#4 Joining in

After a few weeks of days spent by sparring with Silver, it was finally time to decide what to do.

"So, tell me, boy, are you joining?" Arno asked me while we were walking around in the underground complex

"...Yes" I stared into empty space for a while before answering him firmly with one word.

"Good, normally before anyone joins, he is required to complete mentality test but since I am the one who was supervising you, there is no need to do that. Not to mention your special emblem." Arno said with a small smile as he took black clothes from his bag and handed them to me.

"You were already expecting me to agree, huh?" I muttered when I accepted the clothes.

"You should have seen your expression when you were sparring with Silver. It was more than evident that you will join. I will not explain what your emblem means. Each emblem represents strength as you could have already noticed but that's not all. They also represent respect, therefore others might give you a discount in shops just to gain your favor. Normally, the green ones are pretty useless here and don't represent anything except for you being a greenhorn, they also let you take certain missions but this is not important right now. The leader deemed you worthy enough to gain that special emblem because he sees potential in you. This emblem gives you a higher status and although you can't really order someone like me with violet one around, neither I can order you around. Of course, since I am your supervisor, I can order you around for the time being." Arno started explaining things to me which took much longer than we expected so we decided to go to the restaurant for a quick lunch.

"Are the staff here also-" I wanted to ask something that's been bugging me for a while but Arno interrupted me.

"Yeah, everyone here must learn how to cook even I know how to cook and I can bet that I am a better chef than these greenhorns." He proudly said as he was looking to the kitchen where people were preparing our meal.

"As I was saying earlier, your status here is a bit special but don't get arrogant because you can lose it anytime. You got it for showing the potential, however, if we will deem that your potential is no longer good enough, we will strip you of this "CRAZED ONES" status. Also, this name isn't official it's just how people started calling it." Arno explained and waved his hand lazily at the "waiter" and ordered a beer.

"Why isn't Silver's emblem the same as mine? He seems like he has a good potential" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Silver...he is a bit different case. He is already here for more than 3 months and he even practiced a few martial arts before joining us while you are here only a few weeks and you were able to catch up to him with no experience in the fighting whatsoever. I think that you already know why he is so important even though he is a greenhorn with better talent than the average person." Arno said with a helpless smile.

"He is the son of the leader here, right?" I asked to confirm it.

"Yeah, but don't worry, the leader isn't someone who would make decisions based on emotions. The time 'he' accepted Silver's request to join was the time where 'he' also built a resolve to kill Silver anytime necessary. But don't be surprised by this, everyone here is practically family so if Silver went to do something stupid, of course, the leader would be the one who would take responsibility. It's not like their relationship is bad but 'he' doesn't want to endanger our lives with 'his' emotions. That's the price of being a leader." Arno said with a slightly sad smile while playing around with his fork.

Something with his expression doesn't add up.

"You really care about this 'leader', don't you?" I asked with a special meaning behind my words.

"...haha" Arno widened his eyes in surprise before he started to laugh.

"Boy...it seems that I have to keep my guard up even when talking to you. You are pretty good at reading from people's expressions. It's exactly what you think but don't you misunderstand...I care about our leader just because I respect her." He replied with an amused smile.

As I thought...the leader is a woman.

"By the way, since you just joined us, you will need your code name." Arno informed me.

"Then let's go with...Akashi" I answered after a few seconds of thinking with a calm expression.

"?...haha, so you like those types of names? Well, you aren't the only one here, so it's okay." Arno seemed a bit surprised by my choice but he quickly brushed it off by laughing.

"Let's fill our stomach so we can start today's training. You will need as much energy as you can keep in your body, this training will be very different from light sparring with Silver." Arno said and I just nodded and started eating with my usual poker face.

...

After we ate our lunch, we were walking through the streets of the underground complex for more than 10 minutes before we stopped in front of one particular building.

"This is where you will be trained to see in the darkness which is a basic requirement for advancing your rank here. If you will fail in this, you can forget about advancing your rank." Arno said and led me inside the building.

"Go inside this room and...well, do your best." He mysteriously said and lightly pushed me inside the darkroom without any light.

*Click*

He actually locked me inside, huh?

I don't see shit, what am I to do?

?! I felt something small to hit my leg and I narrowed my eyes in pain.

So it's this kind of training...This is gonna hurt.

...

After a more than an hour of receiving blows inside the darkroom, I was finally able to adapt my eyes a bit to the dark but it was nowhere enough to see where the attacks are coming from. Thankfully, after getting beaten up so much, I was able to develop some kind of alarm in my head whenever something was about to hit me, the alarm always rang inside my head. At first, I wasn't accustomed to it and wasn't fast enough to dodge but with more time, I started dodging everything while keeping my eyes closed.

---Inside another room---

"Is this guy the reason why you begged me to give you the right to decide who gets special emblem?" A woman asked Arno with a calm expression while looking at the display where Akashi was training, observing his movements.

The woman's height was around 176 centimeters (5.8 ft.) tall, her body had hourglass shape. She had blonde hair and blue eyes and an overall voluptuous body with a beautiful facial complexion. No one would ever suspect such a beautiful flower to be an experienced assassin. Judging from her face she was around 25 to 30 years old.

"That's right, Raksaya. I believe that he is extremely talented and as you can see, he is slowly getting used to the dark environment. For some people, it takes even weeks to make such progress as him." Arno praised Akashi who was currently doing his best to dodge and predict the attacks going at him.

"?! This..." Raksaya's face immediately changed to shocked one after a few more minutes of observing Akashi's training.

"Didn't I say that he is talented?" Arno wasn't even looking at display anymore since he trusted in Akashi's talent and he thought that his leader was surprised by Akashi's fast progress.

"Talented? It would be better to call him a monster, look at what he is doing!" Raksaya said with a serious expression and when Arno saw her face, he could no longer resist looking at the display.

"Wha-?! He is dodging with his eyes closed?! And he is doing even better than before when his eyes were opened." Arno exclaimed with a surprised expression.

They weren't surprised by what exactly he was doing because most of the higher-ranking members were already able to do that but he was there just for 1 hour yet he was able to learn so quickly.

------------

I continued dodging attacks for what felt like 15 minutes and then the lights turned on which made me open my eyes.

*creak*

The sound of the door resounded behind me so I turned around to see Arno standing there with a wide grin while looking at me.

...

Like this, another 2 weeks passed by with me training inside the darkroom and practicing some martial arts. I already quit University and my mother didn't complain to me since I told her that I got a job offer. Even my employer, Arno, called her and explained everything. 'Thanks to my fluent English, I would be able to travel across the world' Which meant that we would be meeting less frequently and at first, my mother was against it but after a while of persuading, she accepted.

I started training mainly with the daggers and I also practiced a lot throwing small daggers usually used together with poison. however, I tried a lot of other weapons and I can't say that I was entirely bad with them...

---(3 months skip)---

"You have been here for more than 4 months already and your progress is extremely fast, however...Are you ready for your advancement to yellow rank?" Arno asked me with a serious expression. He was the one who spent with me most of the time together with Silver who was always training until half-dead exhaustion.

"What does the test entail?" I asked him with resolve in my eyes.

"Simply said, everyone here who has the yellow emblem already killed someone. You understand, right?" Arno said with a calm smile and asked me.

I just nodded my head since I was already expecting it.

"Good, you can start whenever you want by talking to people at the reception there, but I guess you are already aware of that." Arno said with a smile and I once again responded only with a nod.

So, it's the time already, huh?

I thought and immediately approached the reception.

"Oh?! If it isn't Akashi, what are you doing here?" The man responsible for giving out missions greeted me with a smile.

I already spread my name here, in the underground, even without killing my first target which was usually impossible. Except for me, the only one who was able to do so was Silver due to his special status.

"Hello, I am here for the advancement test." I greeted him and explained what I wanted.

"Alright, wait a bit...Akashi-Akashi" He said and bent down under the counter to look for my specific mission while muttering my code name.

"Got it! Hm? Here you go." He finally found my mission and got slightly surprised by the content before giving me the paper with the information regarding the mission.

[Kill the woman named Cornelia, who is responsible for numerous deaths of other people. Police weren't able to find any evidence leading to her therefore the only way is to kill her. On the contrary, she misled the police to other innocent influential people which caused chaos in the city. While police have no real evidence to lock up those influential people, the rumors were still spread and now their reputation is suffering. Your primary objective is to kill the target, however, there is also optional secondary objective and that is to clear the name of those innocent influential people. You are allowed to kill those who will endanger your life, however, don't kill anyone else when it's unnecessary.]

This looks a bit more complicated than just usual killing. I thought after I was done with reading the instructions.

"Be careful with this mission...It's much harder than usual ones, I guess someone believes that you have the skills to complete it." The man informed me with a helpless smile.

"No problem, I am going to buy additional tools and then go out." I said without any change in my expression. Now that I have spent more than 4 months here, I was able to keep myself in half-asleep mode even down here. However, I wasn't bored at all, it was simply my bad habit.

"Of course, there is no real-time limit for your mission but I would recommend doing it as fast as you can." He gave me advice and I nodded before leaving for the weapon shop.

----In the dark corner----

"Why did you give him such a hard mission when it's his first time?!" Arno asked his leader and couldn't help but feel skeptical even though he fully trusted Raksaya.

"Calm down...this is a good test for him. Cornelia's mansion isn't filled with many bodyguards so it will be easy to infiltrate inside. I wonder if he will decide to do just a primary objective and kill her instantly...however, if he will go even for the secondary objective...then I really wonder what will happen." Raksaya said with an expectant smile while licking her lips.

"I am well aware of what will happen if he will decide against killing her instantly. This mission should be just for female members only! Cornelia's biggest weapon isn't her bodyguards but her body which seduced numerous men already." Arno commented with a slightly angered expression since Akashi has yet to receive any training to resist the seduction. He was just an almost 20 years old boy...temptation in his current years are the most dangerous

"Well, let us see what will happen, there is no longer way back but I bet 10 percent of my whole wealth on his success in both objectives. Are you interested, Arno?" Raksaya said with a confident tone while taunting Arno to bet against her.

"Wha-? Of course, I won't bet against my own student!" Arno said decisively, however, there was also another reason why he fled from the bet.

'How can she trust him so much?! Plus 10 percent of her wealth? It's more than enough to feed numerous families for the rest of their lives! No way in hell I am betting my money on something stupid like that!' Arno thought while being puzzled by Raksaya's trust in Akashi.