Loopshard

Adam hadn’t noticed the melodies until they were right upon them, making the ambush quite effective, but his group was able to respond quickly.

Diwa yelled loudly, causing the two assassins to focus on her before they could fire again. One of them stayed above with a crossbow, while the other slid down the side of the mountain to reach them. Both wore faded royal-blue hoods that wound around like scarves to cover most of their faces, except for their hateful black eyes. Under rusted cuirasses they wore long-sleeved black tunics and trousers, with time-worn gauntlets and sabatons.

They must be the forlorn assassins that Beck mentioned.

While they didn’t count as knights, they were part of the forlorn army’s elite, making their deaths worth a few points. And they didn’t need a true flame to get points from killing them, like with the knights, but they could be brought back to life, which would be annoying.

A second before the assassin reached the ground, a flash of darkness surrounded him and he vanished from sight, taking his melody with him.

Seo-Yoon aimed her staff at the air, clearly still tracking him. She had switched to the Elemental Tempest weapon and as Adam tried to figure out exactly where the assassin was, she created a spell pattern in front of herself and slammed it with the tip of her staff, launching a magical bolt after the enemy. She followed it up with another, swirling her weapon around skilfully to slam the tip into the floating spell once more, firing off a second bolt. Then her staff glowed brightly, stinging Adam’s eyes. A sun flare shot out of the top, causing the shadows on the assassin to vanish and turn him visible, even though it missed.

Adam didn’t waste a second and launched each finger of his raiment’s right gauntlet in quick succession. He tweaked the fingers’ trajectories as they zipped through the air with speeds that nearly rivalled his Warder build’s triple-fused barriers, piercing the assassin first through the leg, exploding the flesh and fabric where it exited, with the rest hitting centre mass and the last blowing the right side of his face away.

For good measure, Chien surged forward and slammed the assassin into the ground with his war hammer, producing a loud crunch and casting forward a wave of holy magic, killing the elite.

[Forlorn Elite defeated,] announced their cubes in unison.