Dan used his warp dancer and dropped down to his stomach before the green tracers reached him. After deactivating his new ability, the rods slashed above his head, hitting nothing but more concrete. He rolled toward the exit of the room and ran down the hall.

  Using his newfound strength, he rushed toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall and smashed into the metal door at full force. The metal slab blew off its hinges and skidded along the pavement outside.

  Overlord couldn't leave him in peace as he continued running through the alley.

  You should be another six levels higher than you are right now, the demonic voice said. Did you not pierce yourself with both halves? What happened?

  “Hey, fuck off,” Dan said bluntly. “Since it’s my artefact, I get to do what I please with it with or without your input.”

  Overlord’s demonic voice made it difficult to pick up on tone. But Dan swore he could hear the slight edge even through the demonic filter. There is no point in saving it for later. You either get the power boost now or you will fall before the cult master.

  “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, pal,” Dan said.

  There was no point in actually telling Overlord the true reason. If he could just reunite with Li, then this half of the artefact can finally be of used. Dan could take it all for himself, but he needed his one and only friend in this shitshow to power up and get his supernatural abilities up to par.

  Dan took the HoA rifle off his back and slammed in back against a wall. He slowly inched his way closer to the edge to a bombed out street. He peered his head out and saw more of the same. Vehicles on fires or exploding, potholes and large craters in the road, dead cropsed from both the Church and Kodak.

  Dan’s HUD hadn’t updated him with any new waypoints. And since no one in the Kodak force had shared the city map with him, his next best option was to listen for the action and follow it.

  His ears picked up rapid footsteps and Dan saw a group of robed individuals running through the mess that was the road. He counted six Church agents running through the wreckage of burning cars and hopping over craters. Dan wanted to test out his new warp dancer against these fools but someone else had the same idea.

  Two blurs rushed the group of Church agents and in the next second, two agents fell to the ground in bisected halves. The two new attackers stopped and Dan saw them.

  Judith and Ada.

  Ada rushed the nearest Church agent and lunged with a jab with her Bloodluster. The blade penetrated the robes and through the body of the Church agent before she ran the blade across until it left the agent’s shoulder in a gory mess.

  Dan’s eyes widened watching Judith. The top Bloodknight looked down at her hand, seemingly check her fingernails even though she wore gloves. The three remaining Church agents exploded and fell apart into dismembered limbs and parts around her. He rubbed his eyes wondering what the hell happened and how did he not see it?

  Judith then turned her head in Dan’s direction then flashed out of existence. She popped up in front of him, causing Dan to stagger back.

  “Ah, a nice family reunion,” she said, giving him her signature slasher grin. “Now come along. Ada misses you very much.”

  Dan narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m sure she has,” he said carefully.

  Judith turned his back to him and Dan reluctantly followed. He briefly considered just shooting or stabbing her in the back but decided against it. It wouldn’t do him any good to bring down the entire Bloodknight sect on his neck for killing their most powerful member and it would make his escape exponentially harder. Plus, Judith just blitzed and chopped down thre Church agents so fast that Dan didn’t even see how she did so. Even with his ascension to tier two, his eyes didn’t pick up any of Judith’s movements. He thought it was best not to directly challenge her. Not yet.

  “There’s a hornet’s nest of activity nearby. All of these fanatics came out of the woodwork after the collapse of that building,” she said.

  Dan followed Judith to the middle of the road and saw Ada. The young Bloodknight washout locked eyes with him and gave a curt nod. He smiled beneath his mask and hoped that Ada picked up on that through the subtle changes in the upper half of his face.

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  “Alright, so our little cult master can cut buildings in half,” Judith said. She glanced at Dan. “You know, holding onto that other half won’t do you any favors.”

  Dan turned at met her gaze. “Shut the fuck up. I fought and bled for this damned thing and I’ll do what I please with it.”

  Judith held her hand over her chest and opened her mouth in exaggerated fashion. “Oh my. Overlord told me you were in a feisty mood but I didn’t think you were this mad. Is that any way to treat us after helping you get that power boost?”

  He maintained his defiant stare at Judith. Glancing at Ada, she looked back and forth between them with mild discomfort.

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” Judith said. “Just took a scan of your stats. Without the other half of the artefact, you’ll be lucky if you can beat Ada in a duel.”

  “I’ve overturned the odds before,” he spat. “Now can we get going? Conversing with you makes me sick.”

  “And they call women overly dramatic,” she muttered. Judith turned to Ada. “Scout ahead and look for any giant slash marks in the roads or buildings. Our cult master is getting restless.”

  Ada silently nodded. She turned to Dan and nodded to him as well before she dashed away, leaving behind her afterimages.

  Judith pointed her finger at him. “As for you, follow close behind me. And keep the snarkiness in check. Ada and I may enjoy it, but you’re making it hard to like you if you keep that up with the others.”

  The Bloodknight led the way and stuck to the sidewalk away from the destructive mess on the road. Dan followed closely behind him. Judith’s pace wasn’t quite a run, but it was a jogging pace that most agents could maintain for extend periods while carrying heavy equipment. He had no problem keeping up with her.

  “I thought you were taking a more hands off approach in this hunt?” he asked. “You like to teleport away and just watch the shitshow unfold.”

  “Glad to see you know me quite well in our short time together,” she said. She hopped over a crater in the sidewalk that was four meters wide. Dan followed suit.

  “From Ada’s report, it was likely that cult master that chopped that building down.You know, the one you had to traverse to get that artefact we so generously donated to you? An opponent of that caliber requires some more… direct intervention, understand?”

  “So you got bored being a spectator and decided you wanted in on the fun? Classic,” Dan said. “Does that run in the Sunheiser family?”

  Even though Judith had warned him earlier, Dan decided to see how far he can push it with the digs towards the lead Bloodknight. She obviously needed him alive rather than dead. And for her and Overlord to direct him to an artefact to increase his power, Kodak had future plans for him. And to Dan, that was a free pass to talk as much shit as he wanted.

  Judith didn’t bother turning around to face him. But her lack of response meant that the dig had gotten through.

  Dan changed the topic and refocused on the immediate threat. “So if a bunch of these Church assholes are popping up and the cult master is going around chopping down skyscrapers, shouldn’t you call more backup?”

  He remembered when communications were jammed during the Amethyst situation and Dan walked away from that mission with half his team gone.

  The Bloodknight looked back at him. Her lips were a tight line. “I could, but I won’t. I have a reputation to uphold on behalf of the Bloodknight sect and as a tier four, calling in more agents would make me look like a weakling.”

  Dan bristled at Judith’s self proclamation as a tier four, even though everytime he tried scanning her stats it gave him errors.

  The two walked around the burning frame of a van and continued on the sidewalk. Dan wasn’t done grilling the Bloodknight. It was funny that he wouldn’t dare drag Jane like this openly, but pissing off her scarier older sister filled him with a strange sense of catharsis.

  “Are all high-ranking Kodak bitches this rigid and ego-driven? Have you not learned that when a mission has to get done, there’s no room for that kind of bullshit? Maybe if you guys weren’t so stuck up about looking and sounding tough, you wouldn’t be getting your asses kicked time and time again.”

  Judith stopped in her tracks. In just an instant, Dan went from walking on a sidewalk to getting pinned against a wall by the Bloodknight. She lifted him off the ground as her hand clamped down hard on his neck.

  “I could snap your neck with a simple flick of my wrist you little brat,” Judith said in a low tone.

  “I dare you,” he said, his voice coming out raspy. “I’m too important for you to kill. Deal with it.”

  Judith maintained her serious gaze. He could do nothing else but stare back into the gold rings of her irises in the sea of bloodshot red that made up her eyes. Then a smile crept up on her face.

  “What a naughty boy you are,” she said. Her other hand clutched his crotch like the lunge of a cobra. “That is true. I might not kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find ways to punish a disobedient pet like you. I can list a dozen ways to make your life miserable, no matter how tough your second tier stats suggest.”

  Judith’s eyes narrowed and Dan felt his body shutter at the look she gave him. The feral hunger her eyes alone conveyed to him. She opened her mouth, only for her tongue to fall out and make rounds moistening her lips.

  “I could rip out all your toe and fingernails. Stab you with needles and force your healing factor to regenerate your flesh around the objects puncturing your body. Eat one of your eyeballs and make you watch with the one remaining. Don’t. Test. Me. Boy.”

  Judith glanced from side to side and abruptly released her tight grip around his neck.

  “I don’t like how quiet it is,” she said. “I hope my warning has sunk in.”

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