The chamber inside the fortress was dim, lit only by torches along the stone walls. A map sprawled across the heavy oak table, its edges held down by daggers and half-empty cups. The air smelled of smoke and steel, and every face around the table carried the weight of too many sleepless nights.

Jack slowly raised his hand. The movement was hesitant, almost timid, but it drew every eye in the room. He actually had an idea, an idea that might get them into Bastion without sparking a war.

“T-there’s Bartholomew’s banquet,” Jack stammered.

Evangeline’s eyes narrowed, a sharp glint in the torchlight. “He still keeps that tradition?”

Allison and Luke exchanged confused looks, their silence almost comical against the tension.

“Every month Bartholomew throws a grand feast for his loyalists,” Mason explained, his tone dry, almost contemptuous. “It’s his way of playing king, of feeding the illusion of nobility. Only the finest food, only the best wine.”

Jack brightened, leaning forward. “I fully support this. Do you know how many couples have formed at those banquets? People talk, make friends, sometimes even fall in love. A well-made feast brings joy. It’s almost like a friendship ceremony of the Goddess of Kindness.”

“That’s exactly his goal, Jack,” Evangeline cut in coldly. Her voice was sharp enough to slice through his optimism. “He wants couples, families, bonds formed inside his fortress. Keeps them rooted. Keeps them loyal. It’s control wrapped in honey.”

Luke smirked, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “Sounds a lot like your Goddess of Kindness and her cult.”

“She doesn’t manipulate people, she preaches love,” Jack said.

Allison ignored the squabble. Her eyes remained fixed on the map, fingers tracing invisible lines. “This could work. How soon is the next banquet?”

Jack shrugged, the motion small, almost apologetic. “A week? Maybe five days? I’m not sure. I haven’t been inside Bastion in a while.”

Still, it was the first real opening they had found, something that didn’t reek of certain bloodshed.

Luke remained unconvinced. His arms crossed tightly across his chest. “Do you really think Bartholomew would hold a feast right now? I broke out of the capital, slaughtered his men, turned the Safe Zone into chaos. He doesn’t strike me as the type to waste time on fine dining with his cronies.”

Mason’s expression didn’t waver. He looked utterly at home in this discussion, like the fortress walls themselves were listening to him. “That’s exactly why he’ll hold it. The worse his position, the more he needs to project strength. A ruler’s image is his authority. He can’t afford to look weak.”

Luke kept silent, though the words gnawed at him. Politics, power games, those weren’t his arena. He could plan ambushes, duels, escapes. But strategy on this scale? Manipulating appearances, shaping crowds? That was another battlefield entirely, one he barely understood. Mason, born to nobility, spoke its language as naturally as breathing.

Nothing I can’t learn, Luke told himself. Especially with the end of this so-called tutorial looming.

“I could reach the mechanism,” Mason declared, his voice certain. “Jack may be barred from Bastion, but me? I’m still a noble. Even if I’ve aligned with Haven, they wouldn’t dare deny me entry to that banquet.”

“Same for me,” Allison added. Her tone was lighter, but the steel in her eyes betrayed caution. “Bartholomew keeps trying to lure me in. He wants more nobles around him. I could walk through the gates without issue.”

Evangeline leaned against the table, arms folded, her gaze sharp as a blade. “And once you’re inside? How do you plan to reach the mechanism? Knock down walls? Smash through stone? You’d make enough noise to rattle the fortress.”

Without her shadow skills, the question hung heavier. The walls weren’t cracks to slip through anymore, they were barriers, and barriers demanded force. Force meant alarms, screams, blood.

Jack frowned, his voice softer. “But… would they really kill you? You’re nobles of the World Government.”

Mason’s voice was ice. “Bartholomew’s desperate. Of course he would. Titles won’t protect us. Don’t forget Erza Grimhart stands at his side. If she saw us anywhere near that chamber, she’d cut us down without hesitation. And the truth is…” His eyes flicked to Allison, the weight of it visible in the hard set of his jaw. “…even together, she’d crush us.”

The fortress chamber had grown colder, though the torches still burned along the walls. Jack’s eyes widened, reflecting both firelight and dread.

“Not even if you were both at peak rank?” he asked, the words escaping like a breath he hadn’t meant to release.

Allison shook her head slowly, strands of hair brushing her face. “No. To begin with, she’s naturally strong. Like me and Mason, she isn’t entirely human. She’s half construct. Her family line comes from a race of automaton-like beings, living dolls, essentially. That makes her both dangerous and unnervingly logical by nature.”

She let out a short breath, eyes narrowing as if recalling old memories. “On top of that, she was born into a family of assassins. Their heirs are raised as weapons from the cradle, designed for one purpose: to kill. There’s no defeating her. She’s a walking execution machine. Even if every one of us here reached peak rank and stacked ourselves with epic-tier skills, she’d still carve through us. Her entire mentality is bent around the logic of assassination.”

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The words left a heavy silence. Mason leaned forward, his gaze locked on Jack, as if he needed to drive the point into his bones. “She’s from one of the most powerful families in the World Government. And beyond that, the god she serves is Lakarion, the God of Assassination. That means her entire bloodline receives the finest training in the multiverse. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? She’s not someone you can afford to make an enemy of.”

A curse slipped from Evangeline’s lips, barely louder than the crackle of fire. “Damn it. We’re so close… and yet it feels like miles away.”

Mason exhaled through his nose, steady but grim. Then he spoke, almost too casually: “Maybe I could get Evangeline into the banquet by claiming she’s my girlfriend.”

Chairs scraped. Everyone turned toward him.

“What?” she snapped, bristling instantly.

“It sounds ridiculous, I know. But hear me out. I can secure an invitation, no problem, and if I say you’re my date, no one would question it. They won’t turn me away, and they won’t turn away my ‘partner.’ That would get you inside Bastion during the feast. From there, you could slip out and make for the mechanism chamber.”

The idea hung in the air, fragile but promising. Luke thought, with some surprise, that it was almost perfect.

“But…” Mason’s voice hardened, cutting the silence in two. “Bartholomew greets every single guest in person. The only way out of that hall is through the front doors. You’d have to vanish into shadows at exactly the right moment, when no one’s watching.”

Evangeline pressed a hand to her forehead, as though the weight of the plan pressed down on her skull. “I may have faked my death, but Bartholomew never truly bought that story. If he sees me face-to-face, even for a second, I’m finished. He’ll recognize me instantly.”

Their gazes drifted down to the fortress map spread across the table. The silence stretched until even the torches seemed to burn quieter.

“It’s still a plan,” she admitted at last, voice thin but steady. “Better than nothing. If I get caught, I die. But that’s the risk.”

Her eyes narrowed, a flicker of memory crossing them like a shadow. “There’s another problem.”

Allison’s head snapped up. “What is it?”

“The damned Shadow Assassins,” Evangeline muttered. Her words tasted like venom. “There’s a real chance one of them will sense me. If any of them has the skill ‘Shadow Sense,’ we’re in trouble. That skill lets a shadow-user detect foreign shadows in their perception field. It’s not foolproof, but the odds are high. They’d realize there was a shadow they couldn’t merge into, and that would give me away. That’s how shadow-users find each other.”

Kind of like my own Plant Sense.

“You can bet Bartholomew will have at least one shadow-user near him during the banquet,” Mason added, voice grave. “Which means… we’ve got a serious problem.”

The plan shimmered with possibility, but the fatal flaw was obvious. No one else in the room had stealth like Evangeline’s, no one who could melt into nothingness and pass unseen.

Luke clicked his tongue in frustration. “We’re screwed. Unless we can find someone with a stealth skill that lets them morph their body, squeeze through stone, slip past barriers… we’re stuck.”

Evangeline’s eyes cut toward him, sharp as blades. “If you hadn’t become a wanted criminal, Allison could’ve taken you as her date to the banquet. Your mist form wouldn’t be detected, would it? That would’ve been perfect.”

Luke gave a dry laugh, bitter enough to echo. “Yeah. Too bad. Don’t think bleaching my hair blond and slapping on an eyepatch will fool anyone.”

The fire hissed in the torch brackets. The fortress felt tighter, heavier, as though even the stone walls understood how thin their chances really were.

“Let’s think of something else. We still have time,” Mason said. “A better plan will come, but we need to be smart. Everyone working outside has to stop immediately. Either they hole up inside the fortress or stay away from this area altogether.”

Allison understood. Until they figured out how to breach Bastion, they couldn’t let Bartholomew know a second fortress had fallen into enemy hands.

“We’ve got five days until the banquet,” Evangeline said. “I’ll come up with something by then. The plan we’ve got isn’t bad. Sure, there’s a risk I’ll be spotted the second I melt into shadow, maybe even before I reach the mechanism. But I can improvise. Worst case, I go loud. Once I get the information, I can blow the whole place apart on my way out.”

“You’d be dead before you made it three steps,” Mason cut in flatly. “Erza Grimhart, Kruger, the Maid Assassins, the Shadow Assassins, Bartholomew’s soldiers—and Bartholomew himself. The moment you broke cover, all of them would converge. You’d be cut down before you reached the exit.”

“It’s far too risky,” Allison agreed. Then her eyes narrowed, as though she had just decided on something. She set an object on the table. A necklace with a crimson pendant.

Luke’s eyes widened. He knew that necklace.

The Gender-Swap Amulet.

“This piece lets the wearer switch their biological sex to the opposite. It’s been in my family for generations. A powerful tool of disguise,” she explained.

Mason’s eyes widened as well, his gaze fixed on Allison like she’d just revealed a relic from legend. “It’s soulbound, yes, but utility-based,” she added. “Which means I can trigger the effect on someone else.”

“A true weapon of disguise,” Evangeline murmured.

Jack perked up. “We could use it on Evangeline!”

“That won’t work,” Mason countered, already running the logic. “The moment they sense a foreign shadow signature during the banquet, she’s exposed. She wouldn’t even reach the mechanism, let alone get back out with the intel.”

Once again they’d taken one step forward only to be shoved two back. For every ingenious solution, reality bared its teeth. This plan left no margin for error.

“Who said I’d use it on Evangeline?” Allison asked softly, a faint smile playing at her lips.

Her gaze dropped back to the amulet. “What if instead of turning you into a man, we use it on someone else? Someone with stealth skills on par with hers, but with a body-phase skill that isn’t shadow-based. Something Bartholomew’s assassins can’t detect.”

The room went quiet as everyone turned the idea over in their heads.

“Wait… are you saying you’d use that to turn a man into a woman? Slip them into the banquet in disguise?” Evangeline finally asked, piecing it together.

“Exactly. A man all of us know. One with a very particular stealth skill.”

Jack frowned. “And where is this man?”

The silence deepened. For a long moment, no one spoke. Then, one by one, they all turned their eyes in the same direction.

“Hey,” Luke said, brow furrowing, “why is everyone looking at me?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep