"O…oi!" I complained, but Anastasia was in too good of a mood to pay any attention to me. Instead, she smiled when she saw the hooded guards (seriously, why the fuck were they all wearing hoods inside a building?!) emerge from their hiding places to ambush her (aren't they coming out too early for a damned ambush? Did none of them know how to launch surprise attacks from behind?!). They were dashing forward, armed with knives and daggers.
Why they didn't arm themselves with guns or just throw their bladed weapons at Anastasia the moment she broke in, I had no idea. Granted, they wouldn't work against Ana. I had a feeling that she would have the reflexes and skills to dodge every single projectile if necessary.
Already she was speeding forward, almost disappearing into a blur that took her assailants by surprise.
"I'm pushing on!" she said excitedly, her earrings flying from her surge. Before any of the ambushers in the hall could react, she kicked the nearest one in the gut with such force he was hurled off his feet.
"Gah!" he coughed out blood as he crashed into the wall, cracking the concrete. The other two ambushers glanced at their fallen comrade, stunned. Again, they were complete amateurs, not making use of their comrade's "sacrifice" to flank and attack Anastasia while she was attacking. Not that they could, because I would have summoned something and taken them out.
That was my job as her hired muscle – to provide her cover fire and support.
"Whoa!" one of them cried out instead of…you know, attacking. "What's with this woman!? She's so strong!"
"You're the ones who are too slow." Anastasia was shaking her head. "Has the Dark Church been reduced to hiring amateurs now?"
At the back, I had summoned Orion and was firing off a bunch of arrows to keep a mass of hooded cultists down, thus minimizing Ana's attackers to a handful. Even so, I couldn't help but glance at the former Assassin in awe.
She was really good at anticipating her enemy's movements. One of the Dark Church cronies was dashing at her with his knives, but she was already moving to intercept his attacks. She was several times faster than me, but that was no surprise.
After all, I was a summoner who probably specialized more in summoning and ranged spells whereas Anastasia was clearly in close combat and melee attacks. That made sense, given the nature of her sect's specialization in poisoned weapons. A poisoned blade only worked if it came into contact with the target's flesh and cut it.
Her eyes were focused on her enemies and despite being outnumbered and unarmed, she remained confident, as if to say she didn't need her poisoned daggers to deal with these small fries. She deflected her assailant's knife by striking his arm to the side. Another ambusher tried to sneak around the corner to fire at her from her blind spot, but I took him out with an arrow to the knee, and then a second arrow to his chest. He crumpled, his crossbow dropping to the ground.
Another ambusher lunged out to fire upon me with a machine gun, but I summoned Scutum Sobiescianum. While he concentrated fire upon my Constellation shield, Capricorn emerged from behind him and trampled him onto the ground. His comrades spun around, surprised by the giant goat's appearance, and they scattered when he hit several of them with his horns.
Anastasia's movements accelerated, as if to say she wasn't going to lose to me, and she grabbed her opponent's arm before throwing him over her shoulder in one smooth move. Then she spun around gracefully to kick his comrade as he tried to stab her in the back. He cried out and doubled over as he flew several meters. She then finished off the guy on the ground with a stomp to his neck. I winced when I heard the sickening crunch.
Ana could be brutal if she had to.
While the remaining ambushers were fleeing from my rampaging Capricorn, I stopped in front of one of them and slammed my elbow into his face before he knew what was happening. To be fair, he was glancing over his shoulder to keep track of my Capricorn, so he didn't see me coming. Clutching his nose, he rolled on the ground with a howl.
"Ugh!"
"Hey, it shouldn't hurt that much, right?" I pointed out dryly as I knelt beside him. Anastasia, with Capricorn's support, was cleaning up the rest of the ambushers in the room. Grabbing him by his pale hair, I yanked his head up to glare at him. He looked at me fearfully with wide eyes, beads of cold sweat dripping down his face. I smiled in what I hoped looked like a kind expression. "Sorry, but we're a little lost here. Could you do us a favor and lead us to the main office? The one where your boss is currently in."
Of course, there was no way he could refuse my polite request.
A few minutes, with the poor guy tied up and leading us, Anastasia and I found ourselves in what was one of the higher floors (but not the top floor). A secure, wooden door stood out against the white, pristine concrete walls, looking nondescript. There was a sign that marked the door as an office belonging to the CEO, and I was suddenly reminded of stories like My Wicked CEO and all those weird romance novels promoting toxic relationships and abusive male leads. Good. I always wanted the opportunity to smash the handsome faces of those arrogant, violent and rapist CEOs for all the physical and/or emotional abuse they did to the poor heroines.
I patted the poor guy's shoulder gently when he stopped. "Are you sure your boss is inside this room?"
"T…that's right."
The guy was clearly an amateur. No professional Assassin would sell out their boss so easily. Either that or he had no loyalty to the person who hired him. It was also entirely possible that he lied to us, and this was a trap, but we could deal with both the trap and him after we came out. Anastasia and I weren't so naïve to just stupidly believe him and walk in unprepared.
Sighing in relief, I glanced at the CEO signboard. If we could apprehend the mastermind and hand him over to the Silver Wolves for interrogation, or extract the information from him ourselves (I was aware that Anastasia had her own methods of interrogation, which was why Feng Hai chose her for this specific mission to begin with), then we would have completed the first objective of our mission. Of particular interest was the Assassin sent to this city and the intended target.
"Thank you," I told the heavily relieved guy, but he didn't manage to ask if we could let him go because Ana knocked him out by striking the back of his neck before either of us guys could do anything. I caught him before he hit the ground and gently set him down. He did us a favor by leading us here, after all. That was the least I could do.
Anastasia rolled her eyes. "You're too nice, Richard."
"Nothing wrong with being nice," I replied with a shrug before turning to face the door. "Well then, shall we go introduce ourselves?"
"Be careful, Richard," Anastasia warned as I approached the office. "The door might be booby-trapped. I hardly think they'll just let us walk in without any repercussions."
"Good point. Taurus."
"…eh?" Anastasia watched dumbly as the giant bull materialized in front of us to paw the ground and grunt. "Why are you summoning your Soul Beast, Richard? What do you intend to do with it?"
"Him," I corrected. Then I glanced up at Taurus with a smile. "You're free to pretend that the office is a china shop."
Taurus snorted, but he complied. Kicking off the ground, he smashed through the door. Several explosions rang inside, but none of the security or anti-intrusion spells had any effect against Taurus's bulk or steel armor.
As I said, amateurs. The whole lot of them.
We waited for the spells to run out, for their effects to subside, before I finally stepped in, walking past a waiting Taurus. Anastasia was still staring at me, her mouth hanging open from astonishment. She managed to close her lovely lips before shaking her head and following me through the wreckage.
"You really know how to make an entrance," she told me. I shrugged sheepishly.
"You're the one who warned me that the door might be booby-trapped."
"Yeah, but I didn't expect you to still kick the door down and trigger all the traps with brute force. And I'm surprised it didn't affect your Soul Beast at all."
"My Constellation spirits are tough," I boasted proudly. Even so, I placed a hand on Taurus's dark skin. "Sorry about that, Taurus, and thank you. It must have been tough on you."
Taurus snorted, as if to say that such spells weren't even worth placing in his eyes. There was no sign of injury of him – I would have immediately recalled him the moment he started taking significant damage, which I could tell because of my mental and spiritual connection with all of my Constellation spirits – so I could exhale in relief.
"Anyway…" I then turned my attention to stare at the hooded man with a jeweled staff, who was still standing in the middle of the room, frozen in shock.
His jaw was hanging open, and a bead of perspiration was rolling down his face. However, when he realized that we were looking at him, he immediately shut his mouth and raised his guard, pointing his ridiculously decorated staff at us.
"!!"
"What should we do about this dude?"
"Barbarians…" the staff dude spat. He was evidently a high-ranking Dark Church agent…maybe a priest, considering his elaborate robes, absurd staff and weird, clearly stylized golden hair that hung from underneath his hood. I didn't know priests went to a saloon to get their hair permed like that, but whatever. He was glaring at me, his lips curling into a sneer. "Kicking the door down and barging in like that…to think you would even bring an animal indoors…do you not have even a modicum of civility?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Civility? I don't want to hear that from a criminal organization that executes schemes of genocide…bastards who lure and unleash hordes of monsters on cities to kill innocent people."
"The world must be cleansed of humans!" the staff dude bellowed as he raised both his hands dramatically, mana crackling around him. The guy was getting ready to release a spell. "It's the only way Earth will survive!"
Earth will survive? With alien monsters pouring out of dimensional rifts and infesting her surface? What was this guy on about? I wanted to know what he had been sniffing.
Nah, no point reasoning with a lunatic like him. I tilted my head while finishing the casting of another summoning spell.
"Richard." Behind me, Anastasia issued a warning silently. "There's another person in the room."
"I'll leave her to you," I replied, already aware of the second, invisible presence. She smirked and I shrugged. "We're partners, right? Can't have me doing all the work alone, right?"
Anastasia grinned in return. "You got that right! Leave her to me!"
"Oh, shut up, the both of you!"
The staff dude blasted us with a torrent of flames…
…or tried to, but his flames were snuffed out in an instant. Instead, Leo pulverized him with a paw and crushed him against the ground. The staff dude cried out as the concrete cracked underneath him, his staff careening out of his grip and spinning away. Blood began leaking from his face and filling the cracks in the ground, pooling beneath his body.
"Whoops. Did I go overboard?" I asked as I stroked my chin. "I didn't even get to use Regulus."
At that moment, an Assassin descended upon me, her sword slicing toward my neck.
Her attack was flawless, executed from my blind spot. Normal people wouldn't have sensed it, and my head would have rolled off before I even realized I was dead.
Normally. I could probably react, but I didn't because I knew I had someone reliable watching my back.
"?!"
Anastasia's kick took the Assassin out, her foot catching my would-be killer in the stomach and diverting her off course. Spinning around, Ana kicked the Assassin's face with her other foot, causing the hooded figure to spin head over heels before crashing untidily onto the floor. Before the Assassin could react or cry out in pain, Ana continued forward, raising one leg high (though how she did that in such a long, frilly skirt, I had no idea) before stomping on the Assassin.
Blood spurted into the air as the Assassin coughed.
"Thanks, Ana," I told her as I turned around to face the new threat. She shrugged and shook her head.
"You didn't need me to protect you. You were perfectly capable of taking her out on your own even if I wasn't here."
"Even so, I still appreciate you helping me out."
"You're too polite." Anastasia shook her head before she approached the fallen Assassin. Her voice turned cold. "Your mistake was to target my partner instead of me. I knew you were debating, you know? You were probably deciding who to eliminate first. You finally judged Richard to be the more dangerous target and moved to take him out, but that meant opening yourself to my counterattack." She smiled frostily. "You underestimated me. Richard left his back to me, and I don't intend to let him down."
"Gah…!"
The Assassin continued to cough. When Anastasia noticed that the mask had fallen from the Assassin's face, she suddenly realized she knew who the person was.
"Adeline!"
"…who?" I blinked in surprise. "A colleague of yours?"
"That's right." Anastasia nodded. "She was deployed together with me to Jing Tian City that night." she turned to me. "You should know her too…you defeated her along with me."
"Ah…the last survivor. I failed to shoot her down when she fled." I nodded, remembering the third and last member who managed to escape even though I had fired Vega at her. She was glaring at me hatefully, gritting her teeth in frustration.
Suddenly I realized that Anastasia was mistaken. This Adeline didn't choose to eliminate me because she judged me as the bigger threat. She chose to strike at me because of a personal vendetta.
I didn't know at that time, but I was the one who had taken her arm off. of course I didn't realize it because they had cast healing magic on her and regrew her arm, so I never knew that I had destroyed one of her arms with Vega that night. But Adeline remembered, and she continued to nurse the grudge.
And when she saw me today, she saw the opportunity to take revenge.
Anastasia must have noticed the venomous gaze in Adeline's eyes, and she shook her head as a complicated expression came over her pretty face.
"Adeline…" She then took a deep breath and composed herself. "I'll restrain her. Richard, please go tie up that Dark Church priest over there."
"All right."
Honestly, I didn't see a need to tie the poor guy up. He was pretty banged up by Leo's paw. Again, I realized how I overdid it. Meanwhile, Anastasia was murmuring something to herself.
"To think I admired you for being able to escape after Richard captured me…I always thought you were the strongest among us, the most skillful…I never thought there would be a day where I would defeat you and restrain you."
She moved quickly to shove something into Adeline's mouth before she could bit a poison capsule and kill herself, or bite her tongue off. Being from the same Veneneum Sect, she was aware of the methods they undertook to self-terminate them upon capture. She would have done the same if Feng Hai didn't deprive her of her toxin capsule.
Divesting herself of irrelevant thoughts, Anastasia quickly returned her attention to restrain our newly captured hostages.