Wraith Dashed toward Sakura with her saber poised to strike.

  She spun out of the way at the last possible moment, catching a glimpse of something coating the blade when it reflected the moonlight. She’s using poison too, or something just as dangerous.

  Sakura wasn’t a warrior, but she had put in long hours training with her short sword. On Ord, any creature that couldn’t defend itself in a pinch was destined to die young. Wraith was a superior swordswoman and had far more combat experience. However, she didn’t seem to be using any skills to bolster her strikes, which let Sakura endure her attacks by the narrowest of margins.

  The clanging chime of steel striking steel rang out across the rooftop as she blocked and dodged for everything she was worth. She almost died when the woman lashed out with the dagger she was holding in her offhand, waiting until Sakura had adapted to the tempo of her attacks before adding another weapon to catch her off-guard.

  Lore-Weaver’s warning let her Dart to safety with inches to spare, teleporting ten feet away in the blink of an eye. While the move caught Wraith by surprise, she didn’t miss a beat, throwing her knife and drawing another before rushing back into the fray.

  This was a worst-case scenario for Sakura’s style of engagement. Instead of studying her enemy and arranging the board to her advantage, she had been forced into a direct confrontation with a powerful opponent while flying blind.

  She was in serious trouble, but the situation was far from hopeless.

  Shortly after ratifying their contract, Lore-Weaver had helped Sakura obtain the Unique skill, Profile. Profile was a passive power that let her discern the nature of her opponents’ implants, traits, and skillsets. It couldn’t provide minute details, but the longer she stood near her enemy, the better sense she had of their capabilities, tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses.

  The problem was, Profile was telling her that Wraith was using an informational skill too. It operated by a different principle and was far more expensive to maintain, but it was more powerful over the short term and negated the advantages Profile provided. If Sakura wasn’t careful, Wraith was going to obtain enough data to outmaneuver her, and she wouldn’t live five seconds past that point.

  She had a pair of aces up her sleeve, but they were going to take some time to prepare, which meant Sakura needed to force the jailbird to deactivate her info-gathering skill before it learned too much. After Darting out of the way of a vicious flurry of stabs, she reached to her belt and unclipped a pair of Disruption grenades while pulling the pin on a third.

  She lobbed the devices along Wraith’s path, forcing the woman to move out of the way or risk getting caught in the antimagic blasts. The elite Claw dodged them with contemptuous ease, then rushed in to score a killing blow… just as Sakura had planned.

  The third grenade went off while still attached to her belt, engulfing both women and forcibly deactivating their skills. Wraith growled in frustration as she hopped back while waiting for the effect to subside.

  “That was a clever move, but not good enough. I’ve already seen enough to know you can’t match me in combat. Whatever is lurking in your skillset, it won’t help if you’re dead before you get a chance to use it.”

  With that, Wraith’s core ignited, and the woman faded away. Sakura could tell she had used a skill to turn incorporeal—something that worked a bit differently than Shadow Step. Instead of darkening to murk and gloom, her body turned translucent like the ghostly creature she’d named herself after.

  Sakura activated her second combat skill, praying it would have time to take effect before it was too late. The moment she started casting, her enemy attacked again.

  Sakura expected Wraith to advance while she was immune to physical damage then deactivate the skill when the woman was ready to strike… which left her unprepared for what happened next.

  Most skills that rendered their user incorporeal suffered from two key drawbacks. The first was that while they offered immunity to physical attacks, magic could still harm them. The second was they couldn’t strike while in an intangible state.

  Wraith’s Rare skill suffered neither of these restrictions.

  The reason was terrifyingly simple. Although Wraith’s body was insubstantial, the skills she had manifested remained solid. In her left hand, the woman held a shimmering magical shield, interwoven with layers of Disruption and mana given physical form. In her right, she gripped a mana-forged blade—a curved knife in the shape of a claw.

  Sakura desperately sought to buy time while Profile worked its magic. Fortunately, unlike Wraith’s informational skill, being disrupted only paused its effect instead of forcing it to start over from scratch. However, the convict had no intention of letting the battle drag on. She came charging in like a vengeful ghost—each movement propelled by a lethal grace.

  Sakura’s sword passed through Wraith’s body, and her Nerve Blade was deflected with ease by the woman’s shield.

  Shit. Sakura was in trouble. She didn’t have a combat-focused skillset, and while two of her powers would work on an incorporeal enemy, one could be countered by that shield and the other needed several minutes to take effect.

  Edge could have countered by turning into shadows, since two intangible beings were solid to each other. But Dart was a close-range teleport and didn’t change the properties of her body.

  In short, the woman was immune to Sakura’s sword and only had to worry about blocking Nerve Blade while launching her attacks. If she wasn’t careful, Wraith would slice her to ribbons without breaking a sweat—although the substance coating her blade would kill Sakura well before that happened. Her only chance was to stay out of reach until her powers kicked in, but the Claw wasn’t going to let that happen.

  For the next twenty seconds, Sakura kept herself alive by Darting away from her ghostly assailant.

  She was starting to feel her first glimmer of optimism when the situation went from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. The next time she tried to Dart out of the way, the skill failed to activate. Instead, she ran straight into an invisible wall—hard enough to bloody her nose.

  Wraith cackled as Sakura tried to Dart in another direction, only to have the same thing happen.

  “Now that I’ve cleared the conditions for Lockdown to activate, you won’t be able to teleport away or leave the rooftop by ordinary means. You should give up and accept your fate. I wouldn’t have revealed myself if there were any way for you to escape or call for help. It’s just you and me, little mouse, and I plan to have some fun before I watch the life fade from your eyes.”

  When Wraith launched her next assault, Sakura cast Disruption Shield, causing a wall of disruptive energy to waver into existence in front of her position. But to her horror, Wraith used her skill-knife to cut straight through the potent barrier, dispelling the shield like it was nothing at all.

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  She scrambled back, only to feel the bite of Wraith’s blade across her left shoulder. It was a shallow wound, but whatever was coating the knife was sure to be deadly.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Sakura ruthlessly suppressed the urge to panic as she dodged like mad. Losing her cool would be the final nail in her coffin, and if she couldn’t stop Wraith here and now, Puppet Town was doomed, along with Sakura herself.

  She took another two cuts over the next exchange, and with each wound, the woman’s smile grew wider. As her confidence grew, Wraith’s posture shifted from a cautious advance to the delight of a predator playing with its prey.

  Sakura couldn’t feel the poison affecting her yet, but she was certain it wouldn’t be long. She just prayed her gambit came to fruition before the toxin took hold.

  Of course, none of that mattered if the Claw cut her throat before that happened. Right now, she only had one weapon that could turn the tide in her favor—her mind. She forced herself to push past the terror threatening to override her reason, ducking beneath a vicious swipe that would have cut her neck all the way down to the bone. Come on, Sakura. Think.

  The only bit of good news was the combo Wraith was using drained a ton of mana. Now that the woman had the upper hand, she deactivated everything but her shield while pressing her attack, showing no hurry as she enjoyed what seemed to be an inevitable victory. Sakura had no idea what was happening at the generators, but she couldn’t afford to let it distract her.

  If I can hold out for another two minutes, I still have a chance. Maybe I can throw her off-balance if I go on the attack. Sakura began flinging a range of consumables, unleashing a hail of flashbangs, smoke bombs, and stink bombs. But to her dismay, only the stink bombs went off. The rest were neutralized by a skill she wasn’t familiar with.

  Wraith snickered at the expression on her face—casually blocking Sakura’s swings as she chased her around the rooftop. Unfortunately, the jailbird’s shield could deflect Sakura’s sword and Nerve Blade, making it one of the better defensive skills she’d come across.

  The next time she lunged for Wraith, she stumbled, then her legs gave out from under her. She fell to the ground—horror gripping her guts in a leaden fist as her limbs refused to respond to her increasingly frantic commands.

  “Excellent. The poison is taking effect. You’re remarkably tough for an information specialist, but in the end, you’re no match for me. It was fun to face off against someone with powers so similar to my own. But as with all good things in life, our little game isn’t fated to last forever.”

  Wraith approached Sakura’s fallen form, savoring the moment before finishing her off. Just when she thought she was dead for sure, it finally happened. Probe activated and knowledge flooded her mind like a damn bursting.

  At stage two, Lore-Weaver had three ultimate abilities. Analyze could read flows of mana like the words on a page, providing detailed information regarding their origin and nature. Bypass let her hack the programming of magitech devices, including some restricted functions of her Guide. It had numerous uses and limitations, none of which were relevant now.

  The third and most powerful ability was Probe. In exchange for a weeks-long cooldown and sending her core into torpor, Sakura could generate a complete model of a creature’s core, including its traits, ultimates, and the exact specifications of every skill it had slotted. Additionally, Probe let her absorb this information within a handful of heartbeats, baring every secret of her enemy’s magic.

  At last, she understood exactly what Wraith’s powers did and how they could be countered. In that moment, she knew that if she could buy another thirty seconds, she could regain the upper hand, although that was easier said than done.

  First, Sakura sent a command to the only implant she had—a device that took up all six implant points. It powered up and began the task she’d assigned, so she turned her attention to the woman in front of her, hoping to use the Claw’s inquisitive nature against her.

  “You weren’t the only one who got caught in a trap. We knew you would target the generators, and your associates have already been subdued.” Sakura was bluffing, but Wraith paused long enough to examine her Sense Link to confirm that fact.

  “You only stopped two of them.” She paused and then shrugged. “Not enough to prevent our invasion. A clever bit of misdirection, but it won’t buy enough time for help to arrive.”

  Sakura needed to stall for another twenty seconds, so she tried another tactic. “The poison you use is made from rockfish venom and numb-willow sap. If I take the equivalent of two Blood-Cleansing Pills and a Nerve-Restoration Potion, it will flush the toxin from my system. I’m afraid you can’t kill me with it after all.”

  Wraith frowned at those words—surprise causing the predatory delight to fall off her face. The woman flung a poisoned knife, but Sakura vanished before it hit her… only to reappear a few feet closer.

  “Lockdown is powerful, but it has a weakness.” She Darted out of the way of another thrown blade before reappearing beside Wraith’s boots. “It only stops me from moving away from you. I can still teleport toward you. Most important of all, while your poison is quite dangerous, you don’t have any resistance to mine. Though Phantom renders you incorporeal and resistant to magic, you still need to breathe, which makes you susceptible to agents in the air.”

  Wraith lunged for Sakura, scoring another shallow cut as she rolled out of the way. “I’ve never told anyone how my skills work. How can you know all that?”

  “The answer is simple, although you aren’t going to like it. I’m better than you. Lore-Weaver’s ultimate is superior to that Rare Spymaster’s core you have burning behind your ribs. After being in proximity for five minutes, Probe’s activation condition was cleared, and I learned the details of every skill you have.”

  With that, Sakura rose to her feet, shocking her opponent to her marrow. By now, her Compounding Pharmacy implant had produced enough antidote to restore motion to her limbs, although her wounds still hurt like hell.

  For the first time, the elite Claw looked afraid. It was clear that she planned to kill Sakura before anything else happened. But little did she know, it was already too late. Every word Sakura had spoken was true, and her revelations had bought enough time for the final skill she’d employed to take effect.

  When Wraith raised her saber to land a lethal blow, the woman began to choke. Her eyes went wide as she fought to breathe, popping pills and letting loose with Disruption surges to no avail.

  “It’s too late for that.” Sakura said as strength returned to her limbs. “My venom has already bound to your receptors and triggered a chemical cascade. I’m afraid the effects are irreversible. You were right. Our powers are remarkably similar. While I can’t turn incorporeal, I have informational skills and the ability to produce toxins. Venom Cloud isn’t as fast-acting as your paralytic poison, but once it accumulates in your system, it’s far more lethal.”

  Sakura could feel her core watching through her eyes, delighting in the dramatic turnaround. “Lore-Weaver wouldn’t be much of a spider if it didn’t have one hell of a bite. You are an impressive woman, Wraith. Your ploy to disable the settlement was well-crafted, and it still might work in the end. But nothing can save you now.”

  As the strike leader fought for breath, Sakura limped forward and drove her dagger into Wraith’s eye—just in case the woman had a final surprise in store. Then she hit the body with a Disruption surge and collapsed from exhaustion.

  Her Compounding Pharmacy was out of aether, so she reached into her belt pouch and took a Blood-Restoration pill, a painkiller, and a stimulant, then sat down to recover from the toughest fight of her life as the sun crested the horizon.

  She tried to send a message, but whatever Wraith had done to jam communication skills was still in effect. Sakura put the points from the cycles she’d obtained into Durability to hasten her recovery, then went limping off to find Earl and Dialla and let them know what had happened, leaving the body behind to loot later.

  The intruders have finally been dealt with. I hope the deputies made it in time to save the generators.

  No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than an explosion rang out. The Dome flickered and went dark, leaving Puppet Town without magical protection. A second eruption resounded from the north as the turrets around the gate exploded, sending twin jets of flame a hundred feet into the air.

  She held her breath, afraid that her efforts had been too little too late, but the third blast never came. When Sakura limped over to the edge of the rooftop and peered into the distance, the southern turrets and the aether refinery were still standing. She let out a shuddering sigh of relief. There’s still hope after all.

  The town was vulnerable but not defenseless. The wall was resilient enough that only a small segment had been lost when the northern turrets exploded, but the gate was gone, and until they had time to plug the hole, the town was critically exposed.

  While her efforts had averted catastrophe, the crisis was still underway. A fact Sakura became aware of when an alarm rang out, signaling a hostile force was approaching from the north.

  The jailbirds lurking in the plains had been lying in wait while Wraith went to work—poised to take the town before they had time to recover from her sabotage.

  Sakura had no idea who would still be standing by the time the sun set, but one thing was abundantly clear. The war for Puppet Town had officially entered its final stage.