My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

I was finally able to wrap up the prologue.

Sorry for keeping you waiting so long because I was unprepared.

After that, we met up in the hotel room where we had been staying.

Crow and Ria somehow saw us flying and hurried over.

I feel bad — it had been just the two of us, and they crashed that.

Ria gave me a severe scolding, but when I told her about Gram she reluctantly stopped and forgave me.

Lord Lattice Nail had wandered off somewhere without anyone noticing, and Raul and Keria couldn’t go back home after what had happened, so they were staying together in one of the spare rooms.

Keria is quitting the Adventurer Guild and moving to another town with Raul.

Well, after seeing the guild master like that, there’s no way she can keep working as usual.

Now it was the middle of the night, and everyone else was sound asleep.

It was what they call the dead of night.

I got up carefully, making sure not to wake Amelia who was sleeping peacefully beside me.

I put on the cloak I normally leave off because it’s a bother in daily life, and wrapped a black cloth around my neck.

I was already dressed in black, but now even darker.

There was almost no color but black.

Now I should be able to melt into the darkness completely.

Luckily, it was a new moon tonight.

My skill, assassination technique, lets me see in the dark, but without an extraordinary reason, no one would be able to spot me.

“…You going?”

“Yeah.”

Crow was standing in the doorway — when did he wake up?

I expected him to show up this time, so I wasn’t surprised.

“I said it before, but don’t overdo it. That Demon Clan girl said people enhanced by the ‘enhancement drug’ reached the strength of ordinary demons.”

Crow warned me, as if he’d asked Lord Lattice Nail about it earlier.

I laughed at that.

I’m not going to be intimidated by ordinary demon-level opponents now.

Crow knows that, so he was probably warning me out of some belated concern.

“Not like you. I would have done this without your warning. When we left that castle, all I thought about was avenging commander saran. Finally I can do it. You can celebrate me if you want.”

I equipped night blade god and passed by Crow, stepping out of the room.

He followed after.

“From the first time I saw you at Uru’s inn, I knew you gained strength to take revenge. I can tell just by looking in your eyes.”

“I bet. But revenge’s a tiring thing to think about. Even if I pull it off, it won’t clear your heart.”

I checked each hidden weapon hidden across my body as I spoke, and I thought I saw Crow smile wryly.

When people are angry, it wears them out the most.

Anyone perpetually angry must have endless stamina.

“Still, some of the diseases ravaging the Beastmen will definitely disappear from this world. Only Gram was enjoying the spoils. The others were just being used by him.”

With no faithful comrades you can blindly count on, the reason Gram hadn’t been assassinated yet was probably the advantage of his enhancement-drug-stuffed minions.

They’re just obedient fighting dolls.

No need to trust them, no worry about betrayal.

But after fighting today I was sure: I can slip past their eyes and kill Gram.

My skill presence concealment is maxed. If I activate it and just walk, cameras won’t capture me; even if there were heat-detecting thermographic devices or infrared sensors, they wouldn’t react to me.

Earlier I disliked this “nature” of not being noticed by others.

When I was a child it was agonizing loneliness — no matter what game, I was the only one they couldn’t find.

Now I use it to slack off or nap, but I never liked it even when it became a skill.

Now is different.

For the first time in my life, I might actually come to like this power.

“I won’t kill enhanced humans. But if I run into another assassin I’ll remove them as an obstacle. I’ll only kill Gram and those who stand in my way. You okay with that, client?”

“Yeah. Do it. Assassin.”

Crow looked at me with something like regret in his eyes. I scoffed and leaped out the window.