Chapter 85: Lucian Slacking Off
The side passage was narrower than Lucian had expected.
Grey-white stone bricks pressed in from both sides. Oil lamps nearly burned to nothing were spaced at intervals, throwing patches of sour yellow light.
The air was thick with damp mold, cheap grease, and rust. Whatever had been rotting in this corridor had been doing it for a long time.
Five guards stood at the passage entrance.
Their leather armor was mismatched, and the weapons in their hands were just as varied.
The big man at the front gripped a two-handed battle axe. The tall, thin one on the left held a crossbow. The remaining three carried a sword, a chain flail, and a short spear respectively.
A typical mercenary spread. Nothing refined about the formation, but the numbers gave it substance. In a space this narrow, five against one was a genuinely difficult problem for an ordinary person.
Lucian surveyed the surroundings and confirmed there were no forces concealed in the shadows.
"Who goes there!"
The axe man spoke first. His voice hit the stone walls and came back dull and flat.
An unfamiliar face, but the correct code. That kind of thing happening in a sensitive period made him nervous. He stepped forward. The axe blade caught the lamp oil's weak glow.
Lucian didn't answer.
He kept walking. His pace was neither quick nor slow, his boots on stone producing a measured, quiet rhythm.
"You're asking for death!"
The axe man's expression changed. He threw a look to both sides. All five moved.
The crossbow man struck first. He pulled the trigger, and the bolt cut the air with a sharp hiss and drove straight for Lucian's chest. Fast, accurate, angled just awkwardly enough. Clearly not the first time he'd put a bolt through someone.
Lucian stepped aside.
The bolt scraped past the edge of his chest plate and buried itself in the stone wall behind him. The tail shivered.
In the same moment, sword and chain flail came from left and right. The short spear followed close behind. The axe man bore down from the front, weapon swung high, dropping with the combined weight of body and arms.
Their coordination was reasonable. Front pressure, flanking from both sides, crossbow reloading in the rear.
In a street fight anywhere in the capital, that formation would have most adventurers scrambling.
Lucian didn't raise an eyebrow.
He stepped forward.
The step landed in the instant between the axe beginning to fall and finding its target. He angled his body slightly. The axe blade skimmed past the edge of his shoulder plate and hit nothing. The axe man's full force went into empty air. He lurched forward half a step.
Lucian's sword was already out.
The silver-white blade moved through the dim yellow light in a single arc, as though someone had written something in the air.
The tip crossed the axe man's throat without pausing, carried right in the same motion to catch the chain flail's iron ball, redirecting it back. Lucian used the returning force to reverse into a sweep across the second man's chest.
Three sounds of pain, nearly simultaneous.
The axe man was still going down with his hands at his throat when Lucian had already turned to face the remaining two.
The crossbow man had just finished loading his second bolt. His fingers were still on the trigger. He looked at Lucian. He looked at the three bodies still twitching on the floor. His lips moved without producing anything.
He fired.
The bolt went wide.
Whether from a flinch or plain fear, it passed two feet past Lucian's side without touching so much as his hem.
Lucian walked forward. The short spear man clenched his jaw and thrust. Lucian turned it aside without effort, and the sword tip slid across his throat on the way past. The spear rang off the floor.
The crossbow man threw his weapon down and ran.
Lucian didn't follow. He crouched, picked up the short spear, and tossed it without particular ceremony.
It went through the back of the man's skull. He went down straight.
The passage was quiet.
Five guards with reasonably good coordination. Gone in moments.
Lucian sheathed his sword. The blade settling into the scabbard made a sound that carried far in the silence.
He looked down at his hand.
Not a single drop of blood on it.
It really is true that you need easy wins sometimes to get your confidence back.
The thought surfaced on its own, and he found it a little funny.
The shadow from Sebas shattering his sword with one punch a few days ago had, at this particular moment, dispersed just a fraction.
Though in fairness, all he had done was beat a few small fry who couldn't even use Martial Arts.
These door guards were somewhat stronger than ordinary Kingdom soldiers. Not by much. A rough level estimate: around Level 7.
Warrior classes in this world had no player status panel. Genuinely difficult to assess.
Without data, you could only go by experience and feel.
Unless someone possessed a specific skill that gave them a rough understanding of their class level, the actual number remained unclear. Magic classes were more straightforward. Just identify the highest tier of spell a caster could use and work backward from there.
Level 1 through 7: Tier 1 magic. Level 8 through 14: Tier 2. And so on upward. When casting level reached 64, Tier 10 became accessible.
Beyond Level 70 lay the domain of Super Tier magic.
As for Lucian himself.
He genuinely didn't know his accurate level. He could only estimate roughly: probably somewhere in the hero-level range, somewhere between Level 29 and Level 35.
Still a measurable gap from the Aberrant tier, which ran from Level 36 to Level 42.
Using Gazef Stronoff, the Kingdom's Warrior Captain, as a reference point for New World combat strength: Level 28.
For Eight Fingers to handle Gazef, they would need to commit at least three members of Six Arms.
The intelligence that Gazef was coming to take down the brothel had been passed to Eight Fingers by Lucian, through that supposed "viscount."
Yes.
The reason Lucian knew all of this so precisely was that the "viscount" who had been feeding intelligence to Eight Fingers had been his own operative from the very beginning.
Several years' worth of accumulated credibility, and Lucian had chosen today to redeem it.
A piece placed at the edge of Eight Fingers' inner circle, transmitting only genuine intelligence, never once lying.
Over the years, the other side had come to trust that line completely.
So when the "viscount" told them that the Kingdom Warrior Captain was coming alone to eliminate the brothel, they believed him.
And the reason the intelligence specified the Warrior Captain alone, rather than an Adamantite-rank adventurer team, was because the Warrior Captain as a combat unit was calibrated exactly right. Strong, but not so overwhelming as to inspire despair. Threatening enough to make Eight Fingers take it seriously, but not so threatening that Cocco Doll would abandon the establishment and simply run.
That calculation ensured Cocco Doll would keep as many Six Arms members in position as possible rather than taking what he could carry and disappearing.
Which meant Sebas could eliminate at least three Six Arms members on the premises. Which meant when his idiot little sister eventually helped sweep up Eight Fingers' remaining departments, her chances of running into anything genuinely dangerous would be almost zero.
Lucian walked slowly through the passage.
He was not in any hurry.
His only job was to hold this side entrance and intercept anyone attempting to escape through it.
The main work could go to Sebas.
Taking on multiple Six Arms members simultaneously would be a genuine struggle for Lucian. For Sebas, it was probably one punch each.
So Lucian slacked off, and felt no guilt about it whatsoever.
****
40+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces