When Luke was in the national guard, he played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. One of his friends decided to play an orc rogue. Instead of investing in dexterity for the stealth stat that all rogues needed, the friend put everything into intimidation. When he wanted to sneak into a castle, he was spotted immediately. But then he yelled “You no see me,” and rolled intimidation instead. The castle guards quickly agreed that they hadn’t seen a thing.

  Luke knew that his real life skills didn’t lend themselves to the typical rogue style stealth. Instead, he decided it was time for intimidation style stealth. They would be too scared to spot him after what he was going to do to them.

  After the explosion of his power armor parts, the entire complex was alert and ready for action. No one had spotted Luke yet, but it was only a matter of time. He hopped over the glowing stone track that surrounded the three train station buildings. As he crept closer, he watched the soldiers jump into action, like a hive of ants after someone kicked over their anthill.

  The elven commander burst out of the smallest building to the south, near the gates to the city. He ran towards the metal gates, aiming to support the two guards there. He was still putting on his breastplate and held his sheathed sword in his hand. He clearly hadn’t been ready for the attack.

  His soldiers were slightly more prepared. The two men near the gate had already leveled their spears at it and were hiding behind tower shields. A chubby orc woman burst out of the maintenance shed, enormous axes in her hands. She was wearing heavy armor, poor quality but thick enough to withstand almost anything. She stopped at the doorway and scanned for threats, smart enough not to go running out into the night.

  No one ran out of the main train station. The two story building had at least four soldiers inside. They opened windows and peered out, most of them holding crossbows. Surprisingly, none of them had spotted Luke yet. Perhaps they had let the dim lights inside ruin their nightvision.

  Luke took the good luck and moved on to the next phase. He threw out his hand, pointing to a spot above the tiled roof. A gray mana blob appeared there and started bending and twisting. Violet lines started forming sharp edges and tracing out runes. Luke bit his lip, his Apex Machine skill took longer than the one that it replaced and that had never felt longer than right now. Eventually it was done and Luke still hadn’t been discovered. He threw a Greater Machine Soul inside the construct.

  Gamma, reporting for duty.

  Luke mentally replied “Execute commands ... now!”

  The runic tank activated its four spell mortars one after another. They shot high into the air; fire, lightning, ice, and rock spells slammed into the ground directly in front of the train station, one after another. Glass shattered and the front door splintered and broke. Behind the wooden door were thick sheets of metal, a barrier placed there in anticipation of a frontal attack.

  The soldiers were disciplined. None of them moved from their posts, simply calling out where they thought the attacks were coming from. All of them were wrong since they hadn’t expected a mortar style spell to originate directly atop them. All of them except one.

  The rotund orc woman pointed directly towards the tank hovering over the roof and shouted, “Construct on the roof!”

  Gamma immediately responded by swiveling and firing the main gun. A comet of fire and doom streaked across the night sky and impacted the orc directly. She had seen the attack coming, and crossed her axes in front of her face. At the moment of impact, a shimmering green field covered her heavy armor and weapons. The huge projectile shattered off her bulwark, burning the grass and dirt around her.

  She dropped her axes to the ground, panting from exertion. She wasn’t wholly unharmed, her face was scalded and her gauntlets were smoking. A slim elf stepped out from behind her, a longbow raised to fire back at Luke’s summoned tank.

  The tank’s cannon fired again, a second comet streaking through the air to slam into the pair. The rotund lady had just enough time to widen her eyes before it hit. Without the protection from the orc’s skill, the comet slammed into both of them and knocked them back into the maintenance shed.

  Luke had watched this all unfold out of the corner of his eyes as he raced towards the train station. He didn’t see what happened to the pair afterwards because he was getting too close to the building. He was coming at it from the northern side, the one without windows or doors. The western face was the front, but he wasn’t headed there.

  They were holding Kruro in the only room in the building without external windows, the station master’s office. The broodmother’s map showed that the room was on northern wall with a single door to the interior of the building. Luke knew that door would be heavily guarded, so he wasn’t going to use it.

  He ran full speed at the western wall and kicked forward with his metal leg. Last week it would have been a tossup between which would fail first, the wooden wall or his precise prosthetic. But after days of Armor Repair passively improving his leg, the result wasn’t in question. His metal foot crashed through the wall, sending a spray of splinters and broken boards.

  The kick blasted a hole in the wall big enough for Luke to duck through. He slipped through the hole and took the room in. An instant later, he burst into action.

  The station master’s desk had been pushed to the side and Kruro was in the center of the room. Her long tail was coiled under her and her hands were bound above her head and a rope secured them to the light fixture in the ceiling. She had been hit by the wooden shrapnel, but her scales had turned it all aside.

  She wasn’t the only one in the room. A young elf stood near the door to the office on the other side of the room. He wore a blue uniform of the Empire and held a long spell rifle. He had been startled by the break in and was only now turning to see Luke.

  With a quick mental flex, a Blink Ball dropped into Luke’s hand. He slung it towards the young soldier, faster than a professional softball player. The elf just barely managed to duck out of the way. But there was a reason Luke threw it at him, because his spell would be successful whether or not it hit.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The Blink Ball whizzed past his shoulder and hit the office wall behind him. Luke was instantly teleported behind the soldier. A rifle shot fired off, and a purple flames hit where Luke had been standing a second before.

  Luke dropped to the ground and spun his tube around so it was almost touching the young man’s back. Then he fired off a dissever ray. The spell punched through the man’s chest, hollowing out a hole all the way through his body.

  The elf stumbled around to see Luke and put a hand to his chest. When it came back bloody, he fell to his knees. With his last erg of energy, he lifted his rifle.

  Luke used Variable Ammunition again and hit him with a phantom shot this time. An instant before the shot hit, the soldier's finger twitched and the rifle fired.

  Luke flared his Acuity and twitched out of the way, but the rifle hadn’t been aimed at him. The young elf had realised he was dead before he fell to his knees. He had decided to aim and fire at Kruro.

  The rifle barked and the soldier fell. Luke watched in slow motion as purple flames shot out and impacted Kruro’s chest. He sprung into motion, kicking off the wall behind him to get there faster. As he raced across the room, the naga burned. Luke felt his Acuity ratchet up even higher, pushing his perception of time. That gave him more time to think, but didn’t get him there any faster. His Dexterity and Strength weren’t enough to outrun the damage.

  Kruro had her mouth open, screaming in pain. Luke couldn’t hear it, his mind was moving too fast. One hand was raised, to bat away the flames or something. The other hand was reaching into his satchel to get the last thing he had purchased today. A healing potion.

  He kept telling himself he would be fine, everything would be ok. A regular healing potion wouldn’t save her from a direct hit of spellfire, but it didn’t need to. It just needed to stabilize her. He could get a greater healing potion later, even if he had to steal it.

  An agonizing amount of time later, Luke was by her side. He had the healing potion opened and splashed some of it on her chest, dousing the last of the guttering purple flames.

  He hissed as time sped up again. The damage was severe, she had been burnt down to the bone. He reached up and yanked on the rope tying her to the ceiling. The rope wrenched the light out of the ceiling and he put an arm under her so he could lay her back.

  A twang ran through his core as his runic tank was dispelled and his Gamma was lost. He ignored it and focused on Kruro.

  With his right hand, he doused her chest with half of the healing potion. He brought the rest to her mouth, knowing that she needed to drink the rest.

  For the first time, he looked into her eyes. They were steely and she had her mouth clenched shut.

  “Open up, Kruro, I need to get the rest of this in you. Please, please open up,” Luke said.

  She looked like she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Her hands weakly twitched and then dropped. Her eyes dimmed and her mouth dropped open.

  Luke poured the rest of the healing potion down her mouth, but he knew it was a waste. She was dead. The healing potion he had doused her with had stopped healing her, her eyes were vacant.

  He blinked and looked around. His mind refused to believe. There had to be something. She couldn't be dead, he had saved her.

  Despite his disbelief, Kruro remained dead. He gently laid her down. He heard the shouts of the soldiers, calling out their locations and which areas were clear. It wouldn’t take them long to realize that the guy in this room wasn’t responding. They would burst in here soon. He needed to do something.

  Luke checked his mana. Twenty points. Enough for one use of Apex Machine and several shots with Variable Ammunition. Or Blink Ball, but he had already decided these soldiers were going to die. He wouldn't be running until they were all dead.

  “Infantryman Iken, report!” a voice shouted from the other side of the door.

  A calm certainty washed over Luke. They had found him and he knew exactly what he was going to do about it.

  He pointed at the ground nearby and activated Apex Machine. As the augmented vehicle was forming, Luke created a Blink Ball. He threw a Greater Machine Soul into the completed summons.

  Beta, reporting for duty.

  “Wait for instructions. Don’t let yourself get destroyed."

  Acknowledged.

  Luke turned and calmly walked out of the room, ducking out. He looked north to the nearby city wall. There were tracks so they could move it aside when the train came in, but at this point at night the wall was closed up tight. A guard stood atop the wall to the west, leaning over to watch the action below.

  “Halt. Drop the weapon. Put your hands on the ground!” a voice shouted nearby.

  A soldier had run around the building and was pointing a glowing spear at him.

  “Sure, I surrender. Let me throw this away,” Luke said calmly.

  With every bit of his enhanced strength, he threw the Blink Ball he had created earlier. As it arced up through the air, Luke put his fists on the ground.

  “Don’t move!”

  “Ah, well, the thing is that I’m gonna move soon whether you like it or not.”

  Luke didn’t catch what the soldier shouted back. He had reappeared outside the city walls where the ball had landed.

  He turned his attention to the Apex Machine still inside the station master’s office. “Detonate.”

  The runic drone exploded with a deep thump and a bright white flash. There was a faint hiss that he knew was an expanding ball of void black gas. Since the sphere of destruction was about a hundred feet wide, that likely took out the train station and all of his enemies. The system of the world agreed.

  Luke ignored the popups and focused on the future. The next time they sent someone after him, it wouldn’t be common soldiers that hadn’t passed their fourth threshold. Next time they would send the big guns, a Lord, or maybe even an Indomitable.

  Luke found that he didn’t much care.

  They had killed his friend. He was going to take down as many of them as they sent his way.

  The chapter title is a quote from The Wolverine (2013). FYI, if you got here early today, I changed the title from a silly one to one with more gravitas.

  Kruro is dead, may she rest in peace. Luke won't turn into a murderhobo after this, but it will be a turning point for the story.