As Kyle was leaving the smiths, enchanted contract paper in hand, he slowed down. Might as well take in the city while I’m here.

  The streets were still packed, even though an entire day had passed. A slightly different crowd occupied the roads than the one in the morning—more people on private business, and fewer unsavory types or merchants hauling goods.

  Kyle was strolling about peacefully, when he passed an alleyway between two apartments. A pebble flew towards his helmet. Thankfully, the gravidar and radar systems as well as the various sonic and barometric sensors all detected both it and the thrower in the shadows.

  He deftly snatched the pebble out of the air and crushed it to a fine powder between his thumb and pointer finger. A sinuous and arrogant voice echoed from the alleyway.

  “My superiors were right about you. We need your capabilities to deal with a… competitor, shall we say. You will be paid handsomely if you do this job for us.” Kyle mentally activated the red glow of the eye slots. They slowly turned red, and Kyle did his best to look imposing.

  “And what if I have better things to do?”

  “Well. In that case, we might be forced to after something you can’t protect holdings in the south.”

  “Fine. Take me to them.”

  The shadow climbed the side of the nearest building and sprinted away. Two can play at that game. Kyle watched the figure race across the rooftops via the high-altitude drone he’d sent up earlier.

  Using that data, he geometrically followed the figure through the city optimally. Although the operative was much faster going in a straight line across the rooftops, Kyle matched him on the streets.

  Eventually, their game of cat and mouse reached the docks. The figure dropped down onto the much wider dockyard roads. Kyle followed close behind, running into the area down a road. Rather than being impressed as Kyle expected, the figure was unperturbed.

  “Simply a test of your skills. Needless to say, you passed, my friend.”

  The man shed his shadowy cloak like water off a duck’s back. Under it, a man wearing a tricorn hat of modest height was revealed. His hair was all black, and his face was sharp and long. He was incredibly thin as well.

  He was dressed in a crisp cloak, with masterfully crafted leather armor underneath it. He was the picture of a “competent medieval rogue”.

  “A cult has been… cutting in on our business, so to speak. They convert our infiltrators, and are too numerous for our organization to reasonably deal with. We don’t deal with Adventurers on principle, it’s brought us trouble before. Go in there, deal with them, and you can leave in peace.”

  Kyle nodded. Killing religious nuts was a pastime of his-the Faith Militant had blown up his precious ship anyway. “Point me to them. I have business to attend to.” “Splendid.”

  The man led Kyle to a sewer grate leading out of the city into the sea. “Their hideout is in the sewer. This Locator Rune should lead you to the entrance.” The man handed him a small stone with a circle on it. Inside the circle, dense runic script was carved into the rock. “Follow the point on the circle that’s lit up. No need to kill all of them, you only need to take out the guards, their mage corps, and the patriarch.”

  The man bid Kyle farewell and reapplied his shadow cloak. Kyle walked over to the sewer grate, from which a dark brown sludge rushed out. I can’t believe this crap. Literally, heh.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  —————

  He easily bent the bars out of the way. Stepping into the tunnel, he found that the design was surprisingly efficient. Small walkways on each side of the tunnel allowed for workers and wayward explorers like himself to navigate them.

  Kyle just walked through the flowing sludge easily. His multi-ton armor wasn’t even nudged by the stream of waste.

  The circle on the Locator Rune worked as advertised. A point on the circle lit up and moved around the circle depending on where he turned.

  Best get on with it.

  After a few minutes of walking through the sewers, the rune stopped tracking and went dim. Must have arrived, then. Looking around, he pinged his sonar and radar systems to find hidden rooms.

  Off to one side, the scan revealed something behind the wall, but it was strangely obfuscated. Something was trying to block the radar, but the armor’s emitters were too strong for the stealth measure to work.

  Kyle took out Daphne, and swung cleanly through the door. The various enchantments activated, and the door was vaporized. A group of armored men had been standing behind the door, expecting him. Little remained of them, and those who survived were totally crippled.

  Kyle stepped over the bodies and marched forward. The hallway was brick, with torches leading downward. At the bottom, another squadron of armored cultists waited for him.

  Kyle had fabricated a few simple stick grenades with the nanofactory. Unclipping one from his belt, he lobbed it faster than an arrow at the men’s feet. A thump and a blast of smoke echoed down the hall, and the group of men was savaged again.

  Marching forward again, he came into a much larger underground area. Inside, lines of robed men and more standard soldiers waited for him. An older man standing on a stone balcony above the cavern called out to him.

  “Who are you? What quarrel do you have with us?” “A man wearing shadows like a cloak told me to kill you. I have no say in the matter, you must understand.”

  The man’s face hardened. “So be it.” And the battle ensued.

  Warily, the soldiers circled him, spears and swords out and shaking. The many robed men started chanting in unison, and some of their hands started glowing.

  Kyle whipped out his hammer into a soldier. The man turned to paste under its blow. Another landed a solid stab onto his armor. Unsurprisingly, it skidded off the metal. Kyle slapped the man, hard enough to concuss.

  Taking out his revolver, he emptied all 8 barrels into one soldier each. One shot, one kill-the huge caliber guaranteed death no matter where the impact was.

  After a few more seconds of carnage, he reached the mages. Some of the more experienced ones managed to hit him with spells before he could cross the floor.

  Crimson red spectral chains by the dozen emerged from the floor, wrapping around the armor and binding his limbs. Dozens of beams, streams, bolts, spheres, and gouts of flame made of that same crimson energy shot towards him. ArmorOS_AI-V.23.2, activate defense subroutine 03.

  Kyle’s armor was equipped with many obscure systems for defense. One of them was the Hostile Energy Refraction system. Kyle had absolutely no idea how it functioned, but he knew that it consumed the entire active output of his reactor to run.

  In an instant, a small patch of his armor melted away and revealed a black cube. It popped out of the armor by about an inch and suddenly began to glow. The glow ramped up in half a second, and eventually was blinding enough that the cultists had to avert their eyes.

  That’s why they didn’t notice every single mana-based construct in the room dissipate like smoke in the wind. Something strange happened-the nearest cultists collapsed to the ground in agony, screaming. The cultists dropped in a wave around him.

  The runes of light covering the walls also died, plunging the cavern into darkness. At that moment, all of his capacitors ran out. He was actually immobile for almost ten seconds, though no one in the room was in any condition to take advantage of that.

  The lead cultist leaned over one of his disciples muttering. “You… you excised the mana from their bodies… how… how is that even possible?”

  Kyle walked up to the trembling man, and punted his forehead. A sickening snap echoed out into the room, and the man fell to the ground, motionless.