Stepping through the hidden door and down a short flight of stairs, Rast and Hiltina found themselves in a dimly lit corridor.
The hallway was empty—no guards to protect the hidden chamber, nothing like Hiltina had expected.
On second thought, it made sense. This was a small cult, established less than half a year ago. For them, installing a functional hidden door and posting a couple of sentries around the manor was already pushing the limits. Trying to mimic a movie-style secret base, with seven or eight verification layers to enter? That would have been far too much for these fledgling cultists.
They moved along the dark corridor, the walls intermittently illuminated by flickering yellow lights.
"By the way," Rast asked, breaking the silence, "once a Chariot reaches the third tier, can they always fight like you just did?"
He wasn't exaggerating. Hiltina's display earlier had exceeded even his expectations.
Sure, the name Chariot implied combat prowess, and Hiltina was two tiers higher than him. But cutting bullets in midair with a slender rapier? In this Night World echo, where the heaviest weapons were revolvers and bolt-action rifles, that was undeniably overpowered.
Compared to that, his own Tower tier, with its purely mental abilities, felt like a child picked up by the Night World and the Silent Master just to pass the time.
Who designed this kind of "career balance"?
Rast couldn't help but think back to his previous life in the game studio—the silent, sinister-looking balance designer who occasionally smirked at his screen.
"'Chariot' isn't my name," Hiltina said, a stray lock of hair bobbing atop her head.
"It's the name of my tier. And it's not as exaggerated as you think. I'm a special case for the third tier… one more Night World echo like that, and I'll be confident I can step up to the next level."
"Also, to be safe, besides using the Chariot tier ability, I activated my Night Blade as well."
"Night Blade?"
"Yeah—Night Blade. I understand it as 'the blade granted by the Night World to its chosen.'"
She paused, explaining further. "If you compare the different tiered sequences to different professions, even outside the Night World, you could train and role-play to approximate those professions through knowledge.
"But the Night Blade is different. It's a blessing, a divine endowment from the Night World to its chosen. Every Night Traveler has a unique one."
"To my knowledge, no two Night Blades have ever been identical."
She stopped walking. "Once you leave this historical echo and become a true Night Traveler, you'll receive your own unique Night Blade as well."
"It's said that the Night Blade reflects the inner landscape of the traveler's mind. Honestly, I'm curious… what kind of blade would your inner world produce?"
Of course, all of that assumed they actually survived Deep Blue Port. Hiltina didn't say it aloud, but they both understood the unspoken truth.
At the end of the corridor was a closed door. Through its seams, a faint light glimmered.
Rast approached, drawing his silver revolver and aiming at the latch.
Bang—
The latch splintered, and the door swung open.
"Freeze! West District Inspection Bureau!"
"On orders from Councilor Talis, we're searching this criminal hideout."
Beyond the wooden door was a stone altar. Ritual tools and offerings surrounded it, and at its center stood a black-iron sculpture.
A middle-aged man, dressed as a fisherman, was arranging ritual items. When he saw the intruders, his eyes flared with hatred.
"That old Talis again!" he spat. "I knew he'd covet the Master's relic."
"Even if the ritual fails, I won't let him succeed."
The fisherman-cult leader abandoned his preparations and grabbed a nearby shotgun—but he didn't aim at Rast or Hiltina. He pointed directly at the sculpture at the altar's center.
Bang bang bang… bang bang bang—
Six rapid shots.
It wasn't the cult leader firing—Rast had pulled the trigger first.
The first three bullets tore through the man's left and right wrists and his side, making the shotgun fall from his hands, his torso twisting in pain.
Then, his agony froze. Two bullets to the chest, one to the head.
The Mozambique Drill.
The final three rounds struck with surgical precision, erupting a fountain of blood and stealing the man's life in an instant.
"Impressive accuracy," Hiltina's brown eyes narrowed.
Ordinary marksmanship wouldn't impress her much. With the Chariot's tier enhancing her body, she had aced every live-fire course at Starlight University. But Rast had done this with a single-action revolver, six shots in two seconds—beyond the weapon's theoretical firing limit.
The only explanation: he was using a technique called single-action rapid fire, a method her shooting instructor had once described. By coordinating the hammer pull and trigger squeeze into a continuous rhythm, one could drastically reduce the interval between shots.
Normally, this technique sacrificed accuracy for rate of fire—landing one or two rounds on target from six was considered successful. Yet Rast had combined it with pinpoint precision.
Compared to his previous skill displays—cocktail mixing, carving—this was the true talent honed over countless loops in Deep Blue Port, engraved into his very bones.
"No choice. When it comes to self-amusement, what's more thrilling than a standoff with an entire city's police and the Royal Navy?" he said, spinning the revolver's cylinder and ejecting spent shells.
Had he not been endlessly experimenting with Deep Blue Port—RPGs to FPS, Red Dead to Vice City, Batman to Joker cosplay—he would have long gone insane in this hopeless cycle.
"So the little prank earlier was just part of your self-amusement? Even fooling a corpse?" Hiltina glanced at the fallen cult leader.
The poor man had died thinking his cult's downfall was all Councilor Talis's doing—someone Hiltina had never met.
"Not entirely," Rast shook his head. "He was the cult leader, a servant of the dark god…
"Though unlikely, if the god ever resurrected its servant, we'd have a problem. But now, even if he comes back, his first stop won't be us—it'll be Talis."
"Sounds even more… perverse," Hiltina murmured, a hint of disbelief in her tone.