[Voodoo Kingdom]

Although Lude hadn't seen the bullet, he dodged to the side almost instinctively.

The next moment, a bullet burst out of the waiter's chest and grazed Lude's left upper arm.

Turning sideways, Lude grabbed the waiter by the collar with his left hand and drew his gun with his right, firing.

Relying on the high stats he'd copied from Aleppo's marksmanship, he fired four shots in an instant. The person at the end of the corridor took all four without making a sound, staggered...

...then slowly deflated, like a leaky inflatable doll, and collapsed onto the floor?

Only then did Lude realize that the waiter's collar felt wrong in his hand.

He hurriedly looked at the waiter he was gripping, only to find that it had deflated through the bullet holes until it was just a sheet of rubber.

Noticing Lude looking at it, the waiter even playfully winked at him.

Then the life went out of its eyes, and its features flattened into mere colors on rubber.

Lude frowned deeply and ran a hand over his left arm.

The waiter had blocked his view, so he hadn't seen the bullet's trajectory and hadn't been able to dodge it completely. The bullet had grazed his arm, leaving a bloody streak. Fortunately, the wound was so minor he didn't even need to cauterize it with a candle.

Making Balloon Puppets. That seemed to be the enemy's ability.

Unlike Death-Defying, this ability seemed to create puppets out of thin air, and the caster could directly possess them and control them precisely. However, once a balloon was punctured, it quickly lost its fighting ability.

He'd figured out the enemy's Secret Art... So what were they after?

It looked like they'd sacrificed two Balloon Puppets in this setup just to fire that final bullet aimed at Lude's chest.

But why would they do that?

Lude frowned in thought. If they really were people sent by the Black Tide Society to hunt him down, they should know that to incapacitate him or seriously injure him with a single shot, they'd need to hit his torso with at least a 12.7 mm armor-piercing round.

Wait. What if I looked at it another way? What if their goal had never been to incapacitate me...

Lude whirled around, his gaze meeting a pair of eyes hidden in the stairwell's shadow. The owner of those eyes had already pried the bullet stained with Lude's blood out of the wall and darted into the stairwell.

So the waiter had started setting this up the moment it spotted me. Its goal was to get my blood!

Interesting. Lude turned back to Sally and slid a pistol in front of her. "Stay right here. I'm going downstairs to collect a few heads."

Sally nodded hurriedly, and Lude immediately turned and headed down the stairs.

On the first floor of the restaurant, a young man sat at a small table for two, holding a newspaper.

Several bagels filled with ham and cheese sat on the table, along with two coffees without sugar or milk. Neither cup was steaming anymore; they'd clearly been sitting there for a while.

Just then, an old man in a dark brown canvas suit sat down at the table, panting.

He brushed the dust off himself and took a deep breath, composing himself. Then he pulled a small brass bullet from his pocket, scraped off the dried blood, and handed it to the young man beside him.

"Moke, see if this blood will work. It's only a trace left on a bullet, though..."

The young man beside the old man looked about eighteen or nineteen. He stood a full six and a half feet tall, his body packed with dark, bulging muscles.

Yet despite being the sort of man whose sheer size had earned him the title Cloud Vajra, he looked faintly timid.

He reached out with both hands to take the bullet. "Don't worry, Teacher Matos. It should... work, right?"

Matos sighed. "Moke, oh Moke, how many times have I told you not to speak so uncertainly? You have to believe you can do it for your Psionic Energy to answer you. Understand?"

"I... understand." Moke took a deep breath, his gaze growing intent. "I can do it. I know I can!"

It was hard to tell whether he was saying it to himself or to Matos. But as soon as the words left his mouth, the traces of Lude's blood on the bullet seemed to come alive, writhing and twisting as they floated in midair.

Within seconds, three bloodstained nails, each about the length of a finger, emerged from the speck of blood.

Voodoo Kingdom, Moke's Secret Art, allowed him to create three nails from his target's blood or hair. When a nail struck an enemy, it merged into their body. Once all three nails had pierced the target, they inflicted a grievous wound severe enough to kill.

The ability could only be used against one target at a time. That was the weakness of this Secret Art.

"Here, Teacher, I made them!"

Like an excited child showing off a treasure, Moke held the three nails out to Matos. "I really made them! Look, Teacher! My Voodoo Kingdom combined with your Two as One is unbeatable!"

"...Sigh!" Matos sighed and, as Moke looked at him in confusion, pushed the nails back.

He gazed at the young man before him with a complicated expression. "Moke, oh Moke, this is the one time I won't use Two as One to attack. In the battle ahead, my Two as One will only serve a supporting role."

Moke's eyes widened in astonishment, panic filling his face. "Teacher, if we're changing our tactics, how are we supposed to take down that terrifying-looking man?"

"By relying on you, Moke, my finest student," Matos said softly.

"M-Me?" Moke's eyes widened even more, and he hurriedly shook his head. "No, Teacher, I can't! I've never, never fought another Arcanist one-on-one before. If I have to fight, shouldn't I start with someone around my own level...?"

"Moke!" Matos shouted, cutting him off.

As Moke's spirits sank, Matos sighed and firmly gripped his shoulder.

"Moke, oh Moke, you are my finest student. I'm not just saying that.

Your talent for intelligence and tactics is already on par with mine, and your close-combat skills have surpassed your teacher's. After you willingly underwent alchemical enhancement and training, your hand-to-hand combat ability ranked among the top three in the Elite Guard—but there is one lesson you never learned."

"That is the [resolve] an Arcanist needs, the resolve of an independent person in society."

"You have excellent tactical instincts and analytical skills. You can devise several workable plans in an instant, but you can't pick even one of them to carry out—"

"—not without my approval or someone else's."

"In fact, it was my fault. I made a close-combat prodigy like you awaken a Secret Art that doesn't suit you!"

Moke tried to protest, but Matos raised a hand to stop him.

"A Secret Art is a unique ability born when a caster comes to understand their own desires, and their fate, temperament, talent, and yearning twist their Soul Fire."

"Even I never imagined that what you wanted was 'to be my second-in-command forever'!"

"That was my mistake," Matos said quietly, his voice heavy with sorrow.