215 Ballista (2)

A kunai flashed in the night and a torch was suddenly snuffed out. It whistled by without a sound, cutting the torch down and sending it falling over the side of the wall.

The guard had just reached the furthest point from this particular torch and didn't notice anything immediately. All things considered, the torch was very light as well, so it didn't make much noise when it hit the ground on the inside of the village either.

Sylas continued to move. With one part of the wall covered in shadows, the next steps were even easier.

He rushed forward and pressed his back against the village walls. From this vantage point, even if a pig demon was right above him, it would be hard to see him unless they peeked all the way over.

Taking advantage of this, and using his visualization to perfect his timing, he knocked one torch over the wall after another.

"Hey! What the hell happened to the torches!"

The gruff voice of a Level 8 came from inside one of the outposts, and Sylas realized immediately that he wouldn't have the chance to knock down the rest of the torches. But that was fine, he had already knocked off a fourth of them, shrouding a quarter of the walls in darkness.

At the same time, while he wasn't trying to set the village on fire, it was inevitable that some carnage would be triggered.

Before anyone could respond, the head of a pig demon was lopped off by a kunai as Sylas used a second to leap up and onto a dark section of the walls.

He grabbed the body of the pig demon and stored it away before rushing to the side.

He didn't leap over the wall just yet. He had no idea what was going on in the village and didn't want to trap himself unnecessarily.

If all he could do was kill a few guards, that would still be fine. Then he would retreat and see what kind of response there would be.

The head of a second Level 7 was thrown into the air, and he stored away this corpse as well.

At this moment, the Level 8 pig demon walked to the window of the outpost, looking out with a frown. A whiff of wind caught their large nostrils, and their eyes widened.

"ENEMY ATTACK!"

Sylas was caught off guard by this and immediately concluded that these pig demons had an exceptional sense of smell.

He remembered that the gnolls had as well. It seemed he was unlucky to continuously run into humanoid beasts like this.

The question was whether it had caught onto his scent or had noticed the fragrance of blood in the air.

Sylas bolted forward as the pig demon reached back into the outpost to pull out a pair of night vision binoculars. Just as it was going to raise it to its head, its nose twitched again and it immediately looked in Sylas' direction.

The reaction of the pig demon was quick and it had a crossbow at the ready. It wasn't a crossbow as large as the one that was mounted to the outpost. That one was far too big to ready in such short order, but this one was lethal in its own right.

It aimed toward where it sensed Sylas and fired.

Sylas wasn't going to make it.

The outpost was inside the village walls, and was about five or meters from the wall itself. Just to get to the closest section of the wall to it, Sylas would have to run another 10 or so meters and then leap across the air and hope his stats were enough to cross a five-meter distance.

The only option seemed to be to fall from the city walls and try again another time.

But that wasn't the decision he made. In fact, his gaze was frighteningly sharp at that moment and almost seemed to emit their own glow.

He was still a distance away, but he wasn't racing to kill the Level 8, he was racing to enter a 20-meter range so that his visualization could lock onto everything.

And he was already in range.

The pig demon clicked and fired, a bolt streaming across the air.

And yet, just when it seemed it would pierce Sylas, he flicked a finger and the bolt was deflected high into the skies. Before it could spiral out of control, it stopped in the air, aimed toward the pig demon, and fired.

The pig demon, who had been waiting to hear shots of pain and was prepared to celebrate his victory, had his throat ripped through in the next instant.

The bolt was powerful but not more powerful than Sylas' telekinesis.

A light weapon, only good for its speed, wasn't able to stop Sylas now unless it could exert more Physical than he could.

But a purely mechanical weapon like this one had no ability to do so, especially not in the hands of a pig demon like this one.

Sylas crossed the last ten-meter distance and stomped on the edge of the wall hard.

The second Level 8 was slow to react, and at that moment, a crossbow appeared out of Sylas' Madness Key.

With a pinch of his telekinesis, it fired.

Blood spurted and the second Level 8 died before it could even understand the situation.

Sylas quickly fell through the air and managed to catch onto the edge of the outpost before quickly pulling himself up.

His figure was seen for a brief instant thanks to the flickering torches rolling around on the ground inside the wall and all of the pig demons seemed to roar to life.

But Sylas was entirely focused on something else.

'How heavy is this thing?'

He looked to the side and found baskets filled with thick crossbow bolts that must have been at least two meters in length. There were easily about a hundred of them in this outpost alone.

Sylas stored them all away, then without hesitation, he levied a forceful kick against the mounted crossbow, knocking it off the outpost and sweeping down toward it as the village roared to life.