> Leodec of Etrenia was brought to you by Rex9584 Wood and Paul Vanderbug. Our collaborative project, “Build a Prince” is still underway (as of October 2021 if you’re reading this in the future). If I missed any collaborators, I’m sorry. Please leave a comment below and I’ll edit this chapter.
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Etrenia was a place of wetlands and marshes, not unlike Louisiana or Florida although they weren’t a coastal territory. Located a thousand kilometers to the south of the capital on the head of the Yossal river, it had diverse flora and hundreds of herb species. Poison and medicine in equal quantities flowed from there. Their [Apotheciaries], [Herbalists], [Druids], and even [Pharmacists] were renowned in the whole Empire.
Just like I grew up dreaming of Raswaria’s oil-on-canvas dreamy sunsets, Leodec also grew among herbs, medicine, and poison. He was rumored to have an amazing resistance to any substance, be it natural or synthetic. He had a penchant for concocting odd and unusual poisons. He even invented some sort of Joker gas that made people laugh manically until they burst their diaphragms. He had fart pills, hallucinogens, and recreational drugs. And medicine. A lot of medicine for several diseases, including antidotes for poisons, which he sold at three times the price of the latter.
It was a shame I was intended on murdering him. Maybe… Only if I could pin the attempt without reasonable doubt on Leodec would he go under. Honestly, the guy and his territory were too interesting to just throw away. Leodec was the twenty-fourth Prince and rumor had it he wasn’t interested in the throne. He had eyes only for his mad chemistry and drug synthesis business. That’s what made me believe he was framed. Why would he try to kill me so blatantly when he had no ambitions?
So before I did something harsh that would benefit whoever pinned the blame on Leodec, I should check with the local [Assassin] guild and trace the assassination request back to the source. As it was a kind of work the blunt Percival shouldn’t be doing, I went out as Apricot. The [Death Princess] was the best for the mission.
The map of the underground tunnels I had was utterly useless after three thousand years. I had to rely on directions by the ghosts of the two third-rank [Assassins]. The game was catch and release. Catch a criminal they knew, kill them, interrogate the soul, get more criminals, then release the souls I no longer needed.
That night, the Imperial capital’s underworld would spread rumors of a boogeyman who struck out of nowhere (from the Ethereal World) and vanished right after. Whoever got a glimpse of the attacker, got exactly that, no more, no less.
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As I lurked in the underground chamber and surveyed everyone gathered in the room, I chuckled. They had no chance of detecting me lurking in the Ethereal at the heart of the [Assassin] guild, while I could see them perfectly. I triggered my wards on that plane, extending the Force barriers to the Material World and blocking teleportation. The room was sealed and had just become a death trap.
“It’s here!” One of them shouted when they sensed the change in the acoustics of the room because of the walls.
Like Batman… No, definitely not like Batman because I don’t want a deranged Wyxnos as my Joker. As I said, like… I give up.
I opened a rip between dimensions and pulled the guy who sensed me across, impaling him with the [Unicorn King Spear]. The body vanished and the new ghost joined the legion floating around.
The next time I tried dragging someone along with me, a guy jumped through the rift and crossed over along with my victim. He struck and I dodged, causing me to release the guy I dragged.
The dimensional stowaway was a man in his forties or something, wearing a black leather suit filled with practical pockets and secret compartments but still stylish and easy to move in. It hummed with enchantments to my magical senses. His face was fully exposed and his features were almost androgynous. I wouldn’t say he was beautiful because I honestly had a little face blindness regarding most males’ mugshots.
> Level 92 ½ elf / ½ human male [Assassin].
So that’s why. Scratch that forties’ evaluation. This guy could be centuries old. He could be from Ackerton’s guild for all I knew.
“Who are you?” The interloper demanded, threatening me with a sickly-looking engraved dagger. It looked dangerous and downright evil, the kind of tool used to summon demons.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
> > Death Contract
It settled, although I spent more Energy (would’ve been SP back in the day) than I wanted. The [Assassin Guildmaster] stared at the dagger clutched in his hands.
“Impressive, my lady. Is this a purge?” He bowed but his eyes kept staring at me. “For the sake of camaraderie and before you dispatch me, who sent you?”
He attempted to dispel the contract but found that his ability fell short of mine. He didn’t despair. After taking a moment to look around, he sheathed his dagger.
“I am Ezechiel, [Guildmaster] of this humble guild. Where are you from? One of Ackerton’s girls?” When I couldn’t hide a reaction, he smirked, “I got that right, didn’t I? Tell me, is it true that ‘King Ackerton sleeps with death?’”
He had hit a nerve. Angry, I dropped the contract at the same time I made a mental note to visit the current King of Ackerton and assert this allegation.
> > Champion’s Challenge
>
> > Contested Charisma test won.
>
> > Contested Ego test won
He spent a fraction looking at the notification before he drew his dagger again.
“Full of tricks, aren’t we? Are you going to kill me? I can be of help if you let me live.”
He could be even more helpful if I had to deal only with his disembodied soul. Not to mention someone at his level would be worth a lot of Exp. The reason I swapped from the contract to the challenge was that the latter gave more Exp if the target acted during our altercation.
The best way to get an agility fighter like him was to trap them in a snare. Directed attacks would most often be dodged or mitigated, but a good snare trap would hold them. He was already trapped in the Force wards I erected, now all I had to do was to restrain him for the kill. I started to fill the wards inside us with Force bubbles the size of a golf ball. These bubbles were movable although they had great spatial inertia. I kept the spell running, filling the box with those invisible spheres.
He sensed them approaching and tried to dodge, only to stop and find himself cornered. Without a choice, he kicked against the ground to attack me. He slashed at my throat and I feinted a dodge. With a smirk, he switched grips and went instead for a stab through the heart.
That’s when I blew a pouch of Deathberry pollen straight at his face. The [Guildmaster] didn’t inhale the pollen as he stopped moving his lungs by reflex in whichever stage of breathing he was but got a face full of it as his head went through the cloud.
Before he emerged, he blew the pollen back at me. Eager to see how he fought it off, I pretended to hack and cough as I fell to the ground. He took an enchanted handkerchief with gold crochet at the edges embedded with gems and wiped his face, all of the pollen coming out on the cloth. “Amateur. This much pollen won’t affect me but it will be deadly for someone as young as you are. I have maxed resistance. Any last words.”
I climbed back on my feet with a bunch of deathberries still stuck to the branch, the characteristic dark green serrated leaves leaving no doubt what the plant was. I bit a couple of berries and pulled them from the branch, chewing on them. The slightly sour but extremely sweet berry juice spread in my mouth and I hummed a gormandizing groan.
“Best berries ever,” I squealed. “Want some?”
“{Detect Poison},” he mumbled in disbelief. His eyes went wide as he stared at the branch full of berries in my hand. “I’m sorry if I offended you, Your Highness,” He offered his open hand. “I thought you were a legend.”
He was damn right. Only one person in the world would eat deathberries like a snack. I would be insulted if a high-level [Assassin] wouldn’t know about Apricot and her moniker.
“I am,” I grinned, my teeth full of berry skins. “A living legend. And no, I never slept with my father.”
The bubbles never stopped growing in number and quickly engulfed us both. As they pressed each other for room, they squeezed our bodies. I let them through me with {Force Phasing} but the guildmaster used a shrinking Perk to keep himself from getting squeezed. With a slight effort of will, I changed the spell’s parameters and all spheres became cubes with a slight attraction force between faces like they were magnets. They quickly snapped in place, allowing more cubes to appear and put more pressure on the middle.
The [Guildmaster] was laughing when he was squished. His body returned to its normal size and his blood spilled.
> For killing level 92 Assassin Guildmaster you earned 15.8 trillion Exp (Base 8,483,141 x 100,000 fast-learner x3.05 Challenge x3.05 Favored Enemy x2 Class Rarity)
>
> ~3% of the Exp to next level.
Then hell broke loose.
For some reason, his blood was highly acidic and magical. Powered by his own death, the blood multiplied and spilled, consuming the magic in the Force cubes. His enchanted items, dagger, storage ring, and whatnots were all dissolved and destroyed. That stupid acidic blood was hideously dangerous, my {Prescience} from [Mental Mastery] told me. Even with my stacked resistances, I knew I should avoid it.
Cutting the supply of magic to keep the Force cubes stable and letting the acidic blood gush everywhere as it multiplied from the body like a compressed bottle, I blinked into the Material world. Some [Assassins] were still trying to escape the wards and I killed all of them as I cleaned the room of anything not nailed to the walls. On the Ethereal, the acid ate the unsupported cubes and spread to eat the wards. They too failed, letting the acidic blood settle in a pool in the other side’s version of this room. By volume, it had grown ten times the amount of the original body.
A deadman’s switch, a vengeance last strike, and a way to clear evidence, all in one deadly and nasty package. The sickly-looking acid was greenish-brown with a cover film that caught the sparse light underground and ran all the colors of the rainbow, like an oil slick.
I shifted into a hummingbird and then blinked between dimensions once again. The [Guildmaster]’s ghost was gone, the satisfaction of doing his last strike combined with the mental discipline to keep their secrets safe quickly ushering him to the next life. It was rare but not unheard of.
After I raided the whole guild base, I found sparse documents and tomes regarding the assignments. But aside from the guildmaster himself, I caught almost everyone present at the time of my raid. The others would be hard to track down but I didn’t need more than what the ghosts told me to plan my next move.
My brother Leodec was indirectly involved in the attempt. Not only he was a member of the Guild and allocated a Path to the [Assassin]’s way, his right-hand man, Sir Myers, was the one to set the job up.
Percival should pay a visit to his brother.