My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds the Hero's

After Aurum blew the whistle, a soundless tone echoed through the labyrinth.

There were some one-man-army strong fighters, but one alone wasn’t enough.

Numbers were a fine weapon.

We were quickly split apart by the demonic beasts that poured out of the walls.

And Aurum, who rode a beast, had headed toward where Ria should be.

She should have had a dagger for self-defense, but the enemy was demonic beasts and members of the Demon Clan from the labyrinth’s lowest level.

Not even me, Yoru, or Amelia could be certain Ria’s attack power would handle that.

This was the time to clear them out quickly with shadow magic, but as long as Aurum was still alive, I wanted to conserve the magical power-heavy shadow magic.

If only Amelia had gravity magic right now...

“Gravity.”

Just as I thought that, a crisp voice rang out, and the demonic beasts surrounding me fell to the ground as if pressed down from above by a giant hand.

My field of view opened in an instant.

I looked over and saw Amelia using magic while supported by Yoru.

She had my cloak draped over her shoulders; its hem was dragging the ground.

Now that I think about it, she must have used it during the fight.

“Amelia! Yoru!”

I dashed past the beasts toward the two of them. Amelia relaxed her stern face when she saw me.

“I felt like Akira was calling.”

Telepathy, huh.

I hadn’t wanted to push her, but her complexion didn’t look so bad—result was all right, I guess.

“Yeah, thanks.”

When I ruffled her head for the first time in a while, Amelia rubbed against me like a cat.

She’d clearly been lonely.

“This isn’t the time. The barrier hasn’t disappeared...”

Yoru cut in, as if insisting we shouldn’t be doing this.

Maybe I’d gotten carried away after seeing Amelia. Indeed, this wasn’t the time for nonsense.

“Ria’s not dead. And it looks like she’s stronger than before.”

She tried to stab her short sword into her arm, but it rebounded off a faint light.

In this state she could probably even stop Aurum’s attacks.

When we’d first entered the labyrinth she’d seemed so unreliable, but apparently Ria performed well under real pressure.

The barrier still being active meant the caster wasn’t dead.

Ria could apparently sense when the barrier she’d cast dissipated, so she should know we’re all alive.

At least we’d confirmed everyone was alive.

“Ria?... Cheating?”

Amelia reacted sharply to another woman’s name.

I instinctively flicked Amelia’s forehead; she covered it with both hands and looked up at me with tearful eyes.

Cute.

...No, not that.

“I wouldn’t look at anyone but you, Amelia. Ria’s a guardian by profession and a princess of the Beastmen. She came to warn us that Amelia was being targeted by the Demon Clan. ...Though she was late.”

Amelia had already been kidnapped before Ria could warn her.

“Right. It’s my first time meeting a guardian.”

Not as rare as Amelia, but still a rare profession.

Feels like there are a lot of rare professions around me lately.

Where did rare even mean.

“If it were just demonic beasts, maybe, but against the Demon Clan, even a guardian can’t manage.”

I nodded at Yoru’s words.

We really shouldn’t be having this conversation now, but for some reason I felt calm.

My danger sense—honed in this world both as a skill and as a sixth sense—wasn’t reacting at all.

Ria was fine.

Still, there was no reason not to help, so I started breaking the pack of beasts swarming Ria from the outside.

All the beasts near us had been flattened by Amelia’s gravity magic.

Only the beasts around Ria were still alive.

Fortunately, Aurum hadn’t noticed the beasts on our side were wiped out.

Just as I reached to move in, a powerful voice rang from the center.

“Divine inverted barrier.”

The center, where Ria stood, glowed, and at the same time our bodies lit up.

“W-what!?”

“Calm down. It’s not something evil.”

“A barrier?”

As the three of us reacted differently, the demonic beasts, at Aurum’s command, launched themselves toward the center.