Midnight Mischief (2)
A winter night, cloaked in darkness.
Two men paced on the rooftop of a building in the back alleys of the Bronze District.
Beneath their thick robes, they wore leather armor and swords, their faces hidden behind black masks.
One of them spoke up.
“Damn, it’s freezing. This winter’s colder than usual.”
He rubbed his hands together, glancing up. Across the alley stood a five-story brick building.
A rare sight in these backstreets.
It was a warehouse recently acquired by the Telia Trading Company, and the reason they were standing guard.
“I don’t get it. What’s so important that they need us, the faithful, to stand guard? Couldn’t they just use some thugs?”
“Shut up. You know what’ll happen if the Golden Mask Apostle hears you talking like that?”
“Damn, am I wrong?”
The man took off his mask, rubbing his face with his hands, trying to warm his cold skin.
The Telia warehouse was bustling, torches lit inside and out.
To the untrained eye, it looked like the company was celebrating a big deal, finally putting the neglected warehouse to use.
But that was just a cover.
Even as a temporary follower, he knew the commotion wasn’t due to any trade.
Something about accelerating the grand plan, but that was for the higher-ups to worry about.
His companion spoke, voice tinged with anxiety.
“They’ve been bringing in a lot of vagrants lately. Over three hundred just yesterday… Something’s definitely up.”
“Heh, maybe there’s a pretty one among them. It’s been too long since I’ve had some fun.”
“Get serious. This could be important. Didn’t you see the White and Golden Mask Apostles running around all morning? They’re talking about accelerating the grand plan. This is a divine mission, a revolution, a war.”
The man shook his head. His young companion took everything too seriously.
Grand plans and revolutions were for the leaders. As a temporary follower, he didn’t need to concern himself with such matters.
He’d never even met this so-called god or demon.
Unlike the man, who had spent years as a back-alley thug, his companion was a scholar from the mountains, naive to the ways of the world.
The man chuckled, slinging an arm around his companion’s shoulder.
“Heh, you bookworm. We’re just grunts. We do what we’re told. If they say jump, we jump. If they say kill, we kill. If they say—”
He stopped mid-sentence, sensing something off.
His arm felt like it was draped over a two-meter wall.
Was his companion always this tall? No, he used to tease him for being short.
The texture under his hand was unfamiliar.
A towering figure, broad and muscular like a stone statue.
‘…Damn.’
A chill ran down his spine.
He stopped groping and slowly turned his head, lips trembling.
His companion was gone.
In his place stood a giant in a black robe, silently watching him.
“Who…?”
“Shut up.”
The giant’s hand blurred.
Crack!
That was the last thing the man saw.
“Filthy cultists.”
Dalen muttered, tossing the bodies of the two black-masked followers aside.
That made thirty cultists he’d dealt with.
Clearly, the cultists hadn’t left the warehouse unguarded.
Around the five-story building, guards were strategically placed on rooftops and in alleys.
Anywhere from two to six guards, wearing black and white masks, occupied strategic positions.
Their plan was simple.
If a small group approached, they’d ambush them. If a large group came, they’d stall for time while one or two ran to alert the main force inside.
Then, the main force would either rush out or destroy evidence and flee.
‘Efficient strategy. Even the Bronze Guard would struggle to launch a perfect surprise attack.’
But Dalen could.
He was an unnoticeable individual with inhuman strength and superhuman senses.
In just thirty minutes, Dalen had single-handedly eliminated the guards, creating a gap in their surveillance.
Step. Step.
Dalen walked slowly through the alley shadows.
Though it was a dark, torchless night, the atmosphere felt strangely different.
Dalen soon realized why.
The usual vagrants and addicts that should have been lurking were nowhere to be found.
‘They must have rounded up all the vagrants nearby to bolster their monstrous army.’
The Telia Trading Company and the Apostles of Regression were becoming increasingly reckless.
With the grand plan imminent, they had no intention of hiding their existence.
And that was fortunate for Dalen.
‘If they hadn’t caused such chaos in the Bronze District, the guard wouldn’t have agreed to this operation.’
After dealing with the Silver Mask Assassin, Sienna had reached out to the Bronze Guard again.
The proposal was simple: with Dalen’s overwhelming strength, could they execute a joint operation?
That was yesterday. The guard’s response came this morning.
Through Sienna, the Bronze Guard agreed to cooperate.
The plan was straightforward.
Dalen would start the fire, and the guard would put it out.
In more detail, it went like this:
Dalen would infiltrate the warehouse’s first floor, taking out thugs and apostles, setting fires, and holding his ground.
Once the fire was sufficiently set, the Bronze Guard, waiting nearby, would arrive to ‘coincidentally’ discover evidence of the cult.
A clean, perfect script.
‘Once I storm the warehouse, everything will go according to plan.’
Dalen scratched his chin. Just past this alley was the warehouse.
But for some reason, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the plan.
“Hmm.”
Dalen looked up.
Before him stood the Telia warehouse, a five-story brick building.
This was one of the main bases of the Apostles of Regression, a place he’d inevitably encounter in battle.
‘I died here once.’
It was here he’d failed to take down the Telia Trading Company’s leader, one of the Silver Mask Apostles.
Back then, the leader was on the fifth floor.
A windowless, sealed room, like an ancient shrine to a dark god.
With the grand plan so close, the leader would undoubtedly be in that room.
The question was this:
If he attacked the first floor, would the Telia leader stay inside until the guard arrived?
Or would he slip away unnoticed, sharpening his blade for the real battle to come?
‘Who knows.’
Dalen shook his head.
But one thing was certain.
If they lost him during this operation, it would be the worst possible outcome.
‘When fighting cultists or demon pawns, there’s one thing you must never do.’
And that’s failing to crush them when you have the chance.
The Apostles of Regression would have grown to rival the Bronze Guard in a few years.
Dalen had no intention of waiting.
By crushing them now, he’d eliminate one of the many events leading this world to ruin.
And in the process, Dalen would grow stronger.
He’d recover the bodies of characters who’d died to them, gaining levels and material rewards.
He couldn’t afford to let the Telia leader escape.
He wouldn’t give him the chance to create more variables.
He’d erase even the slightest possibility and claim the rewards in the process.
Step.
Dalen turned back down the alley he’d come from, thinking.
‘This is the perfect opportunity to test the skill I acquired yesterday.’
Dalen circled around to the back of the building.
In his memory, the leader’s sealed room was at the rear of the building.
A block away from the warehouse, Dalen looked up at the fifth floor, taking a deep breath.
Inhale.
Power surged through his body. His toes dug into the dirt.
With his strength increased by three points, Dalen’s already superhuman power reached a new level.
It was almost beyond his control.
Despite his efforts since yesterday, he still struggled to fully master it.
Exhale.
Dalon exhaled deeply, then drew in a sharp breath. The cold oxygen filled his lungs, coursing through his veins, invigorating every part of his body.
Boom!
He sprinted forward.
Thud! Thud!
The ground beneath him erupted like waves, each step sending clumps of earth flying as if he were splashing through puddles.
He moved with a speed that rivaled a galloping horse, and at a certain point, he pushed off the ground with all his might.
Thud―
The earth rippled beneath him like water.
He focused his intent on leaping, channeling all his muscles to push against the resistance below.
And then—
“Leap.”
Boom―!
With an explosive force, the ground burst apart, and Dalon shot into the air like a cannonball.
He soared upward, reaching the height of a five-story building, his trajectory almost a perfect straight line.
“The walls of the chamber are reinforced, nearly as strong as a fortress,” he recalled from the game settings.
With that thought, Dalon extended his fist.
The walls of the fifth-floor warehouse were said to be as tough as a fortress, but it didn’t matter. Even if a real fortress stood before him, the combination of his superhuman strength and skills would have overcome it.
The moment his fist connected with the wall—
Crash―!
A tremendous noise erupted, and Dalon found himself inside the chamber.
Thud! Thud! Rumble.
Around him, stones rolled and debris fell in a cascade of dust and rubble.
Dalon slowly lowered his steaming fist and arm, casually brushing off the smaller debris.
“It’s been a while.”
Beyond the settling dust, the scene he had only seen through a monitor unfolded before him.
A windowless chamber, lit only by scattered torches, casting flickering shadows on the strange symbols and figures etched into the walls.
On the opposite side of the wall he had just demolished, a row of sturdy wooden doors lined up, each fitted with small iron bars like prison cells.
“That’s where they keep the army of abominations.”
They captured vagrants to create an army of monsters, using the power of this sanctuary dedicated to a dark god to keep them subdued.
The fact that they had managed to create thousands of these creatures within the city without being discovered was a testament to their meticulous management.
Rustle.
He sensed movement. Dalon turned his head with a nonchalant expression.
”…I have witnessed the presence of the divine alongside my own apostle.”
The sound came from the center of the sanctuary, near a small altar dedicated to the dark god.
A middle-aged man in a black robe, holding a silver mask, stared at Dalon in disbelief.
“It’s the first time I’ve doubted my eyes might be deceived by hallucinations. Did you cast a spell?”
The man asked.
Dalon moved forward silently, striding toward the altar where the man stood.
The man was Telia, the elusive head of the Telia Trading Company, rarely seen in public and known only by reputation.
Rumors about him were rampant—some said he was a drug lord exiled from the southern empire, others claimed he was the illegitimate child of a knight from the eastern kingdom of Britain.
Few took these rumors seriously.
Most people saw Telia as nothing more than a shrewd merchant approaching old age.
“But the truth is closer to the rumors.”
In fact, the reality was even more fantastical than the rumors.
Telia, or rather, Achalis Philenom, was a retired knight who had once served in the imperial order. He was also a shadowy figure who controlled the drug and prostitution rings, dominating the Bronze District’s commerce.
Moreover, he was one of the two most powerful bosses among the Silver Mask Apostles.
Dalon drew his axe. Dust fell from his shoulders as he moved.
“I don’t know about spells.”
He approached Achalis Philenom, the head of the Telia Trading Company, and raised his axe.
“If your eyes hurt, see an eye doctor, you wealthy merchant.”
The axe came down.