I returned to the others after finishing off the assailant. They had surrounded the princess and put up a magic barrier to prevent any further attacks. Maybe they should have done that while she was giving her speech.
“When did you-”
Sunalla approached me to ask some questions, but now wasn’t the time in my opinion.
‘I know who did this. Is it alright if I go handle them?’
I looked at the princess for confirmation and she mauled over it for a while.
“Who did this?”
‘The Sikari Guild from what I gathered.’
“Huh? If it’s someone from there, I doubt you would have gotten any answers.”
‘I can read minds.’
I gave her that simple excuse. It would probably be a bad idea to tell them I eat souls to acquire information I’m seeking. Just imagine you had been insulting someone who could kill you at a moment’s notice without blinking. You’d put your guard up around that person, no?
“Even if you know who did it, what good does it do us when we don’t know where the Sikari guild is? For all you know, it was all just sham. It would have been better if you left him alive.”
The princess complained about me killing the man who attempted to assassinate her. Maybe I should have let him kill her and be done with it.
‘Oi, chicken. What happened?’
Yokino called out to me with her mind. I looked at her, but she was busy playing with her hands. Well, I say playing, but in truth she was coming up with new spell ideas. This spider was crazy. Every time I saw her, her hands were busy doing something.
Maybe I needed to adopt that attitude as well. Always coming up with ways to get stronger. There was always the simple route of killing.
‘I simply got answers out of him. Is it that hard to believe?’
‘Well… yeah. The Sikari guild is the most mysterious guild ever. Proof of the guild being real is even fickle. For you to say such a thing, especially considering the person spoke when you tortured them, it could just be some random idiot leading us on a wild goose chase.’
The guild was that quiet with their missions? So, whoever hired them simply went to some random alleyway and hoped they had hired this supposed Sikari guild?
‘Ah… so how does their name even exist?’
‘I don’t know. It just does.’
‘How do you know so much?’
‘Not my first rodeo, cowboy.’
She then cut off the connection and returned to doing whatever it was she was doing.
‘How am I supposed to convince them then?’
I looked at Sunalla and the princess who were still talking about the issue. I didn’t want to reveal my trump card to them.
‘Maybe we make up having a certain skill that allowed us to get the information?’
‘I doubt they’d believe that.’
‘Just say we tortured him that well?’
‘We didn’t even spend thirty seconds on him.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Hmmmmmm.’
‘W-We don’t need to tell them anything.’
‘What?’
‘Akkun?’
‘I-I mean, t-they won’t believe us no matter what, right? Even if they do believe he is from the guild, there’s no reason that we know where the guild is. So we go by ourselves, retrieve the head of the guild and present it to her. That way, no one gets in the way of the feast… erhm, culling… princess protection?’
‘Ha…’
‘A-Akkun…’
‘U-Uwaa! S-sorry.’
Akkun was scary. Practically the secret brains of this organisation.
I looked at them for one last time. Yokino looked at me, then a weird expression formed on her face.
“I know that expression. Don’t you dar-“
I shot off towards the guild’s secret location, leaving them behind.
My stomach grumbled as I appeared before an alleyway. I was being cautious because of the guard who prevents anyone from entering the guild.
He usually acted as a sort of homeless drunk, but considering he was trusted enough to protect the entrance, he must have been no easy target. Although when I scanned him, his stats looked no better than the needle master.
I wasn’t going to take my chances. If I got found out this early, the guild would relocate in a matter of seconds. Fortunately for me, the Needle Master had the skill [Transformation], which allowed him to look like anything he looked at.
Using [Remorse], I activated his skill with the intention of looking just like him. There was a tiny flash and when I looked at my hands, I looked no different from my regular self.
‘Am I actually transformed?’
Since there was no real way to confirm from simply looking at myself. I decided to just go with the flow. I got into the alleyway, there, I saw the drunk merman. He had pale skin and messy strands of hair on his head.
A few of his teeth were missing or golden, with tatters for cloth on his body. I could even see his ribcage showing. To his side were empty bottles.
I was now curious as to how a merman could drink anything underwater. They were literally surrounded by water 24/7, so there was no way they would grow thirsty, right?
Quickly, I moved towards the darkness in the alleyway. The drunk looked at me and I looked at him back for only a split second before proceeding further down.
I could sense a weird distortion in the darkness. Much like using [Shadow Travel], meaning the caster had an affinity for [Dark magic] and [Space magic]. Possessing more than one affinity in this world was more than enough to cause someone to be called talented.
To reduce someone like that to simple portal control meant they most likely possessed more important individuals in their mix.
Needle Master for all his boasting, knew little to nothing. Sure, he was aware of the entrance and a rough estimate of the number of members present in the guild, but he had no idea of the true power of everyone. He assumed he was the best in the guild.
So, infuriating.
“Varim der har iz groys.”
The drunk whispered as I was about to enter. It was customary for guild members to respond, but Needle Master never responded. Quietly, I proceeded through the portal.
When I appeared on the other side, my mind was in awry. To the sides of the portal, there were two mermen with spears in hand. The guards for the portal it would seem.
Not worth the time, I looked at everything else.
I had seen it through the Needle Master’s memories, but to think the guild was actually this big simply amazed me.
A temple made out of white marble on a mountain. The temple itself was easily over 60 meters tall and its width should have been over 300 meters. There were several pillars holding up the roof of the temple, with multiple pearls shoved into them. These pearls glowed beautifully in the quiet area, and were each as big as my head.
The temple seemed to have the same structure as temples from Ancient Greek. There were multiple assassins holding spears or carrying weapons standing guard in front of the statue. All around me, multiple mermen were moving about quietly and slowly.
Some were in hijabs, veils and all sorts of coverings, preventing their faces from being shown. Their hands were folded together as if in prayer.
At the bottom of the staircase leading to the temple, there was a statue of a woman in a veil. This woman held a similar pearl in her hand. The statue was so hold, there were no real discernible features on it.
She was supposed to be the Primordial Goddess of the Mass Blue. She had too many names for me to pick a specific one, according to Needle Master’s memories, so I wouldn’t even bother.
My heart started to thump loudly. Drool escaped my mouth while looking at all the delicacies present.
“Oi, hurry up and go pay homage to the goddess.”
One of the guards protecting the portal ordered me with his spear in hand. I looked at his stats and he was weaker than the needle master. He was even younger, meaning he had less experience than the needle master.
I performed a wide area scan and almost no one here was my match, meaning, I was in for a treat. Obviously, I wouldn't kill everyone here. I simply needed the princess to believe my claims.
‘[Shadow Demon Summoning].’
A black orb appeared to my side. The guards looked at it with confusion.
‘Huh? What’s that?’
‘Needle Master?’
I had no idea, but this entire situation was amusing. I remembered how my life was when I first entered this world. I was always being preyed on. It felt like I would die at any moment if I simply met the wrong enemy.
Now, here I was. Stronger than almost everything I see. This was going to be fun.
One by one, my five shadow demon generals descended from the orb. Considering I had more mana, I could summon more than a dozen shadow demon generals now, but these five would do.
They surrounded me and bowed.
“PRINCESS!”
“GIVE!”
“US!”
“YOUR!”
“ORDER!”
“Fuck! Needle Master’s gone insane!”
One of the guards reacted to the shadow demons in such a way. I had forgotten that they still saw me as the Needle Master.
He charged at me with his spear in hand. One of the shadows cut his weapon and body in half with a single slash. Even my shadow generals were this overpowered in the presence of their guards.
I quickly ate his soul.
[You have eaten 1 merman soul]
[Your stats have received a permanent 10% boost]
[You have gone up 1 level]
Good. Good.
His soul wasn’t really tasty, but I would surely find something tasty.
The other guard looked at me, but he was standing in fear. I was surprised he belonged to this supposedly hardcore guild of assassins. Maybe that was why he was left to mere portal guarding. The moment an enemy found out how to infiltrate, it meant they knew all the information they had to.
The real tough guys were sent out to assassinate.
A wimp’s soul wouldn’t be tasty.
‘Round up everyone you see. Put them to near death situations, but don’t kill them. I want to get the best souls from an evaluation. Show no mercy to anyone. Summon your subordinates and pass these orders to them.’
<A/N: I'll be back to usual 5 chapters a week in 2 weeks. I do apologise for this inconvenience for this past month! We should have been close to the end of this arc by now, but that's still a ways away. Please, do comment, leave a review or give me power stones!>
