Jin stood over the bleeding man in the dirt road. The bandit clutched his severed stump. He cried loudly. Tears and snot mixed with the dust on his face.
Nyx stood perfectly still behind Jin. She tilted her head slightly. The cracked obsidian visor stared at the back of Jin's hooded head.
She had just done all the work. She had killed eleven heavily armored men in thirty seconds. She moved faster than sound. She crushed bone and severed spines. She secured the area.
Now, the weak prince stepped forward. He acted like he was in charge. He demanded answers.
Nyx let out a small, silent huff in her mind. It was a strange feeling. She was slightly annoyed, but she was also amused. Original Jin would be crying in the dirt right now. He would be begging her to take him away from the blood.
This Jin was different. He was completely fragile. A strong wind could break his bones. But his mind was cold. He looked at a pile of dead bodies and saw an opportunity. He saw a way to get money. She respected that.
The bandit looked past Jin. He looked at the dark shadow of Nyx. He saw the black blood dripping from her fingertips. He did not want to die slowly.
"The broken tooth," the bandit sobbed heavily. He raised a shaking, dirty finger. He pointed toward the east, away from the main trade route. "There is a rock formation. It looks like a giant broken tooth. It is three miles off the road. The main camp is hidden at the base."
Jin followed the man's finger. He looked out into the darkening wasteland. The sun was almost completely gone. He saw the faint outline of a jagged peak in the distance.
"How many men?" Jin asked. His voice was flat.
"I don't know," the bandit cried. He pressed his face into the dirt. "Many. Hundreds. The boss takes in everyone who gets kicked out of the city guilds. Please. I told you everything."
Jin nodded slowly. He got the location. He got a rough estimate of the numbers. He did not need anything else from the man.
He opened his mouth to tell Nyx to finish it.
She did not wait for his command. She stepped forward smoothly. She swung her right hand in a short, sharp arc.
The invisible monomolecular wire sliced cleanly through the bandit's thick neck. The crying stopped instantly. The severed head rolled away into the yellow scrub brush. The body slumped forward, bleeding out quietly into the dry earth.
"He was stalling," Nyx stated in Jin's mind. "He was hoping a patrol would hear him crying and come to investigate. We need to leave the road."
"Agreed," Jin said. He did not look at the dead man again.
Nyx bent down. She moved quickly among the twelve dead bodies. She did not take their rusted swords or their cheap plasma rifles. Those weapons were too heavy to carry. They were not worth the effort to sell.
Instead, she reached into their leather pouches. She pulled out their small, glowing Aether cores.
Bandits always carried their wealth on them. They did not trust banks or hidden stashes. Nyx collected fifteen low-tier cores in a few seconds. She dropped them into the pouch on her black belt. It was a very small profit. It was not enough to pay for a teleportation circle.
"Let's go," Nyx said.
They stepped off the hard dirt road. They walked eastward into the untamed wasteland.
The sun finally vanished below the horizon. The sky turned a deep, inky black. The twin moons rose, casting a pale, cold silver light over the jagged rocks and the dry brush. The temperature dropped rapidly. The heat of the day was gone. A cold wind swept across the plains.
Jin pulled his heavy brown cloak tighter around his shoulders. He was grateful for the thick canvas clothes he bought in Cloud City.
The terrain was difficult. There was no path here. They had to navigate around deep, rocky crevices and thick patches of thorny bushes. Jin watched where Nyx placed her feet. He followed her exact path. He used the steady energy from his Foundation Level 4 core to keep his balance in the dark.
They walked in complete silence for over an hour.
Jin used the time to plan. He needed money. Iron-Spire was a rich city. Rich cities charged high prices for everything. If he walked through the city gates looking like a beggar with empty pockets, nobody would respect him. The guards might just throw him out.
He needed capital. He needed a large sum of high-tier Aether cores.
A bandit camp was a perfect target. Bandits stole from merchants. Merchants carried valuable goods. The bandit boss was probably hoarding a massive pile of stolen cores in his tent. It was a simple equation. If Nyx killed the boss, Jin got the money.
The jagged peak grew larger in the distance. The bandit was right. In the silver moonlight, the massive rock formation looked exactly like a shattered molar pointing up at the sky.
They drew closer. The smell of the air changed again.
Jin smelled wood smoke. He smelled roasting meat. He heard the faint, distant sound of coarse voices and clinking metal.
Nyx stopped walking. She raised a black-gloved hand.
Jin froze instantly. He crouched down low behind a cluster of tall, dry brush.
"We are close," Nyx whispered in his mind. "Move slowly. Keep your head below the rocks. Do not step on any loose gravel."
They crept forward. They climbed a slow, rocky incline. They reached the top of a high ridge. Large, flat boulders lined the edge of the ridge like a natural wall.
Nyx lay down flat on her stomach. She crawled up to the edge of the boulders. She peered over the stone.
Jin dropped to his stomach. He crawled up right next to her. He kept his head very low. He looked down into the valley below the broken tooth mountain.
He expected to see a few dirty tents around a campfire. He expected to see a disorganized group of thieves.
He was completely wrong.
It was not a small camp. It was a massive, fortified settlement.
A high wall made of sharpened tree trunks completely surrounded the base of the mountain. Thick wooden watchtowers stood at every corner. Guards holding heavy plasma rifles paced back and forth on top of the walls.
Inside the wooden walls, the camp was sprawling. There were dozens of large, heavy canvas tents. There were crude wooden buildings. Massive bonfires burned in the open dirt squares, casting a bright orange glow over the entire valley.
Jin saw hundreds of men moving around. They were drinking from wooden barrels. They were fighting in dirt pits while others cheered. They were dragging massive, dead beasts into a central butchering area.
He saw wooden wagons parked near the back of the camp. The wagons were loaded with heavy iron crates. Those crates held the stolen merchant goods.
It was an army of criminals. It was a small city of murderers.
Jin felt a tight knot form in his stomach. He stared at the massive scale of the operation. He had wildly underestimated the target. He thought they were going to rob a small convenience store. This was a heavily guarded military base.
He looked at Nyx. She was perfectly still.
She did not look surprised. She did not look afraid. She was just a machine taking in raw data.
Her eyes scanned the entire valley through her cracked visor. She tracked the movement of the patrols on the walls. She counted the heavy plasma rifles. She counted the large tents. She noted the size of the bonfires and the density of the crowds around them.
Her Divinity Realm mind processed the numbers in seconds.
"I have the count," Nyx stated in his mind. Her voice was completely calm.
"How many?" Jin asked. He kept his physical voice down to a bare whisper.
"Based on the tent capacity and the patrol rotations," Nyx reported. "There are at least eight hundred men inside those walls."
Jin closed his eyes for a second. He let out a slow, silent breath.
Eight hundred bandits. Eight hundred Core Formation killers.
Even if they were low-level trash compared to the elite imperial army, the sheer number was overwhelming. If they all fired their plasma rifles at the exact same time, they could turn the entire rocky ridge into a smoking crater.
"That is too many," Jin said logically. "You are strong. But you are just one person. If you fight eight hundred men, your Aether will run out. You will be exhausted. They will eventually overwhelm you with pure numbers."
Nyx turned her head. She looked at him.
"You are correct," Nyx agreed. "If I walk through the front gate and challenge them to a direct battle, I will kill five hundred of them before my core is empty. Then the remaining three hundred will kill me. And then they will find you."
Jin nodded. The math did not work in their favor. The risk was too high.
"We should leave," Jin decided. He started to slowly back away from the edge of the boulder. "We will find another way to get money in Iron-Spire. This is a bad investment."
Nyx did not move. She kept her eyes on the massive camp below.
"We do not need to fight eight hundred men," Nyx said smoothly. "We are not an army. We are an assassination squad. We only need to kill one man."
Jin stopped crawling backward. He moved back up to the edge of the rock. He looked at her dark profile.
"The boss," Jin said.
"Yes," Nyx confirmed. "Bandit camps do not have loyalty. They are held together by fear. The boss is the strongest man here. He hoards the best weapons and all the high-tier cores. If the boss dies suddenly, the camp will panic. They will turn on each other to steal the loot. The structure will collapse in minutes."
Jin looked down at the sprawling, noisy camp. He looked for the biggest tent.
He found it. In the very back of the camp, near the solid rock wall of the mountain, stood a massive pavilion. It was made of thick, dark red beast leather. Four heavily armored guards stood outside the entrance.
"That red tent," Jin pointed.
"I see it," Nyx said. "That is the target."
Jin ran the numbers in his head again. It was a massive risk. But the payout would be huge. All the stolen wealth of eight hundred men was sitting in that one red tent.
"Can you get inside without waking up the entire camp?" Jin asked.
Nyx finally turned her head away from the camp. She looked directly at Jin. The cracked obsidian visor seemed to glint in the pale moonlight.
"I am a shadow-guard, My Prince," Nyx said. Her telepathic voice held a rare hint of dark pride. "I lived in your shadow for ten years, and your own brothers never saw me. Wooden walls and cheap mercenaries cannot stop me."
Jin nodded. He made the final decision. The corporate manager approved the hostile takeover.
"Do it," Jin ordered. "Kill the boss. Get the money. I will wait here."