A Dagger at Night.

Alice yawned, walking out of her room and heading toward the bathroom. As she went through the hallways, she could hear her footsteps echoing behind her. She reached the bathroom and went in. Silence filled the hallways for a while, and soon she came out, yawning again. She picked up the wooden mug and filled it with water from the bucket, heading toward the basin to wash her hands.

After she finished washing her hands, she washed her face. Behind her, a large man clad in black clothes silently approached, holding a dagger in his hand. He stood just three feet behind her and slowly lifted the dagger, ready to stab her.

Behind the man, two red eyes started glowing and Liam's smiling face creepily showed up from the darkness. The man lifted his dagger, about to swing at Alice's neck.

He then felt a hand on his groin, clenching on his jewels. A disgusting squishing sound broke the silence as he felt a gut-wrenching agony flash up his spine.

Alice gasped as she turned around, "Who's there?!" She cried.

Liam pulled the assassin from what he caught and threw him back, feeling that something had been ripped off. The poor man rolled on the ground and barely stood, his vision blurring out of the pain. But he didn't even have time to breathe as Liam's fist gave his nose a well-deserved greeting.

With blood gushing out of his face and his knees shaking, the assassin tried to swing at Liam's face but he was met with disappointment. Liam has been holding back his speed in this short interaction and has just accelerated back to normal. That caused the dagger swing to miss, opening the assassin to Liam's next assault.

With a clenched knuckle, Liam punched the assassin's eyes into his head and then twisted his wrist and stole the knife. He was aiming to kill the assassin, which was never his intention. On the other hand, Liam wanted the assassin to remain alive, but for him to feel pain. Assassins are hard to get information from so he needed to make a good first impression, that he's a maniac who enjoys torturing people, which wasn't that far from the truth.

I'll need to squeeze them like a lemon to figure out who sent them from them later. The basement would finally get some use.

As the assassin recoiled, Liam unleashed a barrage of fists, cracking several bones before finishing with a solid kick to the guts that sent the poor man flying through the hallway and out of the window.

"Liam!" Alice shouted.

"Assassins, deal with the big one." Liam jumped out of the window after the assassin, only to see four assassins jumping down at him from the roof. The assassins felt that they'd won; Liam had no way to dodge. But at that moment, they could feel despair upon seeing a smile crossing Liam's face. He spun in place and swung his arm, throwing the dagger he took from the first assassin at one of them. The assassin barely dodged the knife, surviving with a scratch on his cheek.

Not a fraction of a second had passed; both the assassins and Liam were airborne, getting closer to a clash. The assassin felt relieved as the dagger missed him, but he quickly felt it, an agonizing stab in his left eye. He dodged the dagger yet got stabbed, what kind of sorcery was that?!

He dodged the dagger, but not [Hakai]. Since they got out of the window, Alice no longer could see them and so Liam could fight freely, as long as he didn't leave strange wounds on the assassins.

"Assassins are good at killing targets in a single hit, but they're awfully bad at any fights that extend beyond the first stab. You'll immediately lose if one pulls you into a direct confrontation." Liam giggled, "And since you're used to tracking people, you tend to fail to notice when people are tracking you. I've been sneaking up your asses since the moment you walked into this property."

"Impossible. What happened to the four we sent to you?" One of the assassins growled.

"Ah…those fools?" He giggled, "One is dead, and two are gravely injured and knocked out. And about the girl with the slave collar, I've stripped her down of all weapons and tied her with a rope and locked her inside the large wooden box I keep my clothes in."

"You were asleep!" The assassin growled with blood reaching his eyes, turning them red.

"Asleep? Yeah, wolves sleep with one eye. You guys are foxes, sneaking at night trying to steal the chickens' eggs, afraid to even meet the rooster." With each word he said, they could feel the air around them shifting, his voice slowly became louder and louder until it sounded like a distant mockery.

"You're standing awfully tall. How about you sit down?" The silence broke with a painful crack. One of the assassin's groins blows to pieces without warning. He fell on his face, screaming.

"Magic! He's using magic!" One of the assassins cried, lunging at Liam with a clenched fist and a dagger in the other hand.

Liam dodged the attack with a smile and swung a fist at the assassin's face. But before that could land, a stab had already reached the poor man's thigh, neatly avoiding the large vein.

The man fell on his knees, screaming with blood gushing out of his left thigh, but not much. "You don't value your life, do you? I can understand challenging the strong, but charging in blind is always a death wish." With each of Liam's words, a cut appeared on the assassin's body.

"Please forgive me."

"You didn't help yourself, so why would I care?" Liam said and a heavy hit smacked the assassin's face, sending him rolling on the ground.

"So, what about you two? Still want to fight?" Liam stared at them with a grin on his face. "I'll play with you all night long if you want."

Back inside the house and right when Liam jumped outside with the assassins, Alice gasped. "What big one?" But almost immediately her senses picked up the approaching hit and her eyes quickly turned, leaving a blue trail amidst the darkness, seeing the first of a large man rushing to her face.

She lifted her forearm and blocked the hit but got sent flying toward the kitchen. With such weight, this must be a close-range power type. She rolled over the counter and landed on her feet, seeing the large shadow in the hallway disappear into the darkness.

The large man appeared right behind her, swinging a dagger at her.

In the blink of an eye, she lifted the pan that was on the counter and smacked the dagger out of his hand, rolling behind the counter and pulled a bag of flour from the lower cabinet as she dodged a punch.

The large man kicked the wooden counter, almost ripping it from the base, and jumped over it, trying to fall on Alice and capture her. She wasn't armed with anything besides a pan, he could handle that.

Alice threw the flour at the assassin's face, spreading it everywhere as she dodged him, and quickly stared at him with a smile, a match in her hand.

"You!" He growled and she ignited the match and threw it at him, setting the flour in the air ablaze. It was but a small burst, unable to harm the man or even injure him in any meaningful way. But Alice was a hero, the savior of the mortal races. She'll never kill one of them by burning unless absolutely necessary.

The flame was but a distraction used to force him to flinch, and when he did, Alice charged forward and pulled the most horrifying weapon she could find in the kitchen. The might steel spoon.

With one swing at the man's elbow, she shattered the bones and his body coiled back. Using that, she swung at his palms and shattered his fingers. Metal spoons were but chunks of molded steel, a bludgeoning weapon that could fit in the palm of her hand.

The man rolled back, falling on the ground crying his eyes out, "MY HANDS! MY HANDS!"

Alice sighed and looked around for a rope to tie him, but the moment she averted her eyes from him he sprung back to action, lunging at her with a bear hug.

She bowed forward, her right leg lifting up from her back. The absolute flexibility combined with her raw strength was absurd. The nail of her big toe extended into a long claw and sliced the man from the stomach to the chin as her foot lifted up, letting a stream of blood.

Alice's skill allows her to create most things. With it being stuck at a low level she could only conjure small elements or anything that her body naturally creates. This included her nails and hair. The countless demons found slashed on the battlefield never died by the hero's holy blade, but instead with her claws and fangs.

Alice curled into a ball, crying and moaning as her toenail had fallen off. With how low level her skill was and how weak the body of her host was, fighting like this wasn't something she wanted to do. This is why she never used it against the demon; she knew she'd only break her nails off.

The torn claw quickly vanished as if it was never there, and several seconds later, Liam walked back in to check on her. "How did it go?" He asked with a smile.

"That's my line! Did they escape? Are you all right?" Alice cried.

"No, they surrendered, but whoever hired them, he had them sign a life contract. Once they were captured, their poison tooth broke off and they died." He replied, "Someone must not like us…"

Did they find my identity? Liam thought.

My host had a drug problem, are they the people she's been dealing with? Alice was about to panic.