Chapter 218: Someone Designed a Trap for My Rifle

Raven didn’t keep retreating once he recognized the ambush. He only changed position.

That was enough to confirm several things. The man beside the wagon shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Another moved behind a half-open doorway. And the angled metal plate still covered the most obvious line from which Raven would have used the Mk.I. They weren’t waiting for him to run. They were waiting for him to fight the way they believed he fought.

Raven scanned the street again. The wagon partially blocked the southern exit, two metal plates created angles capable of deflecting a frontal shot, and several windows appeared to have been sealed from inside. Too many sections of the street were deliberately empty for any of it to be accidental.

Roland moved to Raven’s right without looking directly at him. "I see five."

"Seven. The other two are farther back. They don’t want to be part of the first exchange."

Valeria stayed near the wall, where she could see both the warehouse and part of the alley. "Do you think the warehouse is actually involved?"

"Yes. I also think they want us to believe it’s the only thing that matters."

Elise studied the route they had entered through. "We can still withdraw that way before they close it completely."

Raven shook his head. "They already have another team covering it. They’re waiting for the reload."

Roland needed a moment to find the hidden positions. Then he nodded. "So they really did study the rumors."

"Enough to prepare a very expensive bad idea."

---

The first grenade came down from a rooftop before they could move. Raven saw the arc and recognized the cylinder before it hit the ground.

"Alchemical smoke."

The grenade bounced once and began releasing a gray-green cloud that irritated his eyes and throat even from several meters away. It wasn’t only visual cover. The mixture was probably designed to interfere with basic magical perception as well.

Raven didn’t retreat toward the position they expected. He raised his left hand and sent Ember Spark into the outer edge of the cloud, where the concentration was still lower. The mixture ignited unevenly. A short burst of flame shoved the smoke upward and toward the opposite facade, opening a narrow clear lane instead of allowing it to cover the entire street.

Roland gave a dry laugh. "That probably wasn’t in their plan."

"It is now."

Movement came too quickly from behind one of the plates. One of the attackers had interpreted the disruption in the smoke as Raven preparing to fire. Raven left the Mk.I hanging from its sling. Burst Step compressed the distance sideways rather than forward. The acceleration carried him out of the prepared firing lane and made the angled barrier meant to absorb his shot almost useless.

The man behind it turned too late. Raven crashed into his weapon arm, struck the wrist, redirected the sword, and drove a knee into his thigh before he could recover his stance. He didn’t need to finish him. He only needed to create enough space for the enemy formation to stop functioning as one piece.

Valeria understood immediately. Two Blood Threads shot from her hand and anchored to opposite sides of the alley. When another mercenary tried to close the gap, the threads wrapped around his ankles and pulled him down before he finished the step.

Roland fired overhead. The arrow wasn’t aimed at the man. It cut the cord holding a second grenade inside an open window. The cylinder dropped back into the room. Someone cursed loudly, and Raven heard several people retreating inside.

---

The enemy adjusted better the second time. A man with a reinforced shield emerged from the left while another briefly appeared on a rooftop. The shield carrier had far too much protection to be the person meant to end the fight. Bait. They wanted Raven to spend a round on something built to receive it.

He didn’t. The rooftop shooter waited half a second too long. That was the actual threat. Roland saw him almost at the same time.

"Above."

Raven used a short Burst Step and moved behind the wagon just as a bolt crossed the space where he had been. The movement punished his legs more than the previous one. Two rapid activations were already tightening his calves and joints. He saved the next use. There was too much fight left.

Elise advanced through the center behind a light barrier, enough to stop projectiles without turning half the street into rubble. Raven no longer needed to explain every detail to her. She understood when to protect and when to leave space for everyone else to move. That was progress. The problem was that the enemy had progressed too.

---

Raven identified the leader by the way the others looked toward him before correcting their positions. Not the armor or the weapon. Attention.

The man advanced with a short sword while trying to reestablish control over the formation. Raven found a metal bar beside a shattered crate and picked it up without taking his eyes off him. Predator’s Instinct tracked shoulders, hips, and gaze.

The leader feinted high and entered low. Raven let the movement begin. Then he turned. Kinetic Acceleration reinforced the entire sequence of the strike—hips, shoulder, arms. The metal bar came down on the man’s forward knee with all of that speed concentrated into one short impact.

CRACK.

The leader collapsed with a scream and lost the sword. Raven rotated the bar in his hands and prepared the second strike against the healthy leg. Not punishment. Mobility removal. If the man couldn’t move, he couldn’t keep controlling the fight.

Elise stepped between them and caught the bar before it came down. Raven stopped immediately. "Move."

"He can’t chase us anymore."

"He can still stand with help, use magic, give orders, or reach another weapon."

"Then we disarm him and restrain him. You don’t need to break the other leg."

The argument lasted less than two seconds. It was enough. The mercenary Valeria had knocked down cut through one of the Blood Threads, rolled beneath a window, and disappeared through a side passage that had just opened. Roland turned with the bow. Too late.

"One got away."

Raven looked at Elise. He didn’t raise his voice. "Later."

She understood from his tone that the discussion wasn’t over.

---

The real protected position revealed itself when the rest began retreating. An interior warehouse door opened, exposing a barrier much thicker than the ones outside. Behind it, three men were moving crates and documents toward a secondary exit. That was what the ambush had actually been protecting.

Raven dropped the metal bar and took hold of the Mk.I. The barrier was angled to deflect a frontal shot, exactly like the plates in the street. But now Raven already knew what they wanted him to do. He didn’t aim at the center. He moved two steps left.

"Valeria."

She followed the change in angle. "I see it."

From there, part of a side junction was exposed. Predator’s Instinct followed the mana rhythm across the surface until Raven caught the instant when the distribution weakened slightly during readjustment. He fired once. The Mk.I roared.

The round struck the junction, deformed the barrier inward, and opened a blue crack across the surface. It didn’t destroy it. It didn’t need to.

Valeria extended both hands and sent her Blood Threads through the opening before the barrier could stabilize. One wrapped around a wrist. Another closed around a throat. A third caught the leg of the man carrying the documents. She pulled, and all three went down.

"Now."

The barrier finished collapsing. Raven lowered the rifle without even attempting to reload. It had already done its job.

---

The fight ended a few minutes later. Seven captured, one escaped, two seriously injured, and no deaths.

Raven waited until Roland had secured the exits and Valeria confirmed that no attackers remained hidden before turning back toward Elise. "Don’t change an action in the middle of a plan again without warning me."

Elise finished securing the leader with a sacred restraint and looked up. "You were about to break his other knee after he was already incapacitated."

"Not for what we needed. He was still conscious, still giving orders, and still surrounded by people capable of moving him."

Elise stood. "That doesn’t make every amount of damage necessary."

Raven held her gaze. "I’m not arguing your morality. I’m arguing predictability. If there are things you won’t allow during an operation, I need to know that before I build the operation around you."

Elise frowned. "Preventing unnecessary cruelty shouldn’t require advance notice."

"And I shouldn’t discover your definition of unnecessary in the middle of a critical action."

She looked toward the passage where the eighth man had escaped. Raven continued without raising his voice.

"You can tell me there are actions you won’t support. I can work around that. What doesn’t work is changing the decision at the exact second I’m executing it and expecting nobody else to pay the cost."

"This time the cost was information."

"Yes."

Elise looked back at him. "And if I had let you continue, the cost would have been his other leg."

"Then before the next fight, we decide where that line is."

She remained silent for a moment. Then nodded. "That I can do."

It didn’t resolve the disagreement. But it turned it into something they could plan around. For now, that was enough.

---

Roland searched the leader and found a small waterproof notebook hidden beneath his clothes. "This looks more important than the money."

Raven took it. The pages didn’t contain assassination orders. They contained observations: estimated interval between shots, user response to smoke, probable Burst Step distance, reaction to angled barriers, behavior during reload. Some entries were complete. Others had blank spaces waiting for data.

Raven turned to the final page. There were additional payments listed for verified information on ammunition, residue, apparent consumption, and combat patterns. They hadn’t been hired only to defeat him. They had been hired to study him while trying.

Raven closed the notebook and looked toward the leader. "Now I have questions."

And he wasn’t going to start by asking who wanted the rifle.

He wanted to know who was turning every fight Raven entered into a laboratory test.