The Assassin.

Two days after meeting Zaban and being publicly humiliated, in the dead of night Mol Stamiv eventually arrived at his uncle's mansion, almost as big as a royal palace, packed with ornamentations and accessories. Mol begins to bang on the door desperately, bursting into tears.

"UNCLE! UNCLE! Please open the door! It's important!" Mol whines out, weeping even louder. After a while, a large man with a longsword sheathed, crossed arms, and a blocky head answer the door, towering over Mol.

"Mol?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and staring at him with pity.

"Open the door! I need to talk to my uncle about this! This is urgent news!"

The doorkeeper gives Mol a dazed look of confusion. "Urgent how and where are your henchmen?"

Mol pops a vein and grits his teeth, "That's why I'm here! A guy! Z-Zaban Sodsa! He has golden eyes, carries a weird tattoo on his right forearm, like around three inches taller than me, and is light skin! He singlehandedly took down both of my henchmen without a sweat AND ate my pears! My beloved pears are gone because his NASTY teeth sank into them!" Mol cries out, trying his hardest to contain his tears.

"Pears? He ate the pears?! No one eats on my nephew's pears!" a voice yells out behind the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper moves to the side to show a midget holding a cane with glasses, fat, small, only has a couple of hair strands under his chin, yellow teeth, and beautifully colored pajamas while wearing a green skincare face mask.

Mol cringes in disgust. "Uh, Yes, uncle! He ate my pears, beat my henchmen with ease, looked at me, and said ArEn'T yOu NeXt! He HUMILIATED me! I've never been so embarrassed in my life!"

"What about the time you pissed your trousers attempting to communicate to a lady in a tavern?" the doorkeeper says.

"Uncle! That was years ago!".

The uncle clears his throat and responds by saying, "Mol. That was less than a month ago."

Mol clenches his fist, "UNCLE! Enough of that, we have a menace in our hands threatening your business!" he screams out. "...And I know how to speak to maidens..." Mol murmured. (Sure you do-)

Fandous sighs, shaking his head. "This Zaban guy, he's human?"

"Yes! He is!"

"Sounds like he's trying to be that one myth that the government made up so people won't be living in fear... About that human fighter who was born for the sole purpose of slaying The Ancient Golden Dragon?" Fandous lets out before snorting. "Foolish! Let's teach this gentleman about manners and why you never believe in such a fairytale, " Fandous goes on, glancing at his doorkeeper with a grin.

Mol stares at the doorkeeper and shakes his head continually. "No uncle! No, he won't be enough for him to combat Zuban! This guy... Is different I swear, I think he has Psychi! What we need... A person with Psychi as well... L-like your assassin? Her name? Right, Ny-"

Fandous sweats, slamming his cane into Mol's toe as Mol screams in pain and agony. "Don't utter her name, you fool!" Fandous yells out, sighing. "Do you deem him that much of a risk for me to have to send somebody from the Shadowleaf clan after him?"

Mol takes off his shoe and blows at his toe to heal it. "He's not a normal human I tell you! That doorkeeper won't even land a hit on him! He's so fast, I can barely catch sight of his movements! He hits hard too! I FEEL the impact! I can't sense Psychi but I can SENSE that!" Mol says as the doorkeeper pouts in the background, mumbling under his breath.

"We need her! We need-" Mol says before the doorkeeper immediately covers his mouth before he finished off his sentence.

"STOP IT! Don't say her name, I don't want to see her... Uttering such a name could even cause her to..." Fandous says before he hears a sudden whoosh as the winds grow stronger, forcing him to become completely silent.

"Cause me to do what precisely," a shadowy figure revealed sitting on a tree branch, crossing her legs, having her mask cover most of her face but you see her silver smooth hair in a bun, having obsidian black skin, and lavender beautiful, glowing eye with a large scar with stitches on her right eye, forcing that eye to permanently close, wearing a full-on dark purple rogue-like breastplate suit, giving a sinister, snarky smirk.

"M-Miss Shadowleaf?!" Mol says, getting red in the face and covering his face in fear. Fandous sighs, looking at the ground while saying, "Too late now... It seems you now have a mission... Nylanna Shadowleaf..."

Nylanna stares down at Fandous in disgust, "Look at me. Gazing at your foot is an indication in a lack of politeness, Mr. Stomiv. I don't put up with impoliteness," she teases. "Look at me or you'll have to conscript another inferior assassin."

Fandous sweats while reluctantly bringing his head up to maintain feeble eye contact. "He goes by the name Zaban Sodsa... Lightskin... 5'9... Weird tattoo on his right forearm... And golden eyes," Fandous says.

Nylanna Shadowleaf snickered before free-falling off the tree branch and flipping down to the soil, landing on her knees and ascending off the floor, still in the shade. "What city?" she asks.

"Haverstale town! You go-" Mol says before Nylanna glimpses at him, bullying him to be silent immediately. "I know my way to get to a lowly town," Nylanna says, finally stepping out of the shades to have the three get a better view of her, standing at 5'6 and having her arms crossed.

"Consider him already dead, sir," she says before moving swifter than the winds, almost vanishing in a flash burst of speed as the three remain hushed at the swiftness of her movements.

"Now you're in deep trouble, Zaban..." Mol subconsciously boasts while grinning, tensing his entire body, and laughing while Fandous merely looks down at the ground.

* [THE HUMAN FIGHTER] *

Zaban stares at the ceiling after adventuring out in the forest to fight absolutely nothing, just eating a pear while laying in bed. He starts to groan and roll his eyes, yawning. "In all honesty... This is lame," Zaban said, sighing. "Do all adventurers go through this? A period of nothing happening to them? It's peaceful and all but there's no conflict. Guess I escaped for nothing, damn... Now I'm going to die for nothing," Zaban says, before placing a hand under his chin.

"To be fair... It has only been a week... This adventure stuff only starts getting fun once you get a month in right? I guess I'll have to be patient... Maybe, this is a test!" Zaban said, munching on his pear before throwing it to the side. "Maybe! If I find something to do that is fun, the adventure gods can award me with cool stuff like big fights, stopping bad guys, slaying dragons, and discovering legendary items!" Zaban says as he raises from his bed in excitement, hyping himself up.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do! Force me to get in that situation instead of waiting for it!" Zaban shouts before yawning and getting sluggish, flopping back down to the bed. "Maybe... I'll commit that goal for... Tomorrow..." Zaban says before heading off to sleep.

The next day, Zaban awakened from his slumber, stretching and immediately doing 500 pushups. "Huh... I didn't dream of anything... That's weird," he says before getting up and going to the windows, looking through he sees the town in ruins and in flames as screams of agony can be heard through the destruction.

"W-what the... What the hell... What the hell!" Zaban said before feeling the motel shaking, Zaban immediately knew the building will collapse if he doesn't react soon, causing him to waste no time running through the windows and lands on the ground, rolling and grunting in pain.

"[W-what is happening!]" Zaban says to himself before he looks back and sees the street seller on the ground, covered by his blood. "Z-Zaban... Please... Help me..." he says as Zaban would try to run at him before the street seller gets stomped into a bloody puddle by an enormous, golden reptilian foot.

Zaban gazes upward in a state of utter terror at the majestic presence of the Ancient Golden Dragon, whose towering stature renders his facial features indiscernible and obfuscates the upper half of his body within the shadowy expanse. As his piercing, menacing blood-red eyes reveal themselves through the darkness, Zaban finds himself transfixed by the sight of the dragon's resplendent yellow scales, oversized talons, colossal wingspan, and spiny, voluminous tail.

"Zaban Sodsa, are you? You disappoint me. You are not what I thought you were. Here looking for a challenge to pursue a wild bear yet all I receive is a mere rabbit to hunt. How humiliating," he says in the draconic vulgar before bubbling his mouth.

"What do you mean I'm not who you thought I was?! Stop this massacre or else I will kill you right here!" Zaban says as the dragon shoots a fireball out his mouth aimed at Zaban.

Zahan sees the fireball is too large to dodge so he is forced to stand there to cross his arms over his face to bring his guard up and endure the flames as much as he can, actually resisting the flames well but his efforts would come short before the dragon lifts his foot and stomp on Zaban to crush him, making a knocking noise, a sound of a pebble being thrown at a window as soon as he got stomped.

Then Zaban wakes up from his nightmare and begins to hyperventilate, after some time and rethinking what he saw he has a dazed look on his face. "Wait... Crushing someone doesn't make that noise," he says as he hears another knock from the window, seemingly a pebble being thrown.

"What the hell? Who or what is doing throwing stuff at my window?" he says before approaching the window and opening it.

"Nothing seems to be out of pocket here. Guess I just hearing things," he says before a gust of winds suddenly blew up in Zaban's face but Zaban moved his head slightly to the side fast enough to not get whatever was coming to him and held onto the window to force himself not to fall back. A purple blur appears behind Zaban. Zaban gets a small cut on his right cheekbone yet Zaban doesn't realize he is cut due to the sheer speed.

"I missed?" Nylanna says, turning around to face Zaban with two daggers in her hands. Zaban turns in her direction as well, scratching the back of his head. "I was intending for the throat to get that effortless kill off of you but you evaded my attack," she says, in shock, amusement, and annoyance.

"Ma'am, what are you talking about? You... Just expect me to stand there and take your hit?" he says, still not noticing he got a small cut on his face and is currently bleeding off his face.

Nylanna attempts to attack Zaban's left eye, but he stops her and is left with a small scratch under his eyelid. She follows up with a high knee to his chin and a handspring flip to escape the grapple. However, Zaban remains standing and unaffected by the attack, causing a surprised and confused look on both of their faces to appear.

"Shit, she's fast... I can barely keep up with what she is doing even if I have my guard up... Though she's sorta physically lacking... Maybe that's why she has daggers to help her with that problem," Zaban says in his mind.

"This simple-minded, vacuous chimp is beginning to get real ANNOYING," Nylanna says in thought before she charges at Zaban, who anticipates her move and dodges. Taking advantage of her momentum, lets herself get thrown through the window and jumps out after her.

Nylanna has a vein on the side of her head as her mask is off her face, showing her full face with a few scratches and a small busted lip. She stands, inhales fast, and exhales slowly, relaxing her body and staring at Zaban with a smile. "I see, so you weren't a complete waste of time. I see how you dealt with Stamiv's nephew's hooligans he claims to be dependable henchmen," she says while Zaban gets on guard, composed and calm, preparing himself for Nylanna's next assault.

"Good. I see you've trained your Psychi well, chimp."

"My what?"

"Your... Your Psychi."

"What the hell is a psychic? Never heard of that... Aren't those mages?"

Nylanna looks at Zaban stunned, fluttering her eyes. "You're joking, right?" she comments.

"No. I don't know how to make a good joke. Only my mama laughs at them and seems genuine. I think?"

"You... Don't know what Psychi is... How did you get so strong then?!"

"Riversia training of course."

Nylanna does not appreciate Zaban's simple words and becomes increasingly bewildered. However, she is now annoyed and chooses to close her eyes to concentrate on sensing his Psychi. To her surprise, she observes a smoking, warming golden aura around him once she opens them.

"No doubt about it, he has Psychi... He must've activated it without knowing it. Anyone can do it if they fought in their younger years and never stopped but this is different... His Psychi is stronger than what it is supposed to be for an untrained Psychi... Maybe that tattoo on his arm is playing a part in this but even then... He needs to be having extreme physical training, and workouts so inhumane to get this kind of physical power... Though unusual, it isn't nearly as strong as mine! He only has better physical benefits from it other than speed and flexibility but my Psychi is still stronger overall because I know how to use it... I can use that to my advan-" Nylanna monologues in her mind before Zaban runs in with his hands up and attempts to land a jab to her face to interrupt her but she manages to evade the jab just barely, lending back and hopping off of one foot to gain distance.

"You kind of just stood there... Is that a common habit you do? That's very bad to do in a fight," Zaban says, slowly ticking Nylanna's irritation to full-on resentment as she gets out her daggers and grins, her eyes glow before being engulfed with a small lavender-colored wind twister around her, fully releasing her Psychi as Zaban watches in amazement, slightly having his guard down.

"How... Did you do that?! Was that magic?!"

"Psychi Incantation... Wind Style," she says as Zaban just watches, interested in what she is doing though not like he could reach her anyway, the winds are way too aggressive to walk through.

"Gale Footsteps!" she shouts out before the winds get absorbed by her and she has a solid lavender aura surrounding her entire body.

"... Please teach me to do that."

"No," she simply replies, assuming a poised position, grasping her daggers firmly as she flashes a smile. With a swiftness that makes her vanish from sight, she suddenly materializes behind Zaban and proceeds to skilfully maneuver around him, delivering swift cuts and flips that leave him no room to retaliate, necessitating that he remains vigilant without even daring to blink.

"Shit, she got faster... I actually can barely see her... Too fast to counter," he says in his mind, "But I'm still not out of options." he continues, as he endures more punishment as Nylanna attempts a deadly attack on Zaban's neck with a backflip and throat stab, but Zaban blocks with his forearm causing her to stab his arm. Utilizing her imbalance, Zaban delivers a strong front kick to her stomach, causing her to be launched into the middle of the road.

"I can tell she loves doing fancy backflips and all that before she attacks. All I had to wait was to bait her into going for the kill, block it, and trap her in a position where she can't run away from and strike... Unfortunately, if I planned this earlier... I would've had the strength to knock her out right here," Zaban conceives in thought, observing Nylanna struggling to stand while clutching her abdomen and coughing yet her aura remains resilient.

"Your magic didn't weaken? I thought magic gets weaker when the body takes more punishment... Or that's how it is in my dreams."

"You idiot... That's not how Psychi works... Your body can be near death but the Psychi remains as strong as it was throughout the battle..."

"Oh... Then how does it work then?"

"Well- Wait... Like I'll tell you anything, you fatuous chimp," she screams in anger, coughing from pain but still manages to get on all four and smirks, albeit with a fed-up and psychopathic smile on her face and declaring, "I can't believe I was forced to activate my Psychi for this..." She's barely conscious but still finds the strength to run straight at Zaban.

Zaban sweats and comes to a quick realization. "I could turn the tide of this fight... Both of our shoes are untied but if I'm the only one who ties my shoe and defeat her before she realizes to tie her shoe... I could match her speed," he says in his head before he gets down to tie his shoe, unintentionally ducking under the slash. Zaban cringes at the fact he doesn't have shoes own, "Shit! I don't even have shoes! Guess I'll have to find another plan!" Zaban says before rising back up, headbutting Nylanna clean under the chin, knocking her unconscious.

"How... Me... Nylanna Shadowleaf... One of the best assassins and clansmen in the Shadowleaf Clan... Lose to this fool," she says in her head before falling fully unconscious as Zaban gets up and gets in the stance. "Ok! I'm ready! Come at me! That attack you tried to pull off on top of my head wasn't very effective! Use your knives!" he says as he waits patiently, a couple of awkward seconds pass before Zaban notices she was unconscious behind him.

"Oh shit... She knocked herself out!" Zaban said as he looked around before shrugging and picking her up. "She's dangerous... She had that magic thingy or she called it... Psi-Ki? Whatever, I want her to teach me to that! I'll turn her in later!" he says, with a big smile on his face before a guy opens up his door.

"Hey! Look at the sky! It's nighttime! Go to fucking sleep!" he scoffs, shutting the door back.

Silence fills the atmosphere after that...

"Sorry! My apologies!" Zaban said, doing 1,000 pushups as punishment afterward in the middle of the road. (What the fuc-)