The moment time sped back up, a few things happened in quick succession. Asher was already low on energy and didn't want to burn through even more by activating his Personal Rift while he was in the astral realm. Instead, he used one hand to keep his neck as firmly attached to his collar as possible while he jumped down to the streets below on the opposite side of the houses from Jennifer and the senior assassin. Before he'd even landed, he'd yanked a vial from his rift.

Sure hope this isn't poison, he thought as he ripped off the stopper with his teeth and downed the entire thing in one gulp.

Asher figured if it was poison or some other more nefarious concoction, he could at least Recall away before the negative effects got too bad. Sure, popping into existence in front of Brian and Samantha while his insides were melting to some unknown acid wasn't exactly ideal, but he would apologize once he was alive again.

Thankfully, it seemed Jennifer had been telling the truth, and the potion of Lesser Restoration he'd taken from the Guild safehouse did exactly as advertised, quickly knitting his severed flesh back together and healing his neck far faster than his Eternal Regeneration would have.

Identify - lvl 19

Before Asher could think too hard about the fact that drinking the potion had leveled up his Identify of all things, the world froze over. Wiping the blood from his hands, Asher grabbed two of his regular steel daggers as he watched the entire alleyway he stood within rapidly accumulate a thick layer of frost. Even more strange, however, was the fact that the ice didn't stop at covering the ground and walls. Every few feet it began building upwards, and Asher blinked as the dozens of ice-stalagmites quickly formed into ice sculptures that looked identical to the senior assassin he'd been tailing behind for the last thirty minutes, each one in a slightly different pose.

Asher had just enough time to wonder what the hell kind of intimidation tactic this was when a freezing blade of pure ice pierced through his stomach from behind, poking out of his front and stealing his breath as he involuntarily gasped. Complete Resilience did wonders for the pain, but he'd yet to actually evolve the skill, and even with his skill, having a sword shoved through his gut hurt.

"Eight ordered us to take you down without hesitation, but I just can't help playing with my food," the senior assassin whispered behind him, twisting her blade and causing even more pain to shoot through Asher's stomach.

Rather than give her any sort of answer, Asher slipped into the astral, freeing himself from the woman's ice-sword, and not a moment too soon. The assassin must have activated another one of her skills, because right after he vanished her blade shattered, blasting jagged shards of ice in all directions. Safely hidden within the astral, Asher shuddered not only at the freezing pain in his gut, but at the thought of what something like that detonating within his torso would have done to him.

"Eight warned us you were slippery," the assassin remarked, forming a new blade of ice out of thin air as she slowly turned around, searching through the field of her ice doubles for him. "Why don't you save us all some time and just come out from wherever you're hiding?"

If you insist. Asher hadn't actually gone anywhere after all, so the moment the assassin turned her back on his position, he brought up his daggers and struck forward, intending to decapitate her with two powerful strikes. He cancelled Astral Dip and returned to the material realm at the last moment, giving her as little chance to dodge as possible without risking the loss of his own daggers. Yet just before his blades could touch her skin, there was a small burst of frigid air, and Asher's eyes widened as his attack sent one of her ice double's heads falling to the ground where it shattered.

"The Reaper indeed," the woman chuckled, suddenly standing almost thirty feet away where one of her doubles had been mere seconds ago. "You're not quite as quiet as Owl, but you're certainly a bit scarier."

"How did you know I'd be following you?" Asher demanded, happy to take a breather for as long as the assassin would let him. He'd spent the last half an hour Distorting his way across rooftops and was already running dangerously low on energy. Whatever breather she was willing to give him was more than welcome.

"You obviously were a skilled tail, or had some sort of tracking skill seeing as you managed to follow Jennifer back to her cell," the woman said, rolling her eyes as if it were obvious. "That idiot is a pathetic excuse for an assassin, but she's not completely incompetent. It stood to reason you'd try the same trick a second time. And you used the rooftops when you first made your way over to attack Jennifer at one of our safehouses, or had you already forgotten?"

Asher could have smacked himself as the assassin pointed out his mistakes. Of course Jennifer would have informed her that he'd been using the rooftops to get around, her enchanted bracelet would have shown her that much at the very least.

Asher had tried doing the exact same plan twice in a row against an organization of trained assassins that had survived countless truthseeker purges. He'd basically been begging for his own demise.

Seeing the pained look on his face, the assassin couldn't help but laugh, clearly enjoying both his mental and physical pain. "Perhaps that bumbling girl isn't the worst assassin after all. You are a rather sad example yourself." She paused, narrowing her eyes as she stared at him, as if waiting for something. "…Though I will admit, you're strangely durable. Do you not feel your insides freezing solid as we speak?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Asher knew it was dumb to look away from his opponent at her own direction, but he couldn't help but glance down at the hole she'd stabbed through his stomach. Sure enough, he could just barely make out the outer edges of the wound having turned grey and blue with severe frostbite, and it was clearly spreading outwards, albeit at a glacial pace. No wonder the assassin was content to sit back and talk to him.

He'd be just as frozen as one of her statues soon enough.

"You're not the first Ice element user I've fought," Asher admitted, gripping his daggers as he prepared for his offensive. His Complete Resilience should buy him more than enough time to take down the assassin, and he was pretty certain her skill would end when her life did. "The last one was far scarier than you, and they still fell to my blade."

"Oh child, you haven't seen terror just yet," she snarled, grinning wickedly as she summoned a second ice blade and matched his dual weapons. "Allow me to show you."

Before Asher could respond, there was another burst of frigid air and the assassin was suddenly replaced with another one of her statues. Having learned his lesson the last time, Asher instinctively slipped into the astral, dodging the two blades that attempted to ram their way through his chest as the assassin attacked from behind. Spinning around, Asher moved to step out of the blades and retaliate, but before he could do so, she vanished, replaced with a statue once more.

Damn it, he thought, cursing the folly of his Astral Dip. If he returned to the material realm while the assassin's weapons were still within him, they would functionally erase whatever parts of him they were currently overlapping, doing far more damage than a little frostbite. Not to mention it would take but a flick of her wrists to carve him up like a turkey-dinner at that point. While he could take the risk and try trading blows with the woman, he still had an entirely different assassin to fight after this if the arrow that had nearly decapitated him was any indication, and he didn't want to needlessly hurt himself right before another battle. And that wasn't even including Jennifer and her Death Darts.

"You're good at hiding, but not very good at attacking," the woman taunted him, once again standing across the alleyway, leaning against one of her own statues. "How in the realms did you manage to take down Leonard? His Hunger element made him one hell of an opponent. Now there was an assassin that knew how to get his hands dirty!"

Asher reappeared, frowning as he tried to come up with a plan. He had a good idea of how to take her down, but it involved surviving her initial surprise attack she always struck with after teleporting.

At the very least, he knew how to handle that.

Not engaging in her banter, Asher quickly swapped out one of his daggers for his enchanted one, feeding it a handful of shards and watching it ignite in flame. Before she could even ask what he was doing, he spun around and began lashing out with tunnel after tunnel of Distortion. A small part of him feared he'd lose his footing on the icy ground like he had while fighting the awakened panther, but it seemed his assassin class helped him keep his balance this time around.

Within seconds, all the statues within twenty feet of him had been decapitated, his flaming blade having sliced through their icy necks like butter.

"Let's see how well you fight when you can't pop around right behind me," Asher grinned, trying to hide how hard he was panting. Destroying so many statues in quick succession had taken yet another large chunk out of his energy reserves, and he was practically running on fumes at this point. Even if he took the assassin down without sustaining any more injuries, it was looking more and more likely he'd have to retreat just to recover his stamina rather than fight the others.

"I don't even need my Ice Double to beat you, you're already practically dead on your feet," the woman laughed, readying her weapons as she lowered her center of gravity. Without warning, she shot forward, actively skating across the frozen ground as though she were a professional skier flying down a hill. She nimbly ducked out of the way of his Distorted stab with his flaming dagger, shooting past him while she tried to swing her blades through his torso. This time, Asher used Distortion to expand the space between her blades and himself, forcing them to miss without having to slip into the astral realm.

Allowing him to activate his trump card before she could escape his reach.

A large, invisible barrier sprung into existence all around them as Asher triggered Spatial Lock, trapping the senior assassin inside. Asher didn't know if it was because his barrier was touching the ice as well, but somehow, she realized it was there. Rather than smashing into the barrier headfirst, the assassin narrowly managed to pull herself to a stop, and her eyes shot wide open at the realization of what he'd done.

"Trying to trap the two of us together?" she scoffed, turning to give him a pitiful look. "Rather desperate when you've been fighting on the backfoot all this time and I've already shown you I have a teleportation skill, don't you think? What do you plan to do anyway, try and drown me in your blood?"

"Why don't you come here and find out?" Asher taunted, pointing at her heart with his still-flaming dagger.

"With pleasure!" Dropping into her skating stance, the assassin blasted directly at him this time, a wild grin on her face as she no doubt prepared to try and run him through with her frozen blades. It seemed she was finally done playing around, and she clearly intended for this to be her final attack.

Unfortunately for her, Asher made sure it was.

Trusting in Comprehend to help him with the timing, Asher stood his ground and met her first frozen blade that was aimed at his chest with his regular dagger. The assassin's sheer momentum made her strike hit hard enough that his dagger was sent flying from his grip, but he managed to deflect her strike enough that it missed him, if only by a hair. His flaming dagger collided with her second blade with far more impressive results, carving straight through the frozen sword and continuing its trajectory toward the assassin. At this point, the woman was right in front of him, and he got to watch firsthand as at the last possible moment, when his flaming dagger didn't slow down and the tip pressed against her chest, the assassin realized her Ice Double skill wasn't activating despite there still being plenty of statues still outside the barrier he'd thrown up.

Asher controlled what passed in and out of his barrier, and he'd locked down just about everything this time around.

Including all forms of spatial travel.

Rather than trading places with one of her remaining statues, the assassin's own momentum carried her forward onto his blade, and Asher's flaming dagger hissed as it slid straight into her heart, killing his opponent instantly.

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