Chapter 44 - 18: [The Failed Infiltrator and the Scarlet Sword]

Chapter 44: Chapter 18: [The Failed Infiltrator and the Scarlet Sword]

Samael raised his shield, lowering his body as he carefully guarded the flank.

The trio sneaked into the camp, following the narrow, cluttered paths toward the largest tent. Their goal was to eliminate as many enemies as possible before sounding any alarms.

The camp was a stumbling hazard. Scattered across the ground were ancient city wall bricks, a mess of plundered loot, Split Claw Bird bones, severed stumps that looked like human fingers, and patches of dried blood. Tents were interspersed with caravans, making the terrain complex and chaotic.

CLACK. Accompanied by a strange, soft noise, a figure suddenly sprang up from the ground! A drunken bandit had been lying there, and Randall had accidentally stepped on his calf!

The moment he rose, Samael reacted with lightning speed. His hand clamped down on the drunk bandit’s neck like an iron vise, holding him tight with one hand while his other arm employed a WWE wrestling-style chokehold, locking the man’s body against his freezing Nether Copper arm. The Nether Copper Armor provided immense strength; choking a grown man with one hand felt like squeezing a baby chick to Samael now.

Randall breathed a sigh of relief.

CLINK! A soft chime rang out. The drunken bandit had pulled a short dagger from his belt and backhanded a thrust into Samael’s abdomen. The murderous blade struck the solid Nether Copper and snapped cleanly in half.

"Urgh... urk..." A faint gasp, like that of a dying animal, escaped his throat. The freezing iron vise had a death grip on his neck, the terrifyingly powerful fingers almost crushing his windpipe. His body was enveloped by the Nether Copper arm and chest plate. A terrible, numbing cold—a rigor mortis-like chill—seeped into his joints. The judgment of the Undead aura descended upon him beneath the phase of the Soul-Feasting Moon.

"Have you... um, have you ever killed innocent people?" Samael asked quietly. "If you have, this will make me feel a bit better."

The bandit wondered weakly in the approaching darkness of death if this was judgment. He had never believed in the gods, but his faith wavered in this moment. Even after fleeing thousands of miles to the Barren Land, he could not escape the fateful judgment of the Angel of Death.

"Please, Cultivator, stop torturing him and torturing me. Give him a quick death," Eliot growled softly. "Clergy are all so damn fussy! This is why I hate teaming up with those fanatics from the Holy Light Church Country, even the Knights and Priests! And you, Randall. If you’re going to be clumsy, don’t come up with some stupid stealth plan. I’m the only one in this whole team with proper infiltration skills!"

Randall lowered his head, admitting his mistake.

Samael fell silent for a moment.

CRACK. A soft sound of breaking bone echoed. He laid the corpse flat on the ground, its neck twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees.

"It feels really strange," he whispered. "It’s colder than I imagined."

"Stop dawdling and hurry up!" Eliot hissed. "I should have known! This entire infiltration plan is complete garbage! You idiot, Randall. You and the Samo Cultivator have practically no stealth abilities, yet you insisted on this bullshit plan, tagging along with me to perform stealth assassinations! You’re going to get us all killed—"

The next second, his breath caught, and his face turned deathly pale.

A blood-red blade pierced his chest, running clean through him. The bizarre, crimson tip, equipped with hook-like barbs on both sides, peeked out with a grim smile before slowly retracting back through Eliot’s body and pulling out from his back.

"Eliot!" Over Randall’s panicked shout, Eliot’s figure slowly collapsed to the ground, revealing a burly man wielding a crimson Longsword standing behind him.

The man chuckled, shivering slightly in perverse comfort. The blood on the Longsword was absorbed into the crimson blade. It pulsed with a faint, dark red glow, as if the blood had been slurped up by a beast trapped within.

"The Alliance really looks down on us. To think they’d send such low-grade adventurers to hunt us down." The burly man, draped in a plush-collared Desert Beast Hide Robe, gripped the ornate crimson hilt. He lazily tapped his Longsword against a nearby wooden barrel.

THUD THUD.

Along with the tapping of the blade, a dense ring of torches suddenly flared to life around them, like the glowing eyes of a wolf pack in the dark. The bandits snickered as they completely surrounded the trio. The vast majority of them hadn’t been asleep at all!

"What level Assassin was this? Level 3? Level 4? Did anyone ever tell you that I used to be a Level 5 Adventurer?" The burly man lifted his boot and kicked Eliot, whose fate was unknown, as he lay on the ground. "Oh, I almost forgot. The Alliance doesn’t care about the lives of adventurers at all. Whether a Level 5 Adventurer goes missing or turns to banditry, it doesn’t matter. It’s also completely normal for high-level commission sheets to lack crucial information."

The surrounding bandits erupted into raucous laughter.

"Resting so close to our camp, and upwind at that? Do you think we’re deaf, blind, and have no sense of smell? Who among us hasn’t hacked and slashed their way through the Barren Land?" The burly man sneered. "Absolutely idiotic. You got greedy for the loot, didn’t you? As a Level 5 senior, let me teach you something, kid: survive first, then talk about loot. Of course, you won’t be needing that lesson anymore."

He casually raised his crimson Longsword and thrust it at Randall with ghostly speed.

CLANG!

The blade was stopped dead in midair by a Rusted Copper Kite Shield thrust horizontally into its path.

Sparks flew as the crimson blade clashed against the eerie green Rusted Copper Shield, leaving a pale scratch on its surface.

The bandit leader’s heart leaped in shock.

This was a Demonized Weapon he had obtained through a transaction with a certain exalted figure. Ordinary armor stood no chance against its blade! It was by relying on this very sword that they had effortlessly slaughtered the grain transport convoy. He couldn’t fathom how such a weapon had been blocked by a Rusted Copper Shield.