When Yvette was planning to capture her target alive, in the “Red Pepper” nightclub in downtown Fushijiang, a middle-aged man with a slightly plump figure was also embracing a beautiful woman in a warmly lit VIP room, leisurely plotting two attacks that he was determined to carry out.
—He was none other than the “Fire Demon,” Colby himself.
In the past few days, through the general, all the supervisors in the Fushijiang area received two optional missions: one was to kill the silver-haired mercenary “Nameless,” and the other was to capture two little girls, one blonde and one silver-haired.
As for the former, Colby understood the backstory and that it was related to the death of that idiot Bryce. Given the general’s temperament, he certainly could not allow someone like “Nameless” to remain rampant within the Rusted Bone territory; otherwise, where would that leave the reputation of the Ghost Hand Society and the authority of the general?
For the latter, Colby was not quite sure. Stroking his shiny, double chin, he sank into thought. According to known information, this seemed to be a transaction between the general and Black Tower Pharmaceuticals. When the time came, Black Tower Pharmaceuticals would send a secret team over to collaborate with the general’s people to jointly capture the two little girls.
However, for the local supervisors, if they thought they had the capability, they could complete the task before the Black Tower team arrived, and the rewards would be several times more lucrative.
Colby was instantly intrigued. Unlike Bryce, who worked hard to improve himself but ended up useless and dead, Colby was quite wealthy and resourceful. He could easily outsource the task and pay others to complete it for him.
For instance, to deal with that mercenary “Nameless,” he planned to spend a significant amount to hire people from the renowned world’s number one assassin organization, “Neon Nightmare,” to hunt her down. They were a group of monsters hiding in the shadows, with their “golden rank assassins” possessing combat abilities that rivaled level five mages and even cycle high priests. Although such high-tier monsters were not easy to hire, he believed that with a bit of a premium, there would always be golden assassins willing to take the job.
Moreover, he couldn’t just let “Nameless” remain in Fushijiang. What if she set her sights on his assets?
As for the two little girls that Black Tower Pharmaceuticals valued highly, he planned to utilize his connections in Fushijiang to join forces with other gangs, acting together to ensure that they had nowhere to escape.His opinion on this mission differed somewhat from that of the other supervisors; he believed the difficulty did not lie in the strength of the two little girls, but rather in their ability to escape—they were slippery and difficult to catch, which was why even a big company like Black Tower Pharmaceuticals found them troublesome.
After all, if these two children were so powerful that even Black Tower couldn’t handle them, that wouldn’t be realistic.
As long as he employed a swarm tactics strategy, leaving them with no way to escape and nowhere to fly, then he believed that defeating them would actually be the easiest part of this mission.
……
Days passed, and due to Colby’s sudden trip to Silver Mirror Island, Yvette missed the opportunity to capture “Fire Demon” Colby, so she made several trips to Shalin Town, enjoying pleasant conversations with Liliana.
During their chats, Liliana clearly showed interest in becoming a mercenary, and more accurately, in acting heroically. She certainly had the capability for it. However, surprisingly, both Yvette and Zero had reached an unexpected consensus against it, albeit for different reasons. Zero believed that the world wasn’t worth saving, and Liliana’s desire to be a good person would only end up harming herself. Meanwhile, Yvette was simply worried that changes in the timeline would affect her narrative development and found an excuse to dismiss it.
Liliana was quite disappointed by this, but from her expression, Yvette always felt that she would eventually walk down that path.
On another damp and cold evening, Yvette returned to the city from Shalin Town. Under the inky sky, the rain fell like threads, fine and whispering, shrouding the sparse streetlights in a hazy white mist.
On the muddy little road, where light could only be seen from a distance, a motorcycle sped past, creating two tracks, with a faint turquoise wind element barrier protecting Yvette’s clothes from getting wet.
After riding for a while, she was about to turn on the high beams when a faint sense of danger suddenly surged in her heart. A long, dark spear shot out from the woods by the roadside, like an elusive shadow, aiming straight for Yvette’s temple.
Yvette immediately left the motorbike, soaring into the air. Just as the spear approached, she raised her hand and caught the spearhead.
In the next moment, a brilliant light erupted from her body, red runes appearing one by one, flashing continuously on her exposed skin and clothing, as though she had triggered a dangerously explosive switch.
“Who?” Yvette lightly landed, allowing the cold rain to slide off her body. She looked at the spear and found it to be a simple magical device, covered in intricate magical circuits.
This was clearly part of a combination spell, using a long fiber inscribed with magical circuits as a bullet, shooting it out through spells. Since it required the preparation of a large number of long fibers inscribed with magical circuits, the actual combat effectiveness was naturally much better than pure spells; this was the advantage of cumbersome preparation.
“The one here to take your life,” a cold voice echoed from the dark woods. The speaker was obviously a professional assassin who was still hiding their identity at this moment.
Yvette glanced in the direction of the woods and said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course, you are the well-known rookie mercenary ‘Nameless,’ who has recently gained fame in New Eden. Am I right, Miss Nameless?” The person in the darkness spoke with a slightly mocking tone.
“Then why do you dare to come looking for me?”
“I never kill nameless people. Only by hunting down well-known figures like you can I make my resume shine brighter. Of course, that is also your honor,” the assassin chuckled lightly.
He seemed to be trying to provoke Yvette, to make her expose a flaw; however, as a cautious person, Yvette was completely unfazed by the taunts in his words and bluntly asked, “Who sent you?”
“You’re talking too much for someone about to die. There’s no need for you to say so much. Just know that you’re dying at the hands of a soon-to-be golden-ranked assassin of Neon Nightmare,” the assassin said impatiently. Perhaps because his attempts at banter were not getting a positive response, his voice suddenly turned cold.
He seemed to have “accidentally” given away information about “Neon Nightmare” and “soon to become a golden-ranked assassin,” but in fact, this was undoubtedly intentional.
The reason was simple; this was his thrill.
The assassin usually walked in the shadows of the world, even having few opportunities to reveal his identity to others, which inevitably caused some psychological repression. Whenever a target was about to die, it was one of the few moments where he could let the other person know that he was a member of the world-famous assassin organization Neon Nightmare, and that he was a silver-ranked assassin just below the gold rank, allowing him to vent his emotions.
But unfortunately, tonight was destined to disappoint him, because Yvette had no idea what Neon Nightmare was.
“What is Neon Nightmare?” Yvette asked.
“Ha… it’s pointless to pretend. I can see the fear in your heart,” the assassin sneered disdainfully.
Clearly, he did not believe that Yvette, who gained fame during the werewolf assassin incident last year, could possibly not know about Neon Nightmare by now.
After all, it was a place that many top mercenaries often moonlighted—after all, the identities of mercenaries and assassins often interconvert, and rune hackers also fall into this transforming category.
He assumed this silver-haired girl was doing it on purpose; her confusion, her calmness, all were mere facades to disguise her fear upon hearing the name of the organization Neon Nightmare. She must have been trembling inside but still reluctant to believe the truth.
Now, he was going to burst this bubble.