Ezra stumbled out of his sheets and ran out of his tent. It was dawn, with the sun just starting to rise above the horizon. Just a little bit away from Ezra, a boy was slumped over on the ground. He whimpered, a red spot on his clothing increasing in size.
Ezra cursed and ran forward. He dragged the boy off to the side behind a mound of dirt and looked over his wounds.
Cloth shuffled to the side and Charles broke out of his tent.
“What the hell was that!?” he said.
Ezra’s head shot over to Charles. “Get down, you idiot—!”
A high-pitched whine slammed against Ezra’s ears and there was a glimmer at the corner of his vision. Charles’s eyes widened and he swept his razor blade through the air. Ice shattered in midair. Charles cursed and ducked behind a tree. A few people who’d wandered out in confusion hit the dirt.
“Goddamn it!” Charles said. “That almost hit my skull!”
“Everyone, play it cautious! Find some cover, it’s to the northwest!” Ezra said.
“Which way is northwest!?”
Ezra was surrounded by idiots.
“Directly behind me, you dumbass!” Ezra said.
Steel pounded the snow. Idia stepped forward. “Belay that order.”
Ezra sucked in a breath. A few people with their backs against the trees glanced at Idia.
“We need to charge,” Idia said.
Idia was still exposed—how had he not gotten shot down?
“We were lucky with that shoulder shot.” Ezra peeked over the mound. Nothing. “We might not be so lucky again.”
Idia snorted. “Are you all going to listen to this coward?”
No one said anything.
“Let me put that a different way,” Idia said. “Remember Ezra? He was a deserter. If you don’t listen to your commander, you will be treated the same way.”
A boy with a spear off to Ezra’s right bit the bottom of his lip. He stepped out of cover.
Ezra slammed the back of his skull into the tree he was seated against.
One by one, the rest of the Otherworlders poked their heads out and assembled into an amorphous mass. Idia pulled out his sword and pointed it forward.
“Charge!” he said
The ground shook from the footsteps as the horde of Otherworlders rushed forward. A loud whizzing noise cut through the air and one of the charging Otherworlders fell to the ground, a hole in their arm. A second later, another one dropped, blood spilling from their ear.
Ezra ground his teeth together. Had that shot been an inch to the left, they’d be dead. The only reason the aim was off was probably due to the vibrations from the amount of movement throwing off the third boss’s aim.
Ezra had to take care of this if he didn’t want a goddamn massacre on his hands.
He poked his head out and flipped on [Mana Perception]. His eyes narrowed and he caught sight of a large blob of mana where a mound of snow was. He summoned Filamenta to his hand and shot her out with a swing of his arms.
The third boss yelped, then jumped up, revealing a pure white golem made of snow. The only traces of color were two black dots where the eyes should’ve been.
Snow King - Golem Sniper - The Third - Lv. 81
“There it is!” Idia said. “Get it!”
The students charged forward. The third boss monster, apparently uninterested in dying, ran away in the opposite direction.
Ezra saw Dorian begin to slash out her sword to create a portal before she stopped. It was probably a good choice on her part. No reason to rush in alone because of Idia’s poor tactical mistakes.
“Healer!” Ezra ran over to the students who’d been injured. “We need a healer!”
Two of the students spread out and put their hands on the wounded classmates. A flash of mana lit up the wounds and they sealed up. Ezra would’ve done it himself, but that would’ve invited several questions he didn’t want to answer.
Idia stood in the distance, his head toward where the creature had run off.
Ezra stared at the man. Before, revenge was a luxury that Ezra had been hesitant to indulge in. Now, Idia was actively sabotaging his goals.
Ezra, really, really didn’t like that.
At the first opportunity, Idia was going to die.
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They decided to hustle and kicked up a light jog toward the town. Rations were running low and their injured needed rest as soon as possible. The mood was tense and awkward, no one felt like talking. Ezra didn’t have time to get any training done either because they were pushing so hard.
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In two days, they made it back to the town. The injured students were given warm beds and good food, and it was hoped that they would make a full recovery quickly. The assumption was that it would only take a night, but given the strange abilities of boss monsters, no one was quite certain.
The little girl wandered up to him when he went back to his room.
“Did you kill it?” she said.
“Nope.”
She pouted. “Do better next time.”
He went to his room—Old Joe didn’t stop him.
The night was a quiet one. The stars were out overhead. Ezra slipped out through his window.
He’d watched the building where Stip Idia had gone into. Ezra crept over to it and peeked his head in through the windows. The first two that he saw were nothing more than students. One was asleep. The second one was reading a book—Yuki.
Third window. Jackpot. Idia was sleeping in his bed, a thin line of drool making its way to the floor. Ezra opened the window and entered. He stood over Idia.
Now then, the question was how he would take care of things. He could just stab the idiot repeatedly… but that would leave traces of Ezra’s existence. It might be better to poison him or something...
Oh, who was he kidding? He summoned Filamenta to his hand from beside his heart.
“Oh? Are we finally getting revenge?” Filamenta said.
Ezra expanded her to the size of a dagger.
He smiled.
Idia mumbled in his sleep.
Ezra shot his hand out to cover Idia’s mouth and his eyes shot open. Ezra stabbed Idia in the stomach three times before the man could say anything. He screamed into Ezra’s glove. Ezra made his way up and stabbed through the rib cage, each one causing Idia to flinch and scream.
Oh, Ezra should make this even more fun.
He turned off his [Guardian of Toria] title and took off his eyepatch.
Idia’s eyes lit up with recognition. Ezra could practically see the thoughts running through his mind.
It’s you?! But how!?
Ezra stabbed Idia five more times. Blood soaked the sheets. Idia stopped moving and his eyes lost their luster.
You have leveled up!
Title gained: Assassin I!
Ezra watched the death with a widening smile. He brought his needle toward his lips before he pulled it away.
“Ew, that’s gross and seriously unhygienic,” Ezra muttered. “God knows how many STDs were probably running through this guy’s system.”
He stared at the corpse for a few more seconds before he turned and walked over to the window.
That was, of course, when the door swung open. Ezra turned around to see Yuki, her eyes narrowed due to the lack of glasses. She looked at Idia, and then her eyes widened. She screamed.
Ezra jumped out of the window and dashed back to his room. He slipped his eyepatch back on and reequipped his title [Guardian of Toria].
He faced toward the door. A droplet of sweat rolled down his neck. He hadn’t had his title on… meaning that Yuki might’ve recognized him. On the other hand, she didn’t have her glasses on, so her sight shouldn’t have been good enough for that… right?
There was nothing to do but wait and see.
A few minutes later, a knock slammed on his door. He winced from the noise and walked over to it. The door stood there, like some sort of harbinger of judgment. He pulled open the door.
Charles was standing in front of him.
“Sir One-Eye,” he said. “I’m afraid that I have some terrible news.”
“What news?” Ezra said.
“Murder. Commander Idia is dead.”
“Who did it?”
The seconds stretched on.
“We don’t know.”
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They had some sort of emergency meeting in Miss Marnie’s to discuss what they would do now. There weren’t exactly tears being shed over the guy’s death, but there was a sense of unease. A lot of people were more worried about the cause of death than they were about the death itself. Why would someone murder Idia? Would they be next?
In response to the ‘Why would someone murder Idia’ question, Steve loudly said that he had an entire 20-page list.
The room went silent and a few poeple awkwardly scooted away from Steve.
In any case, the group decided that they wouldn’t return to the kingdom. No one said it aloud, but everyone knew that Idia had been the reason for their colossal failure with the Golem Sniper. With him out of the way, they saw it as a fresh opportunity.
Nonetheless, Charles was obligated to send a message back to the Crown alerting them of Idia’s death.
It just so happened that they only had enough money to use the absolute slowest priority mail. It would take weeks for the letter to get to the crown. It was unlikely that the crown would go all out and get a letter back to them in a day. Therefore, they had around a month.
A month in which they would hunt down the third boss monster.
After that, Dorian brought up the obvious—someone would need to replace Idia. Charles put himself forward as the natural choice, but Pete objected because Charles was too inexperienced. He ended up putting Ezra forward as a candidate.
It was hard for Ezra not to burst out laughing. The more things change…
Charles was competent and had built up a fair amount of trust with the Otherworlders, but was he good enough for the coming challenges? That was the main concern of Pete and the others who’d tried to push Ezra as a candidate. Of course, Charles won the vote, but unlike last time, it was far closer than it had any right to be.
The meeting adjourned and Ezra stumbled back to bed.
[Please select your class immediately! If you don’t select it within the next 38 days, the system will be forced to disconnect to prevent your death!]
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The next morning, Ezra got some more early morning training done. He took advantage of [Mind Partition] like earlier. His goal this time was to get [Bind], [Thread Manipulation], [Precision Prick], and [Telekinesis] up.
Thanks to his enormous mana pool, he was able to continually train for almost an hour. He rotated between the abilities, summoning thread while telekinetically throwing Filamenta around the room. The only problem was the headache that felt like someone had drilled out his brain.
[Bind] - Lv. 25 > [Bind] - Lv. 29
[Thread Manipulation] - Lv. 4 > [Thread Manipulation] - Lv. 9
[Precision Prick] - Lv. 15 > [Precision Prick] - Lv. 19
[Telekinesis] - Lv. 15 > [Telekinesis] - Lv. 21
In the meantime, he also took a look at his new title.
[Assassin I]
The foundation of the Assassin path, representing the art of moving through the shadows and striking without being seen. Those who take on this title learn the delicate balance between patience and lethal action, mastering the craft of silent elimination.
Increases movement speed when in stealth, boosts critical hit damage when attacking from behind, and slightly reduces detection range by enemies.
Well, if he needed to go around killing people in secret that would probably be useful.
He wandered out of his room and put his hand to his head. Charles walked up to him and slapped his back.
“Hey, we were waiting for you.”
Ezra looked at Charles. “What?”
“We’re due for another meeting, it looks like the guild went all out. They managed to get us a pretty decent tracker quickly. The person is high-ranked in the guild as well, which is pretty surprising.”
Ezra pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
They approached the guild hall and opened it up. A crowd of students were gathered around something. Sen was shouting something in the back about order. Ezra pushed his way forward to get a better look and the crowd parted for him.
He blinked.
He blinked again.
Prise stood with her mouth open like a fish of some sort.
“O-One-Eye?” she said.