I Level Up by Killing Gods-Chapter 46: Shadows and Silver

"You’ve done this before," she says.

He wipes blood from his knuckles. "We need to move."

She hesitates, staring at the unconscious mercenaries. Then she kneels, rifling through their pockets.

"What are you doing?" Kael muttered behind her.

"Honest work," she says, pocketing a handful of shards. "Now let’s go rob a bastard." freēwēbnovel.com

— – —

The innkeeper’s safe was hidden behind a portrait of himself—a garlish oil painting that depicted the man as a benevolent patriarch rather than the cutthroat extortionist he was. Lira snorted when she saw it.

"Vanity’s a louder alarm than any bell," she whispered, her breath fogging the grimy window they’d pried open to slip inside.

The inn’s back office reeked of Blight-rot and cheap perfume. Moonlight filtered through moth-eaten curtains, casting skeletal shadows over the desk cluttered with ledgers and empty gin bottles.

Kael moved soundlessly, his boots avoiding the creakiest floorboards—a skill honed robbing in the outskirts if earth. Lira, meanwhile, seemed to channel chaos itself, her fingers darting over drawers and shelves, pocketing anything shiny.

"Focus," Kael muttered, nodding at the safe embedded in the wall.

"Relax. He’s three ales deep by now. Probably snoring in his—"

A floorboard groaned overhead.

They froze. Voices drifted down—a pair of drunken patrons arguing about Ravager baiting. Lira rolled her eyes and pulled a set of lockpicks from her coat.

"Birthday present from an Iron Pact jailer," she said, wedging a tool into the safe’s mechanism. "Sweet man. Terrible taste in wine."

As she worked, Kael studied the room. A map of the Second Reach hung crookedly on the wall, red pins marking Void Breaches. One pin—black, not red—was stabbed into the Shardspire Ruins.

"The safe’s older than my grandma, and that bitch is old," Lira hissed, her picks jiggling. "Come on, you rusted relic—"

*Click.*

The door swung open. Inside, Etherite shards glimmered in neat stacks, alongside promissory notes and a velvet pouch spilling coins. Lira whistled.

"This slimeworm’s richer than Lady Draemir."

She jested of course, no one was richer than Lady Draemir.

Kael grabbed a fistful of shards, counting silently. Fifty. Enough to settle the debt and buy gear. Enough to matter.

Lira, however, lingered. Her mismatched eyes narrowed at something tucked behind the coins—a scroll case stamped with the Iron Pact’s dagger emblem.

"My stolen map," she breathed. "Why’s the innkeeper have it, well an identical copy at least?"

"Later," Kael said, strapping the shards into a burlap sack.

She hesitated, then snatched the case. "This one’s different from mine, it isn’t some nursery Breach guide. Look." She unrolled the map, revealing symbols inked in what looked like blood. "These marks... they’re not locations. They’re weaknesses. Pact intel on guild vaults, patrol routes—"

A door slammed upstairs. They froze again.

"Move," Kael ordered.

---

They escaped through the window, melting into the alley’s shadows as the innkeeper’s laughter boomed from the tavern hall. Lira clutched the map to her chest like a stolen child.

"This is worth a thousand shards. Maybe more."

"Or a thousand knives in our backs," Kael said. "The Pact wants it...and from what i can tell they are not pushovers. That makes it danger, not currency."

She grinned. "Danger IS currency here."

They wove through backstreets, the night air biting. Kael kept waiting for shouts, alarms, the thud of pursuit. None came. Sanctus Nexus swallowed their crime whole.

As they circled back toward the inn to pay their "debt," Lira broke the silence.

"You fought those Pact mercenaries like they were First Reach scrubs. Expecting more?"

Kael glanced at her. "To be here they must have passed the first reach Trial. They should be stronger...everyone should."

Lira barked a laugh. "Oh, you sweet summer corpse. Most folks here? Born in Sanctus. Never set foot in a Trial. Their ancestors crawled here when the Nexus was young. The real climbers—the ones aiming for the Third Reach and higher—they’re guild-bound. Ghosts. You’ll hardly see ’em till they’re dead in a ditch."

Kael frowned. "You weren’t born here."

"No. I fell." She said it like a joke, but her white eye flickered. "Point is, don’t get cocky. The ones who choose the climb? They’re different. Faster. Meaner. Half of them are more Ravager than human by the time the Nexus is done with ’em."

He thought of Aether’valis’s hunger, the way it thrived on slaughter.

"And the other half?"

"Dead." She tossed the map case at him. "Hold this. I’ve got a performance to stage."

---

The innkeeper was indeed drunk—slumped in his chair, a bottle dangling from his fingers. Lira sashayed up to him, her voice syrup-thick.

"Look what the Void coughed up! Twenty shards, as promised."

The man blinked blearily. "You... you freeloading maggots—"

"Ah-ah!" She danced back as he lunged, clumsy.

"Payment rendered. Debt cleared. Unless you want the Silver Vanguard knowing you’ve been skimming their tolls?" She nodded at the safe’s hidden portrait. "I’m sure Jorik Bloodtide would love your bookkeeping."

The innkeeper froze. "Get out."

"Gladly."

They left him sputtering, the stolen shards heavy in Kael’s pocket.

---

Lira split the remaining thirty shards on the smithy roof, dawn bleeding into the sky.

"Fifteen for me. Fifteen for the walking corpse."

Kael stared at his share. "The map?"

"We’ll sell it. After we copy it. And decrypt it. And maybe sleep." She stretched, yawning. "Get a room. You look like death reheated."

He did.

The innkeeper’s face purpled when Kael slapped down five shards for a night’s stay, but he said nothing. The room was a closet with a cot, the sheets reeking of mildew. Kael didn’t care.

He let out an exhale as he collapsed onto the mattress. Fatigue hit him like a sandbag—muscles trembling, wounds throbbing, the Blight in his veins hissing like a lullaby.

He hadn’t slept in weeks. Not truly. Not without one eye open.

As consciousness frayed, he heard the blades echo, or was it Blight: Slaughter.

They spoke too much these days.

But here, in this rancid room, Kael dared to close both eyes.

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