Chapter 29: The Powers of A Theif

As I looked towards my teammates, the system suddenly gave me a notification.

[Would You Like To Know Your Powers?]

[Y/N]

I willed yes.

[—Thought Theft (Active)]

[—Swift Hands (Passive)]

[—Ability Theft (Active)]

[—Spiritual Intuition (Passive)]

[—Visceral Theft (Active)]

’Cool...’

Across the clearing, Arthur had stumbled backward over a jagged root, sword raised in a shaking grip that would not do him any good. A Yangereu towered over him, its shell catching what little light filtered through the canopy, both pincers drawn back and rising, aimed straight at his throat.

I did not remember deciding to move. My legs simply carried me forward, mud dragging at my boots, my heartbeat pounding somewhere behind my ears.

’Let’s use my new ability!’

I let my spiritual power enter the thoughts of the Yangereu. For one breathless instant, nothing happened.

Then its pincers simply stopped.

Frozen mid-strike, trembling faintly, as though the creature itself could not understand why its own limbs had betrayed it. Its eyes blinked, slow and confused, fixed on Arthur without truly seeing him anymore.

The Yangereu had forgotten what it was about to do.

This was the active ability called Thought Theft!

I ran towards the Yangereu and my sword swept forward swiftly and cleanly in a single unbroken arc.

The Yangereu’s head separated cleanly from its body, spinning once before it hit the mud with a thud.

This was the passive ability called Swift Hands!

I landed in a crouch beside the twitching corpse, breathing hard, and looked up at Arthur.

His eyes were so wide, so utterly disbelieving, that for one absurd moment I genuinely worried they might pop straight out of his skull.

"H-how did you—"

He never finished the sentence.

A strange sensation bloomed low in my stomach, cold and sudden, like a hand closing gently around something inside me that had no business being touched. I could not explain it. I did not try yet It simply existed, and it pulled my attention, hard and insistent, toward my own back.

I turned around before I had even consciously decided to.

A Suap was already airborne, jaws unhinged wide, three feet away from tearing into my spine.

This was the passive ability called Spiritual Intuition!

My sword moved before the thought had finished forming. A single low sweep, more instinct than intention, and the Suap’s charge ended in two separate, twitching halves that skidded past me into the underbrush.

I exhaled slowly, my pulse hammering, and forced myself to look past the two kills already steaming in the mud. The battlefield beyond was chaos: Yangereu skittering sideways on their legs, Suaps snapping and barking between them.

Scattered like this, we would bleed out one skirmish at a time.

"Let them all be in a single place!" I shouted.

Eliza’s head snapped toward me. Whatever she saw in my expression must have convinced her, because she did not ask why. She simply grabbed Theodore’s arm mid-swing and bolted, and Mary broke off her own fight a half second later, all three of them converging on one narrow stretch of ground.

The Yangereu and Suaps, hungry and single-minded, followed exactly as I had thought. They gathered in a churning, snarling knot around the space my teammates had just vacated, no longer scattered, no longer separate problems.

That was exactly what I needed.

I reached out again, spiritual power flooding outward in one hard, decisive push, straight into the collective thoughts of every Yangereu in that knot.

Their movements faltered, all at once, like puppets whose strings had gone slack.

They forgot what they were doing and they forgot what they were about to do!

"Now!"

Mary, Theodore, and Eliza scattered clear of the mutual point they had just been standing in, leaving the entire confused mass of Yangereu and Suaps stranded together, exposed, undefended.

I spun my head toward Eliza, "Eliza! Open the Traveller’s Door in front of me!"

She did not hesitate. Mist gathered in the air before me, curling and thickening, coalescing into the shape of a door etched with magical patterns. I did not wait for it to fully solidify.

I equipped the bell named of Voice of Death from my inventory, let my spiritual power flow in it and hurled it through the opening with everything I had

The Traveller’s Door vanished the instant the bell passed through it.

A heartbeat later, it reformed, this time hovering directly in front of the confused, huddled mass of Yangereu and Suaps.

The door opened and fog was let out of that door along with the voice of death that hung suspended in the air before our enemies, and I felt the pull of it like a string tied around my own ribs.

I willed it to ring and it rang.

Every Yangereu in that cluster dropped to its knees, shrieking in a voice that made my teeth ache, while the Suaps convulsed and barked in raw, mindless pain, utterly stripped of whatever coordination they had left.

Before a single one of them could recover, Eliza’s axe was already spinning through the air toward them.

A trail of purplish lightning followed the blade’s arc, shaped like a deer mid-leap, and passed straight through the writhing mass of enemies, leaving smoking wounds in its wake.

That was my chance.

I willed the glove to life.

A torrent of flame erupted from the glove’s maw, engulfing the Yangereu and Suaps within a blazing inferno.

Slash!

With a singular, devastating sweep of the blade, they collapsed.