While Leo looked between the swordsman’s clearly poisoned wound and Taylor in confusion, their opponent snarled, narrowing his eyes as his free hand went to his neck.

  “You brat,” he hissed, pressing his hand firmly against the wound as if that would do anything. “Poison users… You bastards are the most annoying gem holders to fight against. Always think you’re such hot stuff. Right up until you find a sword lodged within your stomach.”

  “Sure you want to keep talking?” Taylor taunted, tapping her neck again with her exposed claws. Only now did Leo realize the tips of her claws had turned an incredibly dark purple, so dark they were almost black. “I wonder how long you have before the poison spreads.”

  “Please. Even with my soul dampened, my body is strong enough to fight off whatever low-Grade poison skill you managed to get your annoying little claws on,” the swordsman spat, finally lowering his hand. Sure enough, despite the fact that the purple scratch marks looked inflamed and distinctly uncomfortable, they didn’t really seem to be bothering the man all that much. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Alright then,” Taylor grinned, launching herself forward with a powerful pounce. Having expected this move ever since they started talking, Leo followed right behind her, determined to do whatever it took to rid the world of another monster.

  As expected, the swordsman didn’t just stand there and take Taylor’s attack head on. He was clearly weaker than his companion had been when it came to physical strength, but in Leo’s opinion, his speed made him far more dangerous. As he blurred out of the way, Taylor’s claws slashed through his afterimage, and she barely managed to twist around and deflect a slash aimed at her throat with her other hand. Before he could strike again, Leo reached him, swinging the mace down at his head with every fiber of his being.

  The man blurred again, slipping out of the way of the attack, and Leo detected his presence behind him. Throwing himself forward in a desperate dodge, Leo winced as the very tip of the man’s sword pierced into the muscle of his back. He’d managed to avoid most of the thrust, but hadn’t escaped completely unscathed.

  Though while the swordsman was busy trying to gut Leo, that gave Taylor another shot at him. Lashing out at his legs, Taylor managed to slice through his pant leg and score another bright red slash across his thigh before he could fully dodge, injecting him with just a little more poison than he’d held before.

  With a grunt, the man went for a two-pronged attack, slashing his sword at Taylor’s neck while lashing out at her ribcage with a speed-enhanced kick that probably had enough force to shatter bone. Leo jerked forward, barely managing to block the blade with the tip of his gauntlet and stop it from beheading his partner. Somehow, Taylor had held full faith that he’d manage to be there in time to stop the strike, as she’d ignored it entirely. Instead, she chose to devote her full focus on catching the man’s foot, willingly breaking a few of her ribs from the impact as she did so. Before he could yank his limb away, she sank her jagged teeth deep into his ankle, slicing through muscle and crunching through bone.

  The swordsman screamed as the feral woman’s teeth tore through his flesh, and he lashed out with a flurry of rapid strikes that blurred so fast Leo couldn’t even make them out. Unable to comprehend where they were aimed at, Leo simply followed through with his earlier block, letting the momentum from his desperate lunge bring him between the two as he tanked the slashes against his back. He grit his teeth in pain as the sword flayed open his shirt and back alike, but he refused to move. With his Vigor and enhanced strength, he could handle the erratic slashes of a panicking swordsman.

  And boy was he panicking. Taylor was actively ripping and crunching her way through the man’s ankle like a magical beast herself, refusing to let go now that she finally had her claws sunk into his leg. The swordsman’s blind panic and pain seemed to prevent him from thinking clearly or put any real strength into his blows, and he never once aimed for any of Leo’s actual vitals. In the split second it took for Leo to recover his balance, he’d taken what felt like a dozen errant slashes across his back.

  That seemed like more than enough.

  With a roar that encompassed all of Leo’s rage at discovering a plot designed to kill thousands of innocent people, he spun around, smashing the woman’s mace he’d snagged against the swordsman’s chest. There was a familiar crunching of bone as he broke presumably every rib in the man’s body, and, with a loud snapping sound, the swordsman was hurled backwards, slamming against the far wall of the cavern. Blood erupted out of the man’s mouth as he impacted the wall, and he slid down to the floor, coughing and wheezing as he tried to suck in air through whatever damage Leo had done to him.

  And he was missing his foot.

  “Disgusting,” Taylor spat, making a face as she tossed the severed foot she was holding off to the side and tried to claw the blood from her tongue. “People taste gross.”

  “You’re the one who keeps biting them,” Leo chuckled, wincing at the fresh waves of pain the action caused him. He didn’t know just how bad his back was, but it felt like he was in pretty bad shape. Taylor’s wide eyes confirmed his suspicions as she peered at his back, and she gasped as she saw the extent of his injuries.

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  “Leo! Are you okay?!”

  “I’m fine. He didn’t cut anything beyond flesh and muscle from the feel of it. Stings like nothing you could imagine, but I’ll heal. How’s your shoulder?”

  “What, this?” Taylor scoffed, poking at the stab wound she’d taken on while Leo had been busy with the mace wielder. “Nothing major. It’ll heal.”

  “Thank the Lords,” Leo said, finally letting his shoulders sag a bit as he sighed. “I can’t believe it’s over.”

  “Not over yet,” Taylor said, narrowing her eyes as she looked at the still-wheezing swordsman. “He’s not dead.”

  “No, I suppose he’s not.”

  Without any further words needing to be shared between them, the two of them slowly but steadily walked over toward where the broken and battered swordsman lay. Seeing them approach, the man chuckled, coughing up another mouthful of blood as he did so.

  “Ah, finally remembered me?” he asked, laughing and coughing as he grinned at them with blood-stained teeth. “Took you long enough. You two clearly don’t know what you’re doing. You’re supposed to finish me off before you celebrate.”

  “Okay,” Taylor said, stepping forward and going to slash her claws through his throat.

  “Hold on,” Leo said, catching her wrist at the last second. “He might have information we can use. We’ll kill him, no question there. But let’s see what we can get from him first.”

  “Word of advice. Don’t start your interrogation informing your subject that you’ll kill them once you’re done,” the swordsman said, wheezing as he shook his head. “Idiots… You’re clearly two kids who are in far over your heads. Do you even know how to torture someone?”

  “We didn’t ask to be in this at all,” Leo frowned. “And I’m not planning on torturing anyone. Currently, you look like you’re in an excruciating amount of pain. I think you know as well as I do you’re not going to recover from this. With the sheer amount of speed you had, there’s no way you have any sort of durability or healing skill. If you help us, we can put you out of your misery. Otherwise, we can leave you here to spend the next few hours slowly drowning in your own blood.”

  “And you’re missing your foot,” Taylor added helpfully.

  “Well, would you look at that? Maybe you’re not total idiots after all,” the swordsman coughed, rolling his eyes as he looked at Taylor. “Well… at least one of you. What even is it you want to know? I’m just a common mook, for the record. I didn’t have any actual hand in putting this plan together.”

  “You seriously expect us to believe you’re just some hired hand?” Leo asked, staring at the broken man in disbelief. “Your soul is dampened, but you’re clearly powerful. What’s your soul rank? Twenty-five? Thirty?”

  “Oh, there you go showing just how little you truly know again,” the man laughed, wincing as he did so. “You think you’re swimming in the deep end of the pool, when you’re actually still treading water over an ocean far more vast than you could possibly imagine.”

  “What’s a pool?” Taylor asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” Leo sighed, already growing tired of this. “Look, that’s very poetic of you, and not at all bad for last words to be remembered by. But it doesn’t really do us any good. What do you mean?”

  “There are thousands of agents under the Planar Lords’ command with soul ranks in the thirties,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not kidding, I’m a nobody. Bottom of the barrel, if I’m being honest with myself. Though it’s my own fault, really, I never exactly had that same upward drive most of the other agents seem to. Pushing through the twenties was hard enough, once I saw what was needed to advance through the thirties…” The swordsman paused, shaking his head and laughing weakly. “…yeah, not for me.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo asked, his face scrunched in confusion, and not a little bit of pain from his flayed-open back. “The Planar Lords couldn’t just provide you with all the gems and power you needed to cultivate?”

  “Ah, looks like not even being the son of two famous cartographers gets you special treatment on that front, huh?” the man grinned, coughing up another mouthful of blood. “You think cultivating is difficult now? You haven’t even gotten started. The road from a soul rank of 1 to 10 is so short and practically nonexistent we really consider all of those gem holders the same. Little more than infants. Rank 11 to 20 is a little harder, but nothing anyone can’t handle with enough power at your fingertips. But after that…”

  His grin widened, his blood-stained teeth imprinting themselves into Leo’s memories as the man chose his words carefully. “…Let’s just say you’re in for an interesting experience. You wouldn’t even understand what I mean if I tried to explain it to you, which is why we don’t bother to tell anyone before they hit a soul rank of 20 and experience it for themselves.”

  Leo didn’t like how the man grinned while teasing them with this information, but he liked the idea of there being some grand secret his parents had kept from him even less. The fact that they didn’t think he was ready even after he spent his entire life preparing to follow in their footsteps and become a Cartographer himself hurt in a way he’d never quite felt before. As if he’d let his parents down for the very first time, without even knowing it. Taylor must have seen the look on his face, because she took his hand in her own.

  “Well figure it out together,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “Yeah,” he nodded, the warmth from her smile banishing the bad feeling just as quickly as it had come. “We will.”

  “Wow. You two make a beautiful couple,” the man coughed, shaking his head as he let out a strained sigh. “Shame you’re going to die like all the others.”

  “We already took out Ghost,” Leo said, unable to help himself from feeling pride at the shocked look on the swordsman’s face. “He’s not coming back to finish the job.”

  “Seriously? Damn, I feel a little better about losing now,” the man admitted, before laughing so hard it quickly transitioned into a coughing fit. Eventually managing to draw breath once his latest fit subsided, he grinned. “Remember how I mentioned you two obviously didn’t know what you were doing? For starters, you clearly don’t know how far down you need to dig to reach the core of a gargantuan plane.”

  and missing a foot.

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