Pillar of Yita

That feeling was like having a built-in thermal imager.

He stopped from a distance.

This position was basically directly behind the enemy; only here did Fang Hong feel some sense of safety, because in this direction, Jiefulite’s people would not be able to make use of their scouting skills without actively checking.

Admittedly, scouting included vision as well as hearing, and even smell and vibration, as well as intuition.

For example, the system would create an audio file from a detected abnormal sound source, mark the direction and notify the Invoker. But the system’s automatic scouting was based on purely character attributes, lacking the subjective guidance of the Invoker themselves, making it worryingly inefficient.

To have the system automatically discover an enemy at this distance, it might be more suitable to find a real Ranger.

Fang Hong waited for a few seconds, then released his Walker.

The Walker ’click’ opened the construct feet, slowly stood up, and slid forward into the bushes. With no visual link, Fang Hong had to resort to this crude method.

Luckily, none of the Jiefulite Red Cloak Team members noticed anything.

About halfway there, Fang Hong activated the Agility Swift IV ability, the agility components humming to life. He thought by now the enemy should have been able to detect the noise behind them—but to his surprise, the five people huddled there didn’t move an inch.

”Could these people be addicted to watching the show...” Fang Hong couldn’t help but mutter.

As if to prove his guess,

it wasn’t until the Sword Hong Style Walker was almost within attacking range that someone heard the noise and turned their head.

But by then, the Flexible Construct had already shown its fangs. Fang Hong made a gesture with his hand—the first target was not the person who turned around, but the only Swordsman among the five. The Swordsman’s sword was a rapier with a basket hilt.

Sicape had told him, characters wielding rapiers generally focused on agility with secondary strength, precise warriors, posing the greatest threat to his Walker. And among these people, another considerable threat was a Gunslinger, who naturally, was slow to act and rather weak in close combat.

So he chose the Swordsman as his first target—

”Careful...!”

Fang Hong heard the person who turned around shout something, possibly calling out a name, but it was too far to be clear. It must have been the Swordsman’s name.

The Swordsman’s reaction was indeed astonishing, worthy of a primary agility profession. Upon hearing the sound behind her, she immediately pressed to release the catch at her waist, drawing the basket-hilt rapier and turning to block.

Fang Hong then saw clearly that she was a woman.

A quite delicate-looking woman with a head of fiery red hair, her movements were very succinct. The rapier was just caught between the Walker’s two brightly shining Blade Claws.

The Walker pressed down on her rapier, which deformed like a spring, bending towards the Sword Bearer, then snapped back.

Combatant and construct separated, their clash completed in the blink of an eye, with others not even getting a clear look.

From a distance, Fang Hong saw a grey number emerge. He didn’t check to see how large the number was, but a successful ambush likely meant it wasn’t small—that was Block Value damage. As a profession, Swordsmen, with primary agility and secondary strength, couldn’t match Wanderers in evasion, nor warriors in blocking. Their advantage lay in balance.

If a Summoner could dynamically seek a balance between blocking and evasion, one could always be charging, and generally, the higher the Summoner’s own ceiling, the more outstanding the Swordsman’s performance would be.

This was a profession requiring extremely high personal talent, and the choice of confident ones.

This woman must have been very confident, yet this unexpected strike from behind probably caused her to lose quite a bit of her balance. While balance itself doesn’t affect the amount of evasion or block value, it does impact the Summoner’s initiative.

Initiative, something not listed among the system attributes, represents the Summoner’s own reaction, judgment, and feeling, and for top Summoners, it could even signify all possibilities.

Not to mention that without balance, evasion and block value do not recharge.

Offensive and defensive movements would more or less disrupt balance, but the attacker clearly has the advantage, and Fang Hong even more so as he had the upper hand. In his data page, he could see the Walker losing balance far slower than the balance recovering, while the female Swordsman was less fortunate—just the opposite effect.

’Sword Hong’ continued its onslaught—

The Swordsman blocked again with the rapier, thwarting the attack.

The Walker’s upper body rotated, launching another blade for an attack, each strike as swift as the one before it.

Surprise flashed in the eyes of the Female Swordsman—she had been quite confident and immediately recognized it was a Flexible Construct of a Combat Artisan, but still held some disdain in her heart.

She firmly believed in her ability as a Flower Sword Swordsman to counter the clumsy Constructs of Combat Artisans, quick and precise—taking down a Clockwork Fairy was nothing to mention, let alone a cumbersome Walker.

But she quickly realized she had made a mistake.

That was why the Combat Artisans’ Constructs were called ’Flexible’ Constructs—

The Female Swordsman repeatedly shifted the direction of her blade, yet she couldn’t break away from a disadvantaged position, their swords clashing, the Construct moved as if it were a real person.

One strike, two strikes, three strikes, she retreated while blocking, panic rising in her heart, and by the fourth strike, her guard was wide open. Fang Hong saw a string of gray numbers break—Block Value depleted. Almost instinctively, he stepped forward, his right hand fingers together, swiping from left to right.

’Sword Hong’ shot out like a swift arrow.

In the nick of time, the Female Swordsman rolled backward, narrowly avoiding the blow.

But this evasion was not of her own volition, it was only because she still had Evasion Value—passive evasion led by the system, with no active input, meaning the damage of this hit was almost not mitigated at all.

A three-digit blue Evasion Damage number emerged into Fang Hong’s vision.

The Female Swordsman, due to this unconscious evasion, fell to the ground, losing her balance completely for the first time.

Block Value zeroed, Evasion Value greatly diminished, Balance all but gone.

The confrontation between the combatant and the machine was as quick as lightning, and in the blink of an eye, the Female Swordsman had reached the end of her life, while it had only just dawned on the others.

”Combat Artisan!”

A cry of alarm came from the direction of the Forest.

Fang Hong recognized it as coming from that foreign girl; it seemed they had also spotted him. Hearing her strong and clear voice, the situation on her battlefield appeared to be manageable.

He let out a sigh of relief.

The Walker’s blades crossed each other, streaking like lightning across the Female Swordsman’s throat, a striking flash of fresh red spurting like an arrow.

Fang Hong didn’t bother to check whether the opponent was truly dead and immediately directed the Walker towards the next target—his goal was the Summoner among them; the Gunslinger was still busily reloading. If he could take out the Summoner first, there was hope for victory in this combat.

At this moment, there wasn’t a hint of triumph at the success of his ambush in his heart.

If the starter was just an appetizer, the main course was just beginning. His gaze slowly swept over the battlefield. The Red Cloak Team still had four people left, four official members, each likely higher in Level than anyone present.

His only chance of victory was to cause the Brown-Red Elephant Beetle to lose control, stirring up the situation on the field.

Beyond that, there was little hope for victory in this combat.

However, just as Fang Hong was weighing the possibilities on the battlefield, something unexpected happened again. The remaining members of the Red Cloak Team suddenly displayed breath-stopping maneuvers. Seeing their Big Sister fall, they didn’t charge over in a furious rampage.

Instead, they all shouted in unison:

”Big Sister is dead!”

”It’s the Combat Artisan, run!”

Before their voices had even faded, these people vanished into the shrubbery with a speed that would outpace Western reporters.

Fang Hong was left staring, dumbfounded by the scene.

What was happening? Were Combat Artisans that terrifying?

...