"Boss!"

  One of the War Lords screamed the word like a prayer, like saying it loud enough might somehow reattach Argor's head to his shoulders. He stared at the headless corpse sprawled in the dirt, blood still pumping weakly from the severed neck.

  I stood motionless, white eyes narrowed to slits, channeling every ounce of willpower into keeping my face an expressionless mask. Behind the bandana, my jaw clenched so tight my teeth hurt. The nausea rolled through my gut in waves.

  Don't throw up. Don't shake. Don't show weakness.

  "Kill that bastard!"

  The same War Lord who'd shouted thrust his finger at me, face contorted with rage and grief. Maybe Argor had been his friend. Maybe his brother. Didn't matter now.

  The War Lords surged forward as one, a screaming mass of fury and vengeance. Swords, axes, clubs, spears; a forest of crude weapons descended toward me.

  Shit shit shit!

  My body moved before my mind caught up. The sword came up in a rising arc, steel ringing against steel as I intercepted a downward slash from a War Lord wielding a rusty cutlass. The impact jarred my arms, but my grip held firm.

  A spear thrust came from my left, held by some gangly kid with wild eyes and terrible form. My blade pivoted, caught the wooden shaft mid-strike, deflected it harmlessly past my ribs. The spearman stumbled from his own momentum.

  Behind me, boots pounded dirt as my six men rushed to join the fight.

  Then everything dissolved into chaos.

  The junkyard became a whirlwind of flashing steel and screaming men. Bodies pressed close, the air thick with grunts and curses and the wet sounds of blades finding flesh. Someone's blood (not mine, I thought) splattered hot across my cheek.

  A War Lord with a pockmarked face and wild hair swung a hand axe at my skull. I ducked under it, felt the displaced air ruffle my hood. My sword came up and across in one smooth motion, opening his belly from hip to ribs.

  He screamed. Collapsed. Tried to hold his intestines in with both hands.

  Oh god-

  No time to process. A club whistled toward my head. I twisted aside, let it pass so close I felt the wind of it, then drove my pommel into the club-wielder's face. Cartilage crunched. He staggered back, nose spurting blood.

  My blade found his throat before he could recover.

  It was like my body knew exactly what to do. Every parry, every riposte, every sidestep; muscle memory I didn't remember building guided my movements. Roxam's Expert-level Long Sword skill wasn't just a stat on a character sheet. It was real, tangible, coded into this body's very sinews.

  A War Lord rushed me from the right, screaming incoherently. I read his attack before he even committed to it, saw it in the angle of his shoulders, the way his weight shifted. My sword intercepted his in a bind, twisted, sent his weapon spinning from nerveless fingers.

  Before he could blink, I thrust forward. The blade punched through his sternum with a wet crunch, grated against bone, erupted from his back in a spray of crimson.

  His eyes went wide. Mouth working soundlessly.

  I yanked the sword free and he folded like wet paper.

  Three down. Maybe four? Lost count.

  Another spear came at me. I sidestepped, let it slide past, grabbed the shaft with my free hand and pulled. The wielder stumbled forward, off-balance. My sword took him across the throat in a horizontal slash.

  Blood geysered. Hot and sticky and smelling of copper.

  Stop thinking about it. Just survive. Just-

  An axe-wielder charged from my blind side. I spun, brought my blade up in a diagonal cut that caught him from collarbone to opposite hip. The steel bit deep, cleaved through meat and bone with horrifying ease.

  He made a sound; high and broken and barely human.

  Don't think. Don't feel. Just move.

  Around me, my men were holding their own. Better than holding their own, actually. The scarred one with the eyepatch fought with brutal efficiency, a short sword in each hand. He wove through War Lords like a dancer, leaving bodies in his wake.

  The big bald enforcer wielded a mace like a toy, crushing skulls and shattering limbs with casual violence.

  Even the weaselly one surprised me, dodging attacks with liquid grace and opening throats with quick, precise cuts.

  Maybe I didn't give them enough credit.

  A War Lord lunged at me with a dagger, trying to get inside my sword's reach. Bad idea. I pivoted, brought my knee up into his groin with everything I had. He folded with a wheeze. My blade came down on the back of his exposed neck.

  The steel bit through vertebrae. His body hit the ground and didn't move again.

  The numbers were thinning. What had been sixteen War Lords was now maybe seven. Maybe less. Bodies littered the junkyard, twisted in the unnatural poses of violent death.

  A boy, who couldn't have been older than sixteen, rushed me with a club raised high above his head. His face was tear-streaked, twisted with grief and rage. Maybe he'd been Argor's squire or something.

  My sword met his club mid-swing, sheared clean through the wood. The blade kept going, opened him from shoulder to chest.

  He looked down at the wound, confused, like he couldn't quite understand what had happened.

  Then he fell.

  Stop. Feeling. Anything.

  My body moved on pure instinct now, all conscious thought locked away in some distant corner of my mind. I became a machine of violence, moving almost automatically. Parry, riposte, cut, thrust. Each motion flowed seamlessly into the next with zero wasted movement.

  No flourishes. No fancy techniques. Just brutal, efficient killing.

  A War Lord tried to tackle me. I sidestepped, let his momentum carry him past, then drove my sword down through his spine as he stumbled. He hit the dirt and twitched once, twice, then went still.

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  Another came at me swinging a length of chain. I ducked under the first swing, stepped inside his guard, and punched my blade through his solar plexus. When I yanked it free, he collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.

  The last War Lord standing threw down his weapon and ran.

  He made it maybe ten steps before one of my men, the one with the scarred face, threw a knife that caught him between the shoulder blades. He pitched forward into the dirt and didn't get up.

  Silence crashed over the junkyard like a physical weight.

  I stood there, chest heaving, sword dripping red onto the blood-soaked earth. Bodies lay scattered across the dirt. Some still, some twitching their last. The stench of blood and opened bowels hung thick in the air.

  My six men gathered around, breathing hard. The bald one had a gash across his forearm, crimson seeping through his fingers where he clutched it. The eyepatch guy was limping slightly. The others bore minor cuts and bruises but nothing serious.

  We won.

  I looked around at the carnage we'd created, forcing myself to catalog the damage with clinical detachment. Trying not to see the faces. Trying not to notice how young some of them looked.

  Sixteen bodies. All War Lords. We'd killed every single one.

  Don't look too closely at the wounds. Don't think about how they're people. Were people. Past tense now.

  My gaze landed on a ramshackle shed at the far end of the junkyard, half-hidden behind piles of scrap metal and broken furniture. Probably where they kept their stash.

  I cleared my throat. The sound came out rougher than intended.

  "Search the bodies." My voice was flat, cold. Pure Roxam. "Take anything valuable. Weapons, coin, jewelry. Angus will want an accounting."

  The men nodded, immediately setting to their grim work. They moved with practiced efficiency, rifling through pockets and stripping corpses of valuables with zero hesitation or remorse. This wasn't their first time looting the dead.

  I gestured vaguely toward the shed with my bloody sword.

  "I'll check the building."

  Nobody questioned it. Of course they wouldn't. I was Skullface Roxam, Angus's most feared enforcer. If I wanted to search the shed alone, that was my prerogative.

  I walked toward it with measured steps, boots squelching in blood-soaked dirt. Each step felt mechanical, deliberate. Like moving through molasses.

  Almost there. Just hold it together a little longer.

  The shed door hung crooked on rusty hinges. I pushed it open with my foot, sword raised in case someone was hiding inside.

  Empty.

  The interior was cluttered with stolen goods: silverware tarnished to near-black, paintings in ornate frames, weapons of varying quality propped against the walls, crates packed with what I assumed was contraband. The shipment they'd stolen from Angus's operation, probably, along with spoils from other jobs.

  I stepped inside, swept the space with methodical care. Checked behind crates. Peered into dark corners.

  Nobody.

  The moment I confirmed I was alone, my hands flew to the bandana. I ripped it down from my ruined face and doubled over, retching.

  Nothing came up at first, dry heaves that twisted my gut like wrung cloth. Then my stomach finally rebelled and I vomited into the corner, splashing bile and stomach acid across broken pottery.

  Oh god. Oh god oh god…

  My knees buckled. I caught myself against a crate with one hand, the other still clutching my sword in a white-knuckle grip I couldn't seem to release.

  Eight people. Maybe nine. I'd lost count in the chaos. All dead by my hand. Cut down like wheat before a scythe.

  Sure, they'd been trying to kill me. Self-defense, right? Justified homicide or whatever legal terminology made it okay.

  Except their faces kept flashing through my mind. The confusion in their eyes as my blade opened them up. The sounds they made. The smell of their blood.

  Gonna be sick again-

  I threw up a second time, then a third, until nothing remained but dry heaves and the taste of copper. My whole body shook like I had hypothermia.

  The adrenaline that had carried me through the fight was gone, leaving me hollow and cold and utterly wrecked.

  Thank god I skipped breakfast.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, smearing blood and bile across my sleeve. My reflection caught in a tarnished silver platter propped against the wall: pale mottled skin, hollow white eyes, skeletal features twisted in nausea.

  Skullface Roxam stared back at me.

  I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose slits, out through the mouth. Slow and measured.

  Get it together. You're not done yet. Still have to maintain character. Can't let them see weakness.

  Outside, I could hear my men working. The rustle of clothing, occasional grunts, the clink of coins. They'd be done soon. Then they'd expect me to lead them back to Angus with the recovered goods and news of our victory.

  I had to be Roxam again. Cold, ruthless, unshakeable.

  One more minute. I could allow myself one more minute to be human, to feel the weight of what I'd done.

  Then the mask went back on.

  I steadied myself against the crate, willing the trembling in my hands to stop. The nausea had passed, leaving behind a hollow ache in my chest that I suspected wouldn't fade anytime soon.

  Focus. Work to do.

  I straightened, surveying the cluttered shed with fresh eyes. The War Lords had accumulated a decent haul. If Angus's smuggling operation lost money on this job, the recovered goods should more than compensate.

  My gaze landed on the nearest wooden crate. Crude carpentry, iron bands securing the lid. I wedged my fingers under the edge and pried it open with a screech of protesting nails.

  Stacks of muskets gleamed dully in the dim light filtering through gaps in the shed's walls. Maybe twenty of them, packed in straw to prevent damage during transport. Long-barreled military models. Each one stamped with the royal arsenal's seal.

  Well. That's... problematic.

  I moved to another crate, jimmied it open with less effort this time. Flintlock pistols lay nestled inside, paired sets wrapped in oiled cloth. Easily forty weapons, maybe more beneath the top layer.

  Firearms. Government-restricted military hardware. This was what Angus had been smuggling when the War Lords hit his operation.

  Damn.

  In Path of Exemplar, firearms occupied a weird space in the game's balance. The lore established strict crown regulations as only soldiers and law enforcement could legally possess them. Adventurers, academy students, even the player character were barred from using firearms no matter how high their stats climbed.

  Complete horseshit, honestly. Half the enemy NPCs wielded the damn things without consequence.

  Fighting Marksmen had been the absolute worst. One shot from those bastards could drop your HP into critical red, forcing frantic chugging of healing potions while scrambling for cover. The lengthy reload time provided the only breathing room, but even that advantage evaporated when facing groups. Three or four Marksmen working in rotation meant constant suppressing fire, no safe windows to counterattack.

  Pure cancer gameplay.

  And here sat crates full of them, destined for Angus's black market connections.

  I lifted one of the muskets, testing its weight. Solid construction, well-maintained despite obvious use. The stock fit comfortably against my shoulder when I sighted down the barrel at nothing in particular.

  I could just take one.

  My Dexterity sat high enough to wield firearms effectively. With practice, I could grind the Firearm skill up to Expert level, maybe even Master given enough time and ammunition. Having a ranged option in combat would patch a major gap in Roxam's capabilities. Swords excelled in melee, but against flying enemies or opponents smart enough to maintain distance? Useless.

  A firearm would solve that problem instantly. One shot, massive damage, crisis averted.

  My fingers tightened on the musket's stock. So tempting. Just slip it under my coat, claim ignorance if anyone noticed later. War Lords must have taken it, used it in the fight, got lost in the confusion...

  No.

  I set the weapon back in its straw nest with deliberate care.

  Angus the Grim hadn't built a successful criminal empire by being careless with inventory. A man like that tracked every coin, every weapon, every scrap of merchandise passing through his organization. He'd notice discrepancies immediately, and his suspicion would fall on whoever recovered the stolen goods.

  Namely me.

  The potential benefits weren't worth the risk. Not when I was still establishing Roxam's position within the Viper Syndicate's hierarchy. Trust needed to be earned before it could be exploited.

  Later. Once I've consolidated power, I can acquire all the firearms I want.

  I hammered the crate lids back into place, sealing the evidence of what I'd discovered. Then I moved to the shed's crooked door and pushed it open.

  "Monkey!" The nickname felt wrong on my tongue, but Roxam would use it without hesitation. "Get over here."

  The hairy thug looked up from looting a corpse, one hand buried in the dead man's pockets. He jogged over, wiping blood from his knuckles onto his trousers.

  "Boss?"

  I jerked my thumb toward the shed's interior.

  "War Lords' stash is in there. Crates of merchandise, including what they lifted from our shipment. Round up some wagons; we're hauling everything back to the Salty Locust."

  Understanding flickered across his brutish features. He nodded once, then turned and started barking orders at the others.

  I stepped back outside into the junkyard, breathing deeply through my mouth to avoid the worst of the stench. Bodies everywhere. Blood soaking into the dirt. Carrion birds already circling overhead, drawn by the promise of easy meals.

  The bandana remained pulled down around my neck. I tugged it back up over my ruined face, securing the familiar weight across my features.

  Skullface Roxam had work to finish.