Zalanir didn’t kill the man. It wasn’t a decision based on conscience or fear of killing — he got over it and accepted it as it was already — but he just found that it wasn’t necessary. He held no animosity toward them. It was just business because he was together with the enforcers at the moment.

  Hiina had finished her fight long before his. The poor cultist woman got a hole in her throat. Blood was still dripping out of it, splitting into two and dropping to the ground from her right index finger and her frayed leather armor. As for the other two who got hit by whatever trap Hiina prepared for them, one shared the same fate as the woman, whereas the other was groaning with two kunai still stuck on his chest.

  Zalanir chose to remain silent. He had thought that her warning about killing him back when he got caught was just for show, but looked like she did have this tendency herself. He was glad that he had told them the truth back then.

  “You are too soft. Keep fighting like that, and you will soon find yourself lying there with them someday,” she left a comment before dragging the one on the ground to where his opponent was. “Now tell me, what are you doing here inside this cave? Where is the prophet? Whoever opens his mouth first gets to live.”

  “Don’t act too cocky, bitch. The prophet will avenge us. The one who descends will mow down all of you,” the one who was dragged there laughed like a maniac.

  “That’s right. You think you deserve to meet the prophet? Taking your clothes off first, and then we—” Zalanir’s opponent didn’t even get to finish his sentence before Hiina slammed a kunai onto his mouth. The man spasmed on the ground, holding onto his mouth with both of his hands before giving in.

  “Do-do-don’t kill … me, I-I will tell. He is sum-summoning a be-beast from the sacred poo-pool.” From a crazy laugh, the first man just turned into a coward in the blink of an eye after his fellow cultist was killed.

  “Where is he?” Hiina asked.

  “I-I-I don’t know. Bo-Boss lady doesn’t tell us. B-but I can try—”

  Hiina dropped her head down and whispered into the man’s ears. “You did well.” Her hand planted a kunai into the man’s belly, and in a smooth motion, uprooted it right away. “Enjoy your life. It might be short, though.” She stood up after digging four holes in the man’s stomach.

  “Don’t waste time looking at me like that. Let’s rest for a bit and go back there.” She darted her eyes at Zalanir while sitting down near the left wall. After a while, she came over to pick up a torch, and followed the same path they had taken again.

  You have slain [Human — Level 42]

  Zalanir kept his silence the whole time. He picked up the other torch lying near the woman’s corpse and trod after Hiina. After ten steps, he sighed, turned around and saw the scene one more time before the darkness engulfed it all.

  This time, before they even entered the previous spot where Hiina was attacked, she threw away the torch and replaced it with the talisman, though the light was kept minimal. Even though she held it right beside her thigh, its light didn’t even illuminate her chest. She slowly came to Rafnick’s spot, but he was no longer there.

  Zalanir saw her attach four inactive talismans to the same number of kunai. Just when he was still wondering what that was for, Hiina turned in his direction and ordered.

  “Follow after me and spice things up as best as you can.”

  “What, I won’t—”

  Without letting him finish, she disabled the only source of light in terms of the talisman on her hand, and edged herself forward. Even though he had no idea what she was planning to do, and his hate for her minimal explanation style had just grown stronger and stronger the more he stayed with her, he still chose to do what she said and tiptoed forward.

  It wasn’t long before he heard a series of faint whooshes coming from Hiina. One second later, four huge spheres of light abruptly flared up and flew to four different spots apart from each other. Zalanir’s right arm instinctively swiped up to cover his eyes. When he let it drop down, Hiina was already gone from her spot.

  Dashing out but still sticking close to the wall, finally, he had the first look at the empty area that he had been spending a long time with.

  It was a dark brown chamber with several big stalactites protruding from the dome-like ceiling. In contrast to his prediction, there weren’t lots of bats up there, just a sprinkle of them latching onto each stalactite. Though a glance to the opposite corner told him where they went. There was a huge mess of bat carcasses hoarding there, reminding him of some piles of waiting-to-be-processed garbage with waste, plastic bottles and junk near his apartment. It wasn’t hard to see some of them losing their wings or even having their heads blown off.

  The chamber itself was quite big, about the size of two side by side placed tennis courts. There were black fungus and dark green moss spraying on the wall and the ground, but the most eye-catching thing had to be a human-height tower-like structure sitting close to the slaughtering pile. River patterns spiraled along its frame and surface from top to bottom.

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  In contrast with the last time they had been here, there was no ambush or attack. Everything was eerily silent, occasionally broken by bats flapping their wings or grunting with their supersonic sound.

  “You can go out and tell me what happened here.” Zalanir turned to Hiina’s direction and saw that she was talking to the … wall?

  “As expected from my colleague,” Rafnick stepped out, separating himself from the brown stumpy area that he was blending in right next to. That skill was really neat. The round bump on the wall that he was looking at turned out to be the man’s head. If Zalanir wasn’t sure that Rafnick was a human, he would’ve mistaken the man for a giant gecko for that trick alone.

  “There was a group here, but they went down that path and haven’t returned. The thing in the middle is a summoning altar. What had they summoned? I don’t know. It was like that already when I sneaked into this area.”

  “How do you know what it is?” Hiina asked.

  “Seen something similar before,” the Gymer shrugged.

  “Is that where they go? Let’s go after them before they get away.” Hiina looked at the only other path in this chamber.

  “Eh, sorry to interrupt, but I think I have to go. You are here, so my job is already done,” Zalanir tried his luck. He just didn’t entertain the idea of chasing after the cultists. What was in this for him? Nothing.

  “Is that why you hesitated to kill the cultist back then? You want to go out and bring in reinforcement for revenge?” Hiina snorted derisively.

  “What? No, I’m not with them. How did you even end up with that conclusion?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You want to be an enforcer, correct? So either you stay with us and kill them, or your life ends here, right now. Your choice is?” Hiina just casually took out two other kunai and was spinning four of them using her fingers. How many kunai did this crazy woman have?

  It wasn’t even a debate about whether he could run or not. The recent fight was still fresh in his mind. Joining the enforcers was his last option, but maybe having a secured choice that he could fall back to wasn’t bad either.

  “Then I hope that you two would get in some nice words for me. The job is pretty competitive, after all.” Zalanir smiled and nodded at Rafnick, which he got a nod back in return. “But you know, instead of pursuing them, why don’t we ambush them here? They left the summoning altar here, didn’t they?”

  “It doesn’t guarantee that they will come back,” Hiina countered, but then she stayed silent and seemed to consider something.

  Zalanir knew for sure that they would come back, because that path was a dead end. Unless the rubble he left there got cleared somehow. Well, he just gave them a suggestion. Whether they took it or not was up to them.

  “He does have a point,” Rafnick said. “How about we stay here for a while, let’s say one day, and if they don’t return, then we can chase after them?”

  Hiina agreed to this idea in the end and came to do her things near the mouth of the other path. She buried some of the kunai under the ground, as well as sticking two slingshot-like devices into the wall right at the foot of the turning spot.

  Without anything to do, Zalanir shot down the three loudest bats from the ceiling, and then switched to the tower structure in the middle after Hiina reduced all the light to minimum.

  Its surface was cold and smooth, like he was touching the ceramic tiles used to make the floor of his apartment. Interesting enough, the decorative patterns were painted onto rather than shaped into the creation when it was made. The break in the stroke was clearly visible to his eyes, even in this obscure environment.

  His hand stopped in its tracks when he patted the top of the altar. He felt something drawing onto his mind, or rather, his mind extended toward something like a worm reaching for food. It was inexplicable, but the sensation was there. What was special about this altar, he wondered.

  He shifted his hand back down, and the feeling was gone. Only the top of the altar seemed to invoke that. He remained there to investigate the tower-shaped structure, which somehow had drawn Rafnick to his side.

  “Are you taking a liking to it?”

  “I have to say the material is pleasing to the fingers.”

  “That’s just normal ceramics, no?”

  “Yeah, but still.” Zalanir shrugged. He couldn’t even describe the feeling himself, so even if he wanted to ask the buffed guy, he just couldn’t. “By the way, you mentioned this is a summoning altar. Is this practice popular? You know … what can they summon? Demons? Mythical beasts? Or, Humans?”

  “I also don’t know much about this branch of power, but as far as I can tell, there is no limitation on what you can summon. Though I have read that if you get consent from the target, the process will be smoother.”

  “If possible, can I ask why are you chasing these cultists? What have they done?” Zalanir pushed the boundaries a little bit. If the man didn’t answer, he was fine with coming back to tinkering with the altar. Though the man didn’t appear to hold anything back.

  “We have a list of criminals to kill, and the prophet, as called by his followers, is one of them. His real name is Wagenner. Once a resident of Yebin, but his pursuit of power had led him astray. He killed three of his fellow associates, stole from his mentor, and even killed five enforcers when escape. And that was when he was still in D-grade. The captain of this hunt wants to put him down for good, once and for all.”

  “Why does this mission need to end with his death? Is capturing not good enough?”

  “Ah, so you are indeed a fellow of the benevolent way. Thought so. Well, the answer is simple. A dead man ends the case. Capturing? You risk getting revenged if the man ever got out. There is always someone willing to bail such people out, even in the deepest cells. Death, on the other hand, solves it completely.” Zalanir had to give the man a tip of the hat for maintaining his tone and composure while speaking of murder, as if it was just a trivial matter.

  “What about the people who were close to the target? Families? Friends? Wouldn’t they want revenge?”

  “Who? His followers? They are just tagging along for whatever benefit he gives them. There is no loyalty there. Remember, I am talking about a wanted criminal here, not someone with power or class. If I were worried about killing every criminal for fear of retaliation, then for what reason am I here? What is the purpose of the enforcers and our criminal list? We hunt down those who violate the law. It’s that simple.”

  Zalanir had to say that the man had his reasons, and these were justifiable. Zalanir was indeed leaning toward the peaceful side — or benevolence, as Rafnick called it — as to suddenly become accustomed to killing as a legitimate way of solving a problem was still rubbing him the wrong way. What exactly that was, he had no answer at the moment. Lucky for him, a kunai thrown his way — their way — helped distract him from the thought.

  Hiina was making a cutthroat gesture, which could only mean one thing: the enemies had returned. They got into position and disabled the faint light.