267 Chapter 267: Guerilla Warfare

"What do you mean we lost contact with Shi Bai's group?!"

Ji Xuan slammed his fist against a nearby tree in frustration, splintering the bark and causing the poor thing to waver. Fortunately, it didn't topple over from his punch, but there was a faint groan that almost seemed to express its agony.

"Exactly what we said, sir," the ninja dude replied coolly. "They went into sector 23B thirty minutes ago, and we lost contact with them fifteen minutes later. I immediately dispatched squad Zhao Ta Men to search for them, and they…were gone. There were traces of a fight, and after a preliminary investigation of the mana signatures left behind, we are confident that they have been eliminated and kicked out of the Spiritual Road after having their blood tokens taken."

"And I'm guessing the culprits are those two again?!" Ji Xuan demanded furiously. The silver-haired, handsome guy couldn't help but snarl in fury, his blue eyes almost sparkling with malice. "This is the sixth squad we've lost to them!"

"…yes. It's those two again." the ninja dude lowered his head, his tone almost resentful. Mostly because he knew what was coming next.

"Idiots! All of you are useless! Useless trash!"

Ji Xuan howled furiously, his mana erupting from his body and blowing up his surroundings. Despite being buffeted by the raging maelstrom of mana, the ninja dude remained kneeling calmly in front of his leader, unaffected save for his hair being ruffled by the violent winds.

Says the guy who does absolutely nothing but command us, he thought with a sneer. You call us useless, but what have you done other than rely on us to do our work? You have done nothing but sit there and give orders without lifting a single finger, and then blaming us when things don't go your way. Why don't you actually do something for once? See if you are more capable than us, if you will succeed if you were the one hunting them instead of us.

In the first place, the ninja dude wondered why this guy was so obsessed with Lilith Porter. He was essentially abusing his authority and position to get other people to chase his own girl for him. Actually, she wasn't even his girl. Normally, this would count as stalking, but with them all inside the Spiritual Road, nobody could do anything about it.

Once the Spiritual Road training camp ended, Lilith could lodge a complaint about his behavior, and he would get punished. However, given his status, Ji Xuan would probably get a slap on the wrist. Fortunately for Lilith, she would be able to get a restraining or protection order and he would be forced to stay away from her outside the Spiritual Road.

However, we had to survive the Spiritual Road training camp first.

"Fuck!" Ji Xuan continued to swear. "How many more people do we have left?"

"Probably less than twenty."

The ninja dude resisted the urge to say none. Even though they were mere trainees, they were still part of the Assassins Guild. It was just their bad luck to be contracted to this selfish, arrogant asshole who thought so highly of himself that he called himself the Spiritual Saint.

Ji Xuan was no saint. He was a fucking demon.

"Useless trash! How in the world did you Assassins get wrecked so badly by just two students?!"

"We're students too…and we are trainees. We haven't reached the full status of professional Assassins." Even as the ninja dude informed his employer that, he knew inwardly that the reason wouldn't fly.

"Shut up! Just do what I tell you to do! I'm paying you guys for a reason! Your services don't come cheap, and seriously, you haven't earned back your money's worth!"

That was because Ji Xuan was using the Assassins for personal reasons not exactly stipulated in the contract. If it was the other goals, which was to gain control of the Spiritual Road and dominate the other students, then the Assassins had definitely achieved that goal. Unfortunately, Ji Xuan had completely overlooked that because of his…well, lust.

However, he did have a point. Despite taking control of the Spiritual Road, the Assassins were still unable to get ahold of these two people, who continued to be a thorn in their side. Worse, with their steadily dwindling numbers, the Assassins were no longer able to control the territory they worked so hard to obtain.

They were losing control and were no longer dominating the Spiritual Road. With the Assassins weakened by the constant guerilla warfare, the other students had begun to retaliate.

It was no longer possible to suppress the survivors through force. Worse, these survivors were the strongest of the participants, the best of the elite, and the most cunning. They were no less troublesome than me and Lilith.

"We'll withdraw our contract if you're dissatisfied with our services, and refund you in full," the ninja dude finally spoke up.

"Running away now?!" Ji Xuan bellowed. "If you've signed a contract with me, then make sure you see it until the very end! Useless cowards!"

The ninja dude shrugged indifferently. "Since we're useless trash and cowards, then it makes no difference if we go all the way to the end or not. The only difference is that we'll probably incur more casualties. Therefore it's wiser for us to cut our losses before it's too late, and compensate you for not just getting what you wanted, but also for wasting your time. It's clear that you'll be able to handle this better than us anyway."

"W…what…what?!" Ji Xuan stammered, taken aback. "Don't you dare…!"

The ninja dude was about to retort when he suddenly paused and raised a hand to a com bead in his ear. It crackled to life and a panicked voice babbled from the other end.

"…squad Bei Da Bai just got defeated by those two again. They were ambushed by summoned Soul Beasts and were eliminated. We're down to fifteen men now." With a sigh, he rose to his feet, cupped his hands and lowered his head. "As I said, we'll cut our losses and refund you in full. The casualties are unacceptable."

"It's not as if your comrades are dead!" Ji Xuan howled.

"No, they aren't," the ninja dude agreed. "But the blow to our morale is crippling. Any more attempts to fight and prolong this inevitable defeat is a waste of time."

"Fuck! How are just two people giving you Assassins so much trouble!? We outnumbered them by fifty to two! By twenty-five times! How the hell did they turn the tables on us and reduce the deficit by so much?!"

"Guerilla warfare." Despite himself, the ninja dude was thoroughly impressed. "They made good use of the terrain and struck at our isolated forces. When you ordered us to search the Spiritual Road for those two, we were forced to spread out…that made us dangerously thin. They used the forest for cover to spring ambushes and take out our isolated groups one by one. Even though they were completely unable to fight our whole group head-on, by forcing us to split up into small groups to search for them, we ended up being the ones hunted down one by one. Even though we're trained in assassination techniques, we're not trained in jungle warfare or how to fight guerillas. Our targets tend to be…high-class and rich people hiding safely in urban environments."

"Bullshit!" Ji Xuan roared. He balled his fists, and then took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he contemplated for a few seconds, and then smiled. "If they're so good at ambushing us, why don't we set up a trap ourselves?"

The ninja dude tilted his head. "How, exactly?"

"Simple." Ji Xuan's grin grew wider. "We give them an invitation they can't refuse. We'll lure them to our remaining forces by giving them the chance to finish this once and for all. Since there aren't many of us left, they'll take the bait. This will probably be our last chance to crush them before we lose our numerical superiority."

"Why would they take the bait?" the ninja dude asked, bewildered. "They have been avoiding confrontation with our full force all this while, so I hardly think they will…"

"Oh, no…they will. Trust me." Ji Xuan's eyes gleamed malevolently. "Because I'll be using myself as bait. They'll only have this one time to destroy me and my schemes once and for all."

The ninja dude hesitated for a moment. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yeah…sometimes, the greatest success only comes about if you're bold enough to take the risk. It's high time I step out of hiding and start doing things personally."

The ninja dude suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. If only Ji Xuan was brave enough to do this from the start, then they wouldn't have lost so many of his comrades. Unfortunately, he was their client, and it was never a good idea to talk back and hack off someone who was paying you your salary.

Instead, he nodded obediently.

"I'll start strategizing and deploying," he said.

*

"This is definitely a trap."

"Gee, you think?" Lilith glared at me, sarcasm dripping from her every word. "Of course it's a trap. Why else would Ji Xuan reveal himself now, of all times?"

"Because he's an idiot."

Even though I knew that was the truth, I was also aware that he wasn't bluffing. I never thought we would be able to whittle their numbers down to a little over fifteen. We had taken out so many of those ninja dudes that I had lost count long ago.

That said, Ji Xuan wasn't a complete moron. He knew exactly how to bait the enemy toward himself. By gathering all of his forces in one place and presenting himself, he was essentially inviting us to finish this war once and for all. As long as we could eliminate him, his whole organization would fall apart and we would win a decisive victory without needing to worry about being hunted again. However, at the expense of rendering himself vulnerable to enemy attack, he was able to force us to fight in a place of his own choosing, and on his terms.

Except that I had no plans of fighting on his terms. If the guy thought he could lure me, of all people, into a trap, he had another thing coming. I was the one who essentially led his poor forces on a merry trip with my guerilla tactics and cornered him to this point, where he became desperate enough to stake everything on a last stand.

Honestly, the smart thing to do was to leave him be. He and his Assassin cronies would be forced to wait for someone who would never show up, staying high-strung and on guard until the end of the Spiritual Road training camp. I had no idea how long more it would go on, but it felt as if I had been here for months.

I wanted to go home already.

But I refused to give Ji Xuan and his lackeys the satisfaction of defeating me. Actually, I wanted to troll him.

"Let them wait. We're not stupid enough to walk into a trap."

"…yeah." Lilith didn't look satisfied, but she understood the wisdom of my decision. It sucked for her, especially since she wanted to at least get a punch in on the guy who made her life in the Spiritual Road so miserable, but fortunately common sense prevailed over her desire for revenge. "Let's go."

"Don't worry," I assured her with a grin. "Just imagine how furious that bastard will be when we never show up."

That earned a giggle from Lilith, and she nodded with a smile. "I would love to see the look on his face when he realizes we won't be biting."

"Exactly."

After spending so long launching guerilla strikes on Ji Xuan's forces, I saw no reason to alter my tactics and throw away my advantage by agreeing to his dumb "finish this once and for all" bullshit. Not when his forces still outnumbered us almost eight to one. Lilith and I probably could manage against fifteen, but there was still a huge risk involved. I would estimate our chances of victory to be about thirty percent. Forty, at most.

There were too many things that could go wrong, and I wasn't about to risk our necks for a slim chance of victory, however tempting it was to finish things once and for all. We could end up paying the price for being too impatient and overconfident. I had seen others succumb when they underestimated their opponent and walked right into a trap.

Of course, both Lilith and I could just summon our Soul Beasts and walk right into it, but even with overwhelming firepower on our side, we couldn't just blow the fifteen Assassins and Ji Xuan away. They were definitely aware of what kind of magic and summons we possessed, and they surely would have some sort of countermeasure prepared. If they were confident enough to lure us summoners into an ambush, then they most certainly had some way of dealing with our Soul Beasts. There was a possibility they were idiots who completely underestimated the power of our Soul Beasts, or that it never occurred to them, but like I said, it never paid to look down on the enemy. If they turned out to only be pretending to be stupid, then Lilith and I would be the morons walking into our own demise because of our arrogance and overconfidence.

"Besides," I added, remembering something when I caught sight of Lilith's wistful expression. "We have more than enough blood tokens between the both of us."

To emphasize my point, I scooped a bunch of blood tokens out from my pocket. Each of us had at least thirty blood tokens by now. The thing was that the Assassins we had subdued had also been collecting blood tokens of their own, having banded together to take out other students and groups in the Spiritual Road. It was only natural – their goal was to dominate the Spiritual Road and place the entire space under their control. At least that was Ji Xuan's goal, anyway. In any case, in order to achieve that vision, they had gone around crushing other students and groups in an organized effort. Thanks to that, whenever Lilith and I defeated them, we ended up obtaining the blood tokens that our fallen opponents in turn plundered from others.

"Yeah. If I get too greedy, I might end up losing everything instead." Lilith counted her own blood tokens, and nodded. I could see her suppressing the temptation to take the risk to acquire more of them. Honestly, if she still insisted on going to fight those guys, I would have just left her to do it alone. I wasn't obligated to participate in stupidity.

Fortunately, Lilith was intelligent enough to know when to hold back, and where her limits were.

"Let's go," I told her, and the two of us turned away from Ji Xuan's position to disappear deeper into the forest.