Isaac appeared in a swirl of shadows so thick that not even the drow ranger's perfect night vision could see through them. His sword was boosted to its safe limit, so Isaac wouldn't have to worry about most armors, and he was already mid attack. The ranger twisted as he pulled his hunting knife out of its scabbard and barely managed to intercept the heavy downwards chop with its small crossguard at the base of its blade. Isaac's sword bit into the metal and the ranger's eyes went wide. Nothing had ever managed to even force him to sharpen the blade, let alone damage it.

Isaac's sword lacked friction along its sides so it easily slipped out of the trough that it had carved into the ranger's knife and he thrust forwards with lethal intent. Isaac hadn't bothered shrouding himself when he teleported over to the final ranger. The ranger's level meant that he was definitely more than capable of feeling the shadow of Isaac's bloodlust as he attempted to make a killing strike. Knowing that, Isaac had opted to just boost his sword to a level where it didn't matter what the ranger did, he would still just be cut in half. Well, that was the plan. When the plan had failed, Isaac was surprised but not entirely caught off guard. One thing that Isaac had learned over the last year was that nothing ever went according to plan. He had just gotten better at going with the flow.

The ranger's knife parried Isaac's thrust but not before it lost another few percent of its durability. If things continued as they were, Isaac would just end up cutting through the knife. Isaac turned his parried attack into a quick horizontal slash that was caught by the other side of the knife's blade, further threatening its integrity. The ranger got his hatchet up in time to push Isaac's next thrust off course but it was not quite enough. The edge of Isaac's blade passed cleanly through the ranger's leather shoulder guard, to call it a pauldron would be an overstatement as it looked like it was just enough leather to keep him from getting hurt if he fell. It had been enchanted to a level where it should have been able to stop almost any sword swing but Isaac's sword cut through it as if it was paper machete.

Isaac teleported behind the ranger, already in mid thrust. "Gia," The ranger began.

Isaac was surprised as the ranger caught Isaac's stab, without looking, with the flat of the hatchet. The entire head of the hatchet was only about the size of Isaac's palm. The act instantly put Isaac on high alert. The ranger apparently had eyes in the back of his head or some other way to know exactly what Isaac was going to do. Isaac's sword skipped off of the hatchet head and into the air above the ranger's shoulder.

"my steps are yours." The ranger finished and flipped around to face Isaac in the time it took him to recover from the awkward position his blocked attack had left him in. The ranger's boots had fused with the stone beneath them and had rotated around his center of gravity in order to point his front at Isaac as quickly as possible.

Isaac sent another flurry of attacks that kept the ranger on the defensive but weren't able to end the battle. What was certain, was that Isaac was going to end up cutting through the ranger's weapons and then killing him. Something else that was certain, was that the ranger was not alone. The leader of the assassins, the second one at level twenty, rushed into the side tunnel where Isaac and the ranger's battle had been going on for seven full seconds. It had only been ten seconds since Isaac had vanished from the caravan and he wasn't done with what he had wanted to do. There were still three scouts on the run.

The reason why the scouts and rangers ran was simple, they were not true combatants. Their job was to hunt monsters, report on enemy movements, guide the wildlife to do what high command wanted, and occasionally engage in mild acts of sabotage. Fighting in a head to head was something that was only supposed to be done as a last resort. Despite that fact, the ranger was proving to be far more difficult to kill than Isaac had both expected and hoped.

If it wasn't for the unreasonably expensive hatchet and knife, the ranger would have already been slain a dozen times over. Now, with the leader of the assassins on the way, Isaac was about to be in some serious trouble if he didn't change things up.

Isaac cut the power to his sword and sucked in all of the shadows that had just been shrouding himself with. He used all of that power to boost himself up to around five times his normal strength and speed. At the same time, his offhand found his belt and doubled his gravity. Isaac launched at the ranger with far more speed and power than he was expecting. Isaac's sword could no longer carve through steel armor as if it were made of butter, but it was still enough for his considerable strength to force through most standard armors. Anything made of unenchanted steel or lightly enchanted leather would hold up admirably but ultimately fail from a single dedicated strike. The ranger's armor was made of falling-shadow leather which made it tougher than most and it was also heavily enchanted. The armor would now do its job against Isaac's sword but it could do nothing that normal leather couldn't do against Isaac's raw strength.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Truth shot out in a thrust that carried with it far too much force. The ranger's parry attempt saved his life but only barely. The combination of an attempted dodge with the parry attempt meant that Isaac's sword only managed to get itself lodged in the ranger's lung. The armor had done its job, it had prevented Isaac from stabbing cleanly through the ranger, but it had ultimately failed against the incredible amount of force behind the perfect point of Isaac's Truth.

Isaac yanked out the blade and teleported behind the ranger. As he did so, he turned his yanking of the blade into a horizontal slice that was meant to remove the ranger's head from his shoulders. The ranger was yanked forwards by the ground itself even as Isaac felt the ranger begin to heal. The ranger spun around and swung his hatchet down at Isaac. At the same time, a spike of stone shot out from the ground from the exact opposite side. The attacks' trajectories made sure that they would either collide with Isaac or each other.

Isaac teleported behind the ranger again, this time to dodge and to keep the rapidly approaching assassin on the opposite side of the ranger from himself, and tried to end things again. This time, Isaac's sword punched through the back armor and found itself in the same lung that he had punctured before, just as his hatchet split the stone spike in two. The ranger's uncanny ability to dodge in just the right way to prevent a lethal injury was as astounding as it was annoying.

'Just fucking die already!' Isaac swore in his head as the ranger spun around again to face him. Pink foam was starting to bubble out of the wound in his chest but the ranger's total focus on Isaac never slipped. A throwing knife went flying over the ranger's shoulder directly at Isaac's face which forced him to lean to the side as he made his next strike at the ranger. From the lean, Isaac could see down the tunnel past the ranger and the assassin and his eyes only confirmed what his Polarity Sense was telling him. 'I'm getting jumped.' His internal monologue sounded out with nothing but pure indignance. The paladin in charge of the soldier squad was charging up the tunnel behind the assassin.

Isaac needed a moment to come up with a plan of attack for each of the three high level combatants attempting to counter ambush his counter ambush. The paladin was level nineteen and was definitely from Contantis, a V'Nova city, which made his oath definitely be towards his ancestors. That paladin type was primarily defensive when it came to their aura and he would definitely make sure to heal any wounds any of the leaders sustained. The ranger seemed to specialize in stone magic and threat detection or heightened perception of some kind yet still had healing magic that was currently being used. And the assassin was, well, an assassin.

Isaac jumped backwards as he withdrew from the immediate melee confrontation with the ranger. The assassin was already less than ten feet away from the ranger and the paladin was only around twenty feet behind him. Isaac sighed. "I'll deal with the three of you later." He told them and then vanished. Isaac appeared a dozen feet behind the paladin and then shadow-stepped another three times in rapid succession to get to the first of the fleeing scouts. The scout attempted to dodge but the obscene force behind Isaac's upwards swing blew through the woman's guard and got his sword stuck halfway through her chest as she impacted the ceiling. Isaac quickly cut off her head and then shadow-stepped another eight times to get to the final two scouts. He could hear the curses and swears of the three leaders as Isaac finished most of what he had set out to do.

As Isaac appeared between the final two scouts, he back kicked and thrust his sword forwards at the same time. The scout behind him was launched back down the tunnel as Isaac's sword punched straight through the frontmost scout's back. Isaac teleported to be directly in front of the front scout as he tried to turn around. A quick slash removed his head from his body and Isaac was already upon the final scout before the second one had even hit the ground. The final scout had hit the ground however, six times as a matter of fact, and had just managed to get his feet under him as Isaac appeared and removed his head from his shoulders as well. With that, all but the final ranger were dispatched of the six that had attempted to run. It had only been around thirty seconds since he had first appeared and five drow were dead.

Isaac stood over the final scout as five assassins, one mage, and three warriors all turned to look at him. At the rate that his boosting skill was at, his mind was also working at five times the speed. That meant that he had just enough time to frown in thought at how he was going to kill the ranger. If Shamesh or Lenna were there, preferably both, then he could finish off the ranger by winning a battle of attrition. The problem would arise if the ranger decided to make a break for it while Isaac helped clean up the rest of the under-leveled combatants and the mage. The mage was also going to be more trouble than he was worth if Isaac didn't get good back up.

Isaac lowered his boosting ability and dedicated a chunk of the now spare power to encasing himself in his shadow-cloak so he could avoid the detection of the weaker enemies. The rest of his regeneration rate would go to refilling his reserves that had taken a hit from all of the shadow-steps that he had done while his regeneration and expenditure rate had been breaking even from his sword and boosting skill combined. Doing that would let him get ready for the next major confrontation while still keeping him safe as he waited for backup to arrive. Isaac also tactically moved himself from the position that he had vanished from just in case the enemy mage got any funny ideas about fireballs in an enclosed space. That was a classic of cornered and panicked mages. Only the gods knew how many poor party members and even the mages themselves died from a panic-cast fireball.

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