Cheat Awakening

"You guys did a good job," Myne complimented, staring at a sixty-year-old man dressed in beggar's clothes, lying at the entrance of an alley, covered with tattered quilt from head to toe, in front of them. He gave a nod of approval to Gandu, who stood beside him.

"It's nothing, Your Highness. You gave the order, and we didn't fulfil it, how could this be possible?" Gandu replied with a humble expression. "Besides, catching those kidnappers benefits us too. Around 70% of us do business at night, but because of those scoundrels, we were forced to stop all our nighttime activities. It's been a major blow to our income." Gandu didn't miss the chance to bootlick Myne as he explained.

"Hmm."

Myne didn't say anything further and continued staring at the beggar's location, waiting for the mysterious kidnappers to arrive. Because the area selected for the operation was very secluded, and recent night attacks had scared most people, there was no sound of any people around them, and the atmosphere was eerily silent.

"Huh? What's that?"

An hour later, just as Myne was yawning uncontrollably and struggling to keep his eyes open, he suddenly noticed movement on top of a house across from them. His drowsiness vanished instantly.

"You guys stay here. I'm going to check out something," Leaving those words behind, before the other could react, Myne quickly used a combo of his various skills to enter invisibility mode and hurriedly left the house. The others quickly moved to the window, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had prompted Myne to rush outside, but they saw nothing unusual, and could only be looked at each other in confusion.

Outside, Myne didn't head straight for the rooftop. Instead, he paused in the middle of the road and used his Presence Detect skill. Soon, a small map of his 500-meter surroundings, with himself at the centre, appeared in his mind. But what surprised Myne was that there were only blue dots—indicating friendly units—appeared on the map. Not a single red dot was in sight.

"Was that my illusion? But I clearly saw that shadowy figure peeking at the beggar," Myne scratched his head in confusion, unsure whether he was just imagining things because of sleepiness."@@novelbin@@

"Anyway, since I'm already here, let's wait a while. If I continue to stay with those lazy people, I'm afraid I'll fall asleep." Shaking his head, Myne casually strolled around to stay awake. Soon, though, he grew bored. Thanks to his night vision, he didn't need any light to see in the dark, so he leaned against a wall across from the beggar, took out his half-finished book, and started reading to pass the time.

However, Myne didn't notice that five minutes after he immersed himself in the world of the book, the thick black fog slowly crept from the other end of the alley, swallowing everything in its path.

Thankfully, unlike Myne, who was unconcerned about the beggar's life or death and was extremely careless, the beggar himself was far from relaxed. Although he had accepted the mission knowing the risks and was ready to die, he still hoped to live a few more decades, after all, if he survived tonight, he would be going to a rich man. Out of nervousness, there was no way he could fall asleep.

The entire time, he was just pretending to be asleep. As soon as the dark fog appeared and began encircling him, he jolted awake and started making noise to alert the others to come to his aid.

"Ahhh! What is this? Damn, where is this black fog coming from?"

The beggar's shout successfully alerted everyone. Myne finally noticed that unbeknownst to him, a thick, dark fog had spread around him. Its thickness was so rich that he could hardly see the outline of the beggar, who was only seven meters away from him.

Myne quickly activated the Presence Detect skill again but still found no trace of any enemy nearby, which made him even more alert. No matter how he looked at it, this black fog wasn't normal—especially since it wasn't spreading everywhere randomly but only inside the alley as if controlled by someone.

His first thought was that the enemy might have a magical item that could evade his detection skill, which wasn't anything rare, he himself had a handful of such items in the market. Recalling the black shadow he'd seen on the rooftop, Myne's face soon became dark.

He hurriedly walked toward the beggar, stood beside him, placed his hand on the other party's shoulder, and firmly held him in place, stopping him from fleeing and potentially ruining their all efforts.

After all, the enemy clearly didn't want to reveal their identity, and for this, they were willing to go to great lengths to hide it. The area effect of the black fog was limited to the alley, and once the beggar ran away, it was highly likely that the opponent wouldn't show themselves. So, Myne had to stop the bait from getting away until the fish bit the hook.

However, what Myne didn't know was that his simple action of forcefully pinning down the beggar had left a deep psychological shadow in the other party's heart, and he was scared to the point of peeing his pants. After all, the beggar could clearly feel someone holding him tightly from his shoulder, but when he looked beside him, he found no one. With the specific area effect of the nighttime and surrounded by the black fog, hundreds of negative thoughts crossed his mind, and soon, the 60-year-old beggar couldn't take it anymore and fainted due to high blood pressure.

Whoosh!

The bagger's abnormal condition didn't attract Myne's attention at all, he didn't even realise that the other party had lost consciousness. Just when he was vigilantly observing his surroundings, he suddenly noticed a shadow rushing toward him with astonishing speed. Before he could see its appearance, he was hit by the other party's headbutt attack and flew out of the alley, rolling on the ground a few times.

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Myne didn't have time to think about how the other party could see him despite his invisibility. After stabilizing himself, he hurriedly rushed toward the beggar's location inside the thick fog, but sadly, it was too late, and he found no one there.

Not wanting to give up, Myne quickly rushed into the alley, but he had hardly gone twenty or thirty meters inside when something came beside him out of nowhere and punched him hard on his shoulder, sending him flying toward the nearby wall, and he was smashed into it like a rag doll.

Bang!

Myne hadn't even gotten up from the previous attack, and his head was feeling dizzy when suddenly a big figure appeared in front of him and kicked him hard on his stomach. The power was so great that Myne, while smashing through the wall behind him, crashed into a random house, bypassing the living area and entering the bedroom of the house owner by directly breaking the wall.

Thankfully, because of Hairless Gang's advanced preparation, the people inside had already moved to another location for tonight's operation, so there was no one to see Myne in such a miserable condition. However, it took him quite a bit of time to get back on his feet and rush back to the alley. Although he was badly beaten, thanks to OP skills like Ultra Regeneration and with a lot of mana stored in his inventory, his injuries recovered in a matter of seconds.

"F*ck, this black fog! I can hardly see within five meters. If this goes on like this, I can only take beatings passively," Myne complained irritably. This time, he didn't dare to rush into the black fog blindly to get beaten. He tried to look inside the fog to see if he could find anyone and attack from a long distance but sadly, the range of visibility was too limited. The enemy was also very professional and knew how to use their advantage to deal with him, leaving him no chance to counterattack.

Having no way to advance, Myne glanced at his skill page to see if there was any skill that could help him deal with the black fog, and quickly cast AoE Magic・Wind Maximum.

A green hexagram of three meters in diameter appeared a few meters away from Myne in the middle of the alley, and the next moment, a tornado five meters tall appeared before him. As the tornado rotated, the black fog was soon absorbed into it, and the visibility of the fog started to decrease, and Myne's visibility quickly recovered.

He moved the tornado toward the other entrance of the alley and slowly started following it with full alert, not wanting to give the enemy any chance to attack him again. For safety reasons, this time he also activated some defensive skills like Rock Skin, Iron Wall, and most importantly, Wind Shield, so even if he got attacked, at least he wouldn't be blown away and couldn't even see the face of his opponent.

It turned out that Myne's choice was correct. Only fifteen seconds later, as the tornado started absorbing the black fog, a shadowy figure on all fours rushed out of the black fog toward him with great speed and smashed its head hard on his Wind Shield, leaving a dense crack on it.