Mysterious Fog World: Eldritch Nexus

“Chief Knife, they still haven’t left the mansion.”

The man referred to as Chief Knife turned towards a thug in anger, he held his collar, pulled him up, and asked, “Didn’t you say they leave the mansion at midnight to go outside the territory and return in the morning? Why haven’t they left yet?”

“Please believe me, Chief Knife. I have been watching them since they killed boss Peter. For the last two days, that’s their routine.” The thug desperately tried to make the Chief Knife believe him.

“So, why haven’t they left yet? It's already seven in the morning”, yelled Knife at the thug and then proceeded to slap him many times then he threw him away.

“Calm down Knife”, said another calm-looking man.

Knife huffed but still calmed down because he respected his best friend Arrow.

“You guys, keep on the lookout for them”, said Arrow to the rest of the thugs.

“Yes, Chief Arrow.”

Knife and Arrow were two of the four lieutenants of the Falmise City’s underworld boss David. He had another identity, he was Peter’s older brother whom the twins killed as he wanted to kidnap them to force them to serve him.

David had plans to return the previous day, but couldn’t as his meeting was extended so he had to stay there. But he couldn’t just let his brother’s killers roam freely so he sent two of his four lieutenants to kill them.

The four lieutenants were the strongest fighters under him. Knife, and Arrow, had a peak beginner stage mastery, whereas the third and fourth one had a mastery in the intermediate stage. Knife had Dagger Mastery and Arrow had Archery Mastery.

Even David thought it was an overkill to send two of his lieutenants but he was seething in anger and sadness for losing his little brother. So he sent them along with over a hundred gang members to not give them any chance to run away.

They had already found their location, they were living with a chosen one. Initially, the plan was simple. Raid the mansion, kill everyone inside, and leave. They were not afraid of any chosen one. He would not be the first one they killed.

But when they heard about the crazy challenge he issued to the Falmise Family, they were afraid of retaliation. The other chosen ones they killed were weak and didn’t dare to raise their voices but he was crazy enough to challenge the entire Falmise Family.

And his proclamation was not baseless. With the capabilities of chosen ones, he was very capable of doing what he said.

They were no match for the Falmise Family, so they were even more afraid of him as they didn’t have a single Extraordinary in their gang.

So they had to change their plan. They decided to kill the sisters secretly as quickly as possible without letting the chosen one find out who did it. That was one of the major reasons that David sent so many gang members, and even two lieutenants after them.

The gang member at whom Knife yelled previously was one of the few surviving members of Peter’s gang who survived because they remained behind at the gang’s hideout to look after it.

He was tasked to keep an eye on the twins from a distance. They decided to follow the twins when they left the mansion at midnight to hunt outside the territory. They would follow them for a few kilometers outside the territory and then surround them and kill them.

But all their plans were useless as the twins still hadn’t left the mansion and the longer they delayed the boss’s mission, the angrier he would be, thus increasing the chances of gang members dying at his hands.

“Chief Arrow, Chief Knife, they have left the mansion.” A thug yelled to the two chiefs.

“Follow them secretly” ordered Arrow.

—------------

The twins left the mansion for another hunting session. Their points were mostly depleted last night. Due to the double motivation of revenge against the Falmise Family and completing the mission given by their lord, they trained for 14(56) hours in the Training Room.

Moreover, they increased the difficulty by using stronger versions of the enemies to train against. The strength of the recorded enemies could be freely modified up to a maximum of one stage above Drake’s current stage.

Since Drake was a Mortal, the Training Room could produce enemies up to the peak of Early-Stage (Rank 3) Extraordinary, i.e., from Level 0 to Level 30.

They each purchased a few Mortal Skills to utilize their mastery efficiently. With the purchase of slots for the Training Room and the Mortal Skills, their Eldritch Points were mostly depleted. So they went on another expedition outside the territory to massacre ‘innocent’ monsters.

“The mouse bought some friends with him”, said Ayame.

“Yeah. I was getting tired of waiting”, acknowledged yumi, who also found the people secretly watching them.

“It took those idiots two days to come for revenge”, said Ayame laughing at them. They found out about their existence on the first day but didn’t do anything to not startle the big fish behind.

“Other than those two, the rest are not worth mentioning”, said Yumi pointing out the existence of Knife and Arrow.

“Yes. They are strong. Their dagger and archery mastery are higher than us”, said Ayame, then continued with a smile, “But we are not weak. They will be good opponents for us to test our latest progress”.

Name: Yumi Murasame

Loyalty: 100 (Zealot)

Level: 0

SAN: 5

Path: None

Skills: Double Shot, Triple Shot, Barrage, Power Shot

Mastery: Archery (Beginner, Lv 16), Stealth (Beginner, Lv 15), Pickpocketing (Beginner, Lv 1), Unarmed Combat (Beginner, Lv 8), Perception (Beginner, Lv 9)

Name: Ayame Murasame

Loyalty: 98 (Fanatic)

Level: 0

SAN: 5

Path: None

Skills: Heavy Strike, Swift Strike, Blade Dance, Eviscerate

Mastery: Dagger (Beginner, Lv 15), Stealth (Beginner, Lv 15), Pickpocketing (Beginner, Lv 2), Unarmed Combat (Beginner, Lv 9), Perception (Beginner, Lv 9)

They drove outside the territory. After a few kilometers, they noticed that the cars following them were catching up, in a few minutes, they caught up with them and surrounded them.

The twins got out of their car, not a trace of anxiety on their faces. All the gang members got out of their cars and surrounded them. Without giving them any time to react, the twins moved while using the fog as cover, to escape their eyes.

“Where are they? Did they run away?” asked Knife.

“All of you find them”, ordered Arrow.

Before the gang members moved, they heard the noise of something falling on the ground. The gang members were dying one by one. The twins had decided to kill the minions and then focus on the leaders.

“Arrow, they also have Stealth Mastery”, said Knife with a slightly serious expression. Having two masteries at such a young age was a great achievement.

They worked hard for more than two decades only to increase one mastery to the peak of the beginner stage, with no idea of how long it would take them to reach the intermediate stage. They had one or two other masteries, but their levels were too low so they were not worth mentioning.

“Don’t worry, their Stealth Mastery level is not too high. We can still defeat them”, said Arrow but he was also a bit serious watching them display two masteries effortlessly.

Of course, the two gang lieutenants didn’t know that the twins purposely showed them lower Stealth Mastery than they had.

In a few minutes, the twins killed all the gang members other than the two lieutenants and came in front of them, Ayame in front of Knife and Yumi in front of Arrow.

Ayame and Dagger ran towards each other and slashed at each other simultaneously. Their daggers met with a clang. Ayame took a step back. She lost in the first confrontation.

Knife didn’t give her time to breathe and followed with another slash. She again parried his dagger with difficulty.

At the same time, Arrow and Yumi shot an arrow toward each other, some of which met in mid-air and broke upon collision, the rest were dodged by them. All the arrows shot by Yumi were shot down by Arrow effortlessly, and while Yumi also shot down his arrows, she had many close calls. That proved who was superior in archery among the two.

Both pairs fought for hundreds of rounds. Arrow and Knife won in every confrontation and the twins barely kept up, though they were secretly jealous of the twins' talent to reach such a level at their age. But they got increasingly serious as even though they won each confrontation, the twins improved with each round. The improvement was too small, but even that amount was too much.

Previously, even after watching their Stealth Mastery, they still had a superior attitude and were not fighting seriously. But the twin’s talent scared them. They realized that if they let them go, with their talent in a few years, they could kill their gang effortlessly. There was no need for Drake to intervene.

Unfortunately for them, the twins also decided to get serious.

Knife gave up his playful attitude and attacked seriously but Ayame dodged it easily. Knife’s eyes widened but he thought it was a fluke. He attacked more times but at all times she either dodged easily or for those attacks she was unable to dodge, she parried like before with difficulty.

He thought of a scary possibility, but before he voiced it out, Ayame attacked.

She twirled and moved as if dancing. Each attack was random and with greater intensity than before.

Knife, who could parry her attacks with little effort before, barely saved himself from getting injured.

At the same time, Yumi also dodged each of the arrows with minimal body movements while shooting arrows too tricky to dodge.

She then shot another arrow at Arrow, but to his horror, the arrow he shot was destroyed by Yumi’s arrows and continued unimpeded. He barely dodged it.

“The Perception Mastery!”

“Mortal Skills!”

Both Knife and Arrow yelled at the same time in shock.

The twins gave a mocking smile. Ayame just said, “Time for Round 2”.

They again fought for hundreds of rounds but the gang members no longer had the upper hand. Three masteries are already too many but they even had Mortal Skills. Only the Falmise Family in the Falmise City had Mortal Skills, and they were kept in heavy security and only given to the direct family members. For the outer members, only those who had proved their loyalty which were not many were given the chance to learn their family’s Mortal Skills.

“Enough with games. Let’s finish this quickly, we still have work to do”, said Yumi, finally bored of her fight with Arrow.

Ayame only smirked hearing that and suddenly disappeared in front of Knife’s eyes using the fog’s cover, Yumi also did the same.

The gang lieutenants were too tired to even comment on that. They realized the twins had deceived them earlier with their Stealth Mastery level.

They regretted accepting the mission to kill them. They wanted to run away but were not given the chance.

Ayame suddenly appeared behind Knife and directly decapitated his head. Arrow, who saw it and didn’t even get the chance to grieve his best friend’s death, was killed by the arrow that punctured his throat.