Chapter 207: Where’s he?
Norelia hovered outside the gaping breach like an angry, pint-sized god of thunder, her oversized coat snapping in the air. Her staff pointed at them, a small ornament dangling at the tip—a gift Eren had given to her a few hours earlier.
"It’s better you pack up and leave," Norelia commanded, voice dangerously sweet. "I have personal business with that fat idiot."
Before the blue mask could even retaliate, the ceiling shook right above him.
THUD!
Emily dropped like a striking hawk. Her dual trench blades sliced downward through the smoke, sparking furiously against the blue mask’s hastily raised punch-daggers. The kinetic force drove the assassin’s knees straight into the floorboards.
"Eyes here, filth?" Emily hissed, planting a boot into his chest and shoving him backward into a dance of whirling steel, instantly monopolizing his attention with relentless blade work.
With red buried and blue locked in a duel with Emily, the golden mask let go of Kiliyan for a second, the gold leveled a sword at the open wall, pure, blinding sword aura shrieking as it crystallized along the edge.
"Meddlesome pest," the golden voice muttered, lunging to decapitate the floating professor.
"Oh, did the little circus leader want to trade blows?" Norelia scoffed, tapping her staff against empty air. A triple-layered prismatic hexagonal barrier bloomed instantly in the hole, detonating against the gold’s sword thrust in a deafening shower of shattered kinetic glass.
The prismatic barrier shards barely dissolved into sparkling dust when she drifted through the breach, boots tapping lightly on the ground.
Seeing the golden mask nowhere to be found, Norelia marched forward to claim Baron Kiliyan. "Target acquired. Time for a little airborne nap—"
She felt something immediately; intense pressure tensed her body.
Gold didn’t retreat; it’s a trap. With unnatural speed, the white-cloaked leader slipped through the dark corridor, the slender rapier whipping in a blinding, low-arc decapitation strike aimed right beneath Norelia’s chin. Her round spectacles reflected the flashing silver edge, her breath hitching as her casting speed fell a microsecond behind.
Then Eren arrived like an incoming artillery shell.
Breaking out from the smoke at speed, his shoulder drove dead-center into Gold’s flank, tackling the assassin clean off the floorboards. The sheer momentum carried them both six yards across the corridor, slamming Gold hard into the wall.
"Hands off my genius, you clown freak!" Eren snarled, his left arm pinning the assassin’s throat against the wall while his right fist, supercharged with roaring fire mana, pistoned straight into the gilded mask.
THUD! THUD!
The impacts cracked like thunderclaps, denting the polished metal plate and cracking the plaster behind.
His earpiece rang with Aria’s sharp, breathless voice, competing with the roar of flames and clashing steel behind him. "Eren! We will take care of the skull freaks! Secure the Baron and clear out now!"
"Norelia! Grab the fat bastard and fly!" Eren barked over his shoulder, driving his forearm deeper into Gold’s throat.
Norelia spun on her heel, brandishing her staff. "Levitation matrix, sequence three—"
Before the gravity magic could complete its circle under the unconscious Baron, the shattered doorway of the opposing suite detonated in a spray of splinters.
The red-masked operative erupted from the rubble like a ghoul, half his white cloak shredded and scorched, eyes burning with manic bloodlust behind the lacquered skull. His hooked scythe gleamed with a jagged, vibrating aura, descending in a vertical cleave meant to split the petite professor from crown to pelvis.
"Die, brat!"
"Eek!" Norelia shrieked, slamming her staff down in pure survival reflex.
A dense, dome-shaped barrier formed a fraction of an inch above her hair. The scythe’s curved beak bit deep into the magical shell, showering sparks across her spectacles. The force hammered her down to one knee, the floor groaning beneath her as Red bore down with both hands, grinding the curved blade into the translucent mana shield, locking them in an agonizing, point-blank struggle of attrition.
"Hey! Don’t look away from your executioner!" Gold’s raspy voice called out from beneath Eren’s forearm as he was looking at Norelia.
Before Eren could deliver another knuckle-duster to the gilded plate, Gold’s legs drove straight into Eren’s solar plexus with explosive, point-blank kinetic force.
The breath blasted from Eren’s lungs. His grip broke, his boots dragging back across the floor as he skidded away, coughing hard.
Gold flipped upright instantly, boots landing without a sound. In a seamless continuation of momentum, the assassin’s rapier blurred forward in a lethal, piston-straight lunge aimed dead at Eren’s throat.
Eren threw himself sideways, hitting the floor in a low roll.
The silver tip tore through the shoulder fabric of his coat, biting into the floorboards right where his neck had been a millisecond prior. Rolling over the corpse of the first guard pinned to the wall, Eren’s hand snapped out, wrapping around the hilt of the dead man’s notched steel broadsword.
With a fierce yank, he wrenched the blade free from the lifeless ribs.
"Sorry buddy, borrowing your sword," Eren muttered in a breathless half-apology to the corpse.
He spun on his knees, bringing the heavy broadsword up in a violent, two-handed diagonal slash.
CLANG!
Sparks erupted in a blinding cascade as steel met steel.
Gold shifted weight instantly, parrying the heavier blade with effortless finesse, the slender rapier slithering along Eren’s guard like an oiled snake. The gilded tip flicked toward Eren’s right eye.
Eren didn’t flinch. Activating his dance footwork, he dropped his stance beneath the thrust, his hips pivoting with fluid, serpentine grace. He drove the stolen broadsword upward, catching Gold under the wrist to deflect the follow-up, then stepped inside the assassin’s guard.
With zero chivalry and maximum street efficiency, Eren whipped his left elbow around, cracking it flush against Gold’s jaw.
Gold staggered back half a step, tilting his head. But before Eren could follow with a downward cleave, Gold’s off-hand whipped from beneath the white sleeve.
Meanwhile, Norelia was gritting her teeth so hard a tiny line of blood leaked from her lip. The red mask’s scythe with aura coating was carving deeper into her Aegis dome, spiderweb cracks spreading across the emerald mana shell under the lunatic’s downward pressure.
"Pint-sized brat! Let the barrier drop so I can harvest your head!"
"Eat dirt, you buzzard!" Norelia snapped back, stomping her boot furiously, she manually overloaded the barrier’s outer layer.
BOOM!
The mana shield detonated intentionally in a concussive shockwave, blasting Red backward through the air. Norelia whipped her staff around, a barrage of glowing arcane spears forming in the thermal updraft, raining down around the recovering killer in a deafening barrage of detonations.
***
Emily, having disarmed the blue mask with a vicious wrist-lock and a double strike that sent him tumbling down the stairwell, vaulted over a burning beam. Her twin trench blades flipped into reverse grip, her military posture snapping toward the target.
"Surround the leader!" Emily shouted, her gaze sweeping across the smoke-choked corridor to coordinate the final pincer maneuver. "Don’t let them—"
Her voice cut off abruptly, her blood ran cold.
"Wait..." Emily’s frantic, disbelieving voice cut through the clash of weapons and crackling fire. "Where the hell did the Baron go?!"