabbed ahold of the skill he’d gained at level fifteen, [Shadow Explosion]. He didn’t need to summon the skill’s description to remember what it did.

[Shadow Explosion] (G) – Harnesses the latent mana of other skills to empower an explosion of shadow blades. Increased yield based on number of skills consumed.

It was the perfect pairing for his other skills. Alone, [Shadow Spear] was a potent weapon. It wasn’t enough to kill on its own, but it had served him well in the early days after his rebirth. Many an orc had fallen with dozens of spears of darkness piercing its thick hide. [Channel Mana], at first glance, seemed a pretty generic skill that allowed him to effectively charge a skill with more energy. The longer he channeled, the stronger the skill became. For the [Shadow Spears], that meant they grew from wrist-thick spears to possessing a diameter approaching that of a tree trunk. But it had another benefit, as well. The more mana that had been injected into the skills, the more mana [Shadow Explosion] had to work with.

He released his level fifteen skill. The results were predictable.

Each of the shadow spears exploded into spinning blades of darkness, which arced around the room in an eruption of deadly shadows, blood, gore, and severed limbs. Screams of mingled panic, horror, and agony echoed through the ruined building, music to Carlos’s ears. They were terrible people, one and all. He had seen their handiwork. He had heard the stories. And so, he felt no guilt about his skill ripping them limb from limb.

After all, it wasn’t as if it was his first time. Nor would it be his last. He watched with grim satisfaction as the gathering was reduced to so much meat and blood. When the last of them finally died after being cut in half, Carlos allowed himself to breathe. When he did, he found the familiar smell of vacated bowels and death, but he didn’t flinch away. He refused. Like so many others that had come before them, these people had deserved what they’d gotten.

Dismissing his level twenty skill, [Umbral Phantom], Carlos felt the shadows slip away from his body. It wasn’t the flashiest skill, but the concealment it offered made his life a lot easier. Besides, it fit with his aesthetic and complemented his build of shadow-themed skills and mystic path.

The same could be said for his level five skill, [Umbral Steps], which allowed him to teleport through shadows. It was limited to his line of sight, but it fit well with his style. He wasn’t some neanderthal who relied on martial skills. His build was all about concealment, firepower – or shadow power, as it were – and movement. And his status reflected that. As he activated [Umbral Steps], he slipped from one shadow to the next, and in an instant, found himself on the ground floor. Stepping amidst the ruins of his victims, Carlos opened his status:

Few could match his stats. Even though he hadn’t focused much on physical stats, Carlos was stronger and faster than most others his level. And his skills were incredibly powerful as well as perfectly synergistic. For the role he’d chosen, he was unrivaled, which was why his guild looked the other way when it came to his extracurricular activities. So long as it didn’t hinder their business, they chose not to bother him. Of course, their disinterest was also predicated on him fulfilling his role as an assassin. If he ever chose to leave that life behind, he knew just how fearsome an enemy the guild could be.

Carlos didn’t bother looting his victims. The guild would take care of that and forward him his share. He had better things to do than muck about in all that blood and gore on the off chance that he’d find something valuable. The infants’ organs, he left alone as well. The guild would destroy them.

He strode out of the building, flitting from one shadow to the next. [Umbral Steps]was an incredibly inefficient skill, and it used a lot of mana. However, as Carlos had been investing in intelligence since his first level, he had mana to spare. On top of that, his high wisdom was enough to guarantee a steady trickle of regeneration that would allow him to use the skill as many times as he’d like. And there was something incredibly satisfying about stepping from one shadow to the next and appearing out of nowhere. It certainly helped his reputation as Asesino de Sombras, which was worthwhile enough on its own that he would always do it, so long as he could afford the mana expenditure.

As he traversed the city, which was mostly constructed of mud brick, with brightly colored awnings wherever he looked, he tried not to notice the poverty and squalor. Those people had had every chance to improve their situation. If they’d have utilized their skills, if they had made something resembling a plan, they could have made something of themselves. Instead, they wailed about misfortune as they struggled to adjust to a new world that required certain sacrifices upon the altar of success. He would protect the innocent to the best of his ability, but he couldn’t protect people from their own laziness and bad choices. On that account, they were on their own.

Finally, he reached his destination – one of the guild’s satellite headquarters. The entire city was dotted with such buildings, so in only a few minutes, the Crystal Spiders could respond to any crisis. Of course, few knew recognized the non-descript buildings for what they were. People were blind when they wanted to be, Carlos knew.

With a last embrace of [Umbral Steps], Carlos found himself pushing through the door. Immediately, he found the satellite’s overseer – a plump man whose name Carlos didn’t know. Posing as a butcher, the man looked the part right down to his stained, white apron. But like all overseers, he was more than what he seemed, and he could hold his own against almost anyone in the Radiant Isles.

Carlos said, “Need clean-up at the abandoned warehouse on Bazaar Street. The one a block west of the Red Eyes’ old territory.”

“Authorization?” the man asked.

“Inspect me.”

The man did, then he went pale. “Oh,” he said. “S-sorry. I didn’t know it was you, sir.”

“It’s fine,” Carlos said. “No reason for you to know. Take care of it, soon, though. And burn the boxes. If I find any of their…contents…out in the open, I’m going to be very upset.”

“Y-yes, sir!” the man intoned. Carlos half-expected him to salute.

With a sigh, Carlos shook his head and said, “Just get it done.” Then, without another word, he switched the name on his status back to Carlos Alfaro, then left the building, as anonymous as anyone else.