PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

“Judging by the breaths and heartbeats I heard ... I would say that about twelve people or more, it is difficult to say, the room is larger than I expected” Desmond replied as he placed himself in the same position as Xiauyue but on the opposite side of the door.

“Are you sure these things will work?” Xiauyue replied while pointing to the strange artifact that she obtained from Desmond.

“Just remember what I told you, on the count of three I’ll open the door, immediately remove the metal ring at the top, throw it into the room and stay covered until you hear a loud bang followed by a flash of light; that’s when we go in, “Desmond explained as he used the device in his hand to illustrate the instructions to his partner.

Now someone might wonder why did Desmond’s description sound so close to the workings of a military-grade stun grenade? well, it certainly wasn’t a cupcake Desmond and Xiauyue were holding.

After some thought Desmond had concluded that the best method to advance from now on would be the tactical method and nothing screamed better tactical method than the old but always reliable stun grenade.

Of course, Xiauyue was unfamiliar with the concept but after Desmond’s brief explanation, she came to understand the logic behind it; after all, she understood very well the kind of handicap of losing sight even for just a couple of seconds.

One only had to look at the lethality that a person as strong as her could have just because she had a split second of advantage, what Desmond and Xiauyue did to the guards on the upper floors was the perfect example.

Now with at least a couple of seconds where her enemies were blinded, Xiauyue was confident enough to annihilate at least more than half the people in the next room and although she still felt uncomfortable with such an act of extermination; after seeing the carving of the purple crow on the door she came to understand the kind of people who were her enemies which reinforced her resolve.

.....

“Ready for fun?” Desmond asked with a dangerous smile beginning to emerge on his lips.

Looking at him, Xiauyue had the strange feeling that she had seen that kind of smile somewhere else but she was unable to remember it at this moment, trying to put that thought aside, she nodded in Desmond’s direction and prepared for battle whit a sword in hand.

Getting confirmation from Xiauyue, Desmond nodded and positioned himself right at the part where the doors connect to get rid of the lock on them that he had noticed a few moments ago.

Too lazy to come up with a creative solution of any kind, Desmond simply took one of his daggers and activated the runes on it. Desmond then used the metal mana blade essentially to pierce through the middle of the doors and cut his way down, thereby cutting through the braces placed on the other side to secure the door.

Such action only took a couple of seconds but during the process, Desmond couldn’t help but think that this application of a glowing sword of energy had seen it somewhere; probably a movie.

But that thought only lasted for a moment as he had more important things to worry about, especially now that his shiny golden blade emerging from the other side of the door had left his presence quite well established for the people within the room.

In fact, without Desmond being aware of it, the moment his golden blade began to cut through the blocks placed on the door, the people inside immediately settled into their respective battle positions waiting for their enemies to enter the room.

Some of them with long-range weapons like bows or throwing knives had already prepared to rain steel and death into the area encompassed by the door as soon as it was opened.

And when the door finally opened they were quite puzzled seeing that no one was entering the room, the people with bows in their hands even began to feel the fatigue of staying in a tense posture but their enemies still did not try to enter the room.

It took almost three seconds that seemed like an eternity to the people inside the room before they finally managed to see something coming through the door but to their surprise, it was nothing remotely close to a human being.

Quite the contrary, what entered the room were a pair of metal containers not much different in size from the bottles that alchemists use to store medicines and pills.

Obviously being trained assassins, the people in the room did not let the object’s harmless appearance make them lower their guard and instead divided their attention between the entrance and this strange object.

And their reaction was quite reasonable because although as an assassin organization their existence could be considered quite recent, they had still had some experience dealing with various types of scenarios and enemies.

Seeing an enemy use strange drugs or poisons as a weapon was not the most inconceivable thing they had seen, indeed, they had used poisonous gases of various kinds to perform some missions in the past.

The only reason they did not use to depend on these kinds of tactics is that knowledge of drugs and poisons was highly coveted by all kinds of forces and highly controlled, so if they wanted to depend on these kinds of instruments they would most likely have to buy it from some evil sect that specializes in poisons like the bone scorpion sect.

Since that was not only costly but broke with the essence of keeping their organization as hidden as possible, this was not a method that was used often.

With all of the above in mind, the assassins in the room had not only raised their guard against what they believed to be some kind of poison gas device of some kind but had also started to make some assumptions about the origin of the people that was attacking their base; Just with that one could see how well trained these assassins were.

It was quite a shame that their assumptions were wrong from the ground up so not only did they fail to adopt a proper strategy to deal with the stun grenades thrown by Desmond and Xiauyue but they even misunderstood their origin.

But none of that mattered in the current situation, the only thing that mattered was that the stun grenades were about to activate, starting another intense battle in this room.

BOOM!

After a thunderous and extremely high-pitched sound accompanied by an intense burst of light, Desmond and Xiauyue who had been in cover covering their ears immediately took action.

Xiauyue immediately channeled the Ki into her body in an extremely mysterious pattern and activated her movement ability to enter the room with not only frankly unheard of speed but also extremely difficult to follow movement pattern.

With her sword in hand, the first thing Xiauyue did when entering the room was to get out of the line of sight that was directed towards the entrance, in the first instance because that is where people with ranged weapons were pointing; besides that, she needed to clear the way for her partner.

As soon as Xiauyue completed her first objective by blinking ten meters from the entrance to the room, she immediately began to analyze her surroundings as well as her enemies.

As Desmond mentioned earlier there were just over twelve people in the place, at least as far as she could see and count at this very moment there were about fifteen people in the place.

The number was a bit high and according to her perception these people were also at least a couple of degrees stronger than the guards on the upper floors which makes things difficult; but with the advantage that she and Desmond currently have, she had the confidence to emerge victorious from this exchange.

Not daring to lose any more of her precious advantage, Xiauyue used her ridiculous speed to pounce on the group of enemies closest to the entrance, as for the enemies in the back with ranged weapons? Desmond would take care of them.

It is unknown if it was because he sensed Xiauyue’s thoughts at that moment or simply because he had a very precise measure of time from the beginning; Desmond emerged from his position covered in his bow, ready to fire an intensely mana-charged arrow surrounded by a ring of wind.

Clearly, Desmond had no intention of restricting his mana consumption or lethality even a bit, at this point, he was trusting that his enemies were dead before he had to worry about running out of mana.

And seeing the entire right shoulder of one of the assassins in the back of the room explodes in a mess of ripped muscles, blood, and bone fragments; one could tell that Desmond had pretty solid reasons for his beliefs.

Desmond did a little mental math and predicted that he would have at least another two or three shots before the people in the room fully recovered from the effects of the stun grenades; so he promptly prepared his next shot.

With a similar train of thought, Xiauyue bypassed the high Ki consumption of and executed her ability to the full of her capabilities, thus creating two blue projections of herself while she executed an extremely elegant and lethal sword cut.

With a single movement Xiauyue directly killed two enemies and left another mortally wounded, but that did not stop her in the slightest, as she immediately blinked to another place repeating the process.

Watching their enemies fall like flies, Desmond again had that annoying feeling in the back of his mind that kept him from being calm and although everything was going well, in his mind he had already begun to prepare for the unexpected.