Chapter 313 – Advantage of Surprise

I prepared myself on the third day. My first attempt would be in the morning. Interestingly enough, my company and Miwai had the same weak point. The two businesses were managed by the person who started the company and also owned it. Just like I was Urtek’s weak link, so was Fradorant Miwai. Both organizations would take a critical hit if they were to lose their head. In my case, it would even be fatal since everything relied on me.

As such, my goal was simple: to send Fradorant Miwai on an orbital trip and join the mercenary his firm employed to attack me. It was all fair game. Since they were ready to harm and kill others for their goals, they should be ready to receive the same treatment.

It was hard to say whether Fradorant being a sorcerer was a good thing or not. Mages and sorcerers handled defenses differently. Taking myself as an example, I constantly kept two layers of defensive spells around me. One would need to pierce through both to be able to harm me.

Sorcerers, on the other hand, used a “surge” of sel to protect their bodies during fights. They would discharge their inner sel outwardly to form a layer of defense. This layer had many names, from sel clothing to sel projection. However, the most mundane way to call it was Sel Armor. It is important to keep in mind that this sel armor is completely different from mage armor spells, which always use the affinity in their names, just like my spatial armor spell.

From my point of view, the pros of the situation were that sorcerers never kept their sel armor on at all times, because it wasn’t efficient in terms of sel usage. On the other hand, spells were pieces of art refined by hundreds of generations of mages. They were optimized to use a minimum amount of sel to generate a maximum output. Sel armor was just a projection of sel, something extremely crude in comparison. All of this meant that if I could reach my target before he activated his sel armor, that would be my victory.

However, that didn’t mean sorcerers were more vulnerable to ambushes. It was the other way around, actually. Sorcerers were warriors trained in martial arts. They relied on their instincts and incredible reaction speed to avoid ambuscades and pitfalls.

Normally, ambushing a rank 6 sorcerer as someone lower-ranked was asking to die. My ambushes weren’t the normal type, though. The sole reason I visited Miwai’s boss three days prior was to acquire the coordinates to his office, a place where he was sure to spend a lot of his time. I couldn’t care less about the contract we agreed on, which they probably never planned to abide by anyway. I was sure they had many other tricks to avoid fulfilling anything that would give profits to someone else.

What I was going to do was the sort of plan that would be impossible back in my world. If Fradorant had known I was a spatial mage, and if he had known how spatial spells worked, he would never have allowed me to meet him in his office. And that was precisely why I tried to keep my secret from becoming public as long as possible. The surprise advantage was way too sweet and critical for these sorts of situations.

Still, I shouldn’t be careless. It would be a terrible mistake to underestimate a rank 6 sorcerer. Wico had been the perfect example of how dangerous they were.

I first teleported to my emergency hideout in the mountains to prepare myself. I put on loose and baggy clothes, together with a large bag with two holes on top of my head. I couldn’t wear any fitting clothes because it was so easy to find a person’s species by their body forms. This was also why the mercenary who burned my home hadn’t tried to hide herself much. The disadvantage of wearing such ridiculous clothes, if one could even call them that, was too large in a potential battle. In this case, though, I only needed to do a single action, and as such, it wouldn’t hinder me too much.

I took a few deep breaths. When I felt ready, I began the operation, codename “Thug Merchant To Space”. I teleported to Fradorant’s office, right behind his chair. I instantly extended my hand toward where he was supposed to be, only to notice that the office was empty. Before I could run into problems, I teleported back to my hideout.

This wasn’t unexpected. I waited a couple of hours and tried again. This time, he was here for good.

“Sir!”

His rank 6 guard reacted well, just like he did. However, the effect of surprise was too large. Just as they were getting into action, I also touched his antlers, which were conveniently protruding from the top of his chair.

Everything happened at lightning speed at that point. The guard was too far to do anything, but Fradorant himself was incredible in his own way. It was like he had been ambushed his whole life, as he unsheathed a dagger from who knows where and aimed to cut me, his sel surging just a bit too late.

The teleportation spell activated right as he severed my hand. We teleported to space, where he had no choice but to stop in his tracks, the sudden nausea and incomprehension paralyzing him. Just as he did so, I fetched my chopped right hand with the left one, with blood spreading everywhere in zero gravity, and teleported back to my hideout.

I quickly removed my upper layer of clothes as best as I could with one hand, ignoring the pain I was very used to. When I looked almost normal, I teleported to Ekidos. There was a clinic there that I had gone to together with Selva whenever she got hurt too badly. It would be far enough from Geola that no one would link me to what happened today. I rushed there at full speed, blood smearing the ground on my way, and immediately asked for treatment.