Episode 21- The Start of The Battles with Assassins  

The age for a person to become an assassin really did not matter. If you were taken in by the assassin guild you trained and become stronger as soon as you hit the age of three. Assassins do not get to live the childhood of normal children since they are forced to work. If a person has the talent to be an assassin, they will do anything to get them into the guild even if it means killing their whole family. Everyone in the assassin's guild is ruthless but not all choose to be like that since they were raised to believe that what they are doing is right.

This assassin's guild needs to be buried in the ground, they use children as slaves and force them to work… I am not going to kill this little girl since she has not experienced the world yet, but the others are going to die.

With those thoughts, Tenka raised her hand, channeling mana into the area, the area started to heat up, and a sword slowly started to form into the world.

"Raise, Caliburn!"

The sword slowly came into view, and it was shining in a beautiful crimson red. The sword was letting off heat. The heat of her blade reached temperatures beyond seven thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

"So, we are going to begin the fight now, Princess Tenka?" the assassin, Zero-One, said looking at the sword that was reaching elevated temperatures.

"Yes, I'm ready to fight now!"

The heat of the sword kept rising, and she swung the sword, channeling fire magic in the area.

Quickly dodging the flames, the assassins back up, keeping their distance away from Tenka. They knew if they had gotten hit by the sword they would die. The sword had reached a temperature beyond that of ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The sword was strong enough to one-shot most swordsmen and mages.

"That's why they couldn't beat you… You are a magic knight, one of the rarest things in the world, so that is the real reason people want you dead... It's because if you were to get strong enough the Vermillion would receive more power from you just being a capable magic knight." said, Zero-One.

The Vermillion clan was a place that birthed some of the strongest mages and swords and became a high-ranking family just because of that but if Tenka were to grow stronger, the Vermillion family would receive benefits from the entire kingdom for birthing a capable magic knight.

After all, it's been about twenty-five years since a magic knight was born and that was the sister of Shito Mahinu… Sara Mahinu, a mage that could use all the four great elements and some of the other elements, while being able to control energy from the void.

The void was a pitch-black place that had nothingness, the deeper you go into the pitch-black hole the farther into nothingness one would reach. The void was an endless place that would kill any average person that would try to go inside it but there were only two people that could successfully control the particles of the void and that was Shito, and his sister Sara.

The assassins dashed towards Tenka, pulling out daggers from their back pockets, and they started swinging at her, reaching speeds that were faster than a bullet train.

I could keep my distance. These people cannot use magic since they are using weapons… the control it takes for one to use both would make no one want to use it, but I got to watch out for that thing they call ki.

Ki was a supernatural energy that was similar to magic. While it was similar the two were completely different, ki was something swordsmen used to completely enhance their physical abilities. A person that has Ki can enhance their physical capabilities by over fifty percent. Unlike magic physical boosting which can boost a person's over ten percent, Ki was better than magic at anything that required physical labor.

The method of Ki was produced tens of thousands of years ago by a man who wanted the swordsman to be able to fight on equal grounds with magic. Back in that time, swordsmen were no different from ordinary people and they could die from the weakest spell because their bodies could not handle the attack from a mana-based spell. The man who created the Ki system was a man named, Rasetsu.

Tenka looked at the assassins and noticed that they had been getting faster and faster, that was we she knew that they started using their Ki and started to distance herself from them.

She was fighting on equal grounds with the assassins, and none of them seemed to have the edge over her and she did not have the edge over them.

I need to keep them at a distance, or this could get ugly fast. These people started to use Ki and I am confident that I could take two of them out but there are five of them here but… I decided to spare the little girl, but she keeps attacking me, I am going to have to separate them.

Tenka looked up at the assassins, gently smiling.

"You guys started to use your ki, didn't you?"

The assassins just stared at her and the little assassin, Zero-Two, stepped up. "Yes, we did start to use our Ki… but you still have not used any magic-based skill. Are you stalling for time?"

Tenka was taken aback by the girl, she could hear the sweet voice of a little girl behind the mask, a girl who was an assassin who should already have grown up, but you could feel the loneliness of the girl from the way she spoke.

She thinks I'm stalling for time… That is not a possibility, since there is no one coming for me. I ran out of her all by myself.

With those thoughts, the whole area started to turn ice cold from the mana Tenka started to release, Ice was coming out of her body on her left side, and flames were coming out of her body from her right side.

Zero-Four could not help but stare at the sight before her, there was no way the person they were fighting was supposed to use other elements.

"She is an irregular! That should not be possible! We have not received that kind of information!" Zero-Four shouted looking at the rest of her companions. They went into the battle with the soul thought of thinking that Tenka was a mage that could only use the four great elements, nothing beyond that.

"She is right, nobody ever said we were going to be fighting an irregular." said, Zero-Five.

Tenka started to look around at the assassins, noticing Zero-Four, standing behind the rest of them, in the condition she was currently in, killing one of them was possible but the easiest one to kill was—

"Ice Spikes."

—Ice Spikes appeared behind Zero-Four, piercing her straight through the heart, and killing her on impact, there was no way for her to survive the wounds she received.

Zero-Four did not scream or let out a single sound, as soon as she died her body was frozen, and the ice crumbled to pieces.

Hearing the ice falling to the ground behind them, the assassins quickly scattered, trying to avoid whatever was appearing behind them. They surrounded Tenka and that was when they noticed that Zero-Four was gone.

Zero-One looked around, trying to find where their comrade had gone, and he looked at the ice and noticed that it had blood on it.

—She is dead…! But why could we not hear any kind of sound of her dying!? What is happening here exactly!?

"How did you kill Zero-Four so fast, what exactly are you planning on doing to use?" Zero-One asked, looking at Tenka.

"I'm planning to kill you, what else do you think I'm going to do with you guys... I'm not going to spare you."

With that, the assassins started to channel their ki into their bodies, boosting their strength by over fifty percent but it did not just stop there. The assassin's strength was boosted to over a hundred percent.

Ki did not have a limit to how much you could increase your strength, but since the human body has limits, people must stop because they might destroy their bodies.

This is going to be troublesome… not only are they increasing their strength they are also increasing their speed and durability.

Tenka looked at the assassin, who had already charged up their strength, each of them was at one hundred and twenty percent.

"You might have caught us off guard when you killed Zero-Four, but we are aware of your strength now and we are going to have to kill you before you use any more of it… Your attacks are too unexpected and one fatal attack could be our last." Zero-One said, looking at the rest of the assassins. He was ready to start a real fight with the vermillion princess, so he could hurry up and kill her and get the money for his mission.

"Ok, then let us get this battle started!"