Chapter 92. Death Associates’ plans

By the time Blackjack arrived, Jack was ready to deal with him; the Magician on the ground was dead.

Blackjack was furious! They ambushed one guy in a six-on-one, but the first casualty belonged to their group. He would seriously lose his face if anyone found out about this!

In his rage, Blackjack jabbed rapid thrusts at Jack. Jack recognized this as similar to Red Death's attack but less refined; it was clear that Blackjack's skill did not quite match Red Death's. Jack was never afraid of trading lives; he struck Blackjack with another regular slash as the thrusts hit.

Blackjack was stunned as his HP fell to critical. He hastily broke away again as the Fighter finally arrived,

The Fighter and Jack clashed once again, and once again, the Fighter flew back. The Fighter's expression was ugly; how could he fight if he was immediately blasted away every time he approached?

The two Rangers, who had taken time to heal themselves, approached to join the fight. But when they saw that Blackjacks' HP was critical, they took defensive stances in front of him while he drank a basic healing potion.

Jack smiled and drank his basic healing potion. His HP immediately recovered by 200 points, but he didn't stop there; he took out medicine and consumed it to recover the rest of his health slowly.

Blackjack's people were speechless. They had put in so much effort to reduce Jack's HP to half and even sacrificed a Magician, but now he had almost fully recovered. How were they going to continue the fight?

Blackjack's expression grew uglier as several names disappeared from their Party window. He turned left to see several players approaching, but none he recognized. He looked right and saw another group coming. Two of these he did identify; their other two targets, Fierce Flame and Star Bowler.

The situation was hopeless! He decisively decided to retreat.

"Withdraw!" He shouted to the others, and they ran away towards the Capital.

Jack was fair and kind to his friends, but he would never be benevolent to his enemies. He ran after the fleeing party. Apart from Rangers, no other class could match his speed, and the slowest amongst the enemies was, of course, the Magician.

The Magician cried for help when Jack began to attack.  His comrades started to turn back to give support, but Energy Bolts came flying towards them. John and Bowler had both cast their spells when the enemies' retreat brought them into range.

"Storm Wind! Stop now, or we will become irreconcilable enemies!" Blackjack shouted in rage.

"You are being funny?" Jack replied without stopping his attacks. "Are you saying we are not already enemies? You attacked us!"

More magic attacks landed on Blackjack's party, and The Man ran towards them, waving a large sword with havoc in his eyes.

One of the Rangers in Blackjack's group urged, "We can't save him. We need to leave!"

In great peril, Blackjack's group could only retreat while Jack freely abused the hapless Magician.

Blackjack gritted his teeth as he stared at Jack grimly, "You will regret this. Don't think this is over!"

They then ran away, leaving the half-dead Magician.

Jack had been bullying the Magician slowly to bait Blackjack's people into staying until his party could surround them. But now that Blackjack had successfully retreated, he no longer needed to extend the Magician's suffering. Jack hit him with a Power Strike and ended his life.

"That's what you get from messing with us!" Bowler yelled at the fleeing enemies.

"Hell, yeah!" The Man shouted victoriously.

The Magician's corpse at Jack's feet disintegrated as the battle ended, leaving behind a magic staff and a few coins. Jack picked them up. The staff was uncommon equipment! Jack was pleased; he would need six more to upgrade his staff into rare grade. A bit worriedly, he stored the staff, but no one thought anything of it; they figured he would sell the staff for coins.

He then looked at the place where the first Magician had fallen. There was an odd hat there. Jack picked it up and found that it was a normal grade cloth headgear. As Jack already had the much superior steel helmet, he tossed the hat to Bowler.

"Take it. You don't yet have headgear."

Bowler didn't stand on ceremony and immediately accepted and equipped it.

"You guys should go check on the ones you killed. They might have dropped something good," Jack reminded the others.

"Tip was on clean-up detail; he volunteered to stay behind to collect the drops. I would say he did it to avoid our enemies from identifying him," John said. Then he asked, "Did you find out who those guys were?"

"The leader is called Blackjack," Jack answered. "He is not a member of Death Associates, but he has ties to that guild. They must have asked him to attack us."

"Blackjack? I've heard of him," John said. "By the way, how do you know his identity?"

"What do you mean? I use Inspect skill on him, of course," Jack answered.

John squinted at him.

"You did?" The Man interrupted. "I also used Inspect skill, but all I got was a bunch of question marks."

"Yes, it must be their face masks," Bowler added. "I think wearing them hid their identities from Inspect. I must look for one when we get back to the Capital. All the face masks looked the same, so they must have bought them from a shop."

The Man nodded.

Jack was astounded. Were the others unable to Inspect their opponents' identities due to their face masks? Why had he been able to? He then thought of his God-Eye monocle; that tool must be the reason.

He realized John was still looking at him suspiciously.

"I recognized him from his moves," Jack tried to explain by covering his previous explanation with a lie. "He has a distinguishable style of fighting, so it is not very hard to recognize him as Blackjack."

John didn't change his expression. After a brief pause, he simply said, "Okay."

The Man was not too bothered by the details. He said, "All right, now that we have vanquished our enemies, let us return to the Capital! We had many glorious stories to share with our brethren! Hahaha!"

Jack agreed at once just to avoid John's suspicious gaze. Tip had also joined them after collecting the dropped items, and they distributed the loot. Jack, meanwhile, took a peek at his Container of Souls. He had vaguely seen transparent fire flow towards him when the Magicians' corpses disintegrated, the same way as the Elite Boss' soul had. The Container had 112 souls in it, counting the Boss battle and the monsters they killed on their way back to the Capital. Now it had 134 souls in it; he had collected an additional 22 souls from those two Magicians. After some thought, he figured the soul count must be equivalent to their levels; both those Magicians must have been level 11.

After distributing the loot, they continued walking back to the Capital, undisturbed.

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In the woods not far from there, two figures watched Jack's departing party.

"It is as you said; he really can detect others' positions," Red Death said with a grim expression. "This will make him more difficult to deal with."

Scarface nodded.

"I was wondering why you asked Blackjack to position his men beyond that small hill and not to place a sentry. You were trying to determine his detecting range, right?"

"Correct," Scarface replied. "From his response, I would say his range is around two hundred to three hundred meters."

"Then we are outside of his area of coverage; he shouldn't be aware that we were spying on him," Red Death said.

"I don't know what extraordinary things he encountered during the Tutorial Period, but, together with his abnormal attributes, he certainly possesses many secrets that give him an advantage over other players."

"Then we should put more effort in eliminating him and stealing his treasures."