Chapter 529: Smoke

Frowning slightly, Landon wondered what Christina was talking about. He was the one who invited her and, by extension, the officers from the Rockwell Kingdom, so naturally it was his idea...

Wait, Landon paused, going over the series of events from earlier today in his mind again.

Sure, he had planned on asking Christina to accompany him tonight, but strictly speaking, the idea of coming ashore and having dinner at the Dunne Family’s estate was first proposed to him by...

Suddenly, Landon felt someone embrace him from the side.

Christina had wrapped her arms around his chest, hugged him tightly, and was literally throwing all her weight onto him, but this was anything but an intimate gesture of affection.

The young girl’s face was deadly serious, even somewhat strained, and in the next instant, Landon understood why.

As the young pair of royals was still falling to the ground, Landon felt a burst of wind pass right above them and just barely managed to catch a glimpse of a black streak fly right through where, less than a second ago, his head had been.

*Bang!*

With a loud thud, Christina and Landon literally hit the deck.

At the same time, something pierced into the stone balcony wall with a metallic pang and stuck there.

An arrow? Landon quickly identified the black object, obviously painted that colour to make it even harder to see in the dark of night, and immediately understood what was happening, Assassin!

"Move!" Christina rolled, dragging the two of them away from the edge of the balcony.

Landon didn’t need to be told twice, cooperating with the younger girl who had just saved him from having his head blown off.

Another arrow came flying, but perhaps because they were too low to the ground now, it passed over them again and blew a hole in the balcony’s wooden door.

Scrambling behind a large stone pillar, Christina and Landon both drew their weapons and prepared to defend themselves, but to the latter’s horror, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t gather any strength from his Core.

Those in the Core Formation Realm were able to use the Spirit Qi stored in their dantian to empower themselves temporarily. The same went for drawing Martial Qi from their hearts to fortify their bodies.

In both cases, this kind of boost was fairly small and only lasted for a very short time, at least compared to what an Initiate-Realm master could muster, but it was much better than fighting with their raw physical strength alone.

Right now, however, Landon felt as if his Core was locked down and his meridians were filled with sludge. He hadn’t noticed earlier because he wasn’t consciously circulating his Spirit Qi, but now that he tried, it was painfully obvious.

As for his Martial Qi, that was slightly better, but not by much, with perhaps 10% of it accessible to him right now.

There was only one possible explanation; at some point during dinner tonight, he had been poisoned!

"Take this!" Christina, obviously having been prepared for this, stuffed a bottle into Landon’s mouth.

Gulping down the anti-toxin without hesitation, Landon gasped, "How did you..."

"I’ll explain later!" Christina cut him off, "Right now, we need to focus on... shit!"

Knocking Landon to the ground again, Christina shielded him as the stone pillar they were hiding behind exploded into pieces, probably having been hit by some kind of expendable Spirit Weapon.

"Damn it," Landon coughed out the dust he had breathed in just now, "Where is everyone else?"

With how much of a commotion the assassin was making now, it was odd that none of the soldiers or guards inside the Manor had responded yet, but recalling his own situation, Landon suddenly had a terrible thought, this whole thing was a trap, and we walked right into it!

"We need to get inside and hide!" Christina shouted, pulling a pair of metal canisters from her Space Bag and tossing them out onto the deck.

Immediately after, the two canisters exploded, releasing a thick cloud of smoke, along with some kind of glittering dust.

This was actually one of Marco’s inventions, something he had discovered accidentally during one of the steam engine explosions. When Lucas heard about it, he had named the device a ’smoke grenade’ and cooperated with the blacksmithing and alchemy teams to further refine it.

It was still a rather clunky device, and Christina wasn’t even sure how it worked, but that wasn’t important right now. What mattered was that the current iteration of smoke grenades was able to temporarily blind both the sight and Soul Sense of a Peak Soul Initiate.

Even her Master, a High Soul Adept, had said that these interesting little tools could dull her senses, making it like she was trying to peer through a layer of thin fog. It wasn’t enough to blind someone like her, but it did make locking onto targets much more difficult, especially at a distance.

Unfortunately, in their current open-air environment, Christina estimated this layer of cover would at best last for 100 seconds, and that was assuming the wind didn’t pick up.

"Can you move?" Christina asked, to which Landon nodded. The anti-toxin hadn’t quite kicked in yet, but running under his own muscles’ power wasn’t an issue.

A few more arrows came flying as the two young royals were strategizing, but thanks to the smokescreen, they didn’t pose an immediate threat.

Still, they had to move fast, so with Christina leading the way, the pair made a break for the doors, hoping to seek cover inside the thick stone walls of the Manor.

Unfortunately, before they could even take 5 steps, a shadowy figure lunged at them, stabbing out with a black dagger.

The bad thing about using these smoke grenades was that while it blinded outside opponents, it also blinded the user inside the smoke screen, so Christina wasn’t able to detect the presence of an enemy attacker until they were right on-top of them.

Nevertheless, she didn’t become flustered. Christina was naturally aware of the situation they were in and had not once dropped her guard.

Shoving the still recovering Landon out of the way with one hand, Christina stomped hard on the deck and used her other hand to swing her greatsword out with all her might, not bothering to conceal her true strength in the middle of this life-or-death crisis.

The attacker, dressed a black cape and wearing a mask, had clearly not anticipated the young girl to react so quickly and was forced to shift his dagger to block her attack, but when the two blades met, he instantly realized he had made a critical mistake.