Asher had only intended to sleep for a few hours, which meant he was more than a little surprised to wake up to find that the sun had already set and he'd slept the entire day away. He'd known his body was tired from the combination of barely any sleep and running out of skill energy twice in one day, but he hadn't realized just how exhausted he'd truly been.

"Asher!" Brian shouted, jumping onto him and driving the air out of his lungs with his surprise tackle. "You're finally up! Sam said we had to practice stealth today and wouldn't let me make any loud noises until you woke up."

"I'll be honest, I can't believe he lasted the whole time," Samantha smirked, looking down at the two of them as she worked on fletching some new arrows. "Feeling better?"

"Immensely," Asher wheezed, still trying to suck in a new breath of air as he shifted Brian off his stomach. "How's training been? Any issues setting up camp on your own?"

"It was easy," Brian scoffed, as if insulted Asher had even considered he might have had difficulties with his tasks. "Samantha's training camp has been way too easy so far. I keep asking her to make things harder, but she won't listen!"

"Have you stopped to consider that maybe she is giving you hard stuff, and you're just that good?" Asher asked, grinning as Brian all but recoiled at his words and blinking rapidly at the thought. He saw Samantha smile and mouth the words 'thank you' silently behind him.

"Brian, how about you go check our snares and see if we caught anything? I think Asher needs to leave soon, but I bet he'd join us for dinner if we can whip something up quickly."

In answer, Asher's stomach let out a loud, powerful rumble, and he couldn't help but laugh as the question was answered for him.

"Guess that settles that," he grinned. "Need any help, Brian?"

"No, I can do it!" Brian answered, grabbing his bow and quickly darting off into the forest, vanishing from sight within moments.

"Wow, sometimes it almost feels like he has his own Forest element," Asher admitted, stretching and pushing himself into a more comfortable position. "Thanks for letting me sleep so long. I didn't actually realize just how tired my body was."

"After hearing about your latest adventures, I figured you would be," Samantha laughed. "Come on, I'm willing to bet you've recovered enough to help me with the fire."

It didn't take long for the two of them to collect enough fallen branches and kindling for the campfire, and by the time Brian returned with two hares attached to his belt, their fire was raging and ready to go. Asher watched in awe as Samantha skinned and prepared one of the hares with quick, clinical precision that could only come from years of practice. Brian worked to carefully prepare the other next to her, and while his skills were incredibly impressive for a twelve-year-old and better than anything Asher could do, he definitely had a long way to go before he could match his sister.

While it was clear Brian was comparing himself to her at every step and grew a little frustrated when he couldn't match her pace, Asher was impressed that he didn't risk rushing ahead and damaging the hare or himself in the process.

As the two siblings worked on preparing dinner, Asher sat back and pulled up his interface. It had been a while since he'd looked at his skills all together like this, but it was good to monitor everything and see how he himself was progressing as a whole every now and again.

Name: Asher Holden

Class: Assassin

Unique classes available: Demon Slayer, Awakened Beast Hunter, Assassin, Librarian

Element: Spatial

Ability: Astral Dip - Lvl 22

Ability: Distortion - Lvl 24

Ability: Personal Rift - Lvl 18

Ability: Spatial Lock - Lvl 12

Ability: Recall - Lvl 5

Element: Knowledge

Ability: Identify - Lvl 19

Ability: Comprehend - Lvl 23

Ability: Incorporate - Lvl 15

Ability: Secret Seeker - Lvl 17

Ability: Judgement - Lvl 7

Element: Eternity

Ability: Eternal Regeneration - Lvl 24

Ability: Complete Resilience - Lvl 21

Ability: Eternal Mark - Lvl 16

Ability: Permanence - Lvl 10

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

Ability: Sever the Thread - lvl 3

Resistance: Darkness - Tier 2

Shards: 48,429

Five different skills already evolved and in the second tier, he thought, unable to keep himself from grinning. The fact that he'd already managed to evolve a third of his entire skill set was mind blowing to him, and not only because the cost of doing so totaled half a million shards. He also had four more skills that were already level 15 or higher, which meant he desperately needed to work on collecting more shards if he wanted to evolve those the moment they hit level 20. His recent run in with the truthseekers and subsequent evolution of Complete Resilience had shown him just how critical it was that he get his capped-out skills evolved as soon as possible.

Speaking of those truthseekers… Struck by a sudden thought, Asher focused on his resistances and began sifting through the list. The last time he'd tried this he'd stumbled upon the list containing hundreds upon hundreds of different resistances, and he'd just assumed there existed a resistance for pretty much everything. He didn't actually know if Complete Resilience's tier 2 effect would be enough to get him out of Clare's chains with the strange binding effect they had, so if he could find something that allowed him to resist that weird strange, skill-lock effect…

After a couple of minutes, he sighed and gave up the search, frowning at the distinct lack of anything related to 'skill-lock' or the like. He'd spotted a 'truth resistance' and a 'paralysis resistance,' but nothing for her chains specifically. There was a chance one of the many unique resistances would help with that after evolving it, like how his darkness resistance also granted him nightvision, but he had no way of knowing which one would have such an effect ahead of time. The best he could do would be to hit Whikoga's library again in the near future and see if he couldn't find some answers.

Though if he were within the truthseeker organization, he probably would have made sure to strike such information from the public, for obvious reasons.

While he absentmindedly flicked through the list of resistances, briefly contemplating the pros and cons of each available option, the smell of cooked meat wafted over to his nose, and his stomach let out an even louder rumble as he was roused from his internal musings a few minutes too soon. As much as he wanted to chow down at that very moment, he was forced to sit there and wait for dinner to finish cooking. Thankfully, it wasn't long before he was digging into the well-seasoned meat and moaning as warm juices dribbled down his face.

"This beats tavern food by a mile," he happily admitted, earning laughs from the two siblings. While they ate, Asher got all the details from Brian's 'training camp' that he'd missed so far. How they'd spent time practicing everything from following tracks to identifying different plants, or fletching arrows and securing food stores in ways that animals wouldn't get into while they slept. Asher knew the entire idea of the training camp was just to keep Brian distracted as they stayed away from the cabin for a while, but part of him was impressed enough that he actually began contemplating asking Samantha to run him through something like this once everything with the Guild was taken care of. Having lived in the city his whole life, Asher's survival skills were woefully lacking when it came to stuff like this, and he quickly realized how beneficial it would be to know how to survive out in the wilderness.

However, he had more important things to focus on at the moment.

Finishing up his hare and wiping his face clean with some fresh water, courtesy of Samantha and her new element, Asher thanked Brian for the meal and wished him good luck with training before pulling Samantha off to the side, far enough from the dancing flames of the campfire that they were hidden within the shadows of the forest.

"Heading back already?" she asked, her smile not quite masking the slight worry in her eyes.

"I've got a lot of work ahead of me," he nodded, wondering where to even begin. "With Jennifer gone, I'm back to square one. Unless Kree can find another lead for me, I have no idea where to even start looking. I'm hunting for a needle in a haystack at this point."

"Maybe there's a better way to go about this…" Samantha muttered, looking like a sudden thought just struck her. "Rather than trying to find the Guild again, what if you let them come to you? Like setting up a snare instead of trying to hunt them down?"

"I mean, that would be fantastic. But I would need to know who they were planning to target in order…" Asher paused, smacking himself as the answer hit him. He did know who they were trying to target. While Eight was trying to deal with him, the Finger was also trying to send Draken a message by killing Crush. Asher highly doubted the prideful Finger would cancel his plans just because Leonard went and got himself killed. The dossier he'd found on Crush stated that Eight wanted the hit to be messy and send a message, which meant the Finger himself probably wouldn't just send the man some poison in the mail and call it a day. Instead, he'd most likely delegate the task to another one of his senior assassins, which meant all Asher had to do was wait for the hit to occur, and he'd have his next lead.

"Samantha, you're a genius," he grinned, pulling her into a tight embrace and surprising her with a passionate kiss. The hunter eagerly melted into his arms, and when finally he went to pull away, her arms prevented him from doing so, keeping them intertwined for a few more seconds. Finally, she released him, and the two of them came up gasping for air.

"You're sure you have to leave right now...?" she murmured, pressing her forehead against his own and slowly trailing a finger along his chest. "I could send Brian off to do some late night hunting… I already checked to make sure there was nothing dangerous nearby…"

"You have no idea how much I want to stay," he shuddered, taking a deep breath and all but forcing himself to take a step back, grinning at the adorable pout on Samantha's face. "...but you just helped me remember someone I know is almost certainly in danger. And not only can I help them, but I think it will give me my next lead toward finding Eight."

"Fine," she sighed, her pout quickly turning into her trademark, toothy grin. "...but I expect you to make it up to me later."

"Yes, ma'am," he saluted, earning another giggle. Focusing on his Eternal Marks, Asher ran through his available options. Samantha and Brian were right next to him, obviously, so they wouldn't be any help. Jennifer was now rather deep in uncharted territory, having fled Whikoga entirely and ran off further into the kingdom. He had no idea where she'd ended up, but it seemed she had at least stopped moving for the moment. Part of him wondered if he shouldn't just erase her mark, but he decided to leave it for the moment. It wasn't as if he had anything else to mark just yet, and the more marks he had active, the faster his skill leveled.

Rosh's mark informed him the instructor was still within his tavern, and Kree was roaming about somewhere deep within the seedier side of the second ring, but the really strange sensation was the mark he'd left on Leonard's body. Asher could only assume someone had destroyed the man's corpse while he'd had been sleeping, because when he focused on the mark, rather than getting a sense of the integrity of the object, all he received was a location.

I guess that's where the corpse was destroyed? he thought, happy to discover that his marks truly couldn't be erased by anyone other than himself, even if whatever he'd marked was completely destroyed. Seems like a good idea to check that location first. Though without knowing what I'd be popping into, I should head to Rosh's tavern and make my way there on foot. After that, I'll head over to Crush and see if I can't catch myself an assassin.

Pleased with the fact he had a plan once more, Asher gave Samantha one more wave goodbye before he focused on the mark he'd left on Rosh and activated Recall.

He was back on the hunt.

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.