Shade easily picked out the target he was looking for among the six people on the "third floor," because only that mustached man had his arm around a woman who was clearly not in a respectable profession, laughing and drinking.
Shade memorized everyone's positions, then turned and left, going back down the iron stairs to the intersection piled with clutter:
"From now on, I'm an ordinary person, not a Ring Arcanist."
He said this to himself, then pulled a steel pipe from the pile of junk and gave it a swing before charging forward.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he bent low and hid in the shadows beyond the gas lamp's reach, his footsteps nearly silent. The two men playing cards were deeply engrossed, so Shade held his breath and silently counted down, three, two, one, before lunging out and knocking down the man with his back to him in a single blow.
The man on the other side of the table looked horrified and reached for a machete beside him. At the same time, Shade grabbed the edge of the table with his left hand and flipped it over. The sounds of the Kerosene Lamp and wineglasses hitting the ground were drowned out by cheers from below. Then Shade kicked the overturned table forward, slamming both it and the man against the wall:
"Good. The stealth mission was a success."
Listening to the heartbeats upstairs and finding that no one had moved, he held his breath and slowly continued up the stairs, stopping before the doorless frame at the top.
"Three, two, one!"
Shade burst inside and swung his pipe into the head of the man beside the doorway. Then he rolled aside to evade the junk thrown at him, rose to his feet, and drove his left