Lord of Disease (JP-GL) 269

269 The Assassin’s Prey

The human assassins were not careless. They knew that demons were, on average, physically superior to humans, and that a higher percentage of them possessed magical abilities.

Therefore, even a ‘mere villager’ was not to be underestimated. That was what they thought.

And while they had anticipated the presence of enemy assassins, they had planned to avoid them, not to fight them. They were one step behind.

And in a battle between assassins, to be one step behind was to die. They were not incompetent.

But if there was one thing to be said, it was that their misfortune was to have superiors who would discuss and decide to dispatch assassins in an official, regular meeting.

The humans had a tendency to underestimate the demons, to see them as barbarians living in the northern frontier. And so, they did not understand the depth of their intelligence network.

They had assumed that the tried-and-true method of eliminating all magical eyes and ears and using mind magic to check for spies was still effective.

It might have been too much to ask, to pay attention to a single spider clinging to the wall of a building. For humans, a race that could transform into a small spider without magic was the stuff of fairy tales.

But still, for the humans, who were forced to move in large numbers, it was best to assume that information would leak and to launch an invasion with a large army, a force that could not be stopped even with a certain amount of information. Assassins should have been used as a force to deal with the small traps that targeted the large army and to eliminate enemy assassins at night.

The effective methods their opponent had taken had been so effective that they had assumed they would achieve the same results by imitating them.

They were just people who had come to believe that what demons could do, humans could also do. Forgetting even the reason why their ancestors had feared the demons, had designated them as enemies of humanity, and had decreed that they must be destroyed.

In the southern region of Listrea. Seven assassins had infiltrated, bypassing Fort Litalside and crossing the Lital Mountains. They had infiltrated in small groups and were acting on a crude, but flexible, and therefore difficult to counter, plan of attacking small villages as they found them.

Of those, two had died without even knowing how.

They had been divided into three teams, two, two, and three, and had been taking turns on watch. And the two on watch had been silently eliminated.

And of the five who had been sleeping in their cloaks, one had ended his life with a single throwing knife. But he had let out a muffled scream, and that had been the alarm. And yet, another had been shot in the forehead the moment he opened his eyes and had died.

Of the three who had jumped to their feet, one had narrowly dodged an arrow, but it had grazed his leg, leaving a small wound. The arrow must have been poisoned. He had survived the initial poison due to his resistance, but he had fallen to his knees, and there was no way he could have dodged the arrow that flew towards his chest.

One, who had tried to run with his backpack, had been read, and a thin throwing knife had pierced his neck, and he had collapsed with his belongings, and the number of corpses had become six.

The last one, having abandoned his belongings, was running through the night forest. The moon was bright tonight, and for him, a trained assassin, running through the night forest was no problem.

But even with such a bright moon, the sentries had been killed without a single warning cry. They had been completely caught off guard. But if it was just a matter of escape… it would be best to assume the mission was a complete failure—no, he should.

The moment he left the forest and there was no cover, an arrow flew. He had expected that, of course, and he had jumped back to dodge it, and then, reading the trajectory, he had hidden behind a tree.

And from behind, a hand, wrapped in red cloth, reached out and passed by his neck.

He collapsed, clutching his neck, which had been half-severed, the bones avoided. The last thing he saw was a single-edged, black, large knife.

Two figures met, conversed with hand signs, and disappeared into the forest.

This was the land of Listrea. A land where just living was a great struggle. A land protected by those who had trained, to live there, to protect all who lived there.

The value of an assassin was not determined by their pure combat ability. But for an assassin to succeed, it was necessary that their existence was unknown, and that they could strike first.

No terrain advantage.

No numerical superiority.

The enemy knew their information, and they knew nothing of the enemy.

An assassin whose every move was known was nothing more than the prey of another assassin.

“They were all wiped out…!?”

Hashir al-Carnac, one of the Empire’s Electors, looked at the report he had been brought, his face a mask of shock. The civilian official who had brought it reported, his voice heavy.

“…To be precise, it is unknown. But… there have been no reports of damage from the few who are in hiding… instead, all regular communications have ceased. At least, from the Empire’s men.”

“…Are they not just in hiding?”

“That is a possibility. And I wish it were so…” The young civilian official lowered his face, his expression grim.

“The meaning of a communication blackout… is not light. It is likely that their information was leaked, and they were hunted down by magical signature detection… in peacetime, they could have used illusion magic even in the cities…”

It was probably unintentional, but his words seemed to accuse him of being responsible for the disastrous outcome of sending assassins. Hashir became sullen. And a chill ran down his spine.

They had received a small amount of information. The enemy had a simple but robust means of communication, the ghost pigeon, and they had borrowed it. But necromancy was a forbidden art in the human nations, and now that they had lost the real thing, along with their local contacts, they were as good as blind and deaf. And necromancers, too, were subject to immediate execution without a trial. It was a long time ago, but there had been a time when a single necromancer had raised an army of the dead and destroyed a city-state.

And among the demons, necromancy was not a forbidden art. The undead, the enemies of all living things, were recognized as citizens, and they even walked the streets of their cities.

If they were to lose, the entire world would become like that.

In that world, humans would be slaughtered, or at best, livestock. To think that they could coexist with non-humans was the delusion of a madman.

“…Thank you for your report. You are dismissed.” He was not so incompetent as to take his frustrations out on the subordinate who had brought him bad news.

“Yes.” The civilian official turned on his heel, a desirable agility for a civilian official… but it would have been perfect if it hadn’t been so obvious that he wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

After he was alone, he spat.

“…Damn demons…!”

He had to sleep. When he woke up tomorrow. He had to secure the commitment of the leaders of all the nations to a full-scale offensive.

If the field operatives had been eliminated. If the assassins had been wiped out. Then there was no safe place, anywhere.

—He died that night.

It was not known if it was an assassination. There were no external injuries. He had just died in his sleep, in his bed.

One of the guards was an assassin, and he, along with the other guards, testified that there had been no intruders.

He, who had been constantly advocating for an immediate, full-scale offensive, had been a nuisance to the upper echelons of the Empire. So, even if it might have been an assassination. Even if it was an assassination, there was nothing that could be done, even setting aside the reality of the situation.

The death of the current head of the Carnac family, a powerful noble of the Empire, an Elector, was handled with a surprising lack of fanfare.