Free Web NovelChapter 36: Three Exchanges
Hearing the Pugilist speak, Cat cursed the man bitterly in his thoughts.
The heavy-set brawler was transparently trying to manipulate the situation, egging on his unit to test the newcomer while keeping his own hands entirely clean. For all his thick-headed, iron-bound appearance, the Pugilist possessed a remarkably calculating streak.
Elyra watched the posturing with absolute, icy stillness. The only variable that brought her any minor satisfaction was the Bramble captain’s behavior; his squad had pulled back significantly into the shadows of the common room, confirming their absolute compliance with the active covenant.
Yet, they did not leave. The veterans lingered near the back wall, clearly eager to analyze the upcoming performance. Every professional across the territory was desperately curious to calculate the actual combat attributes of this rapidly rising masked executioner.
Cat found himself completely backed into a corner. If he retreated now, his shadow employer’s entire disruption sub-routine would fail. The baseline contract penalty was an extraordinary sum of liquid silver; though the mysterious handler’s advance was technically deep enough to cover the fine, executing a formal default would permanently ruin his squad’s professional guild rating. That was an unacceptable structural loss.
If they could smoothly compromise the Redoak Vale recovery operation through administrative delays, it would yield the highest payout. But if that route was structurally blocked, they had no choice but to adjust their parameters and extract as much coin from the deployment as possible. They were mercenaries, after all, not suicidal zealots bound to a foreign lord.
"Green?" Cat called out, his voice sharp.
A silent, brown-haired combatant stepped forward from the line at his commander’s signal.
He was outfitted in high-grade, reinforced leather armor, but unlike Xander’s compact kit, his primary weapon was a massive, single-edged iron falchion. The blade shared structural similarities with an eastern katana but featured a significantly wider, heavier tip designed to maximize the kinetic slashing force when cleaving through armored beast hide.
The man was a cold-blooded line executioner. Dozens of wild monsters and rival mercenaries had already tracking data on his blade, the vast majority of his targets ending in brutal, unmitigated liquidation sequences.
A single heavy cleave typically left two fatal lacerations.
A [Wandering Blade]?
Xander narrowed his eyes behind his leather mask, tracking the exact weight distribution of the man’s stance. That specific heavy iron falchion was a signature asset of the Tier 2 Wandering Blade professional class. While the challenger obviously hadn’t accumulated the experience points required to execute a formal tier advancement yet, he was explicitly structuring his attribute points toward that specific path.
Wandering Blades prioritized exceptional Agility metrics, but their raw Strength remained remarkably fierce. Given sufficient forward momentum, their heavy, sweeping arcs could split a fully armored infantryman clean down the center. In his past life, this hyper-aggressive, high-mobility combat style had been an absolute favorite among top-tier competitive players.
But against an opponent utilizing that specific framework... Xander knew the exact mathematical counter.
"Miss Elyra, even if your ledger officially insulates our front line from the spellcaster, the column still requires physical confirmation of this individual’s tactical viability," Cat proclaimed, his tone dropping into a smooth, challenging register. "Let him trade markers with our level 5 vanguard asset. We require absolute certainty before we march toward a bloodline caster."
"I presume the legendary Masked Twin Blades doesn’t harbor any objections toward a basic mechanical calibration?"
"If his blade prevails, your mouth remains permanently locked," Elyra retorted, her voice cutting through the tavern’s heat like a shard of ice. She fixed Cat with a look of pure, unadulterated disgust. "You will either execute your contract parameters and help us liquidate the demi-humans, or you will forfeit your silver and drag your squad out into the mud."
"Agreed," Cat answered instantly. If the masked figure demonstrated a combat tier high enough to mathematically guarantee a victory against the Sorcerer, he was entirely willing to temporarily suspend his employer’s sabotage protocol.
Surviving the front line and collecting the estate’s massive completion bounty was a perfectly acceptable secondary payout. Had his noble handler explicitly warned him that the Masked Twin Blades was anchored to this specific column, he would have never accepted the gold to delay it.
The sovereign heir of Redoak Vale was a reckless fool, actually employing a high-profile, wanted urban executioner to reclaim his ancestral borders. According to Cat’s internal data streams, the geopolitical situation surrounding the estate was exceptionally toxic. Multiple powerful factions were quietly watching the territory’s sovereignty status. Even if this immediate recovery campaign succeeded, the young master would inevitably face a massive wave of assassination protocols and legal challenges in the aftermath.
Thinking of this, the albino Ranger’s internal calculations steadied. freēwēbnovel.com
But before he could step back, Xander’s voice cut through the room, cold, raspy, and entirely devoid of human empathy. "I do not execute calibrations. I execute targets."
The entire common room froze.
The arrogance on this bastard!
His face contorting with immediate rage, Green gripped the leather-wrapped hilt of his iron falchion and launched himself across the floorboards. His heavy boots shattered a stray wooden mug as he closed the distance toward Xander, his blade rising in a high-velocity, lethal overhead arc meant to instantly terminate the standoff.
Elyra and Andre both stiffened, their hands instinctively flying toward their weapons, but the kinetic velocity of the heavy fighter’s charge was too high to intercept.
Elyra’s eyes locked onto Xander—not out of fear that her young master would sustain critical damage, but out of absolute panic that he would genuinely liquidate the squad’s finest frontline asset on the spot. Losing a six-man mercenary unit now would severely compromise their survival metrics against the demi-human line.
Xander remained entirely stationary, his back loosely leaning against the oak tavern counter. He didn’t shift his baseline coordinates by a single millimeter until the heavy edge of the iron blade was less than twelve inches from his face.
Then, his internal 20-point Dexterity sub-routine fully engaged.
At that elite tier of cognitive and physical reflex, the human nervous system processes motion with extreme clarity. Xander’s gaze didn’t bother tracking the steel blade; instead, his focus locked entirely onto the challenger’s right shoulder joint the exact microsecond the man launched his frame forward.
In standard martial kinematics, that specific muscular cluster must contract first to drive the leverage for a heavy cleave.
The right shoulder joint twitched, indicating a massive release of kinetic force.
Xander’s frame blurred. He stepped directly inside the trajectory of the arc, appearing directly in front of the fighter’s chest before the downward momentum of the falchion could even maximize its velocity.
The onlookers gasped, a collective shiver running down the spines of the mercenaries. That reaction speed... his spatial pathing is entirely unnatural!
Without granting them a single frame to process the movement, a sharp, metallic clang echoed through the rafters. Xander’s right-hand dagger cleared its sheath in an instantaneous draw loop.
Because the challenger was utilizing a right-handed grip and possessed a baseline Strength attribute significantly higher than Xander’s unbuffed state, stopping a heavy forward rush required an immediate, high-impact deflection vector.
Even though his [Two-Weapon Fighting] mastery granted both of his hands identical mechanical precision, his raw physical mass remained structurally limited. He had to hit the blade’s pivot point perfectly.
The fighter’s eyes widened in sudden horror. Before he could re-route his balance or pull the falchion back into a defensive guard, the heavy, reinforced pommel of Xander’s right-hand blade slammed violently against the flat of his iron weapon.
"Agh!" the man bellowed, his combat instincts triggering an immediate tactical adaptation.
He instantly transitioned into a low, sweeping upward arc—a localized curved slash designed to take out Xander’s lower thighs and break his center of gravity.
Xander inwardly sneered. This predictable rotation has been logged in my database ten thousand times.
The second exchange initiated.
Left hand.
It was a perfectly clean, unembellished parry that required zero advanced skill points. As long as his blade intercepted the exact node where the falchion’s kinetic leverage was mathematically weakest, the momentum would completely neutralize itself. To a seasoned veteran of Xander’s caliber, executing this block was a routine calculation.
Clang!
The low upward arc was stopped dead in its tracks, sparks cascading onto the timber floor.
But even as his left arm locked out to sustain the impact, Xander’s third offensive sequence was already halfway to its target coordinate. The absolute lethality of the two-weapon combat framework relied entirely on a user’s capacity to execute independent parallel processing.
His left arm maintained the hard block, while his right hand drove a vicious, high-velocity counter-thrust straight through the open guard.
The blackened steel blade flashed under the dim candlelight of the tavern.
The tip of the dagger was tracking perfectly toward the soft, exposed leather wrapping at the side of Green’s neck. Even with his high-grade leather armor, a clean piercing strike to that critical biological vital would instantly trigger an unmitigated bleeding condition and a fatal damage modifier.
The surrounding mercenaries watched with wide, paralyzed expressions, their breath caught in their throats.
Xander’s physical trajectory and instantaneous reaction metrics made it appear as though he had completely downloaded the challenger’s entire combat routine before the fight even began.
Three distinct exchanges.
He had required exactly three moves to drive one of River Shore City’s finest Tier 1 fighters into an absolute, inescapable death state.
Cat’s face drained of color, his stomach twisting with an immediate, sickening wave of regret. If that dagger completed its path, his vanguard asset was dead.
"Stand down!" a sharp voice commanded through the silence.
It was Elyra, her voice cutting through the common room precisely at the targeted microsecond.
In the next frame, the forward velocity of Xander’s dagger dropped to zero, the tip grinding to an immediate halt a mere millimeter from the flesh of the man’s throat before shifting downward to tap the flat of the blade against his shoulder.
Clank.
The fighter was drenched in a thick sheet of cold sweat. His fingers spasmed uncontrollably, entirely losing their grip on the leather hilt as his heavy iron falchion clattered uselessly onto the floorboards.
The common room erupted into a low, frantic murmur. Green was widely logged as an exceptional martial specialist within the regional low-tier circuits. Yet, he had failed to survive more than three brief exchanges against the Masked Twin Blades. Furthermore, his psychological state appeared completely shattered; he stood frozen, staring at his empty hands in absolute disbelief.
For a frontline Fighter to be systematically dismantled by a pure dagger sequence without landing a single counter-metric was an absolute humiliation. Had the half-elf retainer not issued the voice command exactly when she did, his life bar would have been completely wiped out.
With this single exchange, the intimidation rating of the Masked Twin Blades inside River Shore City would skyrocket.
As for the challenger... his internal psychological traits as an aspiring Wandering Blade had sustained a catastrophic critical hit. Overcoming the mental trauma of this absolute defeat would require a massive expenditure of time and training. Whether his combat efficiency would ever fully recover remained an open question.
Xander inwardly validated Elyra’s tactical timing. She had executed her vocal cue perfectly.
Had she remained silent, he would have been mechanically forced to liquidate the man to preserve the absolute, uncompromising terror profile of the Masked Twin Blades persona. However, this entire sequence was merely an execution of the behavioral blueprint they had drafted back at the estate.
Xander was designated to project absolute, terrifying martial superiority, while Elyra followed up with diplomatic stabilization. By utilizing this classic duality, the compromised mercenary squad would be completely forced into absolute submission.
Moments later, two pale members of the rebel unit scrambled forward to help their trembling comrade back to his bench. Elyra noted that the heavy fighter was shaking so violently he could barely keep his footing; the absolute lethality of those three movements had triggered a massive fear condition in his status.
The Pugilist remained entirely silent at his corner table, his previous mocking grin completely wiped from his rugged features. His posture was deeply grave.
A palpable undercurrent of fear swept through the room as Xander turned his masked head to fix the brawler with a slow, deliberate glare.
Close-quarters Pugilists were mathematically disadvantaged when facing high-speed, dual-dagger duelists. The Pugilist rapidly ran the internal simulations and arrived at a definitive conclusion: if he stepped onto the floor against the Masked Twin Blades, his survival metrics were exactly zero.
The individual standing before them possessed an execution framework that bordered on absolute perfection. Even if a few of his transitions appeared slightly rigid due to his unoptimized physical frame, his raw velocity was completely abnormal for a Tier 1 character.
"Are there any outstanding technical objections regarding the contract parameters?" Elyra asked, a serene, confident smile gracing her features as she scanned the silent room.
Not a single mercenary uttered a word.
Seeing the tension settle, the old disabled tavern keeper quickly limped through the hall, setting down heavy platters of hot bread, roasted roots, and steaming mugs of bitter bean broth. The suffocating weight in the air lifted slightly as the mercenaries began to quietly consume their rations.
Elyra didn’t grant the adventurers permission to retire to the upper rooms after dinner; instead, she immediately unrolled a detailed tactical map across the central table to begin the operational briefing.
"Our entry vector into the Redoak perimeter is bounded by the southern pass," she explained, her finger tracing a narrow ravine. "The initial defensive layout consists of four advanced demi-human sentries stationed at the choke point. Two of them are confirmed skirmishers utilizing shortbows."
"Those assets present a basic liquidation routine for our ranged units. The true tactical crisis at the gate," she continued, her voice turning sharp, "is the presence of six mutated aardwolves."
