Not for the first time, Sorin wondered how difficult it would be to get a copy of Rue’s Aura Sense. The four Hellions were too far away for him to tell what ranks their soulspaces were, which made going to the old man’s rescue a very risky proposition.

  At the same time, he couldn’t just let them do whatever it was they were planning to do. Their victim didn’t deserve that, and from a more self-serving perspective, letting the enemy interrogate people for information about him was just a bad idea.

  If he went out there, he’d be stuck on Floor 0 until he killed or drove off the Hellions, a feat Sorin was by no means sure he was capable of performing. If he stayed put—or more smartly, retreated—that old man was in for a rough evening that might result in his death, and Sorin’s enemies would likely gain some sort of information about him. How useful that information would be was questionable, since it appeared they’d already discovered the alleyway he used to enter and leave the city.

  Because of course this stupid soulprint doesn’t work anywhere else now. Is the tower having a laugh at my expense with this crap? It was fine a few days ago, but now it’s a problem?

  He already knew what he was going to do. He was just coming up with justifications while he plotted out his plan of attack. The first thing to do was stash his supplies somewhere safe. He couldn’t bring bags full of food, medicine, and other essentials into a fight, but if he lost and was forced to flee, he didn’t want to leave it behind.

  Sorin retreated a block and stashed the packs behind a partially collapsed wooden wall that had filled the alley with debris. He wouldn’t trust it as a long-term hiding place, but for a few hours or a day, it was as safe as he could manage on short notice. Then he scaled a building on the corner, crossed over to the far side, and crouched down to study his targets.

  Two of them were holding the old man, forcing him to kneel in front of the woman who appeared to be in charge and another, silent man in a black cloak. Based on how ferociously the old man was struggling to get out of their grips, the thugs restraining him weren’t that strong. That was good. It meant they were probably either low ranked or dangerously overspecialized in magical soulprints. They were good opening targets for his ambush.

  Two-on-one was a lot better than four-on-one, and this time Sorin wouldn’t be holding back. These guys weren’t Nemari’s family. They were Hellion scum willing to participate in ‘interrogation’ techniques against an innocent victim.

  Jumping off a roof was not a great way to start a fight, but he’d manage. It was going to hurt the guy he landed on a lot more than it hurt him, anyway. With a brief prayer that he wasn’t about to deliver himself into a group of rank 10s or anything like that, he drew his sword and leaped.

  Ice blades flashed out, three at once and then three more, to strike at the woman and the silent man in the cloak. At the same time, Sorin’s boots hit one of the other two’s back hard enough to drive him into the street with a sickening crunch. His sword flashed out and dipped under the other’s chin, slicing flesh and sending blood spurting across the alley wall. It retreated as quickly as it had arrived, then drove into the back of the neck of the man he was standing on.

  Two dead. So far, so good.

  The old man was—unfortunately—also pulled down to the street and had the wind driven out of him, but he’d survive. Sorin stepped past him, bloody sword held firm in one hand, and advanced on the other two. The woman had a gash across one cheek where an ice blade had carved a furrow through her skin, but she’d dodged the other two. Sorin could work with that.

  Far more worrying was the last man, the tall, silent one. He stood motionless, and without a mark on him. Sorin knew his aim was good, and through Blind Sense, he knew the man hadn’t moved. So how is he standing there without so much as a scuff on that cloak of his? The ice blades had just vanished when they got close, and that was worrying.

  Best case, his attack had been countered with precision bursts of flame. Worst case, he’d just inadvertently picked a fight with a rank 30 or higher who had access to C-ranked soulprints like Negation or Thermal Suppression. That seemed unlikely, but stranger things had happened. Sorin would know in a few seconds when he got close enough to feel out the man’s rank.

  “Huh. Not too often someone finds out the Hellions want a word with them and just shows up to talk,” the woman said. Her eyes never left Sorin’s as she flicked some blood off her cheek with a thumb. “And you’re a feisty one, too. That’s good. I like that. I promise not to kill you.”

  “Old man,” Sorin said. “Get up and run.”

  Not needing to be told twice, he was already scrambling out from under the bodies and retreating down the alley. Smartly, he didn’t stop at the door to his house. Instead, he turned the corner and vanished. The woman watched him go with a small smirk before locking her eyes back on Sorin.

  “You may call me Amistra,” she said. Her eyes lingered on Sorin’s splinted arm for a moment, clearly assessing the injury. “No doubt that you’re the one we’re looking for, but I confess I’m unhappy to see someone has already broken part of my new toy before I get to play with it.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ugh, one of those types. Not surprising that she doesn’t seem to care about her two dead henchmen. Well, this is probably a good thing. If she wants to screw around instead of fight for real, it’ll be that much easier to kill her.

  Amistra pulled on a pair of long, black gloves with metal claws worked into the fingers like nails. It wasn’t steel, either, or at least it wasn’t base steel. The nails all glowed blue, perhaps from some sort of alchemical treatment or an enchantment woven into them. Sorin struggled not to roll his eyes at the sight of her donning a torturer’s tool for a weapon, but he wasn’t about to let down his guard. There were plenty of soulprints that could enhance the deadliness of the scratches she could carve into him.

  She started to slide the first one on. “I think that—”

  Three ice blades led his charge, cutting her off before she could even finish putting on her gloves and forcing her to flinch to one side. The next moment, Sorin was close enough to feel out her rank and bitterly cursing his luck. Fucking Rank 8. This just keeps getting worse.

  Whatever her build was, she was fast. Seemingly ignoring Sorin except to weave back and forth dodging ice blades and sword strikes, she finished donning the gloves. Even at close range, he was struggling just to hit her now that he didn’t have the element of surprise.

  One good hit would probably put her down. He knew that just based on how easily that first ice blade had cut through her. She was operating at base-line human durability, probably having invested far too heavily into speed and maybe offense. The cut wasn’t healing, though, so at best, she had something like Minor Regeneration to help between fights, and maybe not even that.

  He could win this. He just needed to outthink her better than she outsped him. There was no doubt in his mind that she’d move physically faster, probably two or maybe three times as fast. Almost certainly, the winning strategy would be to let her get close and take a hit in order to trap her with some sort of grapple where he could negate the speed advantage. It would hurt, but it would also assure victory.

  The problem with that whole strategy was standing about ten feet behind her. Sorin had no idea what that guy could do, or even what rank he was, but he didn’t think it likely that he’d stand and watch once his friend lost. Beating her alone wasn’t good enough. He needed to win against them both.

  If not for Blind Sense, Sorin didn’t think he would have noticed it. Amistra was faster than his eye’s ability to track, but not faster than a soulprint centered around detecting motion. Her hand lashed out, seeming almost casual despite the speed, and her nails slashed through the spot his face had been a fraction of a second earlier.

  Briefly, Sorin lamented this particular hole in his build. Warrior’s Vigilance was covering most of his physical boosts, but it did almost nothing for his speed. He hadn’t worried about it since prediction generally trumped reaction anyway, and since experience was the foundation for that, he had more than anyone his rank had a right to. That was less useful when the opponent was ranked three times as high as him.

  Amistra started fighting for real, using both hands and not just limiting herself to well-telegraphed wide slashes. She shifted position completely, sometimes on Sorin’s left, sometimes on his right. Once, she disappeared from his field of view entirely as she circled around behind him. Blind Sense kept him in the fight though, and a pair of shuffled steps forward and two ice blades shot out from his back defeated that attempt.

  “Oh, you’re good,” Amistra crooned. “Even with one arm, you’re still keeping up with me. And you’re not even moving faster than a normal person, not really!”

  Drive her left, pin her against the wall, ice blades when she tries to slip around me followed by a slash from the other direction. She won’t be able to go back, forward, right, or left. That just leaves up, and God help the fool whose feet leave the ground.

  Sorin rushed in, ignoring Amistra’s attempt at banter, and aggressively slashed at her. Her smile slipped into a disapproving frown at his wild attacks, not because she was at all pressured, though. She’d probably say something like he was ruining her fun soon.

  She let him push her back toward the alley wall, following the steps he’d laid out perfectly, right up until the end. As he spun in place to block her escape, she leaped straight up. That was when things went sideways. Though agile opponents could still dodge an attack mid-leap, it was a lot harder to do, and he was confident the handicap would prevent someone that was only being sped up by a D-ranked soulprint at best from outmaneuvering him.

  As it turned out, her build wasn’t devoted solely to speed and supporting soulprints. She cried out, and that single note scrambled Sorin’s brain. Dizziness swept through him, blurring his vision to the point of myopic blindness. His sense of balance shifted, or rather vanished, causing him to stagger sideways and drop to one knee. Nausea swelled up, curling in his stomach and threatening to spew out of him.

  I really would be completely fucked without Blind Sense, he thought.

  Through the soulprint, he could see Amistra’s lips curl up in cruel delight as she fell back to the ground, her steel nails spread wide to rake through his flesh and bleed him. The only reason he even had a fraction of a second to react was that she couldn’t descend faster than gravity pulled her down.

  His senses were a mess, but he didn’t need them to aim. Ice blades materialized, blurred through less than two feet of air, and buried themselves in Amistra’s chest. She screamed, this time in pain instead of some sensory-destroying magic, and her hands fell limp to her sides instead of clawing through his face.

  Completely ignoring what his sense of balance was telling him, Sorin watched himself sweep back upright, sword in hand, and lash out. Amistra saw the attack coming too late to do anything about it. With one hand still frozen on an ice blade that she was trying to pry out of her chest, she collapsed into a puddle of blood. Her head landed on the street next to her.

  The man in the black cloak just stood there and watched all three of his people get killed. Sorin doubted they were friends, but he would have expected some sort of reaction. Nothing? Alright. Works for me. I’m not going to complain about you giving me an easy advantage.

  The vertigo only lasted a second or two. Then Sorin turned to face the last of the Black Hellions and lifted his bloodstained sword.