The ambush had failed. The signal had been delayed long enough that such result was clear. What had been the actual cause of failure, however, was the main question, because the ghost that was supposed to help during the operation had not even been able to escape.
None of this should have happened. Had the intelligence report been more throughout, they should have found at least a mention of this nameless mercenary having some idea on how to form an elemental spell instead of plain reinforcement, nevermind how in the actual fuck he'd learned destructive light magic!
It was now clear that they had still underestimated him however, as someone that had been casting like a siege mage for three days straight should have neither the presence of mind or body to take down five of his man and the strongest ghost they had.
He could only hope at least one of them had hit him with a blast of dark energy, which should make it easier to take care of him in when they came or on the next ambush, he'd not yet received the report on wether they called off the attack or not.
A structured spell was just that much more deadly for normal people than polluted residues in the ambient. One was literally refined from the other to kill you better after all.
Turning back to his table, he sighed. It was time to read the report again and try to see inconsistencies instead. His life was mediocre but well documented, a standard sob story about a man who became a mercenary. He should be barely passable with his reinforcement to be considered a mage and a good mercenary, yet he displayed abilities that would put him on par with the young talents of some forces. That was more than enough reason to further...
*Puok*
*****
"Cuss to me they're all the same..."
With a childish smile, Aki looked at his rifle, he was happy there was no significant debuffs to it's accuracy, likely because it'd not changed much in appearance or something of the like.
He'd just taken out four men in quick succession, all of them alone in a room or so he'd gathered. It was hard to know when he was shooting through a few centimetres of stone and possibly wood.
Luckily, shooting bullets with hard light propulsion and encapsulating them in a dark bolt was more than enough to silently penetrate the layers in front of him and kill people with headshots.
He'd spent over an hour trying to figure out how to do this right only because he saw that some man were quite close to the wall, some even right beneath the dirt he stood at while near the natural wall of rock, and there didn't seem to be any kind of urgent gathering, meaning he could take his time and eliminate his enemies while later collecting everything in the base for future study and reference.
There were still a dozen more man, sure, but....
[Spirit reinforcement: Apprentice - Temporarily use energy to reinforce an object or part of it.
1. Reinforced objects also become slightly more resistant to the elements.]
[Celestial umbra: Apprentice - The darkness shrouding great light and forming before dawn.
1. You may choose to restrain the dexterity or spirit of someone within your umbra by one rank.]
And just like he expected because of the amount of energy condensing over their bodies, which was what he actually saw with his spiritual vision, there was no mage among the men in this base. While some of them might have been strong enough to rip through any physical restraint he could put on them, specially the behemoth even bigger than the village's sheriff, who he'd previously thought very well built, but his magic basically made the person unable to command their body to move like they wished instead, so simply putting a mental defense wouldn't be so useful. Unless that person had specialised knowledge or even more spirit attribute than Aki, they would be restrained.
Of course, this also included a muffling function because of how the spell was based on space, a great nothingness that had nothing for the waves to propagate through, nevermind the lack of light.
Aki simply walked inside and turned the whole room black, his sneaking more than enough to conceal him until he could shoot everyone with either magic or gun. By the flip side, it turned out that one of the guys he'd sniped from the outside had been the leader, and no one but the behemoth looked strong enough to be his second in command, so he might have also killed the second in command when he had been ambushed.
Instead of trying to probe highly trained agents for some small amount of info he killed everyone, the chance he'd get something good out of them too small for him to waste time on them. Looking through the papers in the leader's office though, he found some papers on his dungeon persona, but ultimately, everything else was of use.
Names, places, orders for vigilance, there was no such thing nor a sender, obviously, nor could he read the code, but even his passing familiarity with the element revealed that this had been written in a way to make it impossible to read without the appropriate light spell. He was sure a court magician would love to decode this though. If the crown was also involved, he wouldn't mind working for them either, it wasn't like his strength was going to decrease from now on, so it was better to take matters on his own hands.
{You have unlocked a special event! Current party: Undetermined (Choose between The church of light and The crown of Ermisten)
Main mission update. Time remaining in the tutorial: 12:12:47:52.
Description: Deliver the evidence discovered back to your faction on the capital
Do you wish to accept? Y/N?}
Such a dungeon world should not give him too much trouble, sure, he could probably even fight the lich spearheading this undead horde head on, but Aki had no illusion about his own power.
Rare skills with C rank spirit? Sure, cool, let me show you my rare skill being backed up by my A+ strength. Any knight from the king's guard would likely not be as powerful as his thoughts said, but they would certainly be able to crush him with higher attributes, skills, combat experience, items, numbers...
So of course he pressed 'Yes' when seeing this special event.
More time ment more fights. More fights ment more achievements. More achievements, different from the tutorial, ment a higher final evaluation. Aki had looked through the forums, and he couldn't find one mention of someone getting achievements there, instead there was plenty of talking strategy to recognize targets worth an achievement over.
While he quite doubted he'd been the first ever to get achievements on the tutorial dungeon, it had obviously been built in a different way since he had assassinated so many figures and yet received nothing but their so-so loot in the end.
Stole the hoard of a dragon beneath it's nose? Nice, +2 for you.
Faced the embodiment of death and somehow survived? +3, but you are still fucked.
Killed every enemy on this bounty list? Meh, take this +1.
As long as what you did was memorable, you would get a better rating. Killing Targets that were above the current dungeon level for example, was one of the main sources of achievement. People didn't go around bragging about such, but less intelligent players had made that mistake once upon a time, and not everyone went into dungeons alone (actually only crazy people went alone, but Aki chose to ignore that fact), meaning that guilds could raise their members rating by sending them on a team with a more experienced players, using such as examples for recruitment drives.
There was simply no way he would not have a reception from both parties he could choose from, the enemy being at least as strong as himself, who, truth be told, should not have even close to this amount of power. Nevermind all his magical abilities, master level dodge had saved his life already, and unless someone sold most of their initial hall on the tutorial, he quite doubted they'd even have as many points as him.
While Aki steeled his heart and grasped his excitement, he collected the loot present. While the horde of zombies droped some materials, there was just no way for him to collect them properly even if he hadn't burned most of their bodies away during his attacks. These men on the other hand...
[Skill book (Uncommon) : Weapon skill - Assasination tools]
[Ring of shadows (Rare): *Sets the sneak skill to master level for two a hours every two days.]
[Poisonous blow gun +2 (Uncommon): *Able to penetrate average rank defense *Average rank poison damage to all darts. May stack and reach strong rank]
[Nimble boots (Uncommon): *Slightly increases movement speed. *Reduces wind resistance for a minute twice a day.]
The skill book came from a rando, the ring from the leader, the blow gun from the very big guy and the boots from one very scrawny dude that seemed to suffer from anorexia or something of the like. There were also a couple of uncommon daggers, but they were literally just better at stabbing people. Aki could literally make himself a knife of hard light that burned everything it touched whenever, so they were immediately set aside for later sale.
It took a bit of thinking, but he decided to keep the boots and the book, setting the other two items for sale, the ring useless to him despite the rarity and the blow gun redundant with his mage build.
Mechanically deciding to try putting on the boots had Aki momentarily questioning wether they would even fit him as he was halfway with one feet, but they were actually perfectly suited for his feet. Likely because the item had been spawned on a dungeon where he was the only player and didn't have some specific restriction.
The book on the other hand, confirmed something else when he was not asked to pay for learning the skill. Only some special skills had a price for learning through skill books. He'd seen no mention of it on the forums, but he already suspected such, nevermind that he'd still have paid for a skill he could use as a base to further his build, which was mostly filled with common skills and self made ones.
Knowledge on how to use many of the tools he'd obtained from this raid filled his mind after accepting the book, but more importantly, he knew how they worked. What could someone do against a garrote made of searing light? A simple dart with no special part to it made out of corroding shadow? Hidden blades that sprung from joints, jolts of fire from the mouth of a close by enemy, knifes that exploded inside your weak points, needles that immediately penetrated your pores to insert venom...
The ideas were many, but first, Aki had a lich to kill and a mourning witch to console, the latter of which was actually a side quest he'd gotten after she'd told him about her past. Nodding to himself, he set the hidden structure on fire, making sure to leave before any sort of hidden explosive could set off. That made him slow down a bit on setting the whole place alight, since there was a limited amount of air and subsequently oxygen. Turns out he was right about there being explosives though.
After that, he'd been ready for an ambush on the way to the village procession. Nothing. No ambush on the way to the valley either. Nada even as the lich and his disciple screamed a conversion from opposite sides. Some ghosts interfered when he started fighting, but he didn't even need more than a small shot to purify them thanks to all effects his radiance had.
Maybe the Lich had some ace his in actual sleeves, but Aki had immediately beamed his limbs apart and taken out anything trying to help the burning skeleton from getting back up, some people looking tired even though there was not even one zombie to fight with him there. By the time he'd cremated all bodies until nothing could move, all were spent. He was still over half his own reserve though, ready to stop the BBE if he tried to blow up as well but still with enough leeway to allow for fifteen minute of back and forth of a dying man and his daughter-figure. He'd originally needed to explain how he was definitely under a geas and his words may be distorted so the woman could just speak her mind and ruminate on his words later for as to how to better interpret then, but the lich actually only had orders to be the most evil possible while being believable, so now that the young man convinced everyone he was also a victim...
He passed away in warm, pure light that soothed his mind instead of attacking it, only small motes of ash remaining of a the previously tall squeleton.