Zurucks's view

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Finally, I am done with the training for the red crodops and can now join the group of assassins I have admired since my childhood. I will now meet with the group's captain, Red Eye, to receive my first mission and begin working with the group.

I finally stand before the door to the Captain's office. There is only one wall between me and my idol. I don't walk in directly, as I am too nervous, as I suddenly hear something coming from the other side of the door.

I could hear someone say something rather interesting: "You can't just send another assassin alone to this place; you know it's suicide and you're not even giving them enough money for this mission. How will you recover your image of being a saint to the rest of the organization if this comes out?"

As he finished speaking, I could hear him, the person I had admired for so long, speaking in an angry tone. "These assassins are mine. They don't even know how much should be given for such a mission, as they are all just newbies. It probably even feels like a lot to them, as they have never done such a dangerous thing before. And how could my image even break? I mean, nobody says anything against what I do and if they did, they would just die before they could say anything to people with an even higher position than me in the organisation. There will never be a newbie who survives and if there was, what would they do? The only people who know about this are us two, so if there was even just a rumor about this, I would know it would have been you, right? So, what could possibly happen? Even if this isn't the case, there is another group that does the same, right? What was their name again? Ah, right, Youshiri."

I was suddenly frozen in place, my idol - whom I had admired for so long and was the reason I had joined the organization - had said such things. I didn't know what to do; I could sense the presence of some assassins drawing near. Quickly, I knocked on the door and heard a voice from inside, asking what I wanted in an angry tone.

As I opened the door and said, "I would like to receive my mission," Red Eye smiled evilly and said, "I've heard a lot about you. I think you'd be perfect for this mission. You have the mission to go and collect the mysterious axe in the north, two days from here, for which you'll get 100 Gold." I found new hope in this task, thinking I may have misheard him. What could be so difficult about finding an axe and getting such a large sum of money for it? So I happily accepted his offer.

On the next day, I thought about the mission again, with doubt as to whether it would be hard or worth the 100 gold. I thought it might be a test to see how this group works. I got ready and wanted to go to the north, but I didn't have my equipment and supplies yet, so I decided to get them first.

I went to the place where you normally get them and asked for it. They gave me a grey assassin cloak (which wasn't really practical, as it didn't help me to vanish in the shadows or something, because it was light in color); a longsword (which wasn't practical either, as I had to go through a cave later on to reach my goal, according to the mission); a dagger; a blowgun; and two pieces of bread.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the equipment provided. I was aware that it was an easy mission, but I had hoped for something better.

So, after having finished gathering all these items, I decided to go and try heading to the north. Finding my way was easy as I had been trained in utilizing simple things like the positions of stars at night or a special item I had for the day (it couldn't be used in the night as it was too dark).

After just a few hours of wandering north, I could feel the air getting colder and colder. The cloak I had acquired earlier that day wasn't providing much warmth, and I had nothing else to replace it. It was too cold to make a fire, so I knew that this mission might be more difficult than I had initially anticipated. It showed me just how well-made this test was, as it demonstrated my ability to think and make decisions in difficult and varying situations.

On the way, I could occasionally see footprints of various sizes, from animals to monsters. This means that there is a high amount of wildlife in the north, and a high chance of encounter with a monster. This shows how high of a standard the members of the "Red Crodops" have, or that they didn't have the information about how dangerous this path would be either way they seem to trust me.

Slowly, it grew darker and darker and I had to find a place to sleep. After searching for a while, I found a small cave, which I used as a refuge for the night, without any fire or warm clothing. It was a bitterly cold night and I had a great difficulty trying to make the rocky ground of the cave more comfortable.

After having eaten one of the two breads, I had I noticed, that I shouldn't eat much more because, this should also be enough to go back. Luckily I trained in the way, to not need much to eat or drink, so that even this amount was enough for me.

So, I went outside the cave to find much more snow than the day before. As I wanted to start going further north, I realized that my item to know which direction north was didn't work any longer due to the cold temperature. Therefore, I was going in any direction, trying to find a way or someone to help me. After many hours, I finally found a way and on that path was a lonely wandering person.

Ah, you're trying to get the axe, am I right? You have to go further in this direction. Before you go, I have an offer for you, Assassin. When you bring the axe to the Youshiris, you will get 300 Gold and a small leadership position with us, the Youshiris, instead of whatever the other people who hired you wanted to give you. What do you say?

I was a bit surprised that he instantly knew I was an assassin, but now that I think about it, weren't the Youshiris another group of assassins, just like the Red Crodops under the "organisation"? I thought about the offer a little longer and decided to take it. I mean, if they could give me three times the amount of money I would get from doing this for the Red Crodops, then wasn't it worth it? At this moment, I remembered what I had heard secretly earlier from Red Eye; he said he would give me much less money than the mission was worth, and here was the proof.

After having accepted the truth and losing my admiration for the red crodops, I accepted the offer and followed the direction the wandering person showed me. He was right; after just a few more hours, I arrived at a large tower reaching high into the sky.

I was already feeling sleepy, so I decided to search for a cave. I quickly found a large one beneath the big tower I had seen before. I suspected there was an entrance to the tower around here, but I was too exhausted to look for it. I went to the entrance of the cave, wary of any monsters that may be lurking inside. I tried to sleep there.

As night fell, the howling of wolves could be heard, making it impossible to sleep. Later on, I could hear something else - footsteps outside the cave. It sounded like there were many of them - the wolves had come.

I slowly stood up and tried to sneak out of the cave while they went inside. After just a few steps, I failed, because I stepped on a stick on the ground, which was too loud. All the wolves suddenly looked at me and I could feel the fear rising inside of me. I didn't know what to do, so I decided to run away, which was a pretty stupid thing since wolves are faster than me. In just a few seconds, they were upon me and I couldn't run away any farther than I already had. I got my weapons out and tried to fight the wolves.

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Because of the time I needed to get my dagger out, one of the wolves had already attacked me. I barely managed to avoid it with the help of my acrobatics, sliding under it and getting my dagger up. I sliced the wolf in two, and the other wolves, barely visible in the dark, looked scared of me. Though I was a bit lucky to have hit the wolf critically, I think I would have been able to take out the other four as well. After we looked in each other's eyes for a few moments and they realized I was ready to fight back if they attacked me, they ran away.

Only then did I see that behind me in the cave were lights, as if somebody from the tower was coming out to see what was going on. I quickly tried to hide myself behind some rocks, but my grey robe was a problem; it wouldn't be able to hide me in this darkness. I cursed the red crodops for giving me such a useless robe instead of a dark one. I had no money to buy one either, so I could only hope that when I reached the Youshiris, they would give me better things. This made me lose even more trust in the red crodops.

When the light in the cave went out, I came out and tried to sleep nearby the cave, as it seemed to be the entrance to the tower.

The rest of the night, I slept without any interruptions, not even hearing one howl. The next morning, when I was ready to go into the tower, I made sure to look on every side for another entrance, as I was sure the main entrance was heavily secured. When I looked on each side, my suspicion was confirmed as I couldn't find any other entrance, which meant that the main entrance had to be in the cave. Unable to find a suitable entrance, I decided to use some other means to go in, so I looked around the Tower again and spotted a window, which was easy to break through to enter the tower. As I looked up, I could see that the Tower was getting smaller and smaller from the bottom to the top, which meant that it should be safer to go through an entrance at the top, as there wouldn't be as many people there. Therefore, I quietly climbed about nine meters to the top floor, which was surprisingly easy as it was slippery, but the tower was built as if it was meant to be climbed. When I looked into the window, I could see two rooms, but I could only see into one of them. In the room, I could see a large bed and a big shelf, as well as a big chest, but that was all. It seemed that this was the room of someone with a high status in the tower, as there was only one bed and no dust at all to be seen.

It might look like the safest room from the outside, as it is so high, which adds to my theory that this room is owned by someone of high standing in the tower. I entered the room as quietly as possible, having broken a wooden window. Luckily, the people here don't use any glass windows, or else I would have been too loud and alerted them to my break-in.

Realizing that I was already there, I decided to take the opportunity to steal some items to help me pay for some necessary equipment. Moving carefully, I opened the chest and peered inside.

Inside it were 30 gold coins; it seems like the person living here really likes them, as they had put all of them in an extra boxes for storage. It took some extra time to open each one, but I was pleased with what I gained.

I greedily looked around a little more to see if I could find any more treasures, but I couldn't find any more and so decided to move on to the next room, which should be the stairs leading down.

I opened the door to the next room, and as expected, it was a staircase leading down to the floor, about the height of where the cave was. I was aware of the danger of using a staircase, connected to every floor, but I decided to take the risk.

As I was too greedy to go down directly, I firstly decided to go down one floor and get whatever was inside there. As I opened the door, I could see a corridor with two more doors. Quietly, I went to one of the doors and looked inside, while trying to hold my breath to not make too much noise and hoping that the door wouldn't be too loud. Even though this worked and I entered quietly, this could still have been risky if it were another room.

But, it wasn't as risky here, as there were only six beds in front of me and only two people sleeping, who both looked exhausted. There wasn't much more inside here, the only other thing that could be of interest were the weapons of the two sleeping people, leaning against the wall directly next to them.

I chose to sneak up to them and silently slit their throats in order to kill them. I did exactly as I had determined and crept up to the two of them. As I slit their throats, there was a lot of blood, but I ignored it and instead focused on the weapons the two seemed to be carrying.

Both of their weapons seemed to be worse than mine, so I just let them be and went looking for the other door. I went outside of the room again and quietly closed the door behind me. This time, I looked at the other door, remembering that it was risky to open the door like last time again. I chose to first listen for any sounds coming from behind the door.

Behind the door, I could hear people criticizing the food of the other. It sounded like they were cooks, so I assumed this must be a kitchen. It didn't seem very interesting to me, so I looked back towards the stairs. Behind the stairs, I noticed two cabinets. I had the idea to move one of them in front of the door to the kitchen, but they were too heavy for me. So, I decided to move on to the next floor of the tower and try to forget about the cabinets and their potential loot.

I went from floor to floor, but couldn't find what I needed until I came to the lowest floor, which seemed to be at the same height as the cave I had seen outside. By this point, I had already killed about eight people without having been noticed, but this floor appeared to be the most heavily guarded.

Without any more unnecessary thoughts, I climbed the wall next to me, reaching the ceiling and moving around with its help. The ceiling was made of stone and not perfectly made, so I could climb it easily. I made it and was able to sneak past many guards. As there were no doors, I didn't even have to come back down. Another thing I was fortunate with was the darkness in the area; the only way for a normal person to see something was with the torches placed on the walls. This was good for me as I had been trained to see in the dark.

This place didn't seem like a good place; in fact, it felt more like a dungeon. I looked around and noticed one room that was different; not only was there a door in front of it, but there were also extra guards. I could see two guards, each holding a torch in one hand and a short sword in the other.

I thought of a plan: I would try to put out all the light sources around here and then quietly kill the guards.

I followed my plan exactly: I descended from the ceiling and positioned myself in a corner that was not visible. The torches were not bright enough for this, so I took out my blowgun and shot darts at the upper ends of the torches; they both went out quickly. I decided to do the same with all the walls. The guards were initially not surprised, thinking that it was just a gust of wind, and they could simply turn the lights back on. But when all the lights went out, it became too suspicious, and they were too scared to scream. I was able to finish them off cleanly. Before anyone noticed it.

I was surprised when I went through the door, for in front of me was just a normal storage room with nothing suspicious. There were only some wine barrels and nothing too remarkable. Suspicious, I searched through each one and, behind almost the last one, I saw a light.

There seemed to be some kind of secret passage way. I put the last few barrels away and could finally see through it. In front of me was a long passage.

When I went through this long way, I saw something: a room with a big altar in the middle. An axe was stuck in the black wood of the altar, and around it were green flying things that I recognized from legends as particles left behind by ancient magic.

When I tried to hold my cloak up to these particles, I remembered that each had a different effect if touched. As soon as they touched the cloak, it was cut cleanly in two. I knew they were of the destructive type, exactly like in the legends.

I didn't know what to do next, but then I suddenly got an idea. I grabbed one of the torches in the room and threw it onto the wood. Luckily, it wasn't hit by any of the green particles. Fire met with the wood, and it started to burn. It was terrifying how quickly it burned, and it produced a lot of heat around me. I could just hope that the axe was a magical item and could withstand this. The wood seemed to be normal wood that had been in contact with magic for a long time, turning it black. I wasn't just burning wood, but I was also burning some magic within it.

I waited until the wood had burned away and then grabbed the axe. Surprisingly, it wasn't hot and wasn't damaged either. Now I had to swiftly escape the place and decide to whom I would give the axe later. I went back through the passage and opened the door at the end of the room in an attempt to flee.

As I opened the door, I was met with something unexpected, I had forgotten--seven people. I had forgotten about the guards I had killed earlier, their bodies lying on the floor, and the lights that could have been turned on quickly. Fortunately, they hadn't done so yet, only holding torches in their hands, rendering them unable to see me as I stepped out of the door.

One of the seven people looked like the leader of the group, as he was the only one different. He wore a pitch black cloak, darker even than the shadows around us. In his hand was a small black dagger, matching his cloak in color. The other guys all seemed to be wearing the same things as any other guard.

Luckily, I still had some items on me that could save me. I quickly poured some oil on the ground behind me. As it was still dark, they couldn't see it at all, which was really good for me. It also seemed like they still hadn't seen me.

I decided to try and sneak around them and escape. I moved smoothly, but right at the moment I was attempting to flee, I seemed to be too loud as I could see how the person in the cloak turned around and faced me.

I was at the doorstep, ready to leave the room, and next to me was a torch, so I could be easily seen. Quickly, I grabbed the torch and poured some oil on the floor in front of me, setting it alight. I then put some oil on my dagger and set that alight too, before throwing it in the same place as the oil I put down before. Nobody seemed to be able to escape, and I could hear their screams of pain as I shot darts at them from behind the fire.

I waited there to make sure no one escaped and went back inside. As I entered, I noticed something strange: the cloak and dagger of the leader had seemingly survived the fire unscathed. I was surprised that the cloak had survived, but not the dagger. I took the two items, as they seemed like magical objects, and finally decided to leave.

To make sure there were no more unexpected events, I decided to go out the way I had come in. As hoped, nothing unexpected happened. I went outside through the window that had already helped me to get in.

As I moved away from the tower, I saw the lone wandering man from before. He said he would give me 300 gold if I completed the mission. I went to him and asked for the money. He seemed surprised to see my axe and asked how I had gotten it out of the wood. I told him I had just burned the wood away and here it was - the axe. He quickly gave me the money and offered me the chance to be captain of a small assassin troupe.

I accepted his offer, as I didn't know what else to do and decided to walk back with him to his group...