Chapter 351 - Assassins Lay Traps

GRAAAAH! Among the human-faced hounds and Ghouls were a few Drowners. Were they fresh ones, only just created? If anyone had died in the torrential rain a few days earlier, it was entirely possible. For monsters, being an hour old or a week old would make little difference. Some grew dangerous with age, but none tottered around on baby steps just because they were newborn. Whether they had just been born was therefore irrelevant. What mattered was their number. "There are a lot of them."

That was the whip-bearing guard. And yes, there certainly were. Their numbers were a problem, but so were the kinds of creatures he could see. There were demonic beasts far more dangerous than the three monster species before them. Demonic beasts were generally less dangerous than monsters, but there were exceptions to everything. The simplest example was a bear demonic beast. Bears were dangerous animals even without the transformation. Naturally, a bear that became a demonic beast was more threatening and dangerous still. Two of those very examples raised their heads among the monsters. One stood a head taller than the other. GRRRRRRR... The drooling, red-eyed bear demonic beasts were hard to miss. Rem looked at them and said, "There's a friend of that religious bastard." "So there is," Ragna replied.

Had Audin heard them, he would have asked whether they wished to stand beside his god, wearing his usual benevolent smile. But the bear was unlike Audin. It did not smile. ROOOOAR! Instead, it beat its chest and roared. The sound reverberated through their bodies, a cry that momentarily froze its prey. It seemed to serve as a signal. "They're coming," Dunbachel said.

The monsters surged toward them like a wave. They began to run. Human-faced hounds kicked off the ground, splattering their bellies with mud. Drowners came running with their arms flailing. Ghouls stretched out their hands as though flaunting their nails and dug into the earth with each forceful stride. Their numbers exceeded a hundred. The horde descended on them, the ground thundering with every step the bear demonic beasts took. For ordinary people, this would have been more than troublesome. Their lives would have been in danger. The sight alone was enough to inspire terror. But the people gathered here were far removed from anything resembling ordinary or average. Prey would have frozen at the transformed bear's roar, but everyone here could move perfectly freely. No one here would freeze at the sight of some demonic beast like that. WHOOSH! THUNK! A streak of light shot into the head of one charging bear demonic beast. A throwing axe. Its fierce roar dwindled into a deflating hiss. The bear's head snapped back, then forward again. Powerful neck muscles kept its head from tearing off, but that did not change the outcome. With an axe ornamenting its skull, the bear's charge began to falter, and it tumbled forward. Several human-faced hounds beside it were crushed beneath its body. SQUEEEAL! The human-faced hounds screamed. That was the end of it. Wasn't a Hydra the only monster that could keep moving with its head split open? It had multiple heads, after all. Of course, Encrid had never seen a Hydra himself. A bear demonic beast with its skull split vertically was bound to die. "Ah, that one was mine!" Dunbachel complained. GRAAAAAH! The distinctive screams of Ghouls rang out. Ragna and Jaxon cut through their heads and sliced off their limbs with the indifference of men pulling weeds. One economical movement followed another. Keeping their steps to a minimum, they cut down everything that entered their reach. Encrid joined in. Hadn't they said it normally took three trained pikemen to handle one Ghoul? A well-trained soldier could kill one alone. Encrid could survive even a thousand of these things. 'Just keep hitting and running.'

That would do if he were alone. And while guarding Krang? He could fight while running with Krang on his back. But he was not alone now. His company members were with him. There was no need to retreat. He pressed the attack, striking, killing, cutting them down in an instant. The monsters' black blood soaked the rain-drenched earth. "Monster dumping," Jaxon said once the commotion was over.

Someone had herded the monsters together and sent them their way. It was a well-known tactic with many names: monster dumping, pushing them out, driving monsters north. "This won't be the end of it."

Jaxon wiped his sword with a cloth, then dropped the cloth on the ground. That was his assessment. Ignoring monsters approaching one's territory or luring them into another was one thing; deliberately sending a horde like this took considerable skill. These were not people who would give up. "Let them send all they want," Dunbachel said, puffing out her chest.

Monsters like these were no threat at all. Even Odd-Eyes had kicked in the heads of the human-faced hounds that charged it, drooling. More than five lay around the wild horse alone, their skulls burst open. NEIGH! Odd-Eyes shook its head and whinnied, as if to say it had been nothing. "The dirty tricks will keep coming."

Jaxon continued in a firm tone. It was conjecture, a prediction. A natural one, too. He had done this countless times himself. From the attacking side, of course, not the defending one. 'Have they joined forces?'

This could not be the work of just one or two guilds. The scale was too large. Naturally, Naurilia had assassins' guilds of its own. Had they all come together to form an alliance? It was only a guess, yet he felt certain. An operation this large, and the audacity to target a member of a nation's royal family. This was not the work of a single guild. 'Why did they band together?'

A few conjectures and deductions led him to an answer. The client had wanted a hunting dog, and the one chosen had decided that sharing the feast and surviving together was better than eating alone and dying. Jaxon's guess was almost perfect. That was exactly how it had happened.

* * *

In Aspen, an assassins' guild called the Swamps of Montterre controlled most of that underworld. Naurilia was different. Its guilds competed while coexisting, and there were quite a few of them. With domestic politics in turmoil and wars breaking out everywhere for years, some guilds had been founded by nobles who banded together to seize the opportunity. Others plied their talent for killing by accepting jobs from ordinary people. Twelve guilds in all had survived in this ecosystem for any length of time. Now those who had held out by building their separate guilds had gathered into an alliance called the Twelve Daggers. "We hired dozens of mercenaries and sent our own people as well, but every attempt failed."

"Because they were up against that Lunatic Company." Assassins' guilds were naturally sensitive to information. Of course they had discovered the truth as soon as they suffered the defeat. They had assembled in the city closest to the capital and were staying in a converted mansion. Naturally, their defenses and security were thorough. "Are we going to let this stand?"

"We all know what failing this commission means." Even among the Twelve Daggers, there was bound to be a guild leader with the greatest influence. The woman who had commanded the largest force before the alliance addressed them all.

"We must do everything we can." Giving up meant death. Their client was inside the royal palace. Failure and surrender would bring the same result. They had only two choices if they wanted to live: abandon everything they had built and flee... 'Or succeed.'

Naturally, both she and the other guild leaders dreamed of the rewards that would follow. Abandon their foundations and run? Out of the question. Better to overreach and get the job done. The country's ruler was going to change. Rewards would naturally follow. They had even swallowed their pride and united tightly enough that their client could not simply discard them once their usefulness was over. Thus, they all came to an agreement. The woman at their center spoke.

"Our opponents made their names on the battlefield. We have no hope of beating them in a fight. Let us fight on our own ground, in our own way." "Quite right."

The man who had become her lover was the first to agree.

"That goes without saying."

Another guild leader, jealous of her, nodded as well. And so they did. They went about it their own way. Their opponents could not know every trick an assassin used. One would catch them out. That would be the end. Some of their opponents might have experience hunting bounties, but surely none could see through every carefully laid assassin's trap. They had all spent their lives on battlefields, after all. It was a natural conclusion to draw.

* * *

"Please help me!"

The voice reached them as they followed the highway. A young man, still visibly boyish, lay sprawled on the ground. He appeared to have been caught in a trap. Bleeding heavily onto the ground, he spotted Encrid's party and cried out desperately. "Please save me! My father is a landowner with tenant farmers! I'll repay your kindness! I'll reward you!"

Tears streamed down his face. "How did you get caught there?"

Jaxon asked before Encrid could step forward. His tone was unlike his usual one. It resembled his Jaxrais persona, when he imitated Krais. Faced with that show of goodness and kindness, the young man answered. "I was on my way to sell wheat, and when I woke up..."

He did not know how it had happened himself. "Are you going to help him?"

The whip-bearing guard wanted to move on, troubled by an odd uneasiness. Encrid studied the man caught in the trap. He seemed sincere. "Please, please. Pleash."

He kept pleading, tears and snot running down his face. The final word came out slurred, as though he had bitten his tongue. "It's a setup. They seem to have laid traps around him," Jaxon said, scanning the area around the young man.

He detected a collapsing pit trap, and the faint scent of poison tickled his nose. "Will he die if we leave him?"

"He will. That's why they captured him and laid this trap." They could ignore it and move on, but that too was part of the design.

"If we ignore him, we'll be made out to have killed him."

"A double trap, then?" Encrid asked. Jaxon explained what would follow as concisely as possible. He predicted what would happen in the city where they would stop for supplies and rest. It was a trap called the "unavoidable choice." Try to save the man, and they would have to get past the traps. Ignore him, and trouble would await them in the next city. "There are the men who killed my son!"

Whether by using a good actor, hostages, threats, or poison, they would make the supposed landowner say those words to the party. 'Tie them up in the city.'

Once they were flustered, it would be over. A dagger in the back. They would have a team ready for that, too. 'Sneaky bastards.'

As Jaxon thought that, Encrid made his decision. "Dunbachel."

"Yes?"

"Go fetch him." As the earlier fight had shown, Dunbachel was quick and agile. With that ability, she could disregard the traps and simply retrieve the man. "All right."

She did not ask why. If Encrid told her to do something, she did it. That was how Dunbachel thought. The trap was designed to trigger various devices laid in the ground when someone approached to save the man. Dunbachel rendered it all useless with a running leap. BANG! The still-muddy earth exploded beneath the force of Dunbachel's foot. She flew straight to the trap and landed with a thud. Having cleared the traps in one long jump, she forced open the one holding him. The iron clamped around his ankle broke with a crunch, no longer able to serve its purpose. The man was gathered into Dunbachel's arms, still shedding tears and snot. With the landowner's son cradled like a princess, she backed up a few steps to make room for a running start, then leaped clean over the entire trap. A feat made possible by the strength of a Beastman's thighs. "Aaaaaah!"

Only the formerly trapped man's scream lingered in the air. The landowner's son joined their party. Encrid examined the rescued hostage's wound, sprinkled powder over it to stop the bleeding, and bandaged it. "Th-thank you."

An ordinary person. A civilian, in other words. A hostage with no connection to the assassins. That was what Encrid's intuition told him. Jaxon had reached much the same conclusion. Leave him behind, and they would become the murderers of an influential townsman's son. Save him, and they would have to overcome the traps. It had been a double snare, but every part of it had been defeated by a Beastman's thigh muscles and Jaxon's experience. The assassination attempts continued without end afterward. "Save us!"

A group from a trading company approached, bleeding from various wounds and claiming monsters were chasing them. No, they did not merely approach. They ran toward them. Encrid frowned as he watched them run. Were they really merchants? Concealing oneself and hiding one's hostility were the basics of assassination. That was what they were doing. He was suspicious, but not certain. Three or four Ghouls were visible behind them, lending weight to their story. Yet something still snagged at his mind. A warning from his intuition. Why? The accelerated thinking he had developed through sword training came into its own. 'Their wounds.'

Not one of them had an injured leg. Moreover, for people fleeing in terror, their breathing was remarkably steady. All of this was interpreted and organized within the realm of intuition. "They're enemies."

That was his conclusion, and Jaxon confirmed it with a nod. Not content with that, Encrid threw a dagger using the Throwing blade technique Jaxon had taught him. The dagger flew as though aimed at a throat, then abruptly dipped. The potbellied merchant crying for help flung himself sideways. Had he not dodged, he would merely have gained a pretty dagger ornament in his thigh. But he had dodged. And such nimble movement from a body like that. Didn't it betray his training? The agility itself was an impressive feat. "You're a heartless bastard," said the potbellied assassin who had dodged aside.

That hardly seemed like something an assassin should be saying. With that thought, Encrid launched a preemptive strike with a casual flick of his tongue.

"Are you pregnant?" The assassin's brows drew together at the insult to his masculinity. He had spent years training to maintain his composure at all times, but the unexpected remark sparked a momentary flash of displeasure. He failed to hide it. His reactions became just a little slower than usual. That was the end. By the time the potbellied assassin sensed the dagger flying soundlessly toward him, it was already too late. THUNK! The silent knife lodged in his neck, and he clutched at it. Bright red blood streamed between his fingers.