Luke stood inside the second fortress of the mechanism, though not in the central stronghold itself. He had chosen one of the side courtyards, the only part of the compound where the ground wasn’t paved over in solid concrete. After escaping the Safe Zone, he had come straight here. Time was already pressing against him. They were probably still hunting for him back in the Safe Zone, and this was the only window of opportunity he’d get.

He was digging. Both he and Charlie. A wide, deep hole. The side yard had real soil instead of stone, and Luke figured that in Bastion’s version of this fortress, it was probably where Bartholomew kept his private little farm.

“Hey, Luke. You’re sweating. Maybe take off your shirt?” Artemis teased.

“I’m not falling for that.”

“It’s not a trick, man, I’m actually concerned. Right, Charlie?”

Charlie froze mid-dig, and through their bond Luke felt the faint ripple of embarrassment from her.

“Leave Charlie alone,” Luke muttered. “She’s pure. Don’t contaminate her.”

“Please. It’s always the quiet ones you gotta watch,” Artemis snickered.

Luke ignored her and moved on. Once the digging was done, he began circling the fortress, firing arrows at the magical alarms fixed to the outer walls. Each one shattered under his shots. He knew they would regenerate in twenty-four hours, constructs of pure mana, but for now, the path was clear. By the time he finished, nothing living lingered anywhere near the structure. He returned to the front gate, pulled out his worn notebook, and flipped it open.

Activating the second mechanism meant triggering the fortress’s event mission. Which in turn meant killing the boss: the Midnight Warden Captain. The Captain wouldn’t come alone. He’d bring an entire host of Wardens with him, and while Luke out-leveled them by a wide margin, he knew better than to underestimate sheer numbers.

“A man can swat one bee without thinking,” he murmured to himself. “But a man won’t last long against a swarm.”

The Warden Captain was level 70 and, on top of that, had the power of invisibility. A dangerous combination. But in a straight-up fight, Luke knew he could handle it. He had racked up profession levels, earned ten Uncommon arrows, and now could even generate Rare ones. The grind of the last two weeks hadn’t been wasted.

But the truth was, he had no interest in fighting that monster himself. He didn’t care about the experience points it would yield. His true goal was far more important: Charlie needed to land the kill.

She was lagging badly behind. Barely level 30 in her race, level 34 in her class, and her second class hovering in the low thirties. In short, she was weak compared to him. Pathetically weak. And it was his fault. He had neglected her growth to focus on his own. Worse, the dual-class system she carried split her experience gains, bleeding her progress even thinner. Every time Luke stole the finishing blow, every time he soaked up the lion’s share of the XP, she fell further and further behind.

The gap between them had grown into a chasm. Right now, he looked like a tank, and she looked like a support that couldn’t keep up. That left him with a dilemma. He could kill the monster himself and maybe squeeze out three more levels, though at his stage, that wasn’t much. Or he could let Princess Charlie land the finishing blow on a level 70 monster and watch her harvest an avalanche of experience.

That was the real plan. Push her straight to level 50 in both classes. That would turn her into a powerhouse, stacking new skills from Death Knight and Pugilist until she became something terrifying. The arrows, the digging, the damned pit, it was all for this. A gift. He was going to hand Charlie the death of a monster on a silver platter.

He already knew what it meant to be this strong past level 50. Now imagine Charlie. He was an assassin, not a tank. No heavy armor, no fortress of steel to hide behind. But Charlie? Give her both classes over fifty, pile on that obscene gear she carried, and she wouldn’t just be strong. She’d be a nightmare for anyone foolish enough to stand in her way. Everything had revolved around that possibility from the start. His entire plan had one purpose: turn Princess Charlie into a walking calamity.

“I’m calling it Operation Skyfall,” he told Artemis after laying it all out while the two of them stared into the pit.

“That’s a solid name,” she replied. “Though it feels… I don’t know, suspiciously unoriginal.”

“You’re imagining things.”

His role was simple: drag the Warden Captain out of the fortress, tilt the odds, and keep it contained. Charlie’s role was simpler still, kill it.

Luke drew a long breath, stepped back into the hole, and kept digging.

***

“Alright, that’s basically it,” Luke muttered, eyes fixed on the table.

He had turned one of the abandoned houses facing the fortress into a makeshift base. Spread across the wooden surface were notes and hand-drawn maps, sketches he’d been working on ever since he first scouted the second fortress.

The plan was simple in theory: separate the Warden Captain from his guards, draw him into a chase, and bleed him out away from support. The problem was that the monster wasn’t some brainless sack of rot, it was a military strategist, a zombie commander. It wouldn’t just wander outside into open ground and walk into Luke’s trap. That was why Luke hadn’t set foot inside the fortress again since his first infiltration. He didn’t want to risk showing his hand, making the creature realize he’d grown stronger, and forcing it to adjust its tactics for the future.

No, he needed the Warden Captain locked in his same defensive routine. Predictable. Stationary. When the operation began, Luke’s plan wasn’t to lure the boss out, but to pull him deeper inside. He would use the staircase near the mechanism chamber, let the Warden Captain think he had the upper hand, and then turn the whole fortress against him.

That was why Luke had been mapping Bastion nonstop. In the middle of chaos, there’d be no time to flip through notes. He’d either memorize every path and passage… or lean on Artemis to guide him.

“Your incredible mind, your ability to devour books in seconds, your spectacular genius, think you can actually help me?”

“Flattery doesn’t work on me the way it does on human women,” Artemis replied. “But food? That works fine. For every single minute we survive in there, you owe me one full meal.”

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“One meal per minute? That’s robbery.”

“Oh, should I make it per second instead?”

“…Fine. First deal it is.”

He had no choice but to accept. He needed to reach the marked ‘X’ on his map with the Warden Captain breathing down his neck.

“And don’t think you can just toss me a can,” Artemis added. “I want real food on a plate. Something cooked. I expect to be treated like a little princess.”

“You’re getting demanding.”

Luke leaned back in the chair, sighing, then turned to his dinner. He heated a can of beans, fried up eggs, even bacon, supplies scavenged from weekly chests scattered through the Wild Zone. He plated one serving for himself and another for Artemis.

“Consider this an advance payment,” he said, holding the dish toward her.

“Accepted.” The moment he placed it near the collar, the plate shimmered out of sight, tucked away into her pocket dimension.

Luke pushed his chair to the veranda, eyes locked on the looming silhouette of the second fortress. He bit into a bacon-and-egg sandwich, chewing slowly as he studied the walls.

“No one from Bastion has shown up to look for me yet.”

“They probably think you’re still hiding in the city,” Artemis replied. “Or Bartholomew figures no one, least of all you, could ever finish the fortress event.”

“He’s not wrong,” Luke said. “Why bother stationing guards? To him it’s untouchable. That’s why Marshall never tried to seize it either, not after Angelica’s brother and his whole team were wiped out. Too risky. Too expensive.”

Luke took another bite of his sandwich.

“Getting nervous, human?” Franky’s voice hissed from inside the collar.

“Well, look who decided to speak again,” Artemis drawled. “The little rebel of the group.”

“I’m not a little rebel!” Franky snapped. “And I’m not part of your group!”

“The child’s cranky. Should we put him in time-out?” Artemis teased.

“You gluttonous woman, you’re going to get fat.”

“F-fat?” Her voice sharpened instantly. “You bastard! Who the hell are you to say that to me? You shit-snake!”

“I’m not a shit-snake!” he hissed back.

“Both of you, cut it out,” Luke muttered.

“He started it!”

“She started it!”

The two voices overlapped, bickering like children. Luke pressed a hand over his face and sighed. “I must be cursed.”

His eyes drifted to the collar. “Listen, snake, I’m about to do something dangerous in a few hours. Don’t start getting on my nerves now.”

“For someone who bragged about killing me, you sure sound worried,” Franky shot back.

“I didn’t brag about your death,” Luke replied evenly. “And I’m not worried. I’m preparing something to help an ally get stronger.”

He went back to eating.

“Besides, snake. You saw my fight in the city today, didn’t you? That arrow I crafted? It created an acid cloud.”

“…Yeah. I saw,” Franky muttered.

The snake fell silent.

“Well? Nothing to say?” Luke asked.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something like, ‘Human, that was amazing. Can I be your familiar now?'” Luke answered, mimicking the pompous tone of the Beast Lord.

Franky clicked his tongue. “I’ll never be your friend!”

Luke scooped a spoonful of beans into his mouth. “Did you hear that guy scream when I splashed acid in his face? Pretty satisfying, wasn’t it?”

Franky stayed quiet.

“Come on, admit it. You thought it was cool,” Luke pressed. “Or do you not like acid?”

“Of c-course I like acid!” Franky snapped.

“Then was it cool or not?”

“…Maybe it was a little cool,” Franky finally admitted. “But I’m still not your friend.”

Luke smirked. “Guess it is kind of funny throwing acid at enemies. Makes sense now why you once said you’d laugh while I melted alive in your acid.”

“Yes. That would’ve been hilarious,” Franky said without hesitation.

“You’re both sick,” Artemis muttered.

***

Landon walked toward a quieter stretch along the edge of the Safe Zone. Few people lingered there. The houses here were abandoned, half-collapsed remnants of old invasions. Even with the new walls that had gone up in recent months, nobody in their right mind would live in the first place to get hit during an attack, or in a spot so easy for criminals to reach.

Landon had come for one man. The contractor who wanted James dead. When he arrived, he slipped a folded letter from his pocket. That was how they handled things: a note left behind with the location of the next meeting. Even though they already knew each other, the man was a notorious criminal. If anyone ever saw a Bastion soldier like him speaking face to face with someone like that, it would be the end of him.

He pushed open the door carefully, stepped inside, and shut it behind him. The place was pitch-black. Landon pulled a lantern from his storage, sparked it to life with fire magic, and crossed the room. At the fireplace, he reached into a hidden hollow in the stone and slid the letter inside.

“Hello, Landon,” a voice said.

He nearly dropped the lantern, stumbling backward.

“Shit, Scott!” He clutched his chest, heart pounding.

“Seems you were planning to arrange a meeting,” Scott said calmly. “Convenient. I was hoping to talk to you as well.”

Landon set the lantern on a crooked table.

“You screwed me, Scott! You sent me after a dangerous bastard, and I lost my men for it!” His anger cracked through his words. Part of him wanted to kill Scott right there, but the man was a thunder mage, one of the dangerous ones.

“I want the damn items you promised,” Landon growled.

“You turned over James’s real identity. Luke, wasn’t it?” Scott replied, setting a helmet and a gauntlet on the table. Payment.

“You knew that little bastard was Luke?” Landon’s jaw clenched, fury twisting his face.

Scott sighed. “You made a mistake, Landon. You should never have raised an alarm about him.”

Mistake? This guy’s insane.

Landon decided then. He’d take the gear, then take Scott’s head. Bastion still had a bounty on him.

“Well, in the end you got what you wanted, didn’t you?” Landon’s voice was low, bitter. “James is being hunted by the Safe Zone. Within hours, he’ll be a dead man. There’s nowhere left for him to run.”

He stood in silence, watching as Scott rummaged through storage. One by one, the man laid out the spoils, a pair of daggers, a battered boot, the gleam of a dented breastplate. The steel caught the faint light, cold and merciless.

“Anything missing from our deal?” Scott finally asked, gesturing toward the grim display.

Landon stepped closer, eyes narrowing as he took stock. His lips pressed into a thin line. “The sword,” he muttered. He turned, and steel kissed his throat.

For an instant he didn’t comprehend the heat spreading across his neck. Then the blade slid deeper, and his breath caught in a wet gasp.

Scott yanked the weapon free. Landon staggered, instinct seizing him. His hand flared with desperate fire, hurling a blazing orb that smashed into Scott’s chest and hurled the man backward.

No… not here. I can’t die here!

Clutching his bleeding throat, he seared the wound shut with a burst of flame. The smell of burning flesh filled the room as he staggered, desperate. From storage he yanked a healing potion, downed it, and started coughing violently.

He stumbled into another room, hacking blood, when something slammed into his back. Pain flared. He turned, dazed, to see Scott advancing with two swords. With a smooth spin, one pierced Landon’s gut and the other rammed through his mouth.

“Bastard…” Landon choked as he crumpled.

His thoughts fractured. Scott was supposed to be a mage. Why the hell was he wielding twin blades? Landon fumbled toward his storage bracelet, but Scott’s boot crushed his hand.

“You shouldn’t have exposed Luke,” Scott said coldly. “I needed him distracted, not warned.”

The blades burned inside him, fire gnawing his insides. The last thing Landon saw was Scott raising a hand to his face, then peeling it away. Skin tore like fabric. The man removed his own face as though it were a mask.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep