Bane descended the stairs, each step echoing through the silent corridor. The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood and the acrid stench of gunpowder.
Bodies lay strewn across the floor, twisted in grotesque poses where they had fallen.
As his gaze swept over them with indifference, the hollow eyes and slack jaws of dead men came into his view.
But he maintained his pace as he reached the bottom and walked past the broken door and into the room.
At the centre of the room was Sheele, kneeling in front of a body. Bane's gaze then moved towards the far end of the room.
There, a lump of mangled flesh lay near the far wall—the remains of a man who had met a brutal end.
But he barely spared it a glance. His focus shifted back to Sheele, who knelt beside the lifeless form of her friend, her fingers brushing a stray lock of hair from her friend's forehead.
As he approached, Sheele stiffened for a second but did not turn. After a moment, her voice broke the silence. "Thank you," she said.
"No need. I have already received my payment," he replied.
After a brief silence, he asked, "Can you fight?"
Sheele didn't answer immediately. She lifted her large pair of scissors and stood up, moving to face him.
Bane saw Sheele's eyes, which were steady and had an unusual, eerie calmness reflected from them.
"What happened?" She asked in a calm voice.
Looking at her stoic face, he said, "The owner was stalling for time. He has already called in a large force to deal with us, and it's none other than the imperial force," he explained.
Raising an eyebrow behind her glasses, Sheele asked, "How?"
Her question implied both how he deduced that the owner was stalling and how he was so sure the force coming was the imperial forces.
Bane didn't waste any time and began to explain the whole situation to Sheele, except for the fact that this was a trap set for her and possibly her partner.
During the whole fiasco upstairs, he had been testing the owner's patience to find out what kind of cards the bastard was hiding.
His suspicions were confirmed when the owner transformed into an ugly ogre using a drug.
Bane knew that the transformation drug used by the Imperial forces gave extraordinary strength and resilience for an hour, but led to death afterward.
So without delay, he swiftly killed the man by sneaking a poison bomb into his mouth as he laughed unsuspectingly, fueled by his newfound strength.
From his previous encounters, he already knew the weakness of these transformations, so he quickly took down the man and his goons.
Bane wanted to get out of the district quickly after realising that the Imperial forces were involved.
Even though he wasn't afraid to face them, he knew it would be foolish to walk into a trap set by the Imperial forces.
They had probably prepared something deadly to kill someone high-calibre like Sheele, who also had a Teigu and might be with another Night Raid member.
Because of this, he started to have a bad feeling that this trap was definitely not a simple one.
"Can't we just kill them all or run away from here?" Sheele asked but was stopped midway by Bane.
"I don't think we can go for either options."
"How do you know?" She asked.
"I have my ways." He answered without explaining about this.
Sheele was slightly confused, but she chose to focus on the chief topic as she understood the seriousness of the situation.
"Answer my questions quickly, you understand?" Bane said, his voice serious. Sheele, still confused, nodded her head, sensing the seriousness in his voice.
"Who are you working with on your mission?" he asked, as he already knew that the Night Raid members do most of the missions in a duo from Najenda.
"I usually do missions with Mine most of the time." Sheele answered.
"What types of weapons do you and Mine use during missions?" he asked again, to which Sheele answered him.
'So they should be prepared to deal with a close combatant with a deadly melee Teigu that can cut through anything and a sniper bearer whose face they do not know and possesses a rifle type of Teigu with a significant amount of firepower,' Bane thought.
'I also have to keep imperial Teigu wielders in my mind, as they are the biggest threat to us. If even one of them having a dangerous Teigu has been deployed in the assault force, then our game may be over during the escape.'
After that, he asked her a series of questions to strategize their escape.
Bane took a small cube from his jacket, from which several items emerged: a map, a pouch of money, lighter, a torch, grenades, smoke bombs, cases of cigarettes, and four guns, along with dozens of magazines.
"Have experience in handling guns?" he asked while throwing two guns towards Sheele.
She caught them easily and answered, "I know how to handle them, but I am more comfortable with melee weapons like my Extase."
He shook his head, "You have to conserve your strength to be ready for the escape."
He threw her five rounds of magazines. "These are no ordinary bullets. I have already used my poison emission to make them more lethal, so even grazing shots will make the enemies die within a minute, or at least incapacitate them giving you time to deal with them."
Sheele, who had caught the magazines, was surprised but began to load them into the guns, strapping her Extase on her back for easy access.
"Protect me for a few minutes. I will use my Teigu's ability to survey the entire district to find suitable escape routes. Do you understand?" he asked to which Sheele nodded.
As Sheele was done with her preparation, she began to walk out of the room, but halted her steps when Bane called her.
"Take this," Bane said without turning back, throwing his spatial storage towards Sheele.
Sheele looked at the metallic cube in her hand and was going to ask Bane what this object was when she heard him say.
"You can use this to store the dead body of that girl. Just do not break it and return it after we return to the base."
"....."
"....Thank you," Sheele said, her voice soft.
Bane didn't reply as he began to equip himself with all the firearms and summoned his teigu.
Sheele looked at his back for a few seconds as she didn't say anything as she went towards the dead body of her friend.
'Now time to survey.' he thought as he sat in a meditative pose and closed his eyes.
Unknown to anyone, dozens of small black snakes emerged from the different narrow spaces in the pleasure district, their black pupils turning blue.
"Go in different directions," he mentally commanded, and the snakes slithered away swiftly.
Bane mentally prepared himself as he took a deep breath, focusing on the vision provided by the snakes.
This last ability of Jormungandr allows Bane to control snakes which he had marked himself for a definite amount of time and distance. It is a high utility type of ability which is best for scouting but it comes at the cost of a crazy amount of mental power.
If it was a matter of physical recovery, he has no problem with it as his natural regeneration will heal it but he has no way to recover from mental power so he barely ever uses this ability.
As the snakes shared their vision with Bane, he saw the streets, alleyways, and buildings around the whole district.
Not wasting any time, he begins to map out potential escape routes and identifying the positions of barricades and enemy soldiers. It was a complex web of movement and coordination, but his mind processed it with cold efficiency.
It seems my intuition was correct," Bane thought as he looked at the number of soldiers surrounding the district.
These soldiers were heavily armed, totaling more than 2,000. Although they could manage the first few companies, Bane and Sheele would eventually run out of energy and find themselves surrounded.
'Just how much has the Night Raid pissed these people off?' Bane wondered, picturing Najenda's smiling face.
Najenda had told him that she only started her tasks inside the capital two years ago. So how could she have led the Night Raid to cause so much damage to the imperial forces that their higher-ups prepared an army to deal with just two members of the Night Raid?
Unbeknownst to Bane, Najenda had inflicted significant damage on the imperial forces because of his actions.
With Bane handling the toughest border missions for the revolutionary army, Najenda had the freedom to focus on eliminating Honest's relatives and his money-making factories.
With Esdeath gone to fight in the war, Najenda assigned the Night Raid members to handle the matter.
Unaware of this, Bane focused on his task as he marked key locations in his mind, noting where he could find cover, where the soldiers were likely stationed, and which routes would provide the best chance of slipping through the encirclement.
After a few minutes, a droplet of blood came out of Bane's nose as he woke up from his meditative stance.
To brace himself for the impending mental anguish that would leave him incapacitated for vital minutes, he inhaled deeply through his mouth.