Asher's victory was short-lived, as despite the fact that he'd taken down his target, her body was still flying at him with all the speed of an out of control skier. The assassin's corpse slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him as he and the body were sent tumbling to the ground and skidding across the ice. Groaning, Asher rolled the woman's corpse off of him, rubbing his sore backside that had slammed into the cold, hard earth.

Judgement - Lvl 7

Distortion - lvl 24

Astral Dip - Lvl 22

Spatial Lock - lvl 9

Spatial Lock - lvl 10

"You just had to have the last attack, huh," he grumbled, quickly storing the assassin's corpse within his rift and snatching his fallen dagger. Leonard hadn't had any sort of enchanted items on his person, but that didn't mean none of the senior assassins did. Already, the ice covering the alleyway was melting, and Asher trusted in his sure-footing from his assassin class as he jogged over to where he'd actually killed the woman to snatch her large glowing orb of shards.

Shards: 148,429

"Man, you really didn't like banks," he muttered, shocked at the massive number of shards she'd had on her. After Loratta, who had controlled a pretty significant portion of the city's criminal underground, the icy assassin had been his largest payout by far.

As much as I would love to stay and try to fight this mysterious ranged assassin she called Owl, I'm just about out of juice, he sighed, poking at the slowly healing wound in his stomach as he prepared to Recall. I suppose I'll just have to find a new way of tracking Eight down in the future. Maybe-

Asher gasped as a massive black arrow splashed against the side of his Spatial Lock, the invisible barrier the only thing stopping it from slamming straight into his head and killing him instantly. The arrow had hit harder than anything he'd ever experienced before, but true to his skill description, his Spatial Lock prevented the attack from entering into his domain.

But in blocking the powerful skill, his Spatial Lock used up the last dregs of his mysterious energy, and Asher paled as his barrier flickered and died.

For the first time since he'd arrived in this deadly world, he was officially and totally spent.

I can't Recall, he suddenly realized, his skill refusing to activate without the required energy. The sensation of being entirely out of that strange energy that powered skills was akin to finishing an incredibly hard workout. It felt almost good, in a strange, roundabout way, and despite the fact that he felt so tired he could barely stand, Asher had the feeling training to such a point was probably good for one's skills. His next notification confirmed said theory.

Spatial Lock - lvl 11

He was in a pretty bad spot, but at the very least, it seemed draining the tank didn't cause his passive skills to stop working. He hadn't lost his enhanced processing speed from Comprehend, and his Personal Rift didn't begin spewing out all the objects he had stored within, but he could tell without even trying he wouldn't be able to access the items, meaning it was just the active portions of his skills he'd lost access too.

All this went through his head in the moments after his barrier fell, and Asher's blood froze far more quickly than it had while fighting against the icy assassin as he looked up and found himself face to face with a man made from shadows.

Standing barely a hundred feet from him on the rooftop at the end of the alleyway was a man holding a bow larger than his own body. His form was covered in shifting, ever-twisting darkness, to the point that Asher couldn't make out a single identifying feature.

Perhaps even more concerning, was that not only did the man not register to his Identify skill, the deadly looking man had no aura. Asher didn't know if that meant he was somehow blocking his Judgement skill or something far worse, but it unnerved him even more than the living shadows covering his form.

Owl, he realized, his heart sinking as the assassin that had come the closest to killing him so far stared at him with his head cocked. Asher expected the man to immediately draw another arrow and attack, so he was surprised when the assassin instead called out, his soft voice seeming to reverberate through the countless shadows in the alleyway and sending an unnatural shiver down Asher's spine.

"Why do you attack the Guild?" Owl asked calmly, without so much as a shred of anger or confusion. If anything, the ranged assassin sounded curious, as though Asher was a strange puzzle he'd found lying in the road half-finished.

"The Guild attacked me first," Asher called back, more than happy to buy himself time to recover. All he needed were a few minutes of peace, and he could Recall back to Samantha and Brian. "I can only assume it had something to do with me taking down Loratta, but that was a personal issue. She kidnapped my friend and tortured him, of course I was going to kill her. I never made a single move against the Guild, so maybe you can tell me why I was sent a parcel of magadrine powder."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"The Guild was backing Loratta's rise to power," Owl said, causing Asher to blink in surprise as the assassin answered his question without hesitating. "We were the ones that supplied her with her Slime element and gave her the orders she followed. I was her personal handler, and your interference destroyed countless plans and projections the Guild had for Whikoga. Eight was intending to make an example out of you."

"Why are you bothering to tell me all this?" Asher couldn't help but ask, glancing around as if to confirm there weren't a half-dozen more assassins slowly creeping up on him while Owl had him distracted. "Not that I don't appreciate the information, but your icy friend made it sound like Eight gave you guys a rather clear-cut kill order on me."

"I'm telling you, because I don't answer solely to Eight," Owl said, his head slowly shifting to tilt in the other direction as he continued to stare at him, just like his namesake. "While the head has his ten Fingers, he also has his ten Knuckles. Units loyal to him that are in place to ensure the Fingers remain obedient and don't get any delusions of grandeur in their positions at the head of each city. I fulfill that role for the city of Whikoga."

This was a shocking revelation to Asher, as either Draken hadn't told him everything he knew about the Guild, or not even the deadly gang leader knew about the existence of these assassins loyal solely to the Head. Yet as incredible as this revelation was, there was one simple fact that Asher just couldn't ignore.

He blamed his time spent working as a mortician's apprentice and preparing countless bodies for their funerals.

"Your Head does know that there are more than ten knuckles in the human body, right?" he called out, holding up his hands and wiggling his fingers. "In fact, there's more than that in just one hand. And that's not even including the toes."

"Perhaps the real question you should be asking yourself is if the Head truly prefers sticking to the analogy to the point that they're willing to ignore that fact, or if I lied to you about the number of Knuckles that exist," Owl responded, quietly chuckling.

Crap, that's a terrifying thought. Asher frowned as he imagined two or three dozen more assassins as deadly as Owl roaming around in the world, all having sworn complete loyalty to the Head of the Guild. Ten was bad enough, but a few dozen of them sounded like a small army.

"You still haven't fully answered my question," Asher pointed out. "Even if you answer to the Head instead of Eight, wouldn't he want you to kill me after I messed with his plans for Whikoga?"

"Whikoga is a small player in the overall scheme of things," Owl answered, brushing aside his concern. "It is the second smallest of the eleven cities within the Noala Kingdom. Far more interesting to the Head than controlling the city's underworld is potential talent. You, have caught his attention."

"Me?" Asher answered dumbly, completely forgetting the fact that he was talking to an incredibly deadly assassin for a moment. "What the heck did I do? I mean, sure, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I know I'm pretty decent at fighting. But this Head of yours sounds like a pretty big fish if he controls the Guild that spans across the entire Kingdom. I've only killed a handful of people."

"Inferno. Slicer. Rock. The Spider. Knick. Loratta. The Night Terror. And now Frostcut," Owl said, surprising Asher as he listed all the more dangerous people he'd killed over the last few weeks. "Not to mention you managed to get the better of Moxy, who has been on our radar as another potential talent for some time now."

"Hold on, how do you know about all that?" Asher demanded, shivering at the thought that the shadow-clad assassin had been stalking him from afar all this time. "Just how long have you been watching me?"

"Only since you killed Loratta," Owl admitted. "Though it wasn't hard to investigate the waves you've made since arriving in the city. While your skill as a fighter is decent, it is your skills that caught the attention of the Head. I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me exactly how you managed to kill Loratta, would you? Slimes are nigh-indestructible, terrifying monsters, and the people that obtain the Slime Body skill from the rare element are supposed to be functionally immortal. When we confirmed Loratta's death, that was what first got you on the Head's radar."

"If your mysterious Head is so interested in me, why did he order Eight to kill me?" Asher demanded, trying to figure out where he stood in all this as he ignored Owl's question.

"He ordered Eight to test you," Owl corrected. "Naturally, making an attempt on your life is a viable test from one assassin to another. However, you have not only survived Eight's fabled magadrine powder, you have managed to track down one of our safehouses, discovered the location of one of our cells, and have killed two of our senior assassins without any lasting injuries, as far as I can tell. You also survived two of my own attacks, which is admittedly even more impressive than the rest of your actions combined. The issue is Eight's own pride in his alchemical creations. That pride can function like blinders, and he has let it lead him astray from the Head's original orders. Which is where I come in."

Without warning Owl seemed to fall through the very roof he was standing on, and Asher stifled a yelp as the man suddenly rose out of the shadows directly in front of him, having crossed a hundred feet in the blink of an eye. Even at this distance, Asher couldn't make out a single identifiable feature about the man, the churning shadows covering him from head to toe working far better than any mask ever could.

"Eight has strayed from the orders of the Head," Owl said, his voice continuing to come at Asher from all the surrounding shadows despite the man standing immediately before him. "In ordering me to take part of this ambush, he made it clear he is no longer attempting to test you as commanded and has instead decided you must die. If I hadn't waited until you noticed something was wrong, my first arrow would have taken your head before you even knew I was watching."

That explains why the ice woman, Frostcut, looked more upset the longer they walked around, Asher realized, his eyes widening. They weren't trying to wear me down… She was probably wondering why on Earth Owl hadn't taken me out in all that time.

Seeing he understood, Owl continued. "Eight has strayed from the orders of the Head," he repeated, as if there were no greater crime a person could commit. "As such, the Head has instead delegated the task of completing your testing to me."

It took every ounce of willpower Asher had to not flinch back as Owl stepped forward, stopping directly in front of his face as he peered at him like a predator would a curious new animal they'd stumbled upon out in the wild. Even at this distance, the assassin's face was nothing more than a pool of living shadow, shifting and blurring endlessly. Asher briefly entertained the thought of trying to slash through Owl's neck, his lack of energy be damned, but he somehow knew in his very bones it would be the last thing he ever did.

"The rest of your test is simple," Owl all but whispered, dropping into the shadows once more and letting the darkness give him his orders as he vanished from sight.

"Kill Eight and become the next Finger before he kills you."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.