Mission Completed

Pan Long killed Seles with a single palm strike and did not pause. He released Seles's corpse with his left hand, and red light flashed in his right. The Slayer Sword, which he had placed in his equipment slot beforehand, appeared. With one swing, he pierced the throat of the nearest fanatic knight.

His sword was fast and precise. He could not cut every leaf drifting through the autumn air, but he could cut any one leaf he chose.

And he could pierce any enemy's throat.

The blood spraying from the first fanatic knight's throat had not yet hit the ground when the Slayer Sword pierced the second knight's throat.

Stunned by the lingering force of the Tiger Roar Technique and by the sight of Seles, the "Most Holy," being struck down, they were nothing but stationary targets to Pan Long. Given ten seconds, he could kill all twenty or so guards.

But those ten seconds were a pleasant fantasy.

He had barely thrust his sword a second time when a black figure appeared behind him. Two blackened blades rose high, then stabbed toward his back.

As expected, an assassin of the One God Religion was among Seles's guards.

Pan Long's tiger roar had stunned everyone, including the assassin. But the man had undergone exceptionally harsh training and recovered far faster than the ordinary guards.

The first thing he did upon recovering was try to kill Pan Long!

As an assassin, he had long since dedicated his life to the One God Religion. Loyalty had little to do with it; he barely had any feelings left. To him, Pan Long was an enemy of the One God Religion. That was all.

An enemy had to die. That was all.

The backstab was vicious, but Pan Long was prepared. More importantly, as a rogue—even one at only level five—he knew a thing or two about how to use the "Backstab" skill.

He did not even turn around. He reversed his sword and thrust it out beneath his arm.

Before the black-robed assassin's blades could strike Pan Long's back, the Slayer Sword reached him first, thanks to its greater length.

The assassin had never imagined his opponent would use such a strange move. The sword struck him square in the chest. Blood sprayed, and he collapsed into the dust, lifeless.

One sword strike. One kill.

Pan Long killed the black-robed assassin and avoided the backstab, but he could not avoid being surrounded.

The guard knights were, after all, carefully selected elites with exceptional nerve. Though the shock had left them dazed, Pan Long's third kill finally snapped them awake. Roaring wildly, they drew their weapons and charged.

The great Most Holy had been murdered by an assassin before their eyes. It was a disgrace they could never wash away. Only by killing the assassin with their own hands and then taking their own lives could they quiet their raging hearts.

With that in mind, the guard knights attacked ferociously. They gave no thought to defense; every move was aimed at taking Pan Long down with them. It left him in a sorry state.

He was not afraid of death. Dying would only mean dropping all his gear, and appearing stark naked before everyone would merely give his father and grandfather something to laugh about. But he had worked himself to the bone and made a fool of himself, putting on a performance that had finally gotten Seles killed. Success was in sight. How could he die now?

It was like struggling alongside everyone else when success was nowhere in sight: if you said you were quitting, you quit, and it was no great matter. But when success was within reach and the reward was close, quitting was no longer something you could decide with a word. You had to weigh it again and again, waver countless times, and make an agonizing choice.

That was exactly where Pan Long stood. He knew he was nearly there. If he could defeat and scatter these guard knights, that rabble could not threaten him in the slightest.

The fact that none of them had joined the attack on him yet said it all.

They had never had any cohesion or shared purpose. Seles had only held them together for a time with threats and promises of reward. Now he was dead, and both the threats and rewards had vanished. The fact that they had not scattered at once was down to sheer momentum from before—and that momentum could carry them no further.

There was no chance they would fight bravely without regard for their lives!

What Pan Long had not expected was that this band of fanatic knights guarding Seles was genuinely formidable!

He had assumed they were far weaker than Seles. If Seles himself had died from one palm strike, what did these men amount to?

Even with so many of them, he should at least be able to protect himself.

If he could not beat them, could he not run?

Only when the fighting began did he realize that he had judged their strength correctly but had never imagined how terrifying it would be when a whole group of people were willing to die just to take him with them.

You thrust your sword, and your opponent did not even try to block. Instead, he lunged straight at you, trying to grab hold of you.

Could you afford to let him?

Of course not! The moment he caught you, a dozen blades would come down and chop you to pieces!

So you could only dodge.

But more men closed in. They had seen how skilled you were and knew they could not beat you. So they abandoned every other tactic and tried to rush in and grab you, pinning you in place until you became a living target for their companions' swords.

What could you do?

Now even dodging was difficult.

For all Pan Long's skill, and though he could still strike while evading—often killing or gravely wounding an enemy with one thrust—he could not withstand being surrounded on every side.

The Pan Lineage's martial arts were steady and powerful, best suited to meeting enemies head-on. Tempered a thousand times over by generations of ancestors, they had been developed for survival in the Northlands.

The style naturally included Lightness Skill, but its strengths lay in running and charging. In the Northlands, there was no shame in fleeing a demon beast you could not defeat. In fact, getting away was the real skill.

That was how the Pan Lineage's Lightness Skill worked: they could run like the wind and charge like arrows loosed from a bowstring.

But agile footwork, evasive maneuvers, and nimble changes of direction were not their strengths.

After all, nothing under heaven was perfect. Among the divine arts and ultimate techniques passed down for countless years by the great Renowned Sects of the Central Plains, there might have been some that excelled at both. But the Pan Lineage had always developed in the bitterly cold Northlands and simply had no way to obtain such arts.

Pan Long's father, Pan Lei, did know such a martial art. But Pan Long had only learned of it recently and, of course, had not had time to study it.

As for his assassin skills... no assassin under heaven used footwork designed for a melee against a pack of frenzied elite knights. An assassin who could do that was either named Nie Zheng or was missing the ring finger on his right hand and could perform a Leap of Faith.

Those were the sort of "assassins" whose methods were called stealth and assassination but looked more like mowing down hordes of enemies.

Pan Long's assassin skills were nothing like that. In his present situation, they were useless.

So he was hard-pressed, dodging desperately and often having to evade several attacks before he found a chance to swing his sword.

At this rate, it would take at least another ten minutes to kill or rout these maddened guard knights.

But he would wager that before those ten minutes were up, someone from that rabble would step forward to help. He was a serious criminal who had assassinated an Empire general. Capturing or killing him would earn a tremendous reward.

When that happened, he really would be finished.

But he was not too worried, because he knew he was not fighting alone.

Sure enough, as soon as the fighting began, the villagers of Luna Village emerged from their hiding places. Led by the Village Chief, they charged out of the village carrying the Fire-Tipped Javelins they had hastily made the night before.

"Quick! Quick! Mr. Pan needs help!" The Village Chief, whose hair was half white and who usually showed his age, now had his eyes wide open. He roared like a maddened lion, urging the villagers to run faster.

He was a Veteran, the only person in Luna Village who had ever been to war. Most of his battles back then had been defeats, but defeats taught valuable lessons too. The moment the Fres Army fell into confusion, he knew Pan Long had succeeded. He seized a torch prepared in advance, leaped from his hiding place, and shouted for everyone to hurry to Pan Long's aid.

They had rested for several hours and recovered their strength, so every one of them ran at full speed. In less than a minute, they had reached a spot not far from the enemy.

The rank and file of the Holy Legion saw the villagers charging toward them. Ordinarily, they would never have given a handful of villagers a second thought. But Lord Seles had been assassinated, the entire army was in chaos, and they had lost the man they looked to for direction.

Worse still, if this village had someone capable of assassinating the "Most Holy" amid a great army, how weak could its villagers possibly be?

A tiger's kin might be wildcats at worst, but they certainly would not be little lambs.

As the villagers charged fiercely toward them, more than one soldier showed signs of fear.

Just as they were about to collide head-on with the Fres Army, the Village Chief roared, "Stop! Light them! Throw the javelins!"

The authority he had built up over the years served him well now. The villagers obeyed his orders at once.

In an instant, burning wooden javelins flew toward the still-bewildered soldiers of the Holy Legion.

"Ah! They're attacking with fire! Dodge!"

"Help!"

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Pan Long's night raid and arson had left a deep shadow in these soldiers' hearts. When they saw the villagers of Luna Village using fire again, many of them immediately panicked.

What was wrong with these damned villagers? Why did they love playing with fire so much?

The burning Fire-Tipped Javelins were not very powerful. Unless they struck a vital spot, they could not kill a Fres soldier. But the thatch tied to them, soaked in pine oil and other fuel, set more than one soldier's clothes and hair alight.

That worked even better.

To the Fres soldiers, the flames were far more frightening than the javelins.

After just one volley, the already shaken Fres Army's morale was on the verge of collapse. More than one man began looking around for a chance to flee.

The villagers, meanwhile, underwent a marked change.

They still looked the same. They did not glow or grow taller, but their bearing was utterly different from before.

They had become steady and confident, and the light of battle shone in their eyes.

Moments ago, they had been civilians who had reluctantly taken the field because they had no other choice. Now they could be called soldiers.

If someone had opened their character panels, they would have seen that their class had changed from "Villager" to "Militia."

At the same level, Villagers were living targets to be mowed down at will. Militia, as a basic troop type, had some fighting ability.

And the change in the Village Chief was greater still.

His expression turned stern, and a faint light flickered beneath his feet, enveloping all the villagers.

Wrapped in that light, the villagers felt their strength increase and their movements quicken. Even the Fire-Tipped Javelins they threw carried much greater force.

This was Inspiration, a command skill that increased the attack power of the soldiers under its user's command.

The Village Chief, whose class had long remained at level 20 Veteran, broke through his long-standing limit at that moment and became an Officer.

An Officer of the first advancement led Militia, a basic troop type, in throwing burning Fire-Tipped Javelins. With the aid of Inspiration, javelin after javelin plunged into the Fres Army's formation and pierced the bodies of several soldiers.

The soldiers pierced by the Fire-Tipped Javelins screamed in agony. More soldiers cried out in fear, turned, and fled as fast as their legs could carry them.

At last, Pan Long's battle plan had succeeded!