Part 1

Leaves lightly rustled against my cheeks and my clothes as I slid myself through the thinner part of the edges. I could vividly feel every single leaf trying to push me back, like thousands of hands begging me to turn away. Through pushing my way out of that miniature maze I was able to reach the other end of the edges just in time to see the light of a torch pass the corner of the mansion in front of me. I waited until no light was in sight before jumping out of my hiding spot. I looked around me, searching for a new hiding spot, and found one where one of the tubes of the gutter came close to a window. I used said tube to help my climbing and, once aided enough, I used it as a foothold together with the external window frame. I was at least three meters from the ground, using both hands and feet to cling to that unruly spot over the corner. I slowed my breath and focused on not making any sound. What was left was to wait.

[Amelie said that a guard usually patrols around the garden, probably now that the duke is here there’ll be more-] I thought as I was struggling to remain focused without letting my mind wander on my future actions [- I don’t think neither of them lied under…interrogation… but better take every word with a grain of salt. I’m sick of trusting people just to get my ass handed!]

As my thoughts ran through the plan times over, a faint light appeared from the other side of the corner where I was hiding. A torch was bobbing up and down as it slowly approached the corner. When it made the turn, the figure of the fantasy-like description of a knight came into view. A man in his early forties donning a metal full-plate armor dirtied by years of usage walked with heavy steps roughly in between the edges and the wall. He had dark hair but I couldn’t make out its color due to the distortion of the fire. His face was also unrecognizable. The forehead and nose were casting deep shadows over the man’s face but the important bit of information was that he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was sloppily making his rounds around the mansion while carrying a shortsword loose on his hip. Luck was smiling on me for that man was the perfect target.

I took a deep breath and waited for the man to reach my position. By observing how the guard behaved I hoped to know something more about my target in that little frame of time. By doing so, I noticed that he staggered every once in a while. Be it because of an injury or alcohol, that staggering could play in my favor. Though all that preparation came into fruition in merely a second. By the time the guard was walking under my hiding spot, I had already readied myself to jump down. It took me but a moment to land with my arms around his neck, one hand over his mouth and nose and one leg clinging to his knee to stop his movements. Like a piton wrapping itself around it’s prey so did I around the guard. He was helplessly struggling and wriggling on the ground as I slowly choked the life out of him. He tried his best to fight back and free himself from that choke but none of his attempts worked, instead every time he made a movement I wrapped my arms tighter. When an unending minute finally passed, the man’s arms and heart had stopped their movements.

I stood up as I looked at the fruits of my work. Retchings began pushing on my throat as my eyes laid upon the dead man’s. White and red mixed in a perfect canvas of suffering while the green of his iris and the black of his enlarged pupils pictured the despair of his last moments. “...I did this…-” Was my only thought once my lungs stopped hyperventilating “- I…just killed a man!”.

It wasn’t my first time seeing death so up close. I had experienced death on my own skin numerous times both in this life and the other, I even delivered death, though unwilling, to those who came after me. I wasn’t one to deliver the killing blow but I was always sure that some of the injuries I gave to my assailants could be, in due time, cause of death. But that man…that man was my first confirmed kill. I killed him knowingly. I planned it and went through with it in cold blood. there wasn’t much difference between me and a killer if not experience. Sweat formed all over my body as I began to panic and curse myself for what felt like hours while in reality, only a handful of minutes had passed.

Once I calmed down and was able to collect my thoughts, I stripped the man of his most useful belongings such as the knife he was hiding on the side of his thigh and the short sword on his hip. Then, I moved the body in between the edges so that the next passing guard wouldn’t alert the whole mansion.

“...I’m…sorry-” I whispered as I looked one last time at the man I killed. I crouched down where the body was hidden and placed two fingers over the man’s eyes. His eyelids slid together with my fingers over his eyes. That was my final farewell to the man who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time “...I…really wished I wouldn’t need to do this…I don’t know your name but…I’m sorry”

I exhaled as a means to further steel myself and strapped the sword to my back while the knife to my thigh. I then approached the closest window, namely one leading into a room full of chairs, tablecloths and crockery. With the use of the knife, I broke the iron straps keeping the window in place. A laborious work that made me almost get noticed by the second guard due to the time it took but still a necessary one since breaking the window would’ve made it easier for the guards to find me.

Once in I took my time to recall the information obtained by the two betrayers in our group. The layout of the mansion, the number of guards, the duke and his son’s bed chambers. While this was important information, it was inaccurate since it came from the time when the duke didn’t live in the mansion. It was a safe bet to say that the number of guards doubled with the duke’s presence. I had to be extra careful not to alert the guards. A full-on fight would have been extremely dangerous for me and for the others, especially if Delvin was able to see my face. I had to act very silently, just like a snake or a shadow.

With that in mind, I slightly opened the unlocked door and looked out just enough to assess my position. On my right, at the end of the hallway adorned with fancy red carpets and paintings, was a set of stairs leading both to the upper floor and the lover while on my left was yet another hallway, though one much shorter than the previous, opening to the dining hall. No guard was in sight but I could hear footsteps from both directions. The ones from the dining hall were approaching closer.

What came next felt all hazy. I didn’t forget even a single detail yet it still felt like my thoughts and feelings had been screened from me. Using the knife and short sword I mercilessly killed all the guards that came into view and those who could possibly come. All of them died without knowing who killed them. They weren’t even able to see the face of their killer. A blade cutting their throats was all they were able to feel. Surprisingly, even for me who carried the knife, my blade never once missed the vocal cords hence no scream could be heard from inside the mansion. I kept on killing and killing while hiding the bodies in empty rooms, all until I finally saw a room on the topmost floor guarded by two armored men standing in front of the door without a single shred of a blind spot.

[Neither of them seems to be a mage. Their builds are way too developed for a mage. They are different from the other guards. Guess those two are what you call “elites”?]

I instantly ruled out the option of fighting them head-on, both for the sake of making no noise and the fact that I didn’t feel confident fighting them with the little mana I disposed of. Not to mention the fact that I needed that mana for later if I wanted my whole plan to make sense. As I looked at them from a corner in a hallway on the other side of the floor I recalled the structure of the mansion. Through first-hand experience and the rough explanation of the girls, I figured the structure was similar to an uneven “T” with one of the horizontal sides much longer than the other. The room where the duke was sleeping stood in the longer side while Delvin’s on the shorter. Some kind of way to distinguish the master of the house from the rest, something nobles really liked to do, hierarchy. The good thing, for me, about that longer side’s structure was that most rooms had a balcony. Once I came to that realization, I just instantly knew how to act.

I broke into one of the rooms near my hiding spot, an empty large room with a long table filled with chairs. A fancy room most unusual to rooms I had seen before, it looked like the kind of rooms politicians used to attend conferences back in my world. I didn’t focus much on the room in itself, instead, I skipped everything and went directly for the window closest to the corner. The same corner where I spied on the two guards. I opened the window and smiled at the sight of a balcony five meters away from the window. After it, a series of almost evenly separated balconies went all the way to reach the end of the mansion’s wing where stood the duke’s room. Now, it was just an issue of jumping from balcony to balcony without alerting those inside the rooms.

I fastened the sword tighter so that it wouldn't dangle too much causing me to lose balance or hit on walls and windows then, I squatted on the marble-like edge of the window and lept towards the balcony made of stone pillars with intricate carvings and stone tiles as pavement. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve used a strength boost just to be sure to land the jump perfectly but the situation required me not to do so. Thus I came close to failing the jump. I ended up grabbing the edge of the balcony with my hands since my jump was shorter than the distance between window and balcony. With no little effort, I climbed back onto the balcony. I was astonished at how I not only felt no pain but also exhaustion, Legis’ potion was much more valuable than he initially thought.

I repeated the same jump four more times, this time though after making sure to put enough strength behind it to land the jump, until I reached the last balcony. The one that led into the duke’s bedroom. Once there, I had to be extremely careful not to make the slightest sound. One of the most important targets, not to mention the master of the house and one of the most influential figures of the kingdom of Belza, was on the other side of a glass door. One wrong move and all the guards of the mansion would have stormed to his rescue and my whole plan would end up thwarted. To prevent being found out I decided to do everything extremely slow. I unsheathed the dagger on my thigh and, making use of it’s pointy tip, I slowly unscrewed the tiny screws keeping the hinge attached to the wall and doorframe. While doing so I also made sure to keep the door in it’s place. It took me between ten and fifteen minutes to get rid of every single screw and hinge as I took care not to make any metal piece fall. Finally, once the last hinge was taken out, the door could be moved out of place and laid flat on the balcony. What worried me was that the air and slight wind from outside would wake up the duke but, when I entered the room, he seemed to be faintly snoring as if having the sweetest sleep of his life. I envied him.

The room was the exact description of luxurious to the point that it felt sickening. A red carpet with intricate gold designs covered the entire floor. In it’s middle stood tall a bed with enough space for five people with a huge dark wood canopy from which soft see-through pearl curtains softly fell over and mixed with the sheets. Various wardrobes, paintings and mirrors littered the rest of the room, all in an extravagant luxurious style that made me miss the simplicity of my room back in Migur. Even the wooden door leading to the hallway seemed to be finely decored with medieval-like engravings, though in the dark all I could make out of them was a huge five-tips crown.

I left the room alone and tiptoed my way towards the bed with the knife firmly in my hand. The duke was there. The father of my enemy. The one who supported Delvin Gallher in his folly and paid one of the ruby-tier adventurers to simply turn a blind eye to his son’s idiocy. He wasn’t even a meter away from me. I could feel his breath. See his chest swell and deflate right in front of my eyes. Anger started boiling inside my veins as I realized what that man was forcing me to do while he was peacefully sleeping sure to stand on the winning side.

“A parent carries their son’s sins-” I whispered as I readied my blade close to the duke's neck. My words must’ve been louder than I intended to since the man’s eyes widened as he stared at mine with cold shock.

I acted instinctively as I had done until then. A clean-cut on his throat appeared the next second yet no sound left the man’s mouth as much as he tried to scream. Shock turned into fear as two rivers of fresh and hot blood started flowing on both sides of his neck. He panicked as he tried to hold his throat to stop the bleeding and squirmed around to fight back. All it took to stop his movements was a blade through his chest, the same blade that previously cut his throat. His movements stopped and his breathing slowed to the point that it almost felt imperceptible. His heartbeat was the same, unlike mine which felt like that of a running horse. The eyes of the duke met stared in mine deeper than before, searching for something, searching for a reason probably. I could feel, even see, the life slowly leaving his body as his eyes were losing light every passing second.

“- I don’t know your name or how you lived your life but not only did you raise your son wrongly, you also supported him in his idiotic actions. This is the price you pay. As your son tried to do with me, I’m now taking the life of those who oppose me… I’m Raphael Bluescale. Rember this name and carry it to the other side with you… I have no use for hearing the names or last words of fools!”

By the time I finished talking, the duke had exhaled his last breath. His eyes still coldly fixed on mine, this time though, I felt no need to cover them in order to give him some resemblance of rest. Rather I felt slightly relieved to know for sure he had died, but….that wasn’t enough. I pondered for a minute on the topic of my next actions and I came up with something gruesome, impossible for me to think if I had been able to think rationally without being swayed by the thrill and adrenaline of action. Nonetheless, I went through with it and, before I knew it, I had already extracted the short sword and placed it over the deceased duke’s neck. The next moment, his head had been detached from his body. Using that same sword, I cut a piece of cloth from the curtain of the canopy and wrapped the severed head around it only to then tie it to my hip.

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Taking the same route and keeping it as silent as possible. I went back into the conference room.

Part 2

I happened to incur misfortune as soon as I tried to exit the conference room. Guards filled the corridors, exchanging chit-chats and half-empty bottles filled with red liquid. It was the guard change. One of said guards ending their shifts ended up noticing that the door leading to the room I was hiding in was slightly open. Intrigued or wary of that, the guard entered the room and had a long look inside. I had hoped he would’ve left right after but instead, he took a small, metallic-white case the size of a hand out of his pocket. From it, he took out a small tube-shaped thing thinner than a pinky. It was a cigarette. I was intrigued by it. In this world, I had already seen people smoke the pipe but never once did I see a cigarette. The interesting part was that all of his cigarettes didn’t look like commercial ones, instead they looked more close to hand-rolled ones. But that curiosity lasted only a brief moment.

From my hiding spot inside a closet, I could see the man opening a window and exhaling out the smoke from the lit cigarette. What worried me was that, if he had a good enough eyesight, he could notice the missing door in the duke’s room. If so I’m sure he would’ve alerted the other guards. I began readying my knife as I came close to exiting my hiding spot. Killing him was the only way for me to make sure no word would get out. As I thought so, another man barged into the room.

“Oi Dallas!-” Said the man with a chest plate and a hairband around his head “- Stop smoking and come down help me before you end your shift! Nicola just fucking vanished while making his rounds”

“Oh come on Dino!-” Answered the smoking man “- You know how that drunk bastard is! He probably had just finished his bottle and went around bars searching for something else to drink. Stop weighing on my balls man, I just wanna hit the sack!”

“Shut up you lazy worm and get your ass out searching for him…smartass!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. *sigh* Fuck this work maaan!”

With those words, the smoking man and his companion left the room, leaving me behind feeling lucky not to have been discovered and having to fight the entire body of guards. With the room clear of enemies, I stuck my head outside the door and scouted the situation. The number of guards didn’t change from shift to shift so all I had to do was now to wait for everyone to get complacent and get their guards down. It didn’t take long since most of the guards shared drinks with each other as the empty bottles of wine piled up. In the end, in less than half an hour, all the guards stationed on the shorter wing of the mansion had all died and their bodies hid in a guest room at the further end of the wing. All that was left was Delvin’s room.

I ripped a piece of cloth from one of the curtains from the guest room and wrapped part of it around my hand leaving most of it hanging. Delvin’s room was two doors away from my current room but, since it had no balcony, I couldn’t use the same method I used for his father’s room. Hence, the only viable way was to enter through the door. So I did just that.

I entered the room trying not to make noise and carrying only the cloth in my hands. Though I really tried my best not to make a sound, I miserably failed. Apparently, Delvin had a very light sleep unlike his father so I was found out almost instantly once I closed the door behind me. Be it because of the adrenaline or the fact that all the kills I had done turned me momentarily insensitive, I didn’t panic at the sight of being discovered and my stealth plan thwarted. Instead, I promptly took action. Using the cloth around my hand, I blocked any sound that could come from Delvin before he could even realize who I was by simply dashing behind his back and rapidly tying the cloth around his wide-open mouth. A blow with the elbow on the back of the head finished the job and rendered him unconscious for a moment. Taking advantage of that time, I grabbed an elegant-looking rope tied around the window curtains and used it to tie Delvin’s hands, then used another to tie his feet.

“Mhhh? MHHH MHH MPHHH!” Spoke Delvin, or at least tried to say. All his words were muffled by the cloth over his mouth. No fair sound could come out of it.

“Yo Delvin-” I said as I appeared in front of his kneeling figure “- Surprise!”

“MHHHH MHH MHHHHH!”

“Don’t get worked up fucker! Not like I can understand a single word that’s coming out of your filthy mouth anyway but I think I can guess what you’re trying to say. Something about the guards in the mansion? Or is it about your father? Well, if it’s about the latter, I prepared a little gift for you!” I said as I untied the piece of cloth tied on my hip and threw it in front of him.

The head rolled for a little while until it settled with it’s front facing Delvin. The angered expression of Delvin turning into the exact description of fear was a thrill in and by itself. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened. The usual expression and smug full of pride disappeared without a trace from his face only to leave a cadaverous pallor on his skin very similar to that of his father’s severed head. It was a feast for the eyes to see his pupils tremble as they met his father’s. Tears formed around his now swollen eyes and mixed with drool as they fell over his face. Muffled screams filled the room as I savored every single last of them.

“You are quite the show, you know that-?” I said as I lifted Delvin’s chin to make him hold eye contact with me “- A year and a half. That’s how long you’ve been aiming for my neck. A goddamn year and a half! For the whole time, I told myself to act superior, to forgive since I believed this was just a momentary kids’ squabble…I was a fucking idiot, am I wrong?”

“MMHHHHHH!”

“Neither of us is a kid. I should’ve realized that when you first aimed for my brother’s death. Today’s event marked the limit my patience could reach. Not only did you actively try to kill me but your father supported that too. That’s the reason he died…because of your choices, your father was killed by me”

“MMHHHH MHH MHHH MHHHMMMHHHHH!”

“Listen-” I said as I sighed and grabbed a nearby chair. Delvin didn’t move an inch as I took my time to sit with one leg crossed over the other. More like he couldn’t, be it fear or something else, he felt like he was paralyzed “- I’ll tell you a bit about myself. I’m not interested in making a name for myself. Being famous, being a noble, a king, filthy rich or creating a harem. I don’t give a dog shit about any of that! My plan was just to live my five years of academy like any normal student. You know? Making friends, going out, studying, attending lessons and all that. In five years I would’ve increased my skill both in magic and swordsmanship, hopefully enough to fend for myself”

“MMMHPPHH!”

“Then, after five years, I would’ve left the academy and headed for the world. You see, I really want to see the world in it’s entirety. There are soo many lands I could visit, soo many sights to see and soo many people to meet. Not to talk about all the various kinds of magic I could learn. See? I wouldn’t have caused any trouble for anyone. Neither becoming the academy’s boss nor making big in society, yet you still fucking tried to kill me. AND FOR A STUPID REASON NONETHELESS! Fuck, I get so angry thinking about it…Anyway, it doesn’t matter at this point. You and your family are finished anyway”

“MMHHPP MMHHHH MMMMHHHHHH!” Screamed the now full of anger Delvin.

“Shut the fuck up!-” I said as I delivered a strong right jab on his cheek “- For christ's sake you really piss me off! I never said I’d kill you, did I fucker?... Your father HAD to die because of you, but simply killing you would leave me somewhat unsatisfied and I don’t dig that”

The resemblance of a smile appeared on my face. A grimace created by my deepest instincts and my shreds of remaining rationality trying to suppress them. The result was a fearsome wide smile sowing all teeth with trembling muscles trying to push it down. My own reflection in the window sent chills over my skin.

I unsheathed the short sword and, with a swift move indifferent to Delvin’s muffled pleads, the blade fell many times over the same spot. Halfway through Delvin’s right biceps. With every swing, the cut became deeper. Separating muscle fiber from muscle fiber, nerve from nerve and bone from everything else. With the seventh swing, his arm fell to the ground with a sound thud as a pool of deep, red blood formed around us. Blood and sweat mixed over both our bodies as the open cut sprayed blood like a fountain all over the room painting walls and furniture alike. Delvin was screeching in pain. I was sure his screams could be heard from all over the wing, unfortunately, there were no guards to hear them.

“Igno” I said as a reddish flame instantly formed over my palm.

I used that spell, Igno, one of the most basic spells a mage has to learn, to cauterize and close Delvin’s wound. His pained expression left little to imagine of the pain he must’ve been bearing. Once I finished with my “treatment”, his whole body was covered in slimy, cold sweat together with blood falling from both his mouth and eyes. For the first time, the anger, pride and disgust in the eyes he always pointed at me disappeared. Now, all I could see in his eyes was plead. Those were the eyes of a beggar. The mighty Delvin Gallher, son of duke Gallher, was begging me to stop with tears filling his swollen eyes. I had reached my goal. I took a moment, a long moment, to have a look at the scene, my mind stuck on whether or not to inflict more damage. Once I collected my thoughts, those words spilled from my lips:

“You are Delvin Gallher no more-” I said, sitting back on the chair again as I cleaned the sword on my cape “- Without you or your father your family will collapse, especially after news goes around of how your father used an artifact of the kingdom for something so trivial. You have no place to return to, no family to wait for you with open arms…you have nothing but a crippled body….As I said, I won’t kill you, but you’ll live bearing a fate much worse than death. You are now an outcast, someone without a name…Live how the fuck you want. Atone for your sins, hide in the mountains, start a new life in a faraway land or come at me looking for vengeance. Just know, next time you act with ill intent towards me or my people, I’ll make you experience the most painful death conceivable by a human being. I swear it on my name”

I stood up and stretched my back. After that, I took care of the ties holding him, virtually giving him the freedom to run to alert a guard. Yet he didn’t move a single muscle. He had lost all will. Delving Gallher was nothing more than an empty husk.

“*sigh* I’ll be setting fire to this whole place. If you feel like it, you can burn together with all the bodies I piled up but that would really give me a bad taste…thc! Not like you understand a single word of what I say in this state. Bah! Whatever, just do what you want, it’s not my problem anymore. Let’s not meet again…Nameless vagabond”

Whit my words said and actions taken, my plan had reached it’s very end. All that was left was to cover my tracks and what best way to do it than destroying everything? I left the room behind and entered again the conference room. There, I gathered all the wooden furniture in one place and used [fireball] to set it on fire. I repeated the same process in almost every room, especially those where I hid the bodies. Using alcohol from the kitchen and setting fire to the kitchen, my experience as an arsonist came to an end. With my work done and most rooms set on fire, I escaped the soon-to-be clad-in-fire mansion from the same place I entered it, of course burning all I could on my way out.

The roof of a low mansion close to the Gallher’s mansion offered the best place to look at the scene I caused. It took even less than ten minutes for the whole mansion to be lit up with red tounges of fire breaking windows and burning walls. The problem with using stone and wood structures is that, once the wood burns, the stone collapses and causes even more damage. Of the previously fancy mansion, very little remained as the fire burned everything in their path and the worried neighbors ran around the streets looking for help. I didn’t know what kind of face I was making at that time. The muscles on my face felt numb hence I believed no emotion was shown on my face, even though my heart was still beating intoxicated by the excitement. But a feeling was telling me that wasn’t the truth.

“...There are no stars watching me tonight…-” I thought out loud as I pointed my eyes to the sky noticing the thick grey clouds covering the shiny astral bodies I so much enjoyed watching “-...though at last….I breathe”

Part 3

The scene where mages tried to kill the raging fire with water magic as knights and guards helped by throwing water buckets at it was long gone behind me. The night’s air was rushing through my wet hair as I ran across town from alley to alley. With the effect of the vial now slowly fading, I was forcing my body to overcome the accumulating fatigue so that I could safely reach the academy grounds.

If all had gone according to plan, no one was able to notice my absence and my only worry now was to appear in my ben in the nursing wind the next morning. The only issue was my clothing. It was covered in blood from head to toe. If someone were to notice me in the academy dressed like that it would’ve been easy to figure I was the one behind all the deaths at Gallher’s mansion. There was no problem with the weapons since I had gotten rid of them almost instantly as soon as I fled the scene, the issue was indeed on how to get rid of the clothes. The fire in the mansion was the inspiration for that solution. I stripped naked behind a small shop close to the academy’s walls and used my last remaining drops of mana to incinerate my clothes until nothing but ashed remained.

With my body growing more tired by the second and the growing awkwardness of going around completely naked, I sprinted as fast as I could towards the window from where I first left. Much like at the beginning of the night, I climbed inside, dressed in the hospital gowns and crawled my way under the bedsheets.

Foolishly, I tried to close my eyes as my head and ears sunk into the soft pillow. All sound disappeared as also colors and images did. All I was left with were my thoughts. That night, I learned the true meaning of guilt. My actions came back to me all in an instant as if the dam holding back my consciousness and ration mind finally broke. The blood, the kills, the lack of feeling and the gruesomeness of my actions. The stares the guards gave me when exhaling their last breath, the eyes full of fear from my victims and the screams filling the night as the sleeping guards burned alive inside the raging fire I caused. It all hit me at once, like a sledgehammer falling on my frontal lobe. Those scenes replayed countless times over inside my head in a matter of seconds.

My body trembled violently as I struggled to keep my bladder in check. I didn’t even know what I was feeling. A mixture of fear, disgust and crushing guilt. That was the price one had to pay for the sin of taking a life. I, one who started it all by taking his own life, was overwhelmed by it.

“I-I…w-w-what h-have I…d-done?” I whimpered as I covered my weeping face with my trembling hands.

That night I didn’t close my eyes even once for fear of seeing those images again.

End of Volume 2: Mage among mages

Up next- Volume 3: The abyss' maw