The panicked screams of the celestial elites filled the grand ballroom as the titanium blast doors sealed them in.

Dozens of highly trained heavily armored Spire Guards poured out from the secondary corridors. Their stun batons crackled with lethal energy.

"Take them alive!" Gildas shrieked. He cowered behind a marble pillar. "I want them audited and erased!"

Cassia did not hesitate. She reached down and her hands tore a hidden seam in her crimson gown.

The fabric fell away. It revealed the sleek tactical holsters strapped to her thighs.

She drew a pair of customized heavy duty stun pistols. Her silver eyes were cold and focused.

"We fight our way out," Cassia stated. She took aim at the closest squad of guards.

Arthur reached out. His heavy hand clamped down on the barrel of her pistol and forced it toward the floor.

"No lethal force," Arthur commanded. His voice was a low absolute rumble.

"If we kill a sanctioned guard, the system hits us with the 500 percent Destruction Tax. We breach the debt limit, and we dissolve before we even reach the vault."

"They aren’t going to hold back, Arthur!" Cassia snapped.

She ducked as a compressed energy bolt shattered the crystal table next to them.

"I know," Arthur said. He rolled his broad shoulders. His tailored suit shifted as his dense muscles coiled tight. "That just means we have to be creative."

Arthur did not draw his sword. He stepped out from behind cover and completely exposed himself to the advancing guards.

"Fire!" the squad leader barked.

Three guards lunged forward. They swung their crackling stun batons in synchronized lethal arcs aimed at Arthur’s head and knees.

Arthur’s eyes went dark. Without the million fold multiplier to lean on, he had to rely entirely on the absolute basic martial arts.

He did not use reality manipulation. He used pure hyper efficient human anatomy.

"WHOOSH!"

Arthur blurred. He dropped under the first baton swing and stepped perfectly inside the guard’s defense.

He did not throw a punch. He extended his index and middle fingers and drove them with terrifying pinpoint accuracy into the exposed joint beneath the guard’s armpit.

"CRACK!"

It was the Nerve Pinch Protocol.

Arthur did not break the bone. He violently severed the guard’s internal mana conduit.

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed to the marble floor, completely paralyzed but very much alive.

Arthur did not stop moving. He pivoted on his heel and grabbed the second guard’s wrist.

He twisted his hips and utilized the man’s own kinetic momentum to flip him through the air.

Before the guard hit the ground, Arthur delivered a sharp brutal strike to the base of his neck. This instantly shut down his motor functions.

Cassia watched in awe for exactly half a second before her rogue instincts kicked in.

She moved like a lethal shadow and covered his blind spots.

She did not fire lethal rounds. She tossed a handful of customized high density flashbangs into the center of the advancing reinforcements.

"Close your eyes!" Cassia yelled.

"BOOM!"

A blinding explosion of pure magical noise and light detonated in the ballroom.

The guards shrieked. They dropped their weapons to clutch their bleeding ears.

Arthur moved through the smoke like a corporate assassin. He methodically took down the remaining squad.

A strike to the collarbone. A devastating chop to the radial nerve. He left a trail of groaning incapacitated bodies in his wake.

"Look out!" Cassia screamed.

Through the dissipating smoke, a guard had recovered faster than the others. He raised a heavy plasma rifle and his finger pulled the trigger.

He was not aiming at Arthur. He was aiming dead center at Cassia’s back.

Arthur did not think. He did not calculate the risk. He simply moved.

He lunged across the floor and violently shoved Cassia out of the way.

"Sizzle!"

The highly compressed plasma bolt slammed into Arthur’s right shoulder.

The heat was agonizing. It instantly burned through his tailored suit and seared his incredibly dense flesh.

Arthur gritted his teeth. He swallowed a grunt of pain as the smell of burnt meat filled the air.

He did not slow down. He spun around and grabbed a discarded stun baton off the floor.

He hurled it like a javelin. The heavy metal handle struck the shooter directly between the eyes and knocked him out cold.

Cassia scrambled to her feet. Her violet eyes were wide with genuine shock.

In her world, in the cutthroat ranks of the Bounty Hunters and Auditors, partners were just meat shields. No one took a hit for someone else unless there was a payout.

"You... you took a bullet for me," Cassia breathed. She stared at his smoking shoulder.

Arthur casually brushed the ashes off his sleeve, ignoring the agonizing burn.

He looked at her. His pitch black eyes were entirely unreadable. "I just love protecting my investments."

Before Cassia could say anything else, the massive titanium wall to their left violently buckled inward.

"KRAA-THOOM!"

The reinforced metal tore open like wet paper.

Stepping through the jagged hole, covered in brick dust and carrying his massive chipped broadsword, was Vane.

"The extraction vehicle is ready," Vane grunted. He looked at the groaning unconscious bodies littering the ballroom.

"Looks like you didn’t need the distraction."

"Let’s move," Arthur ordered.

[Ding!]

[14 Targets pacified. 0 Casualties. 0 percent Destruction Tax Incurred.]

They leaped through the breached wall.

They free fell into the smog choked air of the Margin and landed heavily on the roof of a waiting hover skiff.

Ten minutes later, they were locked safely inside the rusted heavily shielded safehouse in the lower slums.

The adrenaline of the heist slowly faded. It was replaced by the heavy tension of the room.

Arthur sat on a rusted metal crate. His coat was discarded, and his white shirt was stained with blood.

Cassia stood over him. She was carefully cleaning the plasma burn on his shoulder with a glowing high tier healing salve.

Her touch was surprisingly gentle, completely different from her deadly skill in the field.

Vane stood by the window and kept watch, but his eyes kept darting back to the two of them.

"You shouldn’t have done that," Cassia whispered. She wrapped a clean bandage tightly around his shoulder.

Her face was inches from his. Her silver eyes searched his dark gaze. "If that had hit your core, it would have killed you."

"It didn’t," Arthur replied simply. He did not pull away. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Cassia let out a soft exasperated sigh. She stepped back and created some distance.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the glowing carved crystal.

"We have the keys," Cassia announced. She held the access codes up to the dim light.

"The backdoor is open. But we have a serious problem."

Arthur rolled his shoulder to check out the bandage. "Let’s hear it."

"The vault isn’t just locked," Cassia said. Her voice dropped into a deadly serious tone.

"It’s guarded. By the only entity in this sector

I never wanted to cross paths with again.

"Inspector Sol."