Chapter 106: Trickster’s mask of many faces
’That Brave Escape...’ Leon thought bitterly, glancing back at the overflowing bin behind him. ’Couldn’t it think of a better safe spot than a garbage bin?’
He looked down at his own body and immediately grimaced. His clothes were stained dark in several places, oozing faintly with whatever filth had leaked out of the torn trash bags he’d been lying on.
Bits of unidentifiable refuse clung to his sleeves and the side of his face, and a slick, sticky residue coated one of his forearms entirely.
His expression twisted sharply in disgust, and he hissed through his teeth, a wave of nausea rising in his throat as the smell finally caught up with him in full force.
For a moment he thought he might actually be sick right there in the alley.
"I need to find somewhere to clean up..." he muttered, forcing the urge to vomit down as he exhaled.
Straightening, he took a proper look at his surroundings for the first time.
He was standing in a narrow, cramped alley, hemmed in on both sides by tall brick walls, with nothing around him but rows of garbage bins and heaps of torn, discarded trash bags stacked against the walls.
No sign of the field, no sign of Medusa, nothing but the dim, grimy reality of wherever Brave Escape had actually decided to drop him.
He was about to take a step forward when a sudden burst of screaming reached his ears, sharp and distant, carrying clearly through the narrow space of the alley.
His ears perked up instantly, his body going tense.
"What’s that?" he muttered, his earlier disgust momentarily forgotten as his instincts sharpened.
Without wasting another second, he rushed toward the mouth of the alley, his boots splashing through a shallow puddle of grime as he moved.
The screaming only grew louder the closer he got, more voices joining in, panicked and desperate.
He burst out of the alley and into the open street beyond, and the scene that greeted him stopped him cold for half a second.
People were running in every direction, scattering helter-skelter across the street, screaming for help as they fled.
Some stumbled over each other in their panic, while others simply bolted blindly, not even bothering to look where they were going.
Chasing them were massive, grotesque creatures that looked, at first glance, like enormous chickens. But as Leon’s eyes adjusted to the chaos, he immediately noticed the differences.
These weren’t ordinary birds. Each one stood on four powerful legs instead of two, their thick talons tearing up the pavement with every stride, and despite their bulk, they moved through the air with an unnatural, fluid grace, wings beating hard enough to lift their heavy bodies clean off the ground.
One of the creatures let out a piercing, guttural crow, the sound tearing through the chaos of the street, before diving sharply toward an old man struggling to keep pace with the fleeing crowd.
Before he could get away, the creature’s sharp, curved beak sank deep into his shoulder, and his scream cut off into a strangled, gurgling cry as he was yanked violently off his feet.
More of the creatures swooped down across the street, tearing into anyone too slow or too unlucky to escape in time.
Some had already brought their victims down entirely, standing over the fallen bodies now, their sharp beaks tearing hungrily into exposed flesh while blood pooled steadily across the pavement beneath them.
Leon stood frozen at the mouth of the alley for a moment, staring at the chaos unfolding in front of him, the screams and the wet, tearing sounds of feeding blending together into something almost unbearable to process all at once.
’This is... a dungeon break?’ he thought.
He immediately began scanning his surroundings, searching for any sign of the gate itself, the shimmering, unstable tear in space that dungeon monsters would typically be pouring out from in an event like this.
He couldn’t find one anywhere close by.
’What does this mean...’ he thought, his frown deepening as he took in the scale of the chaos around him without any obvious source in sight. ’No guilds came to help them?’
Situations exactly like this were the entire reason player guilds existed in the first place.
Their primary duty, above almost everything else, was to respond the instant a dungeon break occurred, containing the monsters before they could spill out into populated areas and start slaughtering innocent civilians who had no way to defend themselves.
Yet here he was, standing in the middle of exactly that kind of disaster, and there wasn’t a single guild member in sight.
He took a cautious step forward, moving further into the street, his eyes sweeping across the wreckage of overturned carts and abandoned belongings scattered everywhere.
That was when he spotted one of the massive four-legged chickens crouched low over the body of a young woman, its beak buried deep into the side of her skull, tearing away at what remained of her brain with disturbing enthusiasm.
Leon’s face twisted sharply in disgust at the sight, and he came to an abrupt stop, his stomach turning at the sheer brutality of it.
Forcing himself to focus past the horror of the scene, he narrowed his eyes on the creature.
A translucent system tab flickered into view directly above the chicken’s head, displaying its basic information.
[D-rank Mutated Four-Legged Chicken]
He studied the tab for a moment, processing the information.
’So it’s only a D-rank,’ he thought.
Compared to everything he had just survived back at the guild headquarters, a D-rank threat should, in theory, be well within his current capabilities to handle without much difficulty.
As if sensing his gaze, the chicken’s head suddenly snapped upward, its beady eyes locking directly onto him.
Strings of gore and torn brain matter still hung loosely from its curved beak, dripping slowly onto the pavement below as it stared him down.
Without any hesitation, the creature let out a sharp, piercing crow that cut through the chaos of the street, and immediately launched itself into the air, wings beating hard as it shot forward, barreling straight toward Leon with terrifying speed.
Leon scoffed under his breath, watching the creature bear down on him at what it clearly assumed was overwhelming speed.
To an ordinary person, the chicken’s approach would have been a blur, a burst of speed comparable to a car barreling down a street, more than enough to close the gap before anyone could even think to react.
But to Leon, standing there with his arms loose at his sides, the creature’s charge looked sluggish, almost lazy, nothing close to the kind of speed he’d been forced to deal with only moments earlier back at the guild headquarters.
As the chicken closed the last stretch of distance between them, beak snapping forward hungrily, Leon simply pulled his fist back and punched the empty air in front of him.
The motion released a sharp, invisible shockwave, cutting cleanly through the space between them with a low, cracking boom.
It struck the chicken directly in the chest, tearing straight through flesh, muscle, and bone in an instant, blasting a clean, gaping hole clear through its body.
The creature’s momentum carried it forward for another half second before it dropped, crashing heavily onto the pavement with a dull, wet thud, blood pooling rapidly from the ruined cavity in its chest.
A notification flickered into view in front of him almost immediately.
[D-rank Mutated Four-Legged Chicken killed!]
[+100 EXP]
Leon clicked his tongue at the message, unimpressed, the experience gain barely registering compared to the massive jump he’d received from taking down the guild leader earlier.
He turned his attention back toward the dead chicken sprawled out on the ground, its body already going still.
Another notification followed shortly after the first.
[Item Drop: Chicken Mask (Common-Grade)]
A plain white mask, crafted crudely from bundled chicken feathers, dropped onto the pavement beside the creature’s corpse, landing with a soft, unremarkable thump.
Before Leon could even process the drop, a fresh wave of notifications began flashing rapidly in front of his eyes, one after another.
[Talent Activated!]
[Extracting Legendary Draw...]
[Legendary Draw: Trickster’s Mask of Many Faces]
Leon’s eyes widened slightly as he watched the plain white mask begin to tremble on the ground.
The feathers making up its structure seemed to dissolve and reshape themselves entirely, warping and shifting until the object transformed completely, no longer resembling anything close to its original crude design.
In its place now sat a sleek, transparent mask, faintly shimmering, shaped unmistakably like the face of a monkey, with delicate, refined detailing carved into its otherwise featureless surface.
Leon stared at it for a moment, caught somewhat off guard by the sudden transformation.
Still, he wasn’t about to question it.
He stretched his hand out toward the mask, and almost immediately, it responded, lifting gently off the ground on its own and drifting smoothly through the air until it settled directly into his palm.