"Why... why is he here?"
Yuan Tiexin stared at a formidable, middle-aged man carrying a life-sized bone bow amidst the Crimson Legion, his expression freezing.
Beside him, Zi Qiong noticed Yuan Tiexin's grave expression and followed his gaze, but she didn't see anyone particularly special that would warrant such attention.
Suddenly, something occurred to Zi Qiong. She couldn't help but ask, "Uncle Yuan, are there Dark Blades among them?"
Super guilds like the Pantheon sometimes preferred to keep certain matters secret, so they maintained a covert department. The Pantheon's department was called the Dark Blade, specifically handling tasks they didn't want to do openly, such as secretly assassinating people to seize treasures so others wouldn't know the Pantheon had obtained them, or assassinating high-ranking members of other guilds while framing other guilds, deliberately inciting wars between them to profit from the chaos.
But that wasn't even its main purpose.
The Dark Blade's true role came into play during large-scale guild wars, where they specialized in covertly eliminating the enemy guild's commanders.
To achieve this goal, when the guild trained these players, almost everything—from skill selection and equipment to attribute allocation—was optimized for taking down a single player. It was an extremely focused combat style. And indeed, this hyper-specialization gave them a massive advantage in player-versus-player combat. A balanced player at the same skill level and with the same quality equipment simply stood no chance; they would just be pummeled.
Of course, this extreme focus made them exceptionally weak in terms of survival, monster fighting, dungeon crawling, and the like. Their leveling speed would be severely impacted, requiring the guild to have others carry them through levels.
"Correct. That man with the giant bone bow is an old acquaintance of mine, the Dark Blade's vice commander, Holy Hand Nine Kills," Yuan Tiexin said, his eyes blazing with anger as he looked at the bone-bow-wielding man in the distance.
The man's name was Nine Kills, and "Holy Hand" was the title given to him by the industry.
In the previous major virtual game, it was because of this Nine Kills, who launched a surprise attack and eliminated the then third vice commander, that the final battle ended in failure. Yuan Tiexin had been one of the guards nearby at the time, but Nine Kills had still succeeded.
That final battle was lost because of this, forcing the Heavenly Secret Pavilion to withdraw from that virtual game.
That incident was considered the greatest humiliation of Yuan Tiexin's life. He had always wanted revenge, but tracking down the movements of the Pantheon's Dark Blades had proven incredibly difficult.
He hadn't expected to run into one now.
Despite the altered appearance, he could still recognize him.
"So he's the legendary Holy Hand," Zi Qiong said, growing curious and observing him carefully.
But no matter how she observed, she couldn't sense anything unusual about Nine Kills. He seemed completely ordinary, no different from the other experts in the Crimson Legion.
"Since Vice Commander Nine Kills has been deployed, it means the other Dark Blades are likely hidden in the legion too. Now the Zero Wing Guild really doesn't stand a chance," Yuan Tiexin sighed.
Setting aside the overwhelming numbers of high-intelligence monsters, just the Dark Blade alone was enough to handle Stone Forest Town.
If the town had no commander, breaching it would be far too easy.