Guide in the Darkness (6)
The fourth floor held none of the information he was after.
To reach his destination, he would have to descend one more level.
Yuglerus waited for the guards to pass. Only after every trace of their presence had faded did he use his magic and drop silently onto the stairwell.
"Intruder! After him!"
The instant Yuglerus's feet touched the landing, the guards he had just slipped past wheeled around, shouting as they charged back toward him.
Startled, Yuglerus tightened his grip on the knife.
Something was wrong.
Landing under the effect of Pass Wall shouldn't have made a sound at all. And yet the guards had spun on their heels and come running as if they already knew exactly where he was.
"There! He's right there!"
Yuglerus ducked into the nearest wall in a hurry. The guards closing in on him skidded to a halt on the far side of the surface he had vanished into.
A man who had been standing right in front of them a second ago had simply ceased to exist. Their confusion was only natural. Having lost their target, the guards swept the corridor with weapons raised, eyes darting in every direction.
"Wh-what the hell…?"
"It's a mage! Open the door and go after him!"
Ignoring them and pressing downward was an option. The real question was what to do about the enemies right in front of him.
Leaning against the wall, Yuglerus weighed his choices and reached a decision fast. Now that the infiltration had been blown, pursuit would follow him no matter where he went. If he didn't care to get surrounded, thinning their numbers while he still had room to breathe was the smarter play.
"He's on the other side of the wall! Open the door already!"
"Just hold on a sec— gah…!"
A wet slash cut the air.
A strike lanced out from beyond the wall and dropped one of the guards where he stood. Still hidden inside the room, Yuglerus lowered his stance and burst into the corridor.
Maybe the remaining man still hadn't grasped the situation. Having just lost his partner, the second guard stood staring at the body, unable to get his bearings.
Pass Wall
Yuglerus refreshed the magic still clinging to his body and raised his dagger. His eyes met the armed guard's across the empty air.
The guard scrambled to bring his gun to bear, but Yuglerus's movements — sinking into the floor itself — were nothing a man could easily predict. In the span of roughly a second, a thin red line opened across the throat of the guard who had let him close.
"Ghk…!"
The last remaining guard clutched at his own neck and crumpled. Yuglerus looked down at the man who had just gasped out his death rattle and dragged in a hard breath.
His magic gave him every terrain advantage imaginable — but the one doing the moving was still Yuglerus himself.
He wiped the blood from his dagger against the wall and studied the two corpses at his feet.
Something about this feels off.
Getting spotted during an infiltration was bad luck that happened from time to time. But the way those guards had moved just now had been unnatural in a way he couldn't quite name. Had his timing simply been rotten?
He shook the thought off and submerged himself again, descending toward the lower floors.
No one except the Commander knew his plan. The idea that Lesert Industries had known about his intrusion in advance made no sense at all.
People moving around. Doesn't look like they're armed.
Once more he slipped through the thick floor and dropped onto the third level. A figure was strolling the corridor ahead of him — a black-haired man in a coat, a muffler wrapped around his neck. He carried no weapon of any kind, walking quietly as he gazed out a window.
The man's eyes were pointed the opposite direction from Yuglerus, and nothing in his hands looked remotely threatening. Even if he were a mage, an individual's detection range had its limits.
That was Yuglerus's assessment — right up until the moment he prepared to drop to the floor.
"So a little rat snuck in."
"…!"
Usher's voice rolled low down the corridor. The instant Yuglerus heard it, he reflexively leveled his dagger and launched himself downward.
His body tore free of the ceiling and gravity took hold, accelerating the fall. The keen edge of Yuglerus's dagger knifed toward Usher's skull in a blur.
The strike closed the distance in a heartbeat — and just before the flashing blade could reach him, Usher's mouth opened once more.
Blink
The magic fired. Usher's body vanished like a phantom. Yuglerus's strike, robbed of its target, punched through empty air.
Casting before he hit the ground had at least spared his weapon from shattering against the floor — but Yuglerus rose with a face full of raw displeasure. He had attacked as fast as humanly possible, and still the man had slipped it. That single exchange was more than enough to take the measure of his opponent.
Yuglerus ground his teeth and spat a curse in Usher's direction.
"Son of a bitch. It was a trap."
Guards who had somehow read the path of a man using Pass Wall. A seasoned mage waiting on the third floor as if he had known the exact moment to appear. Every piece of it pointed to the same truth: none of this was possible unless they had anticipated Yuglerus's arrival from the start.
"Pathfinder Yuglerus. That's the name I heard. Whose orders are you following?"
Usher asked the question of a man who had already finished reading the situation. Yuglerus regarded him in silence, then snorted and raised his dagger again. The blade spun a half-turn in the air and settled reverse-grip in his hand.
"You think I'm going to tell you that?"
"You don't have to say it now. A man can still open his mouth after losing an arm or a leg."
"Then go ahead and try."
The air between them drew taut under the traded provocations. Neither broke eye contact. Both shifted their feet by inches, already calculating the next move. One step. One breath. Each man strained not to miss the instant the other committed.
Then, for a fraction of a second, that choking tension loosened — and in the blink of Yuglerus's eyes, Usher was gone.
Usher had moved first.
Operation name: Guide in the Darkness.
It sounded impressive enough, but the core of the plan was surprisingly simple. Locate the enemy. Lure the enemy. Catch the enemy. That was the whole operation.
Through the mana detection device Wilson was running, we could track Yuglerus's position in real time. To keep the operation from leaking, we hadn't briefed the guards in advance — but Ney, who had taken over the radio from Wilson, was continuously feeding us the target's location.
"Is the intruder really going to come this way?"
"Most likely. Assuming Usher fails to catch him, that is."
Yuglerus's direction of movement had been calculated as well. From the moment his presence was first detected, I had been using telepathy without pause — generating traces of human activity on every floor of the building, always herding him in a specific direction. Nothing dramatic; just ordinary living noise. For a man who had to avoid people at all costs, Yuglerus had no choice but to move into the spaces I was guiding him toward.
Static crackled through the earpiece I was wearing while I was still talking strategy with Sinel. Ney's last position brief had come only moments ago, so this was unlikely to be her. Usher Hayes — or the Sword Saint from the upper floors. I was waiting for a call from either of them when a voice came through the earset.
It was Usher.
"I lost the intruder. He'll have gone lower."
Usher's report was brief. He had lost Yuglerus after the man reached the mid-levels. Yuglerus had shaken Usher off and successfully fled.
"You lost him?"
"Annoying magic. Driving him off was the best I could manage."
I had already accounted for the possibility that the mid-level engagement wouldn't end things. Usher's primary tool was Blink. If Yuglerus simply burrowed into the walls and stayed there, Usher's preferred Area Binding wouldn't be able to land a meaningful hit.
And once the target shook Usher, the place he would come looking for was obvious.
I adjusted my grip on the gun and gave Sinel the order.
"Sinel. Prepare for combat."
"Yes."
Haste
If the earlier fights hadn't settled it, what came next would be nothing but a messy game of tag. Had a pursuit broken out while we were unprepared, we almost certainly would have been helpless to stop Yuglerus from escaping. But I had spent days laying nets specifically to catch this man. No matter what move he made, he wasn't walking out of here easily.
"Watch the ceiling. He'll probably come from above—"
"Boss."
I was still scanning the air overhead for Yuglerus's drop when Sinel kicked me. Her strike shoved me several steps back — and a dagger immediately punched through the space I had just been standing in.
A sharp whistle of steel cut the air. The sudden thrust from beyond the wall had me raising my muzzle in answer.
"Quick on the uptake here, too."
Only then could I finally see him. A human shape was wedged between the thick walls — a young man producing a sight so wrong it looked like a glitch from an unfinished game.
"So you're Yuglerus."
"Of course. Every last one of you already knows who I am."
"Well. I did tell them."
The muzzle trained on Yuglerus spat fire. Before I had even finished the motion of pulling the trigger, he was already dropping his stance and sliding back into the wall. My rounds couldn't punch through masonry that thick. Simply by retreating into the wall's interior, he had completely neutralized my gunfire.
But I had already anticipated that.
A gunshot cracked from the far side of the wall. Yuglerus flinched on pure reflex. Confirming an enemy behind him meant he had no choice but to look back — and as his body twisted the opposite way from the direction he had entered, part of his arm slipped free of the wall.
I didn't waste that fraction of a second. I pulled the trigger again.
"Gah!"
The blast hammered against my eardrums. A short scream, and the round punched clean through Yuglerus's arm.