#024. The Assassin is Too Kind (1)

#024. The Assassin is Too Kind (1)

Nina braced herself for a confrontation with an exceedingly difficult opponent.

The assassin of Sodom Village.

I know their true nature.

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＜Tutorial Quest＞

The time has come to take your first steps towards raising an adventurer.

Join the Adventurer’s Guild as an employee and achieve your first success.

Reward: Enhanced Brainwashing Ability

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After clearing the tutorial.

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Quest Objective: Eliminate the thug who killed my mother.

Quest Guidance: Nurture a capable adventurer and induce them to accept a contract killing request.

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After my mother died.

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Quest Objective: Avenge my younger sister.

Quest Guidance: Recruit a powerful adventurer or nurture a number of adventurers to destroy the organization.

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When my younger sister died.

The organization that killed my mother and younger sister.

A powerful NPC with a certain probability of appearing within this organization.

This assassin is a character on par with a mid-boss.

In an era when thieves were looked down upon and party play within the Adventurer’s Guild was impossible for the thief class.

All the skilled thieves turned to the shadows.

Their skills, which could have been directed at monsters.

Skills honed day and night.

Those skills were now unleashed against humans.

The assassin ranked among the most wretched of the unemployed, a figure spurned by every guild.

-Your talent blossoms in shadow, not sunlight.

-I shall bestow upon you wealth beyond measure.

-Take my hand. And become my dog.

Gomora, the vice-guild master of the Adventurer’s Guild, had ruined the life of a woman who, through her own skill, could have been independent, enjoyed adventures with a party, like everyone else.

He mobilized adventurers within his sphere of influence, obstructing her, applying pressure, and inflicting direct or indirect disadvantages on those who sought to form parties with her.

As a result, the only way left for the woman to earn a living was as an assassin, beholden to the vice-guild master.

“Nina said she’d go alone, but she’s bound to get badly hurt.”

“Indeed. An assassin will be lurking around the surviving miner, and Nina, unable to create distance, won’t be able to exploit her advantages as an archer in an unexpected ambush.”

Gorgo understood the danger Nina had willingly embraced.

“What can I do to help?”

“You need to draw the assassin away. Prevent him from reaching Nina.”

“…My mastery of mana manipulation is still insignificant. I’m sorry I can’t meet your expectations, but I’m not up to it?”

Of course, Gorgo’s current abilities had clear limitations.

So, he decided to resort to unorthodox methods.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a letter.”

“It has a seal. Whose is it?”

“Gomora, the vice-guild master of the Sodom Guild.”

“The seal of such a big shot?!”

A letter bearing Gomora’s imprint.

The assassin would have no choice but to verify it.

Because he had something to receive from Gomora.

Long ago, when the leash had been placed around his neck by the vice-guild master.

A letter containing news of his younger brother, who he couldn’t support himself and had to entrust to others.

The assassin lived with that single letter as his only hope.

“How do we get this letter to the assassin?”

“We don’t need to deliver it directly. We just need to indirectly reveal the code for the place where he can find the letter.”

Gorgo’s eyes flickered.

Such classified information, a normal child couldn’t obtain it.

Even adults wouldn’t dare attempt it.

Where on earth did you get this?

While I was focused on my training.

While I wasn’t watching over you.

What on earth have you done?

Reproach.

Frustration.

Rage.

A swirling vortex of emotions in his eyes.

All that remained after the violent chemical reaction was debt.

And then, it was responsibility.

“You exploited my sense of duty, but I won’t strike you down. Because this is a chance too precious, too vital for me to squander. Still… I don’t think this is something a proud son of Theresa would do.”

Gorgon, face hardened, tucked the letter into his breast pocket and stepped out into the street.

A proud son of Theresa.

The weight of that title felt suddenly, crushingly heavy.

* * *

Shoa, the assassin.

She was aware she was doing what was wrong.

But this was the only path left open to her.

‘I, too, wanted to live a life slaying monsters, not men. If only everyone had taken the hand I offered, I might have lived a different life.’

But every derived job class of the Thief was treated as nothing more than a common pickpocket, pilfering their due.

More and more quests could be completed without a Thief’s aid, and so Thieves were unwanted everywhere.

The funds to care for her ailing younger brother were endlessly insufficient, and only one hand offered itself for her to grasp.

-Become my dog. And wield your blade against those humans who have turned their backs on you.

Shoa’s life was stained ash-grey.

The white aura of a knight in training, once gleaming with pride, grew increasingly murky with each killing, until it became ash.

A color that had lost its purity.

A color that could never return to the faultless brightness of its past.

A color as loathsome as the hands it stained.

Crunch.

She tipped three pills from the vial and swallowed them down.

Pill of Night Vision.

Pill of Enhanced Physique.

Pill of Heightened Senses.

Each one fraught with severe side effects.

Prolonged use of the Pill of Night Vision resulted in the gradual deterioration of daytime vision.

Prolonged use of the Pill of Enhanced Physique caused the muscles to twist uncontrollably, often accompanied by excruciating pain.

Prolonged use of the Pill of Heightened Senses caused unbearable suffering, as even the slightest breeze felt like a blade slicing across her skin.

But she had to take them.

Because this target was no easy mark.

A Centaur beastman.

A race of archers, but skilled with any weapon they chose to wield.

The explosive acceleration born from their equine lower bodies granted the race, who had mastered the art of man and beast as one, overwhelming penetration and combat power.

‘Hold a grudge. Against me, who has sacrificed even more than you.’

Gomorra’s enemies were all formidable in their own right.

Enemies that even the most powerful adventurer parties could not overcome.

Enemies who feared no noble backing.

War mercenaries.

Free knights.

Amongst these renowned monsters, there was none lacking in talent, nor any who shirked from relentless effort.

If skill and effort cannot surpass the foe, there is but one path.

Sacrifice.

More than the enemy is willing to give.

The sweetness of rest.

The joy of romance.

The comfort of friendship.

The solace of a home.

Even the possibilities of the future.

Hesitate not even before forbidden doping, tearing down the body, devouring the future.

*Kraaak*

As muscles screamed, threatening to tear, she bit down on a towel, swallowing the cries and enduring the pain for what felt like an eternity.

The power clenched within her fist swelled, grew even greater.

*Thud, Crash!*

Ripping free of the restraints, she rose from the chair, unlocking the shackles and ankle restraints with the key left on the table.

Barely half a day remained before this power was spent.

She would burn through a month of her life for this half-day’s mission, leaving to eliminate an equally powerful adversary.

“Which b*stard spread the rumour? Saying the back alley soup kitchen was open.”

“I’ll kill the son of a b*tch who made up that lie.”

“Think you can? Heard it was the Adventurer’s Guild that started the gossip. Don’t go out there and get your ass kicked, just give it up.”

Emaciated homeless, bellies gnawing with hunger from the adventurers’ cruel joke, they trudged back into the alley.

Ruined, past the point of salvation as a woman, yet enough to make her reconsider her path toward the operational sector.

-A false rumour of a soup kitchen opening means a message will arrive in the red mailbox.

An assassin cannot simply stroll into the guild hall and meet with the deputy guild master.

For her, several secret signals and rendezvous points exist.

Her senses, heightened by the doping, would not miss the curses and lamentations of the alley’s homeless; this rendezvous was intentionally conspicuous.

“…!”

The message delivered right before a commission was usually accompanied by crushing despair.

A cancelled assassination order, revealing the frightening power of the deputy guild master, forcing either flight from the village or a humiliating capitulation.

The doping, paid for with a month of her life, would be in vain, requiring her to spill as much blood as possible, shortening the time during which the drug’s effects would erode her lifespan.

But today, it was different.

It was not a cancellation.

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Vancent Orphanage.

Tombstone number 17.

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She couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling.

Why an orphanage?

Why a tombstone, of all things?

With her enhanced body, she ran, and ran.

“Why am I being summoned here?”

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

Thugs, likely planted by the organization, bared menacing expressions and drew their daggers.

Shoa’s body, as fragile as her precarious lifespan, swayed dangerously as she slipped between the two ruffians.

“Gah.”

“Gurk.”

The thugs collapsed, making sounds of boiling blood.

Their corpses fell, and the scream of someone who discovered them pierced the air, but Shoa didn’t stop.

The cold, unfeeling cooking equipment.

Children’s clothing, strewn about like rags.

Black blood, etched layer upon layer into the walls and floors.

Empty rooms, devoid of children’s laughter, devoid of their cries.

She traversed the orphanage and arrived at the back garden, which was filled only with tombstones instead of missing children.

Her own body staggered as if it would soon collapse.

Afraid that the tombstone she might grasp would fall.

Unable to grab onto anything, her hand halted before stone number 17.

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Aged 7

Shua, rests here.

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Seven years old.

Shua’s age.

Three years prior.

When Gomorrah was first collared.

When her younger brother was taken hostage.

What she had believed was alive.

What she had trusted as proof of survival.

All those traces, her reason for living, her last hope.

All of it crumbled.

“Not a single day. Not even a single day of happiness…?”

Shua had been dead from the beginning.

For her brother?

Her brother was dead from the beginning.

No, murdered.

By Gomorrah.

By her master.

The effort that shaved away her lifespan, all her dedication.

Was a sacrifice for her enemy.

Faced with the weight of a reality that could not be more wretched, Shoa spoke in a somber tone.

“Was it you. Who delivered the letter.”

“That’s right.”

“You… what was your relationship with my sister?”

The player remembered.

The main storyline where his sister died.

The game he repeated countless times, progressing onward.

Seeing the various endings.

Accumulating bonus points.

The new possibilities unlocked when investing the points of accumulated potential.

[Shua’s Scribbles: Opening this perk will allow you to see Shua’s scribbles and help your sister survive the orphanage.]

A way to prevent his family’s death.

The master of the perk that revealed the possibility of a new walkthrough.

The sister’s brother felt gratitude.

But the feeling of gratitude could not be conveyed.

The gap between player and NPC was beyond the scope of explanation.

“We were nothing to each other.”

So he couldn’t tell him.

“Then why are you here? The uncontrollable rage inside me could kill you right now. Why did you risk appearing before me?”

As a player, that was true.

But what about as the sister’s brother?

Still, was there nothing to say?

[Leather inscribed with Shua’s Scribbles]

The children who received help.

The revealed truth.

The brother who could protect his sister thanks to it.

A truth in one playthrough.

A truth that might become reality in this one as well.

Offering clues mixed with truth and lies, he spoke.

“I could find a reason not to leave my sister at the orphanage in these traces.”

A miracle that came to me.

A miracle that didn’t come to you.

A bill of conscience, crossing playthroughs to pay a long-standing debt, was handed to the assassin Shua.

“I see. Shua… even after realizing what kind of facility this was, in order to save the children who would later be trapped…”

With a life that might end at any moment, she created guidelines for survival and escape for the children.

“What do you want. Truly, what do you expect from me that you would tell me even a truth that didn’t need to be told. If you hadn’t said anything, I would have rashly rushed to repay my vengeance to the vice-guild leader, throwing away my life. That alone would have been pleasant enough for you.”

What more did he want, risking himself to step forward and deliver his sister’s last traces?

“There is only one way to repay the debt of a life that saved a sister who had no way to survive. It is to save your life, which has no way to survive.”

“…!”

“Assassin Shua. Please postpone your revenge, disregarding your own life.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. If you cherish the heart of the younger brother who desperately wanted to save someone. If you can cherish my heart, which inherited that heart.”

He stops the woman who seeks to finally join her sister in death, by selling the will of her younger brother, preventing her from dying.

That was the cruel, true heart the wicked brainwasher had kept hidden.