The Insider System

Chapter 84: Bedtime

Rounding the last corner before he could walk into the barrier surrounding the Alchemist guild Lake heard a noise behind him. Pulling out his knife Lake spun so he could intercept any attack that was coming for him, to see the person had yet to launch one. Right when he was about to ask what they wanted, he heard another person land behind him.

Lake saw the person in front of him snicker because their genius plan to surround him had worked. Lake didn't know exactly how they were planning to actually get him under their control though. Lake guessed they must be pretty strong if they thought the two of them could stop him no matter what he could do.

That was how fights in this world went between people who didn't know each other. Both sides just had to guess how strong their opponent was. Unless they were able to inspect the other person, but that was a pretty rare skill that was easy to block with a ring like the one Lake had.

The only other way you could try and tell how strong someone was was to look at their stuff, if they had a lot of nice things they were either strong or rich enough to buy strength. Lake hadn't turned to look at the person behind him yet so he wasn't sure what they looked like, but the person in front of him had some rings and a necklace, so Lake expected at least one of them would be protecting him from magic.

Lake could tell they weren't about to say anything because they were clearly just waiting for him to make a move, so Lake said. "Can we do this tomorrow? It's my bedtime." No one laughed, and Lake thought it was because they could tell he was being serious. "No, but if you'd like we could knock you out for a while."

Lake didn't know if that counted as sleep or not but it wasn't something he was interested in, so he guessed he was going to have to fight these two, plus whoever else came out once these two were dead. This was really upsetting to Lake because he was so close to being able to go to bed, and now he had to deal with these idiots.

"Before we start, do either of you belong to a guild or anything?" Lake wanted to make sure he didn't kill someone from the Assassins guild again because it was too much trouble. It would be much easier to just knock them out if they were Assassins. "Why would we tell you that?"

Lake took this to mean they weren't from the Assassins guild, because if they were they would probably just not answer instead of being cute with him. Lake marked the guy in front of him, and then turned to look behind him. Lake planned to fight towards the barrier so he could slowly get away, and if he was lucky one of the guards might see him and come to help.

The person behind him wore a similar amount of jewelry but their clothes didn't match the guy in front of him. Lake guessed this meant they were free agents, or they had purposely forgotten to wear their uniforms to keep their identities hidden.

Lake was pretty sure even the dark guilds had uniforms even if most members didn't wear them, even if that wasn't true the higher ups probably had something they all wore at the least.

Lake knew the best plan was to rush this woman and even if he didn't kill her in the first attack he could test their speed by booking it towards the barrier. That would be when the rest of them would probably show themselves. Blocking his way forward, and forcing him to fight.

Lake just hoped he would be close enough to the guild by then that maybe someone would see him. It was unreasonable to think Lucas wouldn't have a single person out here watching the situation. Lake looked at his Stamina before he started just to see if he was ok to go all out right from the start.

Seeing he had 65 Lake decided he would be good as long as he didn't use Fast Hands too much. Rushing forward Lake could tell he hadn't caught her off guard at all but his speed had surprised her because she started moving backwards away from him to buy herself more time before they clashed.

Seeing he had time, Lake risked a look behind him to see if he was faster than the guy, which he wasn't. Spinning Lake switched targets; the woman clearly had less Agility than the man did, so he needed to make sure he kept his eyes on the man until he was dead or incapacitated.

Lake had just realized his skill The Sight had activated, making it much easier for him to tell what was happening behind him, so as long as he kept his ears peeled for attacks, he could disregard what the woman was doing, because he could still hear her making distance between them.

Lake activated Burst and jumped backwards away from the man getting both in front of him. Lake could tell neither of them had been able to keep their eyes on him when he activated Burst so while he was still in the air he activated Fast Hands and Knife Throw at the same time and threw his knife at the guy.

Lake's knife moved faster than he had when he had jumped so there was no way the guy would see it coming so as long as he didn't have some skill that could block physical attacks Lake had a good chance of killing the guy.

Lake saw the silver blur that was his knife slam into the guy's head hard enough that even his helmet exploded. With the stacked effects of Burst and Fast Hands, Lake wasn't surprised the attack had been so powerful, but the shock value was the best part.

He could feel half of the eyes that had been on him were now gone, Lake guessed he had scared them off from this one display of power. The only thing was he only had one knife, so he couldn't repeat the attack without retrieving it.

Left with his sword and bow Lake chose his sword. Since no one had come to back this woman up yet he figured he could finish her off and retrieve his knife. It wasn't his original plan, but he didn't want to run, and leave his knife here.

Once he landed Lake jumped again, but this time towards the woman. Lake could tell he was moving too fast for her to see, because her eyes were looking around even though he was heading straight for her.

Once he was close enough Lake used Crunch and smacked her head off her shoulders. With her head now a thin layer of red on the wall next to them Lake picked up his knife then headed towards the guild. It seemed his display had run off the rest of them because he could only feel one, or two people were still looking at him.

Looking back at the fight scene, Lake bet whatever rich bozo lived here was going to be pissed once they woke up, but he doubted they would clean it themselves, and he really didn't have the energy to clean it up, so if anyone found him through the evidence he left, good, maybe they would see how stupid it was to bother him.

Lake felt the two headless bodies spoke for themselves, so hopefully whoever was in charge of law enforcement would just sweep the bodies under the rug instead of making trouble for him. Getting through the barrier Lake saw there were some guards there that reacted to his presence.

Remembering what Lucas had said about him being checked once he got back, Lake handed himself over to them. He wanted to get all of this out of the way as fast as he could so he could go to bed.

Being brought into a room with an old wizard looking dude, Lake was cleared for entry a few minutes later. Lake guessed that guy was a curse master, or something that could tell when someone was being controlled, but he was more focused on finding Lucas, so he really didn't think about it.

Entering Lucas's office Lake could tell he was really busy so Lake tried to make it quick. "I saw a bunch of crazy shit today, goodnight." The rest could wait till morning but before he started up the stairs Lucas stopped him. "Like what?"

Lake wasn't sure if the news about what happened at the forest had spread yet, so he asked. "Have you heard about what happened in the forest?" Lucas seemed interested, but Lake couldn't tell if it meant he had or he hadn't. "Are you talking about what the Demon Worshipers did?"

Lake nodded and said. "Yeah I was there when they did it. They used all the bodies to make a giant undead." Lucas didn't seem that shocked by what he said, so Lake assumed the giants weren't new. Lucas had probably seen one during the last war. "Who made it? I'm guessing by the fact you're here right now you didn't see the Demon Lord, which means you saw someone with the new job that lets them make undead."

"It was another giant, and once they were done, I saw a cloud with a mouth give the new giant divinity." Lake sounded like a little kid lying when he said this, but by the look on Lucas's face Lake could tell he believed it. "He made the giant a demigod?"

Lake didn't really know how he was supposed to answer this so he just nodded until Lucas said. "Goodnight." and disappeared. Lake looked around for the mark to see where Lucas had gone, until he saw it at the top of the spire. Lake shrugged, and started climbing towards his room.