Chapter 324: The Carriage Trail
The five of them sat in the room, though Kayla could barely move on the sofa cushion after the intense treatment she had just received.
"Do you think we should hit the other outposts?" Alexander asked, resting his elbows on his knees.
"I don’t think so," Brianna replied, shaking her head. "They maintain constant communication with headquarters. By now, they must know someone attacked their base, so they’ve already evacuated the city."
"Then how do we reach headquarters to settle the score?" Alexander said, folding his arms.
"I don’t know," Brianna confessed. "None of us have ever gone on our own. They always blindfold us and take us in a carriage, that’s all."
"Where do you catch the wagon?" Alexander asked.
"On the outskirts of the city, there’s a place to rent the carriage..." Brianna began to say, before freezing mid-sentence.
Her eyes widened as she grasped what Alexander was thinking before he even voiced it aloud.
"You girls don’t know how to get there... but the driver does," Alexander said with a smile.
"Kayla can’t even move," Paige commented, looking at the light-blue-haired girl who remained lying down, breathing heavily.
"Stay with her and take her back to the tavern," Alexander ordered Paige. "We’ll go on ahead."
Paige nodded away and moved to tend to Kayla, while Alexander, Brianna, and Sydney prepared to head out.
As he walked toward the door, a smile formed on Alexander’s face as a floating notification popped up in his vision:
[You have acquired the skill: Sonic Echo]
[Skill: Silent Steps has leveled up to Level 2]
The discovery caught Alexander off guard. So skills could actually level up and weren’t static? If he remembered correctly, Paige already possessed [Silent Steps]. If he had originally obtained it from her, did sleeping with another woman who had the same skill increase its level? Or how did this work? Things were getting more and more interesting.
Alexander, Brianna, and Sydney left the tailoring shop and walked at a steady pace toward the edge of town, avoiding the glances of passersby. As they moved down the dirt road leading out of the settlement, Alexander took the opportunity to test his new ability.
He activated [Sonic Echo].
An imperceptible pulse radiated from his body in a wave, bouncing off the wooden and stone walls of the nearby houses. In his mind, the layout of the streets and the movements of people through the walls revealed themselves with clarity, like a three-dimensional map drawn inside his head. Combined with level two [Silent Steps], his footsteps didn’t produce the slightest creak, not even when treading on dry leaves along the path.
"It’s over here, Master," Brianna said in a low voice, pointing toward a small wooden depot at the edge of the main road. "That’s where the assigned wagon always waits."
Parked in front of the small hut sat a black carriage, hitched to two dark horses. Sitting on the driver’s seat, a mature man in a wide-brimmed hat and worn clothes smoked a wooden pipe.
Alexander gestured for his shadows to keep their distance and approached the driver alone.
"Good afternoon," Alexander said, stopping alongside the horses.
The driver didn’t even bother to look at him keeping his eyes fixed on the horizon as he blew out a ring of smoke.
"I don’t take private fares, traveler," the man replied in a raspy voice. "This carriage only hauls authorized cargo for the silk shop."
Alexander smirked. The answer confirmed what they needed to know, he took a step closer to the driver’s seat, resting his hand on the wood in a casual manner.
"Just what I wanted to hear," Alexander said, glancing at him sideways. "Though I should warn you, I’m soft on women, but... men don’t get that privilege."
The driver frowned and looked up for the first time. As his eyes fell on the women accompanying him, his face turned pale; he recognized the organization’s spies immediately.
"Come on, friend, I’m just a driver," the old man said, raising his hands in mock innocence as tension filled the air. "Nothing special. What do you want from me?"
Without waiting for an answer, the old man reached into his pocket, threw a handful of white powder straight at Alexander’s eyes, and whipped the reins violently to break away.
The white powder shot out in a cloud straight toward Alexander’s face. Moving with blinding speed fueled by his abilities, Alexander shifted half a step to the right, dodging the cloud before it could touch him.
The old man whipped the reins in desperation, but the horses barely took a single step before Alexander was already up on the driver’s seat.
With a ruthless motion, Alexander reached out and clamped his hand tightly around the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe just enough to choke off his air. With his other hand, he snatched the reins and pulled back hard, bringing the horses to a dead stop with a muffled neigh.
The old man kicked in the air, clawing at Alexander’s hand as his face turned from red to a purple.
"Pathetic attempt," Alexander muttered, looking down at him coldly as Brianna and Sydney approached the carriage. "Now you’re going to drive us to headquarters... and if you try another stupid stunt, I assure you that white powder will be the least of your concerns."
Alexander threw him like a rag onto the floor of the carriage.
The old man huddled on the floor of the carriage, clutching his throat as he caught his breath. He coughed violently and looked up at Alexander with eyes filled with terror.
"I... I can’t," the driver managed to articulate in a raspy, choked voice. "If I take you to headquarters... they’ll kill me."
Alexander leaned over him, resting his elbows on his knees and looking straight into his eyes with glacial coldness.
"If you don’t go, I’ll kill you myself," Alexander said, his tone leaving no room for doubt. "So instead of worrying about the future, how about you worry about what’s here in front of you? Because they might kill you... but I definitely will."
The man swallowed hard, feeling the cold breath of death looming over him that second. Without daring to utter another word, he nodded slowly, crawled back up to the driver’s seat, and took the reins with trembling hands.