Ch-20: Assassination [1]

***

A few days back when the people under Azazel had held off the assassination until further orders, the bulky man realised that several strong men were around the house of Jarien and 'The Sobbing Thief' who seem to be patrolling the area at regular distances.

'They seem like trained personnel. Hmm, looks like it won't be easy to take out these guys' thought the bulky man.

Ring-Ring-Ring

Just when the man was deep within his thoughts, his phone rang and upon seeing the caller, he immediately straightened his posture and put on a respectful expression after entering an isolated alley to answer the call.

"Report" a voice laced with authority rang out as soon as he answered the call to which the burly man bowed then opened his mouth.

 "Sir, there is a 70% chance of our target being correct according to the previous investigations but now we are almost certain that we have the correct target at hand" answered the man in a servile manner.

"Oh? Reasoning?" asked the authoritative man acting curious but his emotionless detached voice betrayed his act.

"Sir, there are some personnel around a specific radius who seem between B-rank to A-rank with one S-rank that is nearby, they entered the city at different timings after the target arrived. They entered the city from different entrances and have not met even once yet are coordinated perfectly to patrol the target's house. The movement of the S-rank has not changed after residing 10 km away from the house" reported the man while sweat drenching his back showing his nervousness.

"Hmm, Agreed. Unless they are crazy enough to send so many people as mere bait then he is the real deal. Treat that C-rank as fake too and consider his real rank as B-rank…no consider it B+ rank and halt the attack for now. What about hiding his tracks and misleading others?" asked the man giving his analysis.

The only reason Richard was considered B-rank was because A-rank had a unique aura that could not be hidden easily till C-rank and the burly man was a A+ rank hunter, so he would have been able to sense a fellow at the A-rank hiding ranks like him at first spot.

Of course, there were exceptions to this such as the sword-ring artifact on Jarien and other similar ranked artefacts for specifically hiding ranks and auras around one's body but they were too rare and precious to use for such missions and the patrol was strong enough to remove any other conclusions.

"Yes sir, we have finished creating multiple fake trails as ordered" replied the man.

Even though he was still doubtful about hiding and misleading others, he had to carry on the orders to live.

"Good, wait for my next order" ended the voice.

Beep! Beep!

*Sigh*

The man with the authoritative voice who just sighed was none other than Azazel. He felt that his plan will help him but it turned out harder to find Jarien that he expected, so he ordered his subordinates to mislead others to cause a little bit of unrest and it proved vital as some idiots randomly attacked and killed people claiming to have killed Jarien which dumbfounded even Azazel.

His only trouble was the secret guards as the max they could order was a B-rank assassin for killing a C-rank by paying extra but it will raise suspicions if an A-rank is asked for, so he decided to send all the assassins organisation's B-ranks to increase the chances to finish it before the secret guards even arrive.

He did not want to resort to this yet and in just a few days he received news that the guards left back to the duchy but no information about their reason was known. He believed that they were not going to return but turns out they left the estate and would return soon on just the third day.

Sensing the urgency, he called the bulky man who answered immediately.

"Albert, send B-rank assassins from the forces that agree to it easily, no need to cause loud noise for now" ordered Azazel to the burly man whose name was Albert or was it his current alias or a codename given to him was unknown.

With this everyone moved and the first plan started to assassinate Jarien when luckily his secret guards were gone. As only a smart person would notice the guards, a hasty person would send assassins directly and Jarien was more believing on the second option as this was the last year he could be killed because after entering the academy, it just would not be possible.

***

Back at the house Jarien was residing in.

Well, with the secret guards gone, Richard was more alert and I understood his reason as he was the only security of mine as well as the fact that I was nearing my breakthrough to peak-F rank which according to everyone was slow and I knew I was delaying it to let my body absorb and get familiar with mana faster which will help me later for reaching early-E rank.

While I was contemplating and finally decided to break through as it was becoming hard to hold on anymore, Richard broke the gate and informed me of a few shady people spying on us for some time and they were finally nearing us.

After observing my precarious state, Richard knew we must hold on for some time as I was in the middle of reaching F+ rank. I did not hear him but seeing the tension on his face I knew we were most probably being attacked but this was too much of a coincidence as if someone was waiting for the secret guards to leave and looks like I helped them.

It was the day the guards would be coming back, so if he could hold on until then, it would be safe but that was going to disrupt my plans. Getting distracted, my mana flared almost going out of control which made me realise that without finishing my breakthrough, nothing is going to work.

Richard just looked at me worriedly and left after placing some traps around me, so if anyone targets me directly, then the traps would hold them for a while allowing Richard to know from the commotion to return immediately.

Unfortunately, this was the best timing if I was not in the middle of a breakthrough but it made me haste too. It usually would take less time to break through due to my bloodline but I was pushing it back so it became a bit slow for now.

I ignored everything and focused back which was my only choice in the current situation as I circulated mana inside me allowing it to increase its quantity and density. All the mana was swirling inside me, circulating faster and faster which was led to my mana core near my heart.

The dense mana started coalescing around the core increasing its density further but the major part was increasing the ring's density and rotation speed allowing me to increase my mana pool to a higher limit.

Usually, upgrading minor realms is easy till B rank as one only has to increase their mana pool and be able to control it but since I was making the mana seep into my body tissues, muscles, ligaments, tendons to make them stronger and resistant to mana, so naturally the mana inside my body was already at the F+ rank.

This resulted in the incoherence when I circulated my mana and the reason for the longer breakthrough period although it would still be quite short compared to others. The tough part is stabilizing the mana in your body post-breakthrough as I had already reached this stage in under 10 minutes.

The stabilizing process is not time consuming but mentally exhausting unless you have an external source to act as an aid that gives you pure mana directly allowing you to skip the tedious process of absorbing mana slowly and steadily from the environment for long periods of time.

While I was in the process of stabilizing mana, loud clashes of weapons could be felt alongside the vibrations on the ground. I had to hurry up as I did not know till how long Richard would be able to hold on for.

***

Richard after screaming incessantly saw Jarien breaking-through, placed some traps and came to the place where he could sense 4 early-B rank assassins along with 1 mid-B rank nearby. They could also sense each other and felt that their pride was hurt.

Richard did not know if they were together or not, so he waited for them to come near him and let them attack him thinking he had his guard down but the five assassins just showed up in front of him which did not make sense to him.

"Hmph. You should just head back and be happy with the advance" said the mid-B rank assassin wearing the typical dress of an assassin with a black cloak over black shirt and trousers made to increase agility and forgo any defence.

"Huh, we are four, you don't believe you will be able to defeat us if we band together, do you now?" taunted one of the early-B rank assassins.

"And how will you gang up? The one who kills is the one who gets full payment, no one here will trust another because who knows when we are fighting you might just go and snatch the target and run away" reverted the mid-B rank guy.

They were taunting each other leisurely, ignoring Richard as if he was not even a threat and they just needed to be wary of each other. This gave Richard a chance to eliminate one of them before the real confrontation starts but he wanted to delay it so he kept listening to their nonsense with a scared face while holding a sword with trembling hands.

'They don't even put me in their eyes, huh? Well, the mid-B rank guy is too far away to be able to be killed instantly. Looks like it will be her then' thought and planned Richard while eyeing the female assassin closest to him.

As soon as their chat ended and they were about to rush inside, Richard flared up his mana to peak-B rank shocking the assassins and coated his sword with mana hurriedly so as to launch a deadly strike at the closest assassin which ended up decapitating her.

He tried to kill the second one as he hurriedly turned around flowing in the sword's direction to carry the momentum but the next assassin hurriedly blocked using his dagger. In his hurry, he ended up using a lot more mana than required.

Clang

The attack was blocked by the assassin and the force pushed him back while Richard stopped at the position of the clash itself. The assassin was ready to block another attack as he hurriedly got into a combat stance but he was bewildered when he saw Richard.

Richard just stood near the headless corpse of the female assassin and looked in their direction while releasing his mana pressure of a peak-B rank as they all had retreated a safe distance away from him.

In less than 5 minutes since their arrival, one of them died while the scene stood at a standstill for a minute only to be broken by the one who blocked the attack.

"Damn…that damned guy definitely knew about this…" said one of the early-B rank assassins while gritting his teeth.

"What now?" asked the other early-B rank.

"Tsk. What else, we either fight together or run" stated the mid-B rank knowing the weight of the situations.

"Tsk tsk, assassins these days have no grit, they decide to run away so fast" taunted Richard as he had to capture or kill them as he heard them talking about someone knowing his B-rank prowess. Also, he had to prevent anyone else from knowing about it too.

"You really think such cheap provocations work?" said the last early-B rank who was the other female unfazed by the death of the other one. After all, they were all assassins from competitor organisations, so they wouldn't bat an eye even if they all died.

"Well, why do you think I said that to provoke you?" said Richard with a smirk on his face as he had finished channeling mana in his heavy-sword for his next attack.

'Draconic Sword Art: Evisceration Movement'

Richard performed his sword art that he had been learning from his master Lebron, his target was taking out a limb or directly killing as his sword style was suited for such attacks. His sword style focused on using momentum and weight of the sword to chop off the limbs or kill the opponent swiftly.

His sudden strike led to the left arm of the shocked early-B rank assassin getting cut as he had decided to give away his arm over his life at the last second when he was being attacked.

"Ahhhhhh…" screamed the man in pain. Just because he knew it would end up like this did not mean that it was not painful.

Seeing this scene, Richard just clicked his tongue in disappointment as he realised that his speed was slower than expected due to using this move initially from rest rather than using it after building some momentum. But this scene was enough for the assassins to decide to run away to save their lives.

Unfortunately for them, Richard had done many missions under his master's behest, so he was not going to watch them leave whenever they wanted, so he started attacking them one by one to keep them occupied.

"You…are you crazy? Do you think we will just let you kill us?" said the mid-B rank as Richard was building momentum using the rest and kept launching attacks continuously by cycling amongst them leaving deep wounds and gashes on their bodies making them bleed profusely.

Richard shrugged his shoulders but he also knew how risky it was to force them into a corner but he had no choice, as the secret guards were not here else, he would not have shown his full strength and would just hold them until the reinforcements arrived.

This elicited a cacophony of wails and cries of pain from the 3 early-B ranks as they could not even block Richard's simple attacks making them aware that they would die if he unleashes his sword art in his current state, so they decided to start attacking him together.

This was the best moment for them to attack as the mid-B rank had held onto Richard by stopping his sword and trying to counterattack using his daggers which resulted in Richard getting wounded by the others weapons but he suddenly used his mana to launch a strong attack.

Realising the severity they attacked with all of their daggers, bows, hidden weapons, artifacts and all these explosive attacks were not only aimed at Richard but also the mid-B rank because they were being flanked from all sides as this was the only chance to attack Richard and they were not friends or anything which resulted in a cloud of dust rising around the centre.