Chapter 5

The King holds Arato's hand just as the blade sinks into his flesh. Arato looks at him in both relief and confusion as he drops the blade.

'You've convinced me, hero. Sorry for my extreme test.'; he says as he brings out a cloth to stop and bandage the bleeding.

'It's alright sir.'; Arato replies. 'I would've done the same if I was in your shoes.'; he continues.

'We both know that's a lie.'; the King says as he sits on his bed. 'You're just a boy that came from a peaceful world to a world that is threatened by a powerful enemy. You can't make cruel but necessary decisions. I'm sure you can't even take someone's life.'

'I can't and I won't.'; Arato says. 'I don't need to take a life to save one.'; he continues.

The King chuckles at his response. 'What a noble thing to say, hero. I hope that decision of yours doesn't backfire.'

'It won't sir.'; Arato replies.

The King chuckles again as he lies on his bed.' Let's hope that's the case.'; he says before he closes his eyes.

Arato bows and leaves the chamber. He sees Eric waiting for him and goes to meet him.

'What happened to your arm?'; Eric asks while looking at Arato's hand.

'He tested me.'; Arato replied with a weary smile on his face.

Eric starts walking away as he says; 'Let's go to a healer. We don't want your wound getting in the way of our training.'

'Sure.'; Arato replies while following him.

After getting healed, Arato trains with Eric till nighttime. He goes to his room and takes his dinner, after that, he goes to sleep.

Eric walks out of Isla's chamber and looks at the empty hallway. It was very late in the night so almost no one was awake; maybe except for the guards that patrol the compound.

There was one problem, and that was the fact that two guards were meant to be stationed in front of the princess' chamber.

Eric finds their absence suspicious as he slowly draws his sword. Suddenly, a masked man dressed completely in black lunges at Eric from the shadows. He immediately grabs the man on the neck and impales him with the sword.

Eric stares at the assassin's corpse in silence. He then opens the door of Isla's chamber to see her standing amid 2 corpses while holding a sword.

Eric sighs in relief. 'This hasn't happened before.'; Isla says while staring at her blood-stained nightdress.

'I think the enemy attacked knowing master isn't around.'; he replies.

Isla stares at the floor deep in thought as she suddenly looks at Eric.' They're after my father.'; she says with a calm but shaky voice.

Eric immediately turns around as he sheathes his sword.

'Stay close to me princess.'

Isla nods and follows him out of the chamber and into the hallway. They run for some time until Eric stops suddenly and draws his sword. Isla stops closely behind him as they look at a very tall thin man with black, long hair and black eyes. The man was wearing nothing except black pants and a long black scarf. The man was leaning against the wall with a long, large serrated blade beside him.

The man looks at them and shows a crazy grin as he picks up the sword and rests it on his shoulder as he starts walking slowly towards them.

'Eric Bearfust right?'; he asks.

Eric glances at the multiple dead knights behind the man as he slowly takes his stance.

'You're responsible for that?'

The man looks behind him as he laughs cruelly. 'Oh, those weaklings?'; he says. 'They weren't even worth calling a warmup.'; he continues while cracking his neck.

Eric clenches his fist in anger as he says in an eerily calm voice; 'I'm going to kill you.'

Arato couldn't sleep at all. It was something that had not happened to him since he entered this world, since he was always tired at night due to his constant training throughout the day.

Arato checks Fei's room to see she isn't there. Since he can't sleep, Arato decides to train at the training grounds till he gets tired.

Arato starts putting on the weights given to him as he grumbles to himself. Reinheart realised that the constant training had become somewhat easy for Arato, so he bumped up the difficulty by giving him 60-kilogram weighted cuffs for each limb. His explanation to Arato when asked why was; 'You immature fool. To get stronger, one must never get comfortable while training. They must train in such a way that they don't want to go back to training later.'

Arato almost felt like he was two months ago. A feeling he disliked very much. After wearing the weights, Arato started practising his swordsmanship; it was a series of continuous swinging and adjustment of stances.

After training for about an hour, Arato goes to sit on a bench nearby. He slowly removes the weights as he checks his status window. His swordsmanship had gone from F to E, but that was the only stat that improved. There were a lot of things he didn't know about the status window and unfortunately for him, there was no one to tell him how it worked, so he had to find things out on his own. He also realised that he never thought of looking at other people's status, he wondered if it was even possible.

At that thought, Arato suddenly became curious about how strong Eric and Reinheart were. Arato thinks for a while as an assassin slowly approaches him from behind. The assassin stops behind Arato and raises his dagger, he swings it towards Arato's head with the intent to kill him in one strike.

Arato holds the assassin's wrist and looks at him as he asks in slight confusion; 'Who are you?'

The assassin tries to escape from Arato's grip but can't, so he swiftly brings out another dagger and attempts to stab Arato's neck but he grabs the other wrist and flips him forward and smashes him on the floor rendering him unconscious.

Arato looks down at the assassin in confusion as he thinks to himself; 'Is he that weak?'

Arato wonders if he could check the assassin's stats and immediately, an orange screen appears.

[Name- Snas Nave

Age- 31

Race- Human(Male)

Class- Assassin

Title- Mid-Rank

Job- Assassin

Level- 243

Stealth-B; Dagger Proficiency-C; Stamina-C; Speed-C; Durability-D; Strength-E;....]

Arato was confused. Judging by the stats alone, the man is stronger than him, but he easily overpowered him.

Arato judged that the colour difference between his status window and the man was the cause, but Arato didn't have the time to think about this, he had to stop the intruders in the palace.

Fei was just coming from a visit to an orphanage in the capital. She often visited around the time Arato went to bed. She would go there with enough food to last them for about two days and she would spend around an hour with the children after she would go back to the palace to check up on Arato and then go to bed.

Fei enters the room to see that Arato isn't there. She guesses he must be on the training grounds so she makes her way there to bring him back since it was already very late.

On the way to the training grounds, Fei notices there aren't any patrolling guards but she doesn't think too much about it. She reaches the place and sees Arato isn't there but notices a severed rope by the tree. She goes to investigate as the assassin watches her silently from a branch on the tree. Immediately she squats to see the rope closely, the assassin jumps down from above to strike.