Chapter Eleven: The Slayer

# Welcome to the match you've all been waiting for…#

# At my right, here he comes, the Undefeated Swordsman, The Slayer himself!!#

# From the left comes crowd favorite, Death!#

# Place your bets…..#

The sound blared from microphones in the arena. Today was the semifinal of a no-restraint the mixed style tournament ran by the boss.

It is been 3 days already.

Honestly, Kane hadn't expected to stay this long. He had been able to gather some information but as he was about to go slayer mode, he felt it.

The presence of a Shard.

Another one here? He thought. Are we being drawn to each other?

He had to stay and discover who it was.

He knew that Sophia and Luthen would be thinking something happened to him. But he also knew that they wouldn't look for him, partly because they were all still strangers to each other and partly because they had bigger fish to fry.

He had to wrap this up quickly and join them. Who knows what information they may have been able to gather or what they had been planning?

But first, he had to take care of this match.

*******

# Still undefeated, The Slayer! #

# Next match, finals!#

# The Slayer vs. five-time champion, Almighty

Today's fight had ended with the opponent unconscious and bleeding. Kane hadn't sustained any injuries from any of his matches so far. His opponents strength increased the further they advanced into this tournament but it all paled when compared to a Shard's might. To mask his ridiculous strength, he had to take it easy on them. But they all ended up in similar near-death experiences.

He advanced faster than anyone in the tournament. Except his next opponent, the five times undefeated champion, Almighty. If Kane had to guess who the Shard was, he would bet on that guy. The matches he had watched of the champion were brutal. He could determine that the champion used some restraint but to a far lesser extent than he did.

He was, however, quite relieved that his self-imposed mission would end tomorrow with the final match of the tournament. He thought of Luthen and Sophia and sighed. He had to focus on tomorrow. He was thinking of them too much.

They would have to wait.

*******

Next day.

They would been waiting for Kane for 4 days. Sophia could not delay it any longer. Luthen agreed too.

"We've got to do this today." He said that morning.

"Yes I am tired of waiting. Why do you think he did not come back?"

"Maybe he got cold feet. This isn't exactly a piece of cake, you know." He replied

"He just doesn't look like the kind of person to quit." She said

"If anything did happen, He can take it on by himself. " Luthen was sure of that.

They had more things to worry about.

"You remember the plan?"

"Yeah." Luthen said.

"Okay then. Let's head out."

*******

To enter the Archive, Sophia would pretend to follow the tour group while Luthen would just teleport inside the building. Using the building's blueprints and confirming from the tour guide, they would be able to locate the exact position of the Archive's vault and also if there were any other security measures.

Normally, it would be near impossible for Luthen at his current strength to teleport into the interior of a building that he had never seen or was not seeing currently. This could now be achieved by viewing the destination through Spatial World and then teleporting inside. He just had to be close enough.

Luthen teleported into the Archive's record vault to disable any traps present before going back to collect Sophia

He could have just come himself, but he did not know how to read the archaic language the older records were written in. Those languages, though, were still taught to Nobles and their heirs. So Sophia had to come with. He tried to stop her from joining the tour group and just teleporting directly into the building but she refused.

Sophia slipped from the tour group at Luthen's signal and they both got teleported into the Archive.

It took some minutes for Sophia to overcome her initial awe. The entire place looked like a library and was packed full of books, ancient scrolls and files. It was in their favour that the only thing it lacked was a librarian. They would have to leave faster than they came if they were caught by one.

"Where do we start looking Sophia?"

"Uhm.. Let's start from the beginning?" She said. Luthen sighed.

This was going to be too much work and there was too little time. Since the Archive was mostly written in a language only Nobles could read, the Archive wasn't ever broken into. No self-respecting Noble would think to do that – except Sophia. In fact, since its formation centuries ago, the Archive had never been broken into. That explained the lax security around the Archive's vault. There were no guards around. The only security measures in place were automatic life sensors that swept through the vault every 2 hours.

They had entered the vault about a minute after the sensors had left. So they had the greater part of the 2 hours to work with. Luthen did not want to find out what happened if they got caught.