114 – Storm – 8
A was a veteran assassin. He had no name. Because in his memory, he himself was always A. Even in the earliest memory he could remember, he called himself A. He had no complaints whatsoever. His master, Wilhelm, was a bit on the rough side of manipulating people, but he was a human being with certain rewards and punishments.
Since he had no stable status, the fact that personal awards meant nothing, and that punishment meant nothing because failure was death was no longer an issue for him. Even if it is due to special interference from the outside, such as brainwashing.
Anyway, A, a veteran assassin, was quite sharp among Wilhelm’s countless knives. How many important things did he do? For A, he said, what he was doing was no mere assassination or sabotage. It was a great patriotic act for the crown prince who will lead the empire and its future. That sense of mission was the driving force behind A.
However, even for him, this mission was very difficult.
“Your Highness, how about thinking about it again?”
“….”
“Your Highness!”
“You seem to be misunderstanding something, but I have never asked for your opinion.”
“But….”
“If a tool has the will to act, it is not a tool.”
At first glance, A shook his head, trembling at the obstinacy close to madness. Only then did Wilhelm snort as if he was satisfied.
“Go away.”
“Yes….”
It wasn’t that he was particularly disappointed in Wilhelm. It is true that since Wilhelm recently took a leave of absence for unknown reasons, he has become a bit more sensitive and sharper. In fact, it showed an unstable appearance close to hysteria, but anyway, it wasn’t that important to A, whose head was broken as soon as it was broken.
However, even A could not help but tilt his head at the fact that he was given a mission like this one, where the possibility of failure and the risk burden were extremely high. Did Wilhelm, who was particularly impatient after hearing the rumor that Princess Yuria and the son of Archduke Sirius held hands, made a hasty decision?
Neither the son of Archduke Sirius nor Princess Yuria are fools. He can get hit once. He can get hit twice as well. But not three times. It would be close to impossible to pierce their alertness, which is probably at its peak.
And if this mission fails…. A shook his head wildly.
The risk was different from previous attacks. It was good to see the previous ones as subcontracts of subcontractors. Even if the worst comes, it means that he can protect Wilhelm, his torso, and finish at the line of cutting off his tail. But he himself is different. If he gets caught, he probably won’t be too difficult to weave Wilhelm together.
Of course, just before that, a b*tch called Lisa, who was full of vain winds, was ordered by His Highness to stage a kidnapping, but she was abandoned because she had run out of usefulness in her earlier work. It is a story that no matter how much her waves came out about her, nothing would come out. The cleaning had already been completed, and it was a mission sent with the intention of sending it once, but if it succeeded, it would be good, or the other side should clean it up on its own. It’s a de facto intermittent process.
In the first place, does it make sense for a human subject to have a name, even if it’s a mediocre thing? It was a year that I didn’t really like from the beginning. Seeing that contact was lost, it seems that it failed and was removed after all. Either he turned into the dew of the execution ground, or he was imprisoned in the depths of a dungeon where he would never see the light of day again.
A clicked her tongue disapprovingly, whether or not she knew that she was also in a similar situation. Then, at the thought of Wilhelm, he sighed deeply.
“How could someone who was so brilliant….”
He lamented with a pensive expression on his face, as if he were a loyalist who sincerely worried about the country’s future. No one taught him that he was, at best, a hound for the prince’s self-interest. He probably didn’t even listen to me.
But what can I do? A collected information step by step. It wasn’t too difficult to find out their schedule, as if they had no intention of hiding it. The giant decided to aim for the day when they all gather together.
And on the morning of the promised day, according to the information I knew in advance, everyone was at the gymnasium. Princess Yuria Reinhardt, Mikhail von Sirius and his fiancée, and Wilhelm’s ex-fiancé and ex-lover. It was said that they gathered for a daily swordsmanship practice, but honestly, it was a funny thing. What changes by holding a knife for just one day?
His original mission was to kidnap Wilhelm’s ex-lover, Lily von Adamas. The rest of the characters hurt just enough to not die.
And after all the effort, how did they succeed in hiding next to them? Since Mikhail and Hestia, an excellent swordsman and wizard, were together, there was no halfway way, and he needed an invisibility potion that he had barely obtained by spending an enormous amount of money.
The execution of the mission was scheduled for late afternoon, around the time they were preparing to return. That’s because it’s the most defenseless, and it’s the time when your guard is released. It wasn’t a very long wait. Originally, an assassin is more like a person who waits. There was one time where I waited in the bathroom for three days for an assassination target suffering from severe bowel disorders. About half a day, well, it wasn’t that great.
However, what made A difficult was their excessively defenseless attitude. As if they had forgotten that they had been attacked several times now, their hands itched at the sight of them not even seeing the slightest hint of vigilance.
‘Wouldn’t it be okay if I just attacked now? No, but it’s right to go as planned.’
However, he endured each time with superhuman patience. And finally, it was the late afternoon we had planned. It’s time to step into action. And then.
“Kyaaa!”
Lily von Adamas collapsed, clutching her chest.
“Ugh!”
As well as Mikhail von Sirius.
‘What is it?’
It was the first time that even A, a veteran who prided himself on having gone through all of the prenatal battles, was experiencing it for the first time. He blinked his eyes in bewilderment. As if they had been concocted, suddenly the two top priorities started rolling around. Did someone do dragon poison? But there was no sign of poison at all. What the hell does this mean? But the bewilderment did not last long.
‘No, this is rather an opportunity.’
Even in an extremely sudden situation, A’s judgment of the situation was swift. According to his usual theory, the two most important things for an assassin are patience and judgment, so it was natural. A ‘veteran’ assassin meant the same thing as an assassin who never failed, so he could be said to be a pretty good assassin.
From nob le mt l dot com
Mikhail, the target to be most wary of, collapsed complaining of unknown excruciating pain, and Lily, a kidnapped target, also collapses with the same symptoms. If you think backwards, isn’t this a heaven-sent opportunity? Even if it was something other forces were caught up in, he was confident that he would take Lily out of this messy situation.
And his memory was cut off there.
–
“Oh, you finally opened your eyes. Seniors.”
“Keuk.”
A struggled to open his eyes. The terrifying headache made me frown. He tried to put his hands on his temples, but hesitated.
A muffled metal clack. His arms were bound very tightly with chains that could hardly be undone. His arms were not the end. His legs, his body, and his whole body were tightly bound with chains. No matter what happened, he showed a strong will that would not allow escape. Got it, A bit his lip. The moment when you are proud of being successful is the most vulnerable. It was a complete defeat that could not be eliminated.
“Why are you ignoring people when they talk to you?”
“You, you?”
Only then, A raised his head and looked up at the owner of the childish voice that had been calling him from earlier. A shabby lamp swayed behind her head, dazzling her eyes. After frowning and giving my eyes time to adjust to the light, her face came into view.
“Yes, that is me.”
“How are you still alive… !”
“Ugh, noisy.”
Her youthful face, like that of a child, and the ferocious look on her face were terribly contradictory. What was in front of his eyes was Lisa, who had been sent to death to kidnap Hestia a while ago. The unexpected encounter made A’s struggles intensify. At the same time, the chains that bound him also made an unpleasant noise. As if she didn’t want to hear the sound, she covered her ears and, after a sigh, grabbed A’s hair tightly.
“Senior, if you don’t want to shorten the short name line more, could you please stay still? You know better that no matter how hard you struggle, there is nothing going to work out.”
He was always using honorifics for the title of senior, but in reality it was no different from being sarcastic. The two had not liked each other for their own reasons since they were under Wilhelm. A disapproved of Lisa for not acting like a hound, and Lisa hated A for being pretentious on the same hound subject.
“How are you feeling right now? I was completely captured by the person I ignored so much.”
A lot. A harsh grinning sound escaped from A’s mouth. Dark red blood ran down his lips. I hate to admit it, but she was right. Running wild like this now doesn’t help anything. Lisa snorted as if he was funny and sat across from him.
“You must be curious about a lot of things, don’t you?”
“How are you alive?”
“I thought that was the first thing I would ask.”
She grinned.
“When I asked if the other side had any intention of siding with them, they said they would just spare me. Naturally, I accepted and ran away, changing into the reserve status prepared in advance. Coincidentally, the status I prepared in advance was an academy employee. Security for students is a tight topic, but it was also quite lax in this way, right?”
“You traitor b*tch!”
“You have to speak clearly. Betrayal is what I suffered.”
Lisa joked that it still makes her shudder when she thinks of that time. To A who couldn’t say anything, Lisa continued her words.
“Honestly, I was dubious at first. I can’t believe that I was abandoned. But as I was sorting out my identity, I looked into this and that. You were surprised. Tail cutting is also an art at this point.”
“That, that….”
“Don’t you have anything to say honestly?”
A shut her mouth. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to say. Even sophistry could explain that it was the most efficient method at the time. But, what does that mean now? It’s just making money. She had no intention of hearing an explanation any longer.
“Still, it’s fortunate that I prepared a few preliminary identities in advance just in case. The senior always said that he had a weak mindset that he shouldn’t have as the prince’s sharpest sword. What saved my life? What is a sharp sword? What’s the problem with a hound that is about to enter the cauldron at the end of the hunt, looking for at least one way or two to escape in advance?”
“The hunting dog is over….”
“Why, I don’t think you are a senior?”
Lisa smiled, twisting the corners of her mouth. She raised her middle finger and waggled like her tail.
“From my point of view, 100 is 100, and seniors are also in the middle of a severed tail.”
“No!”
“No…. From the perspective of your senior, do you think that our brilliant Highness would have just set up such a risky operation without any safeguards? It’s just some kind of resentment. Since orphans without parents are widespread in the empire anyway, there will never be a shortage of hounds to use, right? Get rid of the hounds that you know too much about, relieve the accumulated stress, and then if you succeed, it’s great. What a great plan to kill three birds with one stone.”
“No!”
“If you don’t want to believe it, don’t believe it.”
I was in denial, but A also had a hunch. As Lisa said, if he is also abandoned, the points he had doubts will be solved. But he couldn’t possibly do that. If so, what becomes of his own life. This is the life he thought he dedicated to the crown prince for his country and nation. Was he really abandoned for such trivial reasons? It was something worse than death.
And after being abandoned like that, he clings to the mercy of his junior he despised, and continues his ugly life in the way he despised? I’d rather die.
“Can I help you?”
“… Not required.”
“Ahahahahaha! I knew it. So, do you have any other questions? I’m a person who goes anyway, so I can take care of that amount of money.”
Lisa burst into madness. She held out her breasts as if to show her great generosity.
“Is this your solo act?”
“Honestly, I don’t think our Grand Duke or his party will slap me in the back, but I still can’t believe my Highness the Princess. That bloodline doesn’t matter where it goes. I just decided to help out on my own. It’s not harmful, and it’s not a breach of contract. So, the question ends here?”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders. A lowered his head. It has no name. He has no one to remember him. Devotion was raged, faith was betrayed. What the hell was his own life for?
“… What was my life like?”
Lisa laughed at his rather serious monologue.
“What is it, it was nothing.”
A’s consciousness was cut off, thinking that the words he heard at the end of his life were too harsh.