CHAPTER NINETY

Jason briefly turned to Danny. His friend was scowling angrily at the notification.

"Dang. I can't believe people have taken out targets already. I didn't think we were delayed that long."

Jason nodded.

"Yeah, me neither..."

This year's tournament was going to be harder than ever before. Normally, it took about thirty minutes or an hour before someone killed a Parachuter. Of course, it was a little easier to find one of the escape Mechs this round - normally, there was only a single one of the slippery machine. However, Jason hadn't expected four of the machines to die.

He couldn't help but wonder who'd killed them.

Jason couldn't wait to battle those skilled opponents in the final round, but he had to qualify first. Jason idly wondered if Castor was one of the winners, but there was no way to check the list of winners. The best option was to get going right away.

The Castle Notoria only had five entrances. There were five pitch-black towers built into the cliff wall. There was one in each cardinal direction and a fifth in the dead center of the castle. Steven had dropped Danny and Jason off at the very central tower.

Like all the other towers, the central tower was surrounded by a set of intricate spiked parapets. The complex design vaguely reminded Jason of a chain-link fence made of stone. It was pretty, but not much use against a giant Mech. At the center of each tower was a massive chute. Typically, the chutes were used as launching catapults, but they were also paths for tournament contestants to sneak inside.

Of course, the chutes were also swarming with opponents. Danny warned Jason as soon as they leapt inside.

"Watch for the walls. They have players hiding inside them. We got shot by a hidden rifle last time."

Jason nodded and followed him inside. Neither player bothered using their thrusters. Instead, they allowed gravity to take them straight down the chute. In fact, using their thrusters to control their descent throughout would actively harm them. The roar of their engines would echo through the narrow corridor and bring their enemies down on them. The best strategy was to wait for the last second until activating the thrusters to catch their fall.

As they fell, Jason closely followed Danny's suggestion by keeping his eye out on the surrounding walls. The corridor was quite dark, but the Red Minerva excelled in these conditions. The dark tube was quite similar to a cave and his partner's eyes gave him full vision of the surrounding area. He was ready to respond to even the tiniest glint.

On top of that, Jason also tracked his smell and hearing receptors.

But in the end, not even he could have anticipated the sudden ambush.

An entire piece of the wall suddenly unfolded and fell towards him. A pair of spindly arms brandishing a pair of massive curved knives slashed viciously.

What the hell?

Jason was so surprised that he couldn't even respond. He was just lucky that his machine had such great defense in its Assault Mode. The knives clanged uselessly against the Antigone Armor, giving Jason just enough time to scout out his opponent.

This machine could best be described as a wall Mech. It was built from the same kind of material as the wall that made the chute, which kept Jason's senses from detecting it ahead of time.

The machine attacked by unfurling itself from the side. The machine had no discernable legs - it was glued to the side of the hangar almost like a poster. The twin knives were grafted to its arms, which reminded Jason of a praying mantis. The machine's cockpit was a very small pod in the center. As the machine slashed at Jason again, he noticed a corresponding hole in the wall that allowed the cockpit to nestle against the chute without any issues.

Jason laughed. A specialized scout Mech that acted as part of the wall!

There really were no limits to the Illusionist's ingenuity. At first, Jason thought he could outrun the machine by simply continuing his fall, but the strange wall Mech rapidly slid after him. The machine's loud thrusters echoed through the chute, providing a warning to the rest of the fortress that Jason was coming.

Beside him, Danny was battling a similarly shaped opponent, and he was similarly surprised.

"What the hell is this?"

The Mech slashed yet again. This time, Jason activated his own thrusters. Now that his opponents knew he was here, there was no point being stealthy. He streaked straight ahead, tanking his opponent's attacks before smashing the wall Mech with his body. The thin machine instantly stopped moving.

Beside him, Danny had done the same thing to his opponent. He'd tanked a hit from the scythe-like arms before laying waste to it with his broadsword.

The wall machines were stealthy, but their strange construction meant they had innately poor defense. There was no way to buff up a machine that was as thin as a piece of paper.

The two of them wound up fighting two more pairs of wall Mechs, but in the end, they successfully made it to the bottom of the chute by using the same forceful attacks as before. Their machines hadn't taken much damage. The few cuts had only brought them down to around eighty-five percent health.

However, both of them knew that tougher opponents were coming. Their descent had been the exact opposite of stealthy. They'd created tons of noise smashing the wall Mechs into the sides of the launcher chute.

Danny confirmed Jason's suspicions.

"Yep. They know we're here. Let's take them out, there's no time for subtlety. We can go silent again later on."

Jason clasped his hands together and summoned his trusty Valorous Ji. The blazing weapon instantly lit up the corridor.

Beside him, Danny raised his broadsword. His other hand, the one that held the Angry Duck's luck-based weapons system, currently displayed a large ax. It was a solid roll, but Jason saw that Danny was planning to scramble it again. By combining his machine with the Searing Anger, Danny had greatly raised the floor of his old build. As a result, he could go for much greedier rolls than before.

The two players stiffened as they heard the footsteps coming. It was a mix of two-legged thuds and four-legged padded steps. The Bandits and Watchdogs were on their way.

Jason carefully watched the corridors in front of him. Now that they'd descended from the central chute, he was surrounded by four separate paths arranged in an "X." The noise was coming from the chute at the top-right.

The two players turned, then Danny and Jason grouped closely together, shifting so their two machines were back to back. Although they only heard noise from one angle, they knew better than to commit to a single direction. They wanted to protect each other if they were ever surrounded.

But to Jason's surprise, the enemies never came. Instead, a strange whirring sound resonated through the halls. It grew louder and louder. Jason heard the sound of cannon fire and howling. The telltale twang of the Bandit's bows echoed repeatedly. But then, the strange whirring crescendoed and the Illusionist's Grunts grew silent.

From the sounds of it, it sounded like some kind of chainsaw or maybe even a yo-yo. Although Jason had no idea who carried the strange weapon, he had to thank them.

At the end of the day, the Tournament of Assassins was a chaotic free-for-all. All of the alliances were out for themselves, and all of them were competing to kill the Illusionists. That meant that Jason and Danny had a lot of enemies, but sometimes things would turn out in their favor. The strange machine he'd heard had only been trying to protect itself, but it would up helping Jason too.

"Let's go this way."

Jason and Danny promptly started heading down the opposite corridor, the one pointing at the bottom left. If the other machine could take out a squadron of Grunts on its own, it was probably dangerous. There was no use charging in to engage them in a head-on battle. The fact that the Illusionists might send more guards further discouraged Jason and Danny from running down that path.

Jason and Danny continued down the opposite corridor for a while, but then Jason called for his teammate to halt as he spotted something strange.

"Stop. Wait a second."

Jason strained his eyes, closely watching the wall. He thought he spotted something strange in the distance.

"Do you mind if I check something? I think I see one of the wall Mechs."

Danny nodded, and Jason raised his beam rifle. The weapon was quieter than most firearms, so there was a slightly lower risk of discovery. Jason aimed, then fired. A red light lanced through the air, and then a small piece of the wall exploded.

A pair of scythe-like hands clattered uselessly to the floor.

Danny grinned.

"Nice one! How did you see that?"

After seeing the wall Mechs three times before, Jason was able to notice the subtle difference in color. If he had to guess, the Illusionists wanted to keep things somewhat fair despite the challenge.

"The patch of wall was a slightly different color. The Wall Mechs are just a little bit darker than the rest of the surroundings. Try to keep an eye out too."

Danny and Jason continued down the corridor. Just like during the first round of the tournament, the Illusionist's machines didn't have communication links. The guild could only respond if you made noise - killing enemies from far away stopped that from happening.

For a while, the corridor continued in a single path. Jason was able to identify and kill a second wall Mech, leaving the two of them largely unhindered.

They only found two other machines on their path, and both of them had been destroyed.

The first was a purple Kingbreaker whose head had been crushed by what looked like a giant foot. The other was the smoldering corpse of a Spell Titan. The frail form was covered in arrows.

Jason stored the information in the back of his head as he kept going. The second machine had clearly been killed by Bandits, but it was hard to say what had happened to the first unit. It might have been some kind of mini-boss, but it could have also been another competitor. Either way, Jason kept his eyes peeled.

Before long, the two friends found themselves facing a three-way fork in the road. Jason initially hoped to use the same trick as before. He and Danny would just listen and go where there weren't any sounds.

Unfortunately, everything was quiet. Instead, they decided to examine the corridors for clues.

The path to the left was covered with scorch marks. It seemed like someone had activated a massive roaring flame, though once again, Jason couldn't tell if this was a trap by the Illusionists or an attack from one of the machines.

The middle path was also damaged, but this time, the source was a little more obvious. A set of neat fists had been punched into the side of the wall, and there were many matching bullet holes dotted throughout the corridor. Both of them were the hallmarks of Castor's fighting style. Unlike the other competitors, it seemed like Castor had taken a direct approach. For all Jason knew, he might have already blasted through and killed one of the Parachuters.

The very last corridor was pristine and spotless. It seemed like nobody had chosen that path yet.

Danny turned to Jason.

"What do you think?"

Although Danny was typically the leader, he was unafraid to ask for advice when he was flummoxed. It seemed like this situation was just as confusing for him as it was for Jason.

Jason frowned.

He definitely didn't want to go down the middle path. If Castor was waiting for them, they'd probably lose. Even if he wasn't, Castor might have killed the target at the end of the hall. They would have wasted their time going down an effective dead end.

It was down to the first or the third path, and even that decision came down to a blind guess. If the scorch marks came from an attack, Jason and Danny should go down the third path. It'd be best to ignore any opponents if possible - there were enough Paranoid Parachuters to go around they could kill a target without going into combat. However, if the scorch marks came from a trap, then the first path was a much better option. They could go down a corridor after another unfortunate player had already triggered a dramatic fireball.

Unfortunately, there was just no way for Jason to tell which was the case. In that case, he'd rather go down the third path. It was still unmarked, which meant there was a better-than-expected chance it was occupied by a Parachuter who hadn't fled yet.

When Jason pointed out the path, Danny nodded.

"Yeah, I wasn't sure, so I wanted to hear what you thought, but I think this is our best bet too. I didn't want to gamble with the flames."

And so, the two friends took the path less traveled.

Unfortunately, they soon found out it was the wrong option. Within five minutes, they quickly hit a dead-end occupied by an Illusionist mini-boss. Spectral hands reached for walls, wrapping around the Red Minerva before Jason could react.