Pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger took a scarily small amount of time and energy.

  Of course, most firearms were made for strong and healthy adults to use.

  What the gunman had carried with practiced ease felt heavy in my hands.

  Adrenaline had let me power through that weight and handle the recoil of each shot without even noticing it. Even without adrenaline, I was physically capable of doing it, so I could have pushed through anyway.

  But it was still a problem in this situation, where even a slight delay could be the difference between life and death.

  I should probably have pointed the gun at him and fired the moment I heard him enter, without sparing a moment to confirm who he was.

  Now he was only a couple paces from me. Well, a couple of his paces, anyway.

  If he was just an ordinary old man, he'd be dead before he could reach me.

  An ordinary old man wouldn't be so calm surrounded by so many dead bodies though.

  'Well... maybe they would be...'

  People did tend to underestimate children, almost no matter the circumstance.

  He didn't seem to be underestimating me though.

  He stared at me warily, as if watching for any sign of weakness, any opening he could exploit, or any movement from me that'd force his hand early.

  Of course, I was doing the same.

  ***

  The man shot toward Van like a bullet.

  The A rank adventurer managed to raise his arms and block the first punch from hitting any of his vitals, but it still connected.

  He felt his left arm fracture, and the force knocked him several yards back, until a tree finally broke his momentum, knocking the wind out of him.

  His vision blurred until he used his Skills to force his eyes to focus again.

  Fortunately, whatever that attack was, it wasn't something his opponent could repeat easily, so he had a chance to breathe again while the foreign gangster slowly walked toward him.

  His crossbow was dropped, and his opponent took a brief moment to stomp it on his way.

  Unfortunately, when Van threw a knife at the man with deadly accuracy... it was also caught.

  'This is a really bad match up...'

  ***

  A sudden noise from outside... failed to distract either one of us.

  "As you can see, I don't have time to play games. Drop the gun, and I won't hurt you. If you were anyone else, we'd be forced to kill you in retaliation... but if you cooperate now, I'll say they just failed to control a wild animal. Of course, if you persist in acting like one, I'll put you down myself."

  So he knew what was going on outside.

  Although I didn't, he seemed impatient, and it was hard to think of any reasons for that aside from one.

  Someone came to interfere with this.

  It was hard to tell if they were an ally or just an enemy of my enemy.

  It could be the Azure Dragons, since they practically gave Lilac and me phones just to track our movements. If not them in person, then someone they sent.

  Or it could be a rival to whoever was behind all of this.

  I couldn't entrust Lilac to strangers, certainly not to people who made themselves the rivals of kidnappers, but getting this guy out of the room could at least help her call for help and hide properly.

  It didn't seem like he knew she was there, at least.

  Plus, there was a chance I'd get a look at whoever was outside.

  Of course, it could all be a bluff, but I didn't really see why he'd engineer a situation like this. If he had control over whatever was happening outside, feigning weakness seemed unnecessary and even risky.

  After all, a moment of weakness was all I'd needed to deal with his men.

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  "Sure, fine," I conceded, and slowly placed the gun on the floor. "I'll come with you."

  "Changed your mind...? I was looking forward to making a little murderous brat like you suffer. Be thankful that I'm a man of my word."

  He grabbed my arm and dragged me outside.

  I think he was trying to hurt me on purpose, but it was hard to care much about it.

  He did have a point.

  I had just killed over half a dozen men.

  Regardless of the cause, I'd become a murderer in this world.

  Of course, if murder is a sin that stains the soul, I was already a murderer. I doubted my particular brand of reincarnation absolved me of anything. It just put me in a convenient position of being in a world that knew nothing of my past crimes.

  But who would possibly side with a demon like me over their own people?

  ***

  When we got outside, I got a glimpse of two people fighting in the distance.

  They were a bit far into the woods that served as the countryside cabin's extensive yard, but I thought one looked a lot like Van.

  It'd be good if I could help him directly somehow, since it sure didn't look like he was winning, but if he was here, that meant the Azure Dragons really were aware of things.

  It'd be pretty embarrassing if a top ranking guild lost to some crooks, so I decided to trust them.

  Besides, I was at least removing one of his opponents this way.

  If I'd tried fighting and died, he'd ultimately have to deal with enemy backup, and Lilac could have very likely been found.

  It had been a gamble, but it seemed that I'd made the right move this time.

  'I'm pretty sure killing people wasn't the right move at all, though.'

  Since the Azure Dragons had come, it would have been far better to let them deal with everything.

  I'd be in their debt, but that was still a better outcome than this.

  As I shut out my immediate future to instead worry about the long-term consequences of my actions, I let the older kidnapper drag me into his vehicle.

  He was oddly less professional than the two men who grabbed us first. Now that I was unarmed, his attention was no longer on me at all, instead fixated on simply escaping.

  At this point, I could just waste his time for a bit, and then test out my Beginner Skill to escape.

  That was a last resort though.

  If I showed off that I could do that, it'd make any future kidnapping attempts a whole lot more annoying to deal with.

  So I just sat in the front passenger seat of the car, staring out the window, watching the countryside scenery go by.

  ***

  Van saw Kid getting dragged out by that other guy.

  Were he an amateur, it might have made him lower his defenses, or convince him to go charging after her.

  But he was fighting an uphill battle against this absurd martial artist, whose punches could crack whole tree trunks.

  As someone who specialized in intelligence gathering and stealth, it was difficult to deal with unwavering brute force.

  So he noted the tactical implications, that is that he'd been spared having to deal with a potential two on one fight, and buried his concerns for a future where he had the luxury to think about them.

  A future he'd have to earn with his own two hands.

  'So this is Ironskin,' he noted when he felt his knife vibrate after he tried to slice through his opponent.

  He'd already gotten a cursory glance of all his opponent's Skills and rough capabilities with Scan, as well as the man who'd just taken Kid.

  This guy had Deflect Missiles, Grit, Ironskin, Ki Burst, and Martial Arts.

  Why shoot him earlier if he had a Skill to prevent that?

  Since a fight seemed inevitable, it was the fastest way to test the capabilities of the man's Deflect Missiles. That is, could it react to a surprise attack, and if so, how quickly?

  Skills weren't absolute, after all. Especially when confronted with other Skills.

  Looking at it another way, his own Sniper Skill should have overcome Deflect Missiles, but it had failed to, leaving him in his current mess.

  Thanks to Ironskin, Van couldn't even chip the man down as he dodged and weaved around those insanely deadly strikes.

  He only had one working arm left, so he could no longer try blocking them without setting himself up for a loss.

  'How long before those guys get here, anyway?!'

  If he could manage even a brief distraction, he could put Concealment up again, at least to buy some time, but the foreign martial artist never once let up his assault.

  The one good thing is that his opponent was burning mana to keep up this sort of pressure, whereas Van's own dodges were relatively efficient. His victory was inevitable...

  As long as he didn't get hit again, of course.

  Avoiding every single attack was a tall order though. Rolling with these punches could still be deadly.

  He did everything he could to use the terrain to his advantage, putting trees and fallen logs in between him and the foreigner, but if it had slowed the man down at all, it was scary to imagine how he might fight undeterred by such things.

  Then it finally happened.

  The martial artist burned even more mana than usual to follow up a missed attack with a full force kick.

  The only good thing is that Van went flying from the attack. If he'd taken that while pinned against a solid enough wall, his insides would have been turned into paste.

  Instead, he flew for several yards before his back once more slammed into a tree with enough force to splinter the cold wood and break a few of his bones in the process.

  Breathing suddenly hurt.

  He lost his knife somewhere along the way.

  Even with his sensory Skills, black dots and odd static filled his blurred vision, preventing him from seeing anything clearly.

  As the man approached him...

  ***

  Lilac had no idea what was going on, but Kid being by her side had made her less scared anyway.

  Were they being taken and relocated?

  She thought she would be okay, as long as it was with Kid, but it was still very scary anyway.

  Drawing with Kid was a lot of fun, though!

  But for some reason, the stoic girl she had thought of as her master seemed a bit more distant than usual, and very slowly gave her instructions.

  Then everything became violent.

  She was shoved out of the way, so she didn't even get to see what happened. One minute, everything was fine, and the next, she was on the ground, and so was everyone else.

  Everyone else besides Kid, anyway.

  The loud noises left her ears ringing. She couldn't hear anything anymore.

  But this must be the situation Kid had been warning her about, so she went to hide.

  She did manage to see that other man drag Kid off afterward.

  And then she was left alone.

  When it was clear that she really was alone, she cautiously crawled back out, and found a phone that she could use to call emergency services.

  It took her a bit to figure out how to make it work, but eventually, a person began speaking to her through the phone... not that she could hear what they were saying, and not that she'd be able to understand them if she could.

  So she just repeated one word.

  "Help."