By the time Blackjack arrived in front of Jack, Jack had turned his attention onto him, as the Magician on the ground had already lost his life. Blackjack was furious! They were the ambushing party, and there were six of them ganging up on a single prey nonetheless, but the first casualty ended up belonging to their group instead. He would lose his face if anyone found out about this.
Blackjack sent rapid thrusts in his rage, which Jack noticed was slightly similar to how Red Death fought, but less refined. It was clear that Blackjack's skill was still slightly lower compared to Red Death. With his strength and HP pool, Jack was never afraid of trading lives, he sent Blackjack a normal slash as he received the thrusts.
Blackjack was stunned as his HP had reached critical with the last exchange. He hastily broke away again as his comrade fighter arrived, who only lasted one second before being sent flying back again. The fighter's expression was ugly, how could he fight if every time he approached, he was immediately blasted away again?
The two rangers who had healed themselves had come back again to join the fight, but they were flabbergasted when saw Blackjacks' HP was critical. They put themselves in front of him as cover while he took out a basic healing potion to drink.
Jack smiled, he also took out a basic healing potion and drank its content. His HP was immediately recovered by 200 points. He didn't stop there as he took out medicine and consumed it. His health starting to recover slowly.
Blackjack's people were speechless. It already took them so much effort and even sacrificed one Magician and they had barely reduced the guy's HP to half, but now he had recovered to almost full again. How were they going to continue the fight?
Blackjack's expression was getting even uglier as he noticed several names had disappeared from their Party window. He turned around and saw several players coming towards them. He didn't recognize them. He looked forward again and saw another group approaching. There were two that he recognized amongst them. They were the other two targets, Fierce Flame and Star Bowler.
With the situation becoming disadvantageous to them, he decisively called for a retreat. "Withdraw!" He shouted to the others. They then ran away towards the Capital.
Jack was fair and kind to his friends, but he would never be benevolent to his enemies. He ran after the fleeing party. Apart from rangers, no other classes could match his speed, and the slowest amongst the enemies was of course the Magician.
The Magician felt like crying after knowing him being targeted, he immediately cried for help from his comrades. The other four turned back to give support, but soon found Energy Bolts flying towards them. John and Bowler cast their spells once they were in range. Helpless, they could only keep on retreating while Jack freely abused their Magician comrade.
"Storm Wind! Stop now or we will become irreconcilable enemies!" Blackjack shouted in rage.
"You are being funny," Jack replied without stopping his attacks. "Are you saying we are not already enemies when you attacked us?"
More magic attacks landed on Blackjack's party as The Man drew closer to them. One of the rangers in Blackjack's team urged him to leave, "we can't save him anymore. We need to leave!"
Blackjack gritted his teeth as he stared at Jack grimly, "you will regret this. Don't think this is over!" They then ran away leaving the half-dead Magician.
Jack was bullying the Magician slowly as to bait Blackjack's people to stay until his allies could surround them. But since Blackjack had retreated, he no longer needed to extend the Magician's suffering. Jack sent him a Power Strike and ended his life.
"That's what you get from messing with us!" Bowler yelled at the fleeing Blackjack's party.
"Hell, yeah!" The Man shouted victoriously.
The Magician corpse at Jack's feet disintegrated as the battle ended and leaving behind a magic staff and a few coins. Jack picked them up. The staff was actually an uncommon staff! Good, he would need six more to upgrade his staff into rare grade. He stored the staff, no one was making a remark regarding him taking the Magician's equipment, they figured he was just going to sell it for coins.
He then looked at the place where the other Magician had fallen, there was a funny hat there. He came over and picked it up. It was a normal grade cloth headgear. He had already got a steel helmet which was better. He looked at Bowler and tossed the hat to him.
"Take it, you do not yet have a headgear," he said.
Bowler didn't stand on ceremony as he immediately accepted and equipped it.
"You guys should go check on the ones you killed. They might have dropped something of good values," Jack said to the others.
"Tip was on cleaning detail, he volunteered to stay behind to collect the drops. I would say he did it to avoid our enemy from identifying him," John said, then he asked, "did you find out who those enemies are?"
"The leader is called Blackjack," Jack answered. "He is not a member of Death Associates, but he has ties to that guild. He must have attacked us out of the request from that guild."
"Blackjack? I've heard of him," John said. "By the way, how do you know his identity?"
"What do you mean? I use Inspect skill on him of course," Jack answered.
John squinted his eyes on him.
"You did?" The Man interrupted. "I also used Inspect skill, but all I got was a bunch of question marks."
"Yes, it must be their face masks," Bowler added. "I think it enabled them to cover their identity. I must look for it when we get back to the capital. They must have bought it in a shop considering all of them equipping the same face masks."
The Man nodded.
Jack was astounded. The others weren't able to Inspect their opponent's identity due to their face masks? Why had he been able to? He then thought of his God-Eye monocle, that tool must have been the reason.
He realized John was still looking at him with a suspicious expression.
"I recognized him from his move," Jack tried to explain by changing his previous explanation with a lie. "He had a distinguished way of fighting so it is not very hard to recognize him as Blackjack."
John didn't change his expression. After a brief pause, he simply said, "okay."
The Man was not too bothered by the details, he said, "all right, now that our enemies had been vanquished. Let us return to the capital. We had many glorious stories to share with our brethren! Hahaha!"
Jack agreed at once just to avoid John's suspicious gaze. Tip had also joined them after collecting the dropped items, and they start distributing the loots amongst themselves. Jack meanwhile took a peek at his Container of Souls. He had vaguely seen a transparent fire came out of the Magician when their corpses disintegrated and flowed towards him the same way as the Elite Boss' soul. Before this, he had collected 112 souls from the basic monsters they had met along their way back to the capital. Now in his container were 134 souls. He had collected an additional 22 souls from those two Magicians. After some thought, he assumed the souls must be equivalent to their levels. Both of those Magicians should be level 11.
After finished deciding distributions on the loots, they then continued on their way back to the capital.
---------------
In the woods not far from there, two figures walked out as they looked at the departing Jack's party.
"It is as you said, he really can detect others' positions," Red Death said with a grim expression. "This will make him more difficult to deal with."
Scarface who stood beside her nodded.
"I was wondering why you asked Blackjack to positioned themselves beyond that small hill and not to place any sentry before it. You were trying to determine by how far the range he can detect the others, right?"
"You are right again," Scarface said. "from his response, I would say he can detect in an area of around two hundred to three hundred meters from him."
"If that is true, then we are outside of his area of coverage, he shouldn't be aware of us spying on him," Red Death said.
"I don't know what fortunes he had encountered during the Tutorial Period, but together with his abnormal attributes, he certainly possessed many secrets that put him ahead of other players."
"Then we should put more effort in eliminating him, in order to steal his treasures."