Lord of the Dead in the Land of Lust

CH17 - Leaving Rad

Litzen the Windowsmasher, a name he actually quiet liked to have been given by the authorities of the Seven Shields Alliance, was a human.

Or at least half one. He was one of the rare few born from a Halfling that was not a Halfling itself. His father had been a wizard obsessed with finding a way to stop the racial gender divide from endangering the future of all races on the continent, and while it had been a possibly noble cause that did ultimately lead to his own creation, his father had also been a criminal as such because he forcibly experimented on Halflings and often raped them.

It was such a shame one could not choose their family.

After killing his own father when he discovered the fate of his mother, he quickly found that while normal work was not something he wanted to do, he was quiet skilled at the act of breaking things, and taking things.

So being a thief was the perfect job for him in a way, and he had a system that couldn't be stopped. Travel across rooftops, jump through windows whether they were open or not, shoot whoever he say in the legs or arm with small throwing needles coated in a natural paralytic, and then steal everything of worth he could.

Of course, worth had different meaning to different people. Travel rations, sweets, and meat were always stolen because he needed to eat, while things like gems and jewelry were only stolen in small amounts. A single gold necklace could sell for enough to set him up for weeks even if he didn't stock up on gear after all.

Most of the time he just stole to get by, jumping from city to city as the local knights caught onto his presence, but occasionally he'd get met by someone from the darker underbelly of the lands, asking him to steal particular items of value for very handsome amounts of money.

"There he is!"

And this was one of those times. Litzen looked back across the room he was running across to see three Halflings following. One was a captain and the other two of the normal guards. They were rather nimble as they followed him across the roof, they were Halflings after all, but the fact that guards almost exclusively used halberds in Rad was proving to be their downfall as the head of it would pull down to one side or the shaft would catch on the pipes and the like that jutted out from the rooftops.

"At least one of them was smart," Litzen muttered as he vaulted over a pipe and took a glance at the captain who was having no difficulty following him. She had ditched her halberd as soon as she had noticed him on the roofs above them and had even ditched the extra armor she was wearing to mark her rank. Now she was wearing little more than her armored bikini, boots, and a single gauntlet and helmet. "Heh, you know there are better ways to seduce someone rather than just slowly stripping! C'mon, seduce me properly!" Litzen called back as he kept running.

"You insolent criminal!" The captain yelled in a rage, providing just enough of a lack of attention for her foot to trick and make her fall, face planting the roof tiles.

"Captain!" Her people called in shock as they went to check on her instead of chasing, allowing Litzen to leap across a narrow alleyway and climb up a higher building and out of sight. All he needed to do was jump a few streets over and he'd be utterly out of sight.

Which was good as his target was just a few streets over.

"Still don't get why someone would want someone's mask stolen, or who would be as crazy as to wear a mask in this kind of heat," Litzen muttered to himself as he passed a very hot smokestack. Rad was always hot, way hotter than any other city, and even with some facets of his body he apparently had not gotten a Halflings culturally perceived heat resistance.

Regardless his job was just to jump some bigshot mage that came by the city and steal the mask they were wearing before they left the city, and as the sun was on the verge of creeping above the horizon, he only had so much time.