"... Huh?"
Hearing her pistol continuously click, Lisa finally snapped out of her daze as she reached for her plate carrier to grab a new magazine for her empty pistol out of a trained instinct. That's when she was surprised again, as her plate carrier was empty, furthermore she hadn't been shooting at anything in particular, her outstretched hand that clenched her pistol so tightly it cut off blood from reaching her fingers pointed towards a setting sun and empty sky.
"Right… We drove them off…"
Realising that the battle had already been won a while ago, Lisa felt strange as her mind came down from the adrenaline induced high it had been under for the past hour. The knights had been wiped out by Lisa and the pair of boarhounds, even as one of them was destroyed they had all continued pushing them back, Lisa herself had followed Tom's initiative flawlessly.
"Wait, Tom?... TOM!"
With her brain finally back in gear, Lisa holstered her pistol, ignoring the pain and agony shooting through her body as she looked around after her teacher. Lisa quickly located Tom, he was sitting on his knees surrounded by spent 8.75mm casings hyperventilating and covered in blood.
"TOM!"
Sprinting over to him, it quickly became clear to Lisa that any wounds Tom had were already closed up thanks to the blessing of the hunt, and most of the blood covering his torso were that of other people who had happened to find themselves on the unfortunate side of his M-909X.
"Are you okay!?"
"..."
Seeing Lisa rush towards him, Tom didn't answer immediately, instead he just smiled for a while as he continued breathing heavily.
In that moment he was happy that Lisa was safe, proud that she had managed to stand on her own two feet in the face of such an oppressive force. But at the centre of everything, Tom was glad that she failed to see him as the monster he was.
"Say something!"
"I'm… Fine."
Seeing Lisa angry at him, Tom was finally forced to say something, although his words came out barely audible.
"My mind is just… A bit foggy… Tired…"
"Well… That's understandable, I guess."
With everything that had just happened Lisa felt tired as well, well more like utterly exhausted, so she could understand Tom's state, she just didn't expect it. In all the time she had known Tom, Lisa had never seen Tom tired before, he always went to sleep after her and woke up long before she was up.
"Let's get some sleep then."
As her mind and body finally started calming down, exhaustion also started washing over Lisa as her body started feeling heavy to even move.
"..."
"Tom?"
Not getting an answer again, Lisa found Tom's eyes closed as his breathing had finally calmed down, he had simply fallen asleep on his knees, weapon still in hand.
"... Why does he still act like a child at times like these?... Well, it can't be helped, I guess."
Retrieving a pair of sleeping rolls from the surviving Boarhound, Lisa got Tom to at least lay down as she curled up beside him, soon falling into a deep slumber herself.
"FUCK! HOW THE HELL DID THEY MANAGE TO LOSE THAT FIGHT!?"
When Adam heard the report from his butler he became enraged, getting up from his cosy chair and flipping over the table to the side of it, wine, glass and all.
"FUCK! IT'S JUST A PAIR OF MEASLY SCAVS!? HOW THE FUCK DOES AN ENTIRE KNIGHT DETACMENT LOSE TO THAT!?"
Finding nothing else to throw around, Adam channelled his anger towards his butler, screaming straight into his servant's face, soaking it with both spit and vitriol.
"According to reports from the few survivors, it wasn't just a pair of 'scavs', Master. They had some strange headless horse golems with them that carried mounted weapons. The knights report that it was their unending fire that forced them to retreat, although they managed to destroy one of the golems doing the battle."
"SO THEY HAVE UGV'S NOW TOO!? SHIT! FUCK!"
Pulling at his own hair, Adam felt like he might have a stroke but didn't much care for that at the moment as his current issue just had become much worse, not only did the measly PMC's have access to UGV's now, discovering that had cost him an entire detachment of mounted knights, something he couldn't hide or escape criticism for.
"GET OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
Screaming at the butler to ease his frustrations, Adam stomped the floor like a child as he ripped out a small chunk of hair, the pain seemed to calm him slightly as his butler silently retreated to safety.
"FUCK! WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO DEAL WITH ALL THESE INCOMPETENT ASSHOLES!? IT'S LIKE BEING A FUCKING LIEUTENANT AGAIN!"
For all the experience Adam had commanding troops, suppressing uprisings and dismantling countries, that had all been in command of a far superior force. In other words, he was used to oppressing people who had no chance at fighting back, so losing in this manner was something he couldn't handle.
"SHIT! Now I need to rely on that old fart… Well, no choice."
Realising he needed to endure quite a bit of humiliation to finally get rid of the scab that had been bothering him to no end, Adam figured he could promise the King whatever he needed to complete the job, after which his employer would take care of everything.
(As long as I complete the job, this country will be mine, and I won't need to ask for things anymore.)
-
"... So that's the capital? It seems small."
"Well yeah, compared to what you're used to Tom I'm sure it looks small."
Glancing at the imposing walls in the distance that marked the edge of the capital city of Kingsted, Lisa focused her attention on the tablet in her hand relaying surveillance information from the GE-54A3 Albatros skirting the edge of space above them.
It had been about a month since Lisa and Tom had repelled the onslaught of gryphon knights, since then they had kept away from all signs of civilization and finally reached their end goal.
Of course, Lisa and Tom hadn't just been travelling, they had been doing every possible moment to gather points from monsters, trained and configured their equipment for the approaching task of freeing Lisa's mother and eliminating Adam Randall. After Lisa's awakening and embracing of her magical powers, her loadout had changed quite a bit as she had experimented together with Tom to figure out how best to implement magic into her arsenal. Lisa's trusted M-503 rifle was still topped with Tom's old LNX-4 scope, but almost everything else about had changed. The rifle's upper receiver and barrel had been replaced with custom implements, including strengthened components and a quick change barrel system for rapid replacement in case she needed to bring out the full potential of her magic. Strengthening had been the main philosophy behind all other improvements too, as the entire lower receiver and grip had been replaced with reinforced components while the stock was replaced and had additional recoil springs installed. Tom's M907X had also been modified, but far less comprehensively as the only visible change was a shortened barrel and a new EXACTO compatible muzzle brake crowning it.
"... Security has definitely been tightened, the little fucker is scared that his end is near."
"Definitely… What do we do?"
Looking over a few different feeds, all Lisa saw was vigilant guards, reinforced gates and kill boxes. There was no apparent way into the city, at least not one that wouldn't alert the guards.
"Patience young grasshopper."
"... Okay, I'm patient… Now what?"
Glancing at Lisa with his signature shit-eating grin plastered all over his face, Tom took out his radio.
"In my old line of business we would do this thing called 'outsourcing' a lot."
"What the hell is that?"
"Outsourcing, it means getting other people to do your shit for you."
Keying up his radio, Tom simply reported that they had arrived and waited for a response.
[Oh yeah, that's great.]
"How's it going?"
[We flooded again yesterday as it's just above the water table, it's good now… I can see those things have arrived.]
"Yeah, we'll be there in a few minutes."
"... Who did you just talk to? That wasn't my aunt."
Seeing Tom put down his radio, Lisa immediately started questioning him as the voice she heard come through the radio was that of a man, and Lisa couldn't remember Tom had given a radio to anyone like that.
"All will be revealed in time, young grasshopper."
"I really fucking hate that therm, you know that right?"
"Yeah, that's why I keep using it, young- AW FUCK okay!"
Getting kicked in his shin, Tom finally got to the point and started heading towards the meet up point.
"AH! It was you!"
When Lisa and Tom finally arrived at an abandoned logging cabin a few kilometres from the capital's wall, Lisa immediately recognised the beastman assassin she and Tom had met back in the city of Yalha.
"..."
With a finger pointing in his face, the assassin's fox-like smile stiffened a bit, given how they had met earlier, he didn't expect Lisa to be this open in cooperating with them.
"Pointing is impolite Lisa, cut it out."
Swatting his disciple away as he reprimanded her, Tom shook the beastkin's hand as the assassin started explaining.
"The tunnel starts from here and is about 3 kilometres long, leading to an abandoned warehouse located at the edge of Kingsteds western industrial district, but as I explained earlier, it's a bitch to get through."
A few days after the debacle in Yalha, Tom had contacted the beastkin and they had immediately started talking about how the two of them could get even again, this quickly shifted to discussing how they could get rid of their common enemies.
The top of their combined shit list was Adam Randall as Tom's target for elimination and had apparently committed a bunch of atrocities on the gambler's home country which bordered the kingdom to the west. With their target identified, Tom had requested the beastkin to start construction on a tunnel into the capital that Tom could use to smuggle in strike equipment for the job.
"We can handle it being a bitch to get through, what about the size? Is it large enough to get The UGV's trough?"
Pointing to the pair of Boarhounds standing behind him and Lisa loaded with equipment, Tom asked about the finer details.
"... I don't think so… If we had another month or two we could enlarge the tunnel and install additional supports, but for now it's only traversable by laying flat down on carts and pulling yourself along."
Needless to say, the chance of working on this tunnel for another few months without it being discovered by the city guard was slim, so Tom would have to leave his Boarhounds outside the capital… At least until it was time to go loud.
"That's also fine Victor, I can work around that."
Sensing Lisa's blatant stare drilling into the side of his head, Tom realised he hadn't introduced her to the beastkin assassin and immediately rectified that.
"Ahem. Lisa, meet Victor, Victor meet Lisa, my disciple and daughter of objective Alpha."
"... Could you not call my mother 'objective alpha'?... It's nice to finally be introduced to you, Victor. I hope we can work well together and achieve our shared goals."
Taking Lisa's extended hand, Victor showed a genuine smile as he responded.
"Likewise Lisa, without your and Tom's help we wouldn't be able to mount an attack of this scale to rescue our imprisoned kin."
With Lisa and Victor introduced, Tom decided to finally drop a bombshell on her.
"Victor and his collaborators will help you with the assault on the dungeon where your mother is held while I deal with our Adam problem in a simultaneous strike."
"What!? That's not what we agreed on!"