Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 773: ANBO Unit Strikes II

CH773 ANBO Unit Strikes II

***

“Hal—”

Before the two guards at the gate could finish speaking, the Fox operative’s sword flashed from its sheath, decapitating them both.

Without so much as a pause, he strode through the estate gates.

He made no attempt to avoid the guards.

Every guard he encountered, he beheaded.

Heads, bodies, and blood littered the Fox operative’s path.

It made no difference whether they were Bronze or Silver Rank.

The outcome was always the same.

Every Combat Warrior he encountered within the Heisen estate lost their head.

In fact, he seemed less like an assassin eliminating specific targets and more like a methodical psychopath carrying out a calm, meticulously planned massacre.

Unfortunately for Fox, the Heisen Clan had concluded their preparatory meeting for the upcoming election earlier that day, preventing him from catching all of his targets in one place.

That simply meant more of the family’s combatants had to die as he hunted down his targets one by one.

HOOORN~~!!!

As expected, before Fox could eliminate all of his targets, members of the Heisen Clan discovered the trail of corpses he had left behind and sounded the alarm.

Even then, Fox did not hurry.

He continued advancing at the same steady pace, allowing the clan to gather its forces into consolidated defensive positions.

They didn’t expect that a single individual had caused such devastation, believing it was an invading armed force. Hence, the defensive position would hold such a force off.

By concentrating their forces, however, they merely made Fox’s task easier.

One defensive line after another fell before him.

Every position he approached was utterly annihilated, leaving behind yet more headless corpses.

Eventually, the clan head and the few surviving elders rallied what remained of the family’s warriors into a final defensive line they believed could withstand any assault.

Shields slammed into the ground.

Combat Energy gathered together, forming both a solid physical barricade and a powerful energy barrier.

Sweat dripped from the temples of every warrior standing behind the wall as they awaited the terror drawing ever closer.

Contrary to their expectations, however, it wasn’t an army that emerged.

It was a single man— A lone swordsman.

The Heisen warriors wanted to dismiss him.

However, the trail of blood and corpses left in the man’s wake made that impossible.

As he approached their defensive position, one of the shield-bearing warriors charged forward with a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.

The man led with his shield, earthen Silver-ranked Combat Energy enveloping his body.

Contrary to the Heisens’ expectations, there was no prolonged duel.

With a single overhead slash, Fox cleaved through the Heisen champion’s shield…

…and his body.

The two halves fell silently to the ground.

Terror gripped the defenders as they realised that this incarnation of death had set its sights upon them.

Fox’s figure suddenly vanished.

The next instant, he reappeared just a few feet before the shield wall, standing in a low stance with both hands resting upon the hilt of his sword.

Copious amounts of energy gathered within the blade.

Then his arm flashed.

The strike moved so quickly that the defenders couldn’t even follow it.

Crack!

Shatter!

The Heisen Clan’s famed defensive formation shattered beneath a single blow.

And with it, the fighting spirit of the Heisen Clan was broken as well.

What followed was nothing short of a massacre as Fox methodically cut down every Heisen combat warrior in his path.

Soon, the clan elders had all been slain, leaving only the retreating Heisen clan head.

The man collapsed onto his knees before scrambling backwards on the ground as Fox steadily approached, his sword lowered to one side while blood trickled from the grooves of its blade.

“Why?!” the Heisen clan head cried out in anguish.

“How have we offended someone like you?”

“You dared offend my liege,” Fox replied coldly.

His figure blurred.

The next instant, he stood beside the clan head.

As Fox slowly returned his sword to its sheath, the Heisen clan head’s head slid from his shoulders before tumbling to the ground, a jet of blood erupting skywards.

By the time Fox departed the Heisen estate, those bearing the Heisen name who remained alive were almost entirely women, children, and the elderly.

Nearly every military-aged man of the Heisen bloodline had been wiped out.

At the same time, a group of six ANBO operatives wearing masks themed after different birds of prey approached the Dunn family estate.

Using grappling hooks fired from modified crossbows, the six bird-masked operatives scaled the estate walls.

Unlike the other assault teams, they maintained their distance throughout the operation. Armed with relatively long-range bolt-action crossbows, there was little reason for them to engage their targets in close combat unless absolutely necessary.

However, as they swept through the estate, they made a surprising discovery.

None of their targets were present.

The Dunn family was known to possess ten Silver-ranked combatants. Six had reportedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances, while the remaining four had supposedly left to search for them.

Yet after news of the domain lord’s meeting with the other clan heads spread through Castin, ANBO intelligence had confirmed that the Dunn clan head and the other Silver ranks had already returned to the estate.

But upon arriving, the Bird Unit found only women, children, the elderly, and a handful of inconsequential Bronze-ranked combatants.

The bird-masked operatives did not engage them.

Instead, they headed directly towards the last known location of the Dunn clan head and the remaining Silver-ranked members.

Their search led them to the estate’s ceremonial hall, a building reserved exclusively for the clan’s leadership. Ordinary members of the Dunn family were only permitted inside during a handful of ceremonial occasions each year.

Slipping silently past the guards, the Bird Unit entered the hall.

It was empty.

The discovery puzzled them.

According to the intelligence they had received, this should have been where their targets were gathered.

The squad immediately began searching the room.

One of the operatives soon noticed that a large wooden wall panel had recently been disturbed.

The team quickly pried it open.

To their surprise, a hidden chamber lay behind it.

At the centre of the chamber was a large hole descending downwards into pitch darkness, with a thick rope hanging into its depths.

“This is Bird Unit,” the squad leader reported over comms.

“Targets are missing. Subterranean tunnel discovered. Commencing pursuit.”

One after another, the operatives secured themselves to the rope and descended into the darkness below.

***