Chapter 12 : Chapter 12
Chapter 12: The First Rule of an Excellent Rogue
Fabric brushed against the bushes with a rustling sound. Overhead, the pine needles swayed in the cold wind, and the thick masses above looked like heavy storm clouds that might crash down upon one’s head at any moment. Looking up at them was enough to make one uneasy.
Yet an environment like this also provided the best possible cover for someone sneaking through it.
All the more so because the battle ahead was so fierce that no one would imagine a third party intruding upon it.
This was exactly the kind of environment Rogues liked best, the perfect kind of chaos in which to fish in troubled waters.
And Cyril was one of the very best at that sort of thing. He had done it countless times before. A large part of a Rogue’s income came from taking mercenary work and involving themselves in other people’s battles.
NPC conflicts, player conflicts, or even battles between players and NPCs—he could not have cared less about the victims’ feelings. After all, the thrill of clubbing someone from behind or stabbing them in the back had always been built upon the pain of others.
More importantly, though, it was built upon profit.
He moved between the trees, and in only a few moments, he had already taken in the entire battlefield.
It was an extremely crude camp occupying a small earthen rise. Simple brushwood had been fashioned into a fence around the perimeter, with one opening at the front and another at the rear.
That Icehide Blue-Striped Bear and four skeletons were hammering relentlessly at the defense of two greatshield warriors at the front, while three human swordsmen were holding the rear choke point against seven attacking skeletons.
In truth, the difference in combat strength was enormous.
An undead chosen for vanguard duty was not at all inferior to an ordinary human soldier in single combat. They were nothing like the mindless skeletons that had been raised casually.
Without the constant support of the two spells being cast from inside the camp, the camp would likely have been overrun very quickly.
Two mages.
Cyril recognized the uniforms those soldiers were wearing. They were the standard silver-gray color scheme of La Rochelle. Neither the greatshields nor the swordsmen’s armor were ordinary pieces. Though scarred all over with marks of battle, not one of them showed any actual break.
And together with the presence of two mages, it was easy for Cyril to guess where they had come from—
The Northwind Tower.
Throughout the entire Northern Frontier of La Rochelle, aside from the two major strongholds—Lovisa and Odenir—only the Northwind Tower could outfit soldiers with gear this good.
Yet even with equipment like that, these soldiers were fighting so desperately that it exceeded Cyril’s expectations. He could not help observing a while longer, and very quickly discovered the reason—
One of those two mages supporting the soldiers from within the camp was complete deadweight.
Cyril would have sworn upon all the times he had mentally calculated trap-trigger timings in high-difficulty underground palaces that one of the mages was casting at only a third the frequency of the other.
No wonder, even with two esteemed masters of magic supporting them and the advantage of the terrain, the soldiers were still fighting so miserably.
And when Cyril finally caught sight, from one particular angle, of that mage awkwardly waving her staff, finishing a chant only to stir up nothing more than a ripple of mana without forming a proper spell construct—while instead interfering with the other mage’s casting—he finally understood exactly why the camp looked like it was on the verge of collapse.
This combination of two mages was not merely failing to equal one plus one equals two.
It was more like one plus one equals zero point five.
What a waste of the purpleheartwood staff in that mage’s hand, the one adorned with a beautifully cut sapphire.
Cyril recognized that staff. It was a Deep Azure Crystal Staff, an extremely high-end piece of equipment even by the middle stages of the game. In the heartland of La Rochelle, it could sell for a staggering price of one hundred gintres, and in neighboring regions the price might even double.
It had to be remembered just how brutally Road of Radiance controlled players’ access to money. A careful player, in the first year of the game, if they did not engage in business activities, could save at most two gintres from beginning to end.
And in some regions where gold prices were especially high, that might only exchange into a single gintre.
For an ordinary player, buying a weapon like that was virtually impossible.
For a moment, four huge words flashed across Cyril’s mind:
Kill them and take it.
But he quickly shook his head and threw the thought away.
He had no desire to crash his La Rochelle reputation to rock bottom in the early game and become a five-star wanted criminal. Besides, with his current strength, the idea of murdering and looting them was not remotely realistic anyway.
Yet in the instant Cyril’s thoughts wandered, the delicate balance on the field was broken.
The cause was a mistimed chant from that clumsy mage. The sudden disorder in the elements slowed the support from the other mage by yet another beat, with the result that one of the front-line swordsmen had to face the attacks of three blades at once. He was driven backward by a full step, leaving an opening behind him.
The undead, who had been waiting for precisely that chance, surged forward all at once. By the time the swordsman tried to retake his position, it had already been seized by the undead. His comrades had all been forced back, wounded, and were only barely holding on at the next gap.
“Miss Christian, do we still have any items left?!” the swordsman roared.
The clumsy mage hurriedly pulled something out and threw it forward. In the next instant, a flash of red burst out. Something exploded amid the undead, and flames spread across the ground, disrupting the attack formation the undead had just assembled.
Cyril could not help being startled. He had not expected that, while the mage looked so clumsy, her judgment at a moment like this would be so correct.
Nothing hindered the undead’s advance better than fire and light, and whatever that unidentified item had been, it had genuinely thrown the undead ranks into disorder.
And that, for Cyril, was the signal to attack.
The Apprentice Knight Squire hidden in the shadows emerged from cover for no more than three seconds before he had already rushed up behind the rearmost undead. Cyril did not pause for even an instant. The standard-issue sword of the Silverblade Knights traced a beautiful arc and sent one skeleton’s skull flying at once, while the broken blade neatly diverted the chop of another undead, followed immediately by a kick that sent it stumbling aside.
The three swordsmen inside the camp froze for a brief instant, then shouted in delight, “We have reinforcements!”
Cyril could almost see a series of “+1 +1” morale points floating up over their heads, but their excitement only made him tense up even more. He hurriedly cut down the skeleton in front of him, then darted into the choke point—only to spin around and kick the approaching swordsman backward before the man could rush in.
“What are you doing?!”
The swordsman shouted in shock and anger, only to see this sudden hero flashing through the undead ranks in a blaze of steel, as though the kick just now had never happened. He swore he had never seen swordsmanship this smooth in his life. In that man’s hands, the knight’s sword—clearly not a weapon suited to agility—moved like the strike of a serpent, yet when it swept across an undead’s neck, it seemed like the wing of an eagle in flight—
In only a few brief instants, the undead that had nearly wiped out all the soldiers from the Northwind Tower were reduced to corpses beneath Cyril’s sword.
The flames from the mage had helped, of course.
But more than anything, it had been Cyril’s deep understanding of those piles of bones.
Fast, precise, ruthless.
He knew exactly which joint to strike in order to sever a skeleton’s head in the shortest time, and where to kick in order to throw them off balance. These skeletons, lacking the protection of armor, were among the undead’s most important fighting forces—and at the same time, the most expendable and pitiful of the lot.
Without giving the three swordsmen a single chance to act, the seven skeletons were swiftly reduced to broken bodies and rolling heads.
Watching his experience bar climb by leaps and bounds, Cyril did not hesitate for even a moment. He did not even give the swordsman he had kicked back a chance to start an awkward exchange of thanks. Gripping his blades, he lunged straight for the battle on the other side of the camp—
The first rule of an excellent Rogue:
Never let anyone else take a share of your spoils.