Chapter 106
Just Desserts
Death in Three Steps had 3 members.
Their leader, Norah, is a married woman. She had a dutiful son and a slightly useless husband. She did not become an Assassin by choice, but because she needed the money after her husband’s failing business debt soared. At first, it was just a one-time job forced upon her by the debt collector, but then she found out that she was good at it. That, and the money was good. And so, she continued.
Along the way, she met Loik. An Assassin who just killed his partner after being betrayed by him. Thus, he was out of a job and out of trust. The other was Geoffrey, a simple-minded man who worked as a thug under a local gang. Unfortunately, he went against the leader after losing a gambling debt.
The three unlikely people were forced to work together due to certain circumstances, then found out that they each had something to gain from working together and had been doing so ever since. Naturally, being the more thoughtful of the three, Norah became the decision-maker.
And for this Assassination Quest, Norah did not make any complicated plan as it needed speed and accuracy.
Before the execution of the plan, the chubby Assassin had told both members of the group.
There are five targets in all. One was crippled, two were of medium danger. And the last two - the Centaur and the Assassin - were highly dangerous.
Rather than killing them one by one, we should poison them. And dispatch everyone who might be a witness.
She assigned Geoffrey to silence the guards outside while Loik took care of the ones inside.
While they were doing so, she disguised herself as one of the female servants. Using her Presence Concealment Skill, she managed to slip in undetected and applied her poison to the fish dish.
After that, she used sleeping powder on all the servants in the backroom to stop them from raising alarm. It had all gone smoothly up to that point. The only thing now was to wait a few minutes for the poison to kick in.
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Upstairs in the main bedroom, the masked man named Loik stood before the bodies of two maids, his short sword dripping with their fresh blood. Grunting, he wiped the blood off his sword on the fresh linen on the bed.
Then, his Passive Skill, ‘Survival Instinct’ turned on and he quickly reacted.
“Shi - !!” Loik half-cursed as he bent his back away from an ambush from behind. A fierce stomp almost got him, but he quickly rolled away and swiped his sword at the leg of his attacker. However, the ambusher had already put a slight distance between them.
“The Dark Elf Assassin,” Loik grunted. Behind him the door was closed and in front of him, the beautiful dark elf stood silently, her silky silvery hair illuminated by the moonlight coming in from the window.
“Who sent you?” She asked tersely.
“You’re an Assassin, you know I can’t tell you that.”
“Then you’re a dead man.”
The two advanced, one wielding a sword and the other a broken bottle. Though the latter wielded the weapon of a hoodlum, she was no less deadly than the other.
“Hah!!”
She deflected the sword using the edge of the bottle as she bent her back, then sprung up whilst thrusting the broken bottle at his face. Loik dodged the attack as he swept the sword to the right, hoping that it would cut her neck.
However, she was anything if not nimble. She ducked then kicked her left foot against the floor, bending her arm so that her elbow hit him on the chest, knocking the breath out of him and slamming him against the door.
“Argh!”
She used this chance to slip his sword-wielding arm under her armpit and turned her back, breaking his arm in the process. It was one of the techniques Connie taught her to ease her reliance on Skills.
“AARGH!”
With his arm broken, his sword fell, and she kicked the sword away. “Shadow -!”
Illumca punched him in the solar plexus before he finished declaring his Skill.
“(Cough) – y-you!” Illumca unceremoniously grabbed him by the neck and slammed him onto the floor. She then pressed her knee against his back, to prevent him from moving.
“Gagh! What the hell is that movement?!”
She ignored the question and fired a question back. “I ask you again, who sent you?”
“F-fuck you -!” Loik screamed a curse, which stopped mid-sentence when Illumca jammed the broken bottle into the side of his neck.
After he stopped moving, she turned him around and opened his mask to see the true face of the Assassin.
She knew that face. Or to be more precise – Kelly knew that face.
“…Death in Three Steps,” Illumca mumbled the Assassin’s collective name. She had a memory of Kelly and her partner working together with the three people in a B-Rank Quest before. Assassins might be working with or against each other so Kelly, being the meticulous woman that she was, had some notes about them.
“There are two more.”
She quickly went out of the bedroom and scanned the surroundings when she caught a glance of the shadow of someone moving from the window below. She leaped down from the second floor while firing a Spell at the window.
“Fireball!”
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The poison user of Death in Three Steps noticed that something had gone awry when she heard voices coming from the dining room. So, she dared herself to take a peek. What she saw made her panic.
None of them are dead! How is this possible?!
She backed away from the door and quickly made her away around the mansion to gather her partner, but then a butterfly-shaped fire spell broke through the window in front of her and exploded. The ornate bush by the window caught fire from the spell, surprising Norah.
Just as she was about to turn back, a hand caught her by the shoulder and her body was flung back to the wall.
“A diversion!” she squeaked before a blunt object met her face.
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“I smell blood,” Martell said as he closed his eyes to concentrate on the movements of the people within the mansion.
“Is that the blood from your nose or the enemy’s blood?” Nick said sourly. He was poisoned, fainted from said poison, and was rudely awakened by a swift kick to the stomach. His mood was not the best. “Working for you is not good for my health, Milady.”
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“Do you prefer dying from poison then? I can arrange that for you. We still have some fishes left.” Martell said in return.
“Just idle complain, my boy, you are working hard.”
Connie scoffed at the man’s sniveling. The man might be rather useless at times, but his shamelessness was amusing to her.
“She works fast,” Akula said. “Khikhikhi! When I first met her, I thought she was a cold and taciturn person. Turns out she is quite the hotblooded one!”
“When you get to know her better, you’ll find out that she’s quite a warm person.”
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“You!”
Thwack!
“Dare!”
Thwack!
“Use!!”
Thwack!!
“Poison!”
Thwack!!!
“On!”
THWACK!!
“My!”
THWACK!!!
“CONNIE!!”
THUD!!!
Illumca used the bottle in her hand to beat the chubby poison user on the face repeatedly and only stopped when the chubby woman fainted. By then the wine bottle was useless. It was a fine one and only shattered after the umpteenth hit. Proof of the anonymous sponsor’s taste in quality.
Norah was proficient in using poison and hidden weapons, but the Dark Elf was swift in her actions. Not giving her a chance to use them. She had always been at the side of assassinating, and never on the side being the target that she did not think of it ever happening.
The Dark Elf looked at the bloodied stub of the bottle in her hand and discarded it. She then dragged the woman across the courtyard and back to the dining room.
She saw the unconscious body of Jorge and the servants littering the floor. She gave Jorge an experimental nudge of the foot to find that he was deeply asleep.
“Nggh…”
Illumca ignored Norah’s moan of pain and continued dragging her.
“Connie, I’ve got the one upstairs and this one. There should be another one – “
Illumca saw a large man with his head planted into a nearby wall and Akula looking apologetic with her fist still outthrust. Other than Connie - who was stifling a laugh – the other looked on with an expression of shock.
“Sorry, the man came at me so fast I just punched him without controlling myself.”
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Norah woke up hearing the tinkling of glass and she opened her eyes slowly only to realize that she could only open them slightly. She felt her face burning in pain and she slowly remembered what happened.
When she did so, the first thing she saw was the image of the musclebound man’s body, hanging from the wall.
“GEOFFREY!!” she shouted. She wanted to move, but she realized that she was bound by a rope.
“Ah, our Assassin is finally awake. Good work on controlling yourself, Illumca,” Connie said.
The Dark Elf shrugged coolly at the compliment. “I just thought that we need to at least leave one alive.”
“This one’s alive. Right? Only barely,” Nick commented while inspecting Geoffrey’s body. “Never seen somebody get punched so hard, his head went through the wall.”
“The wall is made of wood. It’s weak, t-that’s all,” said Akula defensively.
“H-how did you survive the poison? D-did you not eat the fish?” the woman interrupted the idle banter.
“My companions did, but I forced it out of the system. A simple matter,” Connie said.
“What? How? It’s not something you can simply throw up and then be fine! They shouldn’t even be able to do that!”
“I have my ways. But let’s not talk about such uninteresting things,” she said with a smile. “You’ve brought with you quite a nice collection,” Connie said gleefully as she watched Illumca and Martell placed small bottles from Norah’s pouch on the dinner table.
“Are you going to…use it, Mistress? At your current condition?” Martell asked.
“Use it? What do you mean?” Akula asked. “On whom?”
Norah trembled.
“Oh, relax. I’m not going to use them on you,” the youthful girl in the wheelchair smiled. “That would be a waste. I’m going to use it on me. It would be rude to not partake when such nice after-dinner desserts are in front of me.”
She then opened her palm and nodded at her two disciples. “Lend me a bit of your Energy, you two.”
“As you please, Mistress.”
“Just say the word.”
The two placed their hand on either palm. Connie sent trendrils of her Energy and connected them to theirs, taking in their Energy. With their Energy sapped the two fell back unsteadily. Connie opened her eyes and send her Energy into the bottles, and the various poisons within the bottles rushed out of their containers and danced in front of them in a multicolor swirl of liquid death.
Connie’s fingers moved slightly, controlling them to enter her open mouth.
Akula and Nick were transfixed at this fantastical scene. “I-is this a Skill or Magic?!”
“I-I don’t know!”
“Fool! Drinking all that poison would kill you instantly! You won’t die a pleasant death!”
And indeed her body instantly reacted to the poison. Her color turning blue and red in places, deformed swells and boils appeared on her skin. Her eyes became bloodshot and tears of blood began to drip down her face.
“Connie!” Akula saw this horrifying spectacle and cried out in worry for her. “Illumca! We have to call a Healer!!”
“Don’t worry, Zalkhin Altanghazar. This amount of poison is nothing but a snack to her.”
And just like he said. After a few moments, her skin returned to its normal color and she breathed out with satisfaction like a man after drinking a glass of good wine.
“Mmm…good poison. Good poison.”
After refining the poisons, Connie’s complexion became healthier and her cheeks rosier.
Illumca dabbed her bloodied cheek with a napkin.
“W-wha -! How?” Norah blubbered in confusion.
“Connie. How did you - !” Akula gasped. Even she knew how deadly Poisons are. In the Plains, she had seen a mighty warrior that could kill 50 monsters alone, died miserably from the sting of a little scorpion hidden in a bush.
“Those poisons could kill hundreds of people! And among them, there are some that even I don’t dare to use because it’s too volatile! But you ingested them like water!”
“I have a special constitution, you see. Trying to kill me with such poison is like trying to dye the sea with a drop of ink. It will only serve as nourishment. This does remind me, though. We’ll have to start a regiment for daily intake of poison for you two. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to join me in future battles.”
Illumca and Martell shuddered when they heard this. They had seen the extent of what Connie’s poison could do and a chill came up their spine.
At this time, the door burst open and the well-dressed Jorge came in with a mighty fluster. “Lady Cornelia!”
The five people took up their stance, ready to fight at the sound of the door opening, but relaxed when they saw the foppish man's mustache.
“Oh, thank Junnaveil you are alive. When I saw the servants on the floor, I thought the worst.”
“Ah, Jorge. Good Timing. Can you call the Knights? These two people are Assassins. There is another dead upstairs.”
Jorge was nonplussed at the calm, unbothered reaction of the Lady.
“Y – yes, Milady!! At once!!” With a nervous bow, the man quickly left them, almost running.
Connie then turned her attention to the Assassin. “Now, while we are waiting for the Knights. Tell me who sent you.”
“…I can’t. If I tell you, they’ll kill me.”
“And If you don’t tell us, we will,” Martell said. “That reminds me, what does the Assassin’s Guild do to Assassins who failed their jobs?”
“Assassin’s Guild members who failed their mission are usually killed by their targets. And they have too much to do to waste their time killing failed Assassin. On the other hand, I have never heard any story about Assassins who failed and live,” Illumca said flatly. “It’s a job about killing and being killed. Not something you’d expect to do and live long enough to grow old.”
“Connie, may I?” the Dark Elf said straightforwardly. She saw her shrug affirmatively then said to Akula. “Akula, you might want to leave the room. This might be a bit unsavory for you.”
Akula indeed had no taste for torture. But she was a Tonsulde and knew what it entailed. Having said that, it did not mean she liked seeing it done. So she took up the suggestion and left. The last thing she saw as she went out of the dining room was Illumca grabbing a spoon from the dinner table along with the plate of poisoned fish.
“No! NONONO!!! NOO!!!!”
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The Knights of White Lions came to the mansion about half an hour after. They were led by the familiar Klein and was greeted at the main lobby of the mansion by 5 Criminals sharing a bottle of wine.
His men quickly canvassed the mansion and brought out the dead bodies. The servants who were still alive were treated and then sent home promptly.
“Cornelia, you…” The Knight Commander of the White Lions slapped his face in exasperation at this junior of his. “You caused such a big international incident and now this? Have you ever thought that maybe you might need to tone it down a bit?”
“Am I not sitting pretty on this wooden chair? It’s not my fault that people are sending Assassins to kill me.”
“Just…just wait in the mansion while I strengthen the guard around you. I’ll make sure to interrogate the Assassin properly.”
“Thank you. But do you think you can get the right answer in time?”
“I’ll try my best. I will not sleep until I get my answer.”
“Thank you. You’re a good friend,” Connie said.
“Cornelia. For what it’s worth, I know you aren’t the type to kill people meaninglessly. I pray that you will be declared innocent tomorrow.”
“As am I, Klein. As am I.”
As they watched him leave, Illumca let out a grumble.
“Until the end, we couldn’t get an answer."
“I don’t get why she’s so loyal to the client. She won’t get anything out of it anyway.”
“You’re wrong. She’s not loyal to the client. She’s loyal to herself. All Assassins of the Assassin’s Guild do,” Illumca pondered. “I saw a man’s gloves in her bag. Two sizes bigger.”
“…she has a family?” Martell tapped his lips with the tip of his finger.
“She stayed quiet for them. I think. I don’t know. It’s not my place to say.”
Two steps away from Martell and the slightly depressed Illumca, Akula and Connie was also talking about what had transpired.
“Do you think he’ll get an answer?” Akula asked worriedly.
“Oh, I’m sure they will. Even if they can’t and she died in the process, then we can surmise that the people who wants me dead are Calendians. Whichever is the result, it will only be point to one or the other.”
“I…don’t understand,” The beautiful Centaur folded her arms to protect herself from the chill of night.
“The Al-Khemiyans have only goodwill towards me. Thus, only the other two countries can be the one who ordered my assassinations. Vorzenny does not have power in the dungeons of Courandhel. So, if the Assassin died during the interrogation, that means only the Calendians are left,” Connie laughed.
“Well, that will only be useful if we managed to get through the Trial without having our heads cut off, though.”
Akula shook her head at Connie's attempt at a joke and pushed her back inside.