Chapter 296

The terrain grew wetter the further east he went. Thick, bubbling mud sucked at his boots. It reminded him of his early days in the game, dragging weighted fishing nets through the surf at Seabreak Town. Back then, a Level 50 monster was a nightmare.

Now, he was over Level 300s. He had fought Great Demons. He had fought legends.

A hundred-man poacher gang didn't even register as a warm-up.

"Still, shouldn't be careless," Rudra muttered. "No point rushing in blind."

He gripped his staff and he activated the stealth skill he learnt from Rajah, the Tiger Chieftain.

"True Silence."

[True Silence (Lv. 1)]

[Unique]

[A stealth technique developed by the Successive Chieftain of the Tiger Beastmen. By perfectly suppressing one's breath, presence, and ambient mana flow, the user can hide from the world.

- Completely eliminates all sound produced by the user for the duration of the skill. 

- Drastically reduces the chance of being detected by enemies relying on hearing or vibration-sense.

- Movement Speed is increased by 10%.

Resource Cost: 500 Mana to activate, 50 Mana per second to maintain.

Cooldown: 10 minutes.]

Immediately he felt all the noise he was emitting and even his presence he emitted subsided.

He jumped. His increased speed carried him high into the canopy. He landed on a thick, mossy branch without a whisper of noise. He moved from tree to tree, tracking the scent of cheap campfire smoke and unwashed armor.

A swamp toad tried to latch onto his boot mid-jump. Rudra casually flicked it away with the butt of his staff without breaking his stealth. The toad splashed into the water below.

He crested a low ridge and stopped.

Below him, in a wide, muddy basin ringed by scrub brush, there was a slaughter happening.

Rudra crouched low against a thick tree trunk and looked down.

The poacher camp was in ruins. Canvas tents were shredded. Campfires were kicked over.

And bodies were everywhere. Or at least, the fading light of them.

"Kill her!" a man screamed. He wore heavy chainmail and carried a greatsword. "She's already taken down seventy of us! Don't back up!"

"I can't hit her!" a spearman shrieked.

"They are just magic guns!" the captain roared, spit flying from his mouth. "She has to reload! The barrels are smoking! Rush her all at once!"

Magic guns. Rudra raised an eyebrow. They were quite rare on the West Continent, and the class that primarily uses them, Marksmen, have not shown a particularly good performance in  the game so far. 

Rudra scanned the mud. He found her.

She was moving through a shallow drainage ditch that cut across the clearing.

She wore a dark, tailored combat coat. Her dark hair was pulled back tight.

She held a black metal contraption in each hand. Pistols.

A poacher swung wide from her left.

She didn't turn to face him.

She dropped a half-step. She let the blade pass close enough to catch a loose strand of her hair. She raised her right hand and pulled the trigger without breaking her forward motion.

Bang.

The poacher's head snapped back. He dissolved into blue ash before his knees even hit the mud.

"Where is she?!" an archer panicked, drawing a bow wildly.

Two men charged her from opposite sides. A clean pincer movement.

She didn't retreat. She kicked a clump of wet mud straight into the left man's eyes. As he flinched, she rolled through the gap between them.

Rudra watched both of her arms come up mid-roll. She fired outward in opposite directions.

Bang. Bang.

Two more clouds of gray pixels erupted in the swamp. She was back on her feet instantly.

She never reloaded in the open. She never stood still long enough for anyone to actually aim an arrow or a spell at her. Every dodge bent directly into the next shot. The movement itself was the weapon. The gun was just the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

Rudra watched her closely and activated his [Legendary Sage’s Eyes].

He could see the limits of her physical strength in the way she landed and moved. He could see the cap on her agility in the speed of her pivots.

Her raw stats were low. Much lower than his.

If he hit her once with Extortion, her health bar would shatter instantly. And her class was well known to have some of the weakest defence in the game.

But that was the trick. He would have to hit her first.

She didn't waste a single muscle twitch. When a spear thrust came at her ribs, she didn't jump away. She twisted her torso exactly two inches. The spear grazed her coat. She grabbed the shaft, pulled the poacher off-balance, and pressed her left pistol directly under his chin.

Bang.

More pixels floated into the humid air.

Rudra gripped his staff a little tighter. A familiar, wild thrill sparked in his chest. His blood started to pump faster.

The woman seemed to have control over her movement unlike anything he had ever seen. And if he had to say so himself, they were even better than him.

She was optimizing every micro-movement. She was using the recoil of her own weapons to spin her body into the next target. It was a beautiful, aggressive dance of pure violence.

"Magicians!" the captain shrieked. "Burn the ditch! Burn the whole ditch!"

Two poachers in ragged robes raised their wooden staffs. Fire gathered at the tips.

The woman didn't hesitate. She threw herself into a slide, gliding across the wet mud on her knees. She crossed her arms, aiming both pistols at the casters.

Bang. Bang.

The fire fizzled out. Two more bodies dissolved.

The guns in her hands were actively smoking. The metal barrels looked warped. They were clearly low-tier items, struggling to contain the heat and mana she was forcing through them.

But she didn't care. She kept firing.

"Run!" the captain finally screamed. He threw his greatsword into the mud. "Just run!"

The remaining dozen poachers broke. Their morale shattered completely. They turned and sprinted toward the deep marsh, abandoning their camp.

One of the poachers—a scout in light leather armor—was much faster than the rest. He was already almost two hundred meters out. He was weaving frantically through the thick trees, trying to break line of sight.

Rudra shifted his weight onto his back foot on instinct. He could catch him. A single second and he would be over there.

But he didn't need to move in the end.

The woman didn't run after the scout.

She stopped in the middle of the clearing. She lifted her right pistol. She just pointed the smoking barrel in his general direction, tracking his movement through the trees purely by rhythm and instinct.

She squeezed the trigger.

Bang.

Two hundred meters away, the running scout dropped mid-stride. He fell so far away that Rudra almost lost the cloud of blue pixels against the dark tree line behind him.

The clearing went totally silent. Only the hiss of the smoking gun barrels remained.

Rudra stayed crouched behind the tree for a second longer than he needed to.

He didn't know if he would win against her one-on-one if their stats were sitting on equal ground. He honestly had no idea.

That thought didn't bother him at all. It just sat there in his chest, new and exciting.

Rudra found, a little to his own surprise, that he was grinning from ear to ear.