Level 1 Fallen

After killing Yatagarasu near the riverbed, it became increasingly difficult to get those last three kills. I could tell that the anxiety was slowly starting to get to the Player, his invincible protection being foiled again and again. Although I was in no rush, wanting to make sure that Diane had plenty of time to complete her own mission, I also wanted to get this taken care of.

For the rest of the day, Yatagarasu refused to leave Guanoborough. He walked through the city openly, his guards following close behind him. His Player had logged off, leaving his Chosen without any idea what to do on his own. Bella and I did not wait for him in the city itself, as we had discovered that it truly lived up to its name, having an unbearable smell.

Instead, we relied on Wisteria’s informants within the city telling us when he was preparing to make a move while we camped near the river where we killed him last. It wasn’t until the morning that we learned that Yatagarasu had slipped out of the city in the middle of the night. Since the informants had been asleep, they hadn’t been able to identify where he went.

Bella and I gave up on following them with the car, using my draconic form to move even more quickly. Our last lead was that he was going to the ruins of Kethet, so I had Wisteria give me directions on how to get there.

Once there, we found Yatagarasu and his guards slaughtering monsters at the edge of a ruined city, its stone structures cracked and reclaimed by nature. Weeds and vines stretched up their walls, and the roads were split open to reveal entire trees in some areas.

As for Yatagarasu, he was wielding a long, thin blade with a curved profile now. Every slash caused sparks to rise from the plant-like monsters that he struck, some deeper cuts catching fire. Meanwhile, his guards were scanning the area, one hand on their swords while the other held scrolls.

I thought about how to get involved this time, as it was clear that the guards were ready to act at a moment’s notice. It wouldn’t be so easy to catch them unawares this time. As I thought, an idea struck me, and I gave a small grin.

I kept myself hidden beyond the mortal veil as I approached, allowing the effects of Forest Titan to spread through the ruined battlefield. For this occasion, I considered those plant monsters my allies, allowing the skill to enhance them. This created a rather interesting synergy with the plant creatures, causing them to grow larger and stronger.

“What’s going on? Did we trigger a hidden event?” Yatagarasu called out, quickly overwhelmed by the monsters surrounding him. Although he wasn’t taking any damage, he was physically incapable of fighting back. Similarly, the guards were assaulted, turning their attention towards the monsters fighting them.

Meanwhile, I changed my appearance, looking like an oaken figure covered with moss and vines. This was a smaller, more toned down version of my normal Forest Titan form, one that I believed could pass as an Elder Treant.

With Walking Fortress, I caused a tree to burst from the ground, rising up dozens of meters into the sky as a canopy of vines spiraled out to form a thick dome. I moved behind the tree, walking through it with Beyond the Veil and dropping my stealth to make it seem as if I had used the tree to travel here.

“What’s going on?!” Yatagarasu cried out, pushing back a shambling plant golem and quickly slashing at another. “Nobody said that there was this kind of hidden boss!” Now that the area was covered, he was able to use his skills again, enhancing his physicality enough to overpower the monsters.

I turned to face the man, walking with slow, deliberate steps. Yatagarasu braced himself as best he could, breaking away from the monsters as I reached him. Perhaps because of the Forest Titan skill, or maybe my disguise that mixed Many Faces and Ancient Shifter, these plants regarded me as one of their own.

With one moss-covered hand, I pointed to Yatagarasu, a crooked smile on my wooden face. “Two,” I said, shaping the bodies of the dead plant monsters into thick vines to curl around his wrists and neck. His eyes widened in realization, scrambling to try and free himself. He released jets of flame from his arms, but the plants were healing too fast to burn through. Meanwhile, the vine around his neck was tightening more and more, until…

Crunch. Yatagarasu’s head lolled to the side, his eyes wide and empty. I looked at the two guards, who were now struggling to defend themselves against the plant monsters pushing them back. My work here was done now, so I stepped back ‘into’ the tree, disappearing again and teleporting back to Bella before they had the chance to activate their scrolls.

The ninth kill was another full day later. After hiding in the city again, we received word that Yatagarasu had been sighted leaving Athua again, this time heading to Farro. By the time we caught up with him, they had already set up camp between the two nations, so I slipped into my reaper form and snuck into his tent to kill him with my scythe. As his body was splitting apart, I drew a large ‘one’ on the wall of the tent.

After this… it was hard to find a chance to deliver the final kill. Yatagarasu had once again holed himself up in his manor, hiring another grandmaster bodyguard. Thanks to the countdown that I had started, he knew that this next kill would be his last.

Bella and I sat a few blocks down from his manor. Because I’ve had to wait for the chance to strike, I hadn’t really had the opportunity to train most of my skills since the start of this mission, aside from those that I either had active all the time, or those that I used in espionage. This led to Roaming Sentries finally evolving back into Spirit Sentry, so I had a hidden camera in Yatagarasu’s mansion.

Bella and I watched the feed from the camera while I maintained a stealth field. “How long until we can go for the last kill?” Bella asked, looking up at me curiously.

I didn’t know the answer myself. It had been two days since we came back to the capital of Athua. If I was determined to, I could teleport in now and deal the final blow at any time that his new grandmaster bodyguard wasn’t in the room.

The problem wasn’t actually on our side, but on Diane’s. We needed to wait for her to be ready to complete her part of the operation, but she had run into some difficulties.

First, she could only report back to Wisteria after completely leaving the church, which required a long and convoluted process to avoid being detected. This was because the High Inquisitor of the church possessed a skill known as Interception, which allowed him to read any messages sent or received by those within a certain range of himself. We didn’t know how large this range was, or how to tell when it was active, so the only safe way to act was to assume the worst and leave the church every time she needed to make a report.

According to Wisteria, Diane had come up with three pre-prepared messages to send depending on the situation. One was to be sent when she was ready to destroy Yatagarasu’s body. One was to be sent if Diane was in danger of being captured. The last one was an emergency abort message that would mean that we’d need to call off the entire operation until she could deliver the full report.

As this was Diane, she naturally had created a system to pass along additional information with each message, having gone out of her way to make the code look as natural as possible. Part of me wondered if this also matched her ninja aesthetic, or if she just really enjoyed undercover work.

I opened my mouth to respond to Bella when a message notification appeared in front of me from Diane. My mouth closed, eyes narrowing as I read the message. Father Anderson has left on a missionary trip to Arisdrum today. He said that he plans to arrive around eight o’clock tonight. Make sure to receive him warmly, as we don’t want any mishaps. Praise the Light.

“Is it from her?” Bella asked, and I responded with a nod, going through the message piece by piece.

“The message is about a departure, meaning that the attack can proceed as planned,” I explained. If the operation was cancelled, the priest would have been detained. And if she was captured, the priest would have been arriving at the church. “The next line would be the time of the operation, but not in hours. Eight o’clock at night, that means we have twenty minutes before she’s ready to act.”

I read out the message to Bella, who looked thoughtful. “She said that she was going to try to explain her methods in the message, right? Does that have anything to do with the warm reception and praising the light?”

“It probably means she plans to bomb the place on her way out, and slip away in the chaos,” I confirmed. I forwarded the message to Wisteria, along with our understanding of its meaning. Afterwards, I got myself ready, teleporting outside the city while maintaining the sentry I had in the mansion. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing me transform, even accidentally or through a skill that looked into the past.

Once I was in my reaper form, I hovered between the trees, watching the screen and counting down the minutes. At twenty minutes, I saw the expressions of Yatagarasu and the grandmaster twist in surprise. The grandmaster rushed towards the window, looking out as a bright light illuminated his face.

Without a word, he burst out the window, charging towards what I could only assume was the church. Yatagarasu’s face drained of color, and he ran to try and follow. However, I had already teleported behind him, the blade of my scythe at his neck. My free hand clutched the imprisonment respawn stone, and I decapitated him with one clean motion before he even realized I was there.

As we had agreed beforehand, I looted the body… or what was left of it after it peeled open and split itself apart. Then, I briefly looked out the window, my eyes twitching as I saw the scene. The church had been engulfed in flames, an entire section of wall having collapsed under the force of some explosion.

Diane… Don’t you think you’re going too far with this? I thought to myself, worried that she would get NPCs caught up in this mess and earn us even more problems with the League of Assassins.

I didn’t have time to consider for long, though, as a message quickly arrived. Need immediate exfil, 3x-2.

I blinked as I read the message, taking a moment to remember how Diane had explained this previously. The numbers should be her location in relation to the church, measured by streets. Three streets to the east, and two to the south?

With that thought in mind, I stowed the scythe away and swapped to a human disguise. After teleporting a few times to reach the designated area, I spotted a figure hidden in an alleyway via my True Sight, wrapped under layers of concealment. I revealed myself, turning to face her and causing my brand to flicker a few times.

She quickly understood, rushing towards me and grabbing my hand. Bright lights were already illuminating the sky, raining down like spotlights to try to find the perpetrator behind the fire. Before they could reach us, I teleported us to Bella, and then all three of us back to Fallcry.

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