Chapter 86: How An Assassin Prepares, Execution, New Class
The remaining guard yawned once, blinked slowly, and slumped forward in his chair.
I stepped out from the shadows.
My foot touched the rune array I had hidden here days ago.
It was invisible, but still fully functioning.
I pressed my palm to the floor and activated the Etherjack Rune etched onto my hand.
It drank my mana like a sponge.
Then, the world shifted.
Suddenly, data streamed into my mind.
It had feeds from cameras, logs from system access, records of alerts, and dozens of folders, each labeled with timestamps.
The feeling of opening a digital terminal inside your own thoughts was strange.
It felt like I was floating in a dream.
I copied everything into the runic memory storage linked to my Etherjack array.
Since I didn’t need to worry about being detected this time, I let the transfer run at full speed.
In a few minutes, the job was done.
I stepped back into the shadows.
The guard returned not long after, yawning again.
He sat back down and resumed watching the monitors.
Suddenly, the guard looked around the floor.
I tensed, wondering if he had detected something.
But he picked up the fallen earpiece, and returned to looking at the monitors.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips
After making sure nothing seemed off in their behavior, I left the control room.
’I’ll need an actual computer to break through the firewall.’
The data I had was locked, and the rune array on my hand wasn’t enough to decrypt it directly without the support of a digital terminal.
’There must be a house in the city with a proper desktop or even a laptop.’
I left the Dusk Hand mansion, and returned to the main city of Drama, Greece.
I searched quietly through the neighborhood until I found a suitable target.
I tossed a regular Dreamroot pill toward the bedroom room window.
It broke on impact, silently releasing its full dose.
Within moments, the people inside were in a deep, undisturbed sleep.
I entered through the back door.
After checking the people in the house had fallen, I booted the computer in the study room.
[Type the Password: ____ ]
’Of course it’s locked.’
Normally, I would’ve skipped this house and moved on to the next one.
Breaking passwords with runes was inefficient, and tedious.
It drained mana, took time, and usually wasn’t worth the trouble unless there was no other way.
But today was different.
I needed the runes to break the firewall of the computer files I brought.
Even if I found another house, I still needed to go through this process sooner or later.
So, I might as well get it over with here.
I took out Fairy Dust from my Inventory Rune, and I began crafting a new rune array on the wooden desk.
[Runic Spoof Seal Array].
It was a layered formation, combining compression runes and temporal dampeners.
The principle was simple: trick the system into thinking a legitimate user had entered the correct credentials.
In practice, though, it was an absolute headache to create.
For two hours, I worked without stopping, drawing precise lines, adjusting the mana flow channels, and checking each layer for stability.
Most people couldn’t make something like this reusable, but my [Advanced Inscription] perk made it possible.
When the last line was in place, I added a [Failsafe Burn] rune in the corner.
Two days from now, the entire array would self-destruct, leaving no trace it had ever existed.
I let out a slow breath and wiped the sweat from my forehead.
The computer was already on.
I pressed my palm against the rune and let mana flow into it.
The array shimmered faintly before the magic sank into the machine.
The [Runic Spoof Seal Array] began dismantling the digital firewall, piece by piece.
The computer’s fan spun up with a low hum. Then, without any input from me, the password screen vanished.
’I’m in.’
I rested my arm on the CPU tower.
The [Etherjack] rune array etched into my skin pulsed faintly, and I channeled mana into it.
It allowed me to connect to the computer, and do basic operations like opening, copying, typing or deleting folders with my mind.
’I should transfer the data I brought.’
The stored data inside the [Runic Copy] rune was transferred to the computer quickly.
[Transfer complete.]
I opened the file I had just uploaded.
Another password prompt popped up.
’Of course.’
I pushed mana into the [Runic Spoof Seal Array] again, but this time, I linked my mind to the array by activating the [Etherjack].
The connection was possible since the [Runic Spoof Seal Array] was connected to the computer, and I was linked to the computer.
I had to carefully guide the [Runic Spoof Seal Array] array to target the encryption on the file itself.
Minutes stretched into half an hour.
My forehead was damp.
When the final layer of encryption fell away, I exhaled slowly.
The file opened.
The computer screen was filled with rows of videos and digital logs.
I dragged four videos onto the screen and played them all at 4x speed.
My high Intelligence made tracking the footage easy.
My eyes darted between the screens as I skimmed each scene for anything important while opening and reading the logs.
I focused on the recordings of Asterios Dukas.
I had a suspicion I needed to confirm.
An hour passed, and I smiled.
’Look at this guy.’
My suspicion was confirmed.
Asterios Dukas—a paranoid mage with connections to the invaders—had only one Rank 1 Exorcist guard posted outside his bedroom door.
For someone with the resources to hire Rank 2s, that didn’t make sense.
At first, I thought maybe he had hidden defense devices I couldn’t detect.
I had been searching for signs of them for the past few days and found nothing.
Now, the footage explained everything.
’This man isn’t Asterios Dukas.’
’He is a body double.’
He had mimicked Asterios’s posture, speech, and mannerisms well enough that most people would never notice.
But it wasn’t enough to fool me.
In my previous life, I had worked with the Asterios for quite a time.
And, I had spent a lot of that time looking for a chance to kill him.
I had memorized every one of his smallest habits, should a chance arise to assassinate him. Even a skilled double couldn’t fake these habits perfectly.
And this double slipped.
His blinking pattern was wrong. He held a pen differently. Tiny gestures—barely noticeable—were all off.
Sometimes, though, the real Asterios appeared in the recordings.
That meant there was a way to get from this mansion to his hidden base without leaving the mansion.
The real and the body double Asterios would switch sometime during the morning and then during the evening again.
’This confirms there is a hidden path to Asterios base from the mansion.’
While I could tell the body double from the real, it was hard to know when they switched off. Habits, after all, only showed themselves now and then.
’A body double.’
’This makes my job easier.’
I deleted the videos from the computer.
The [Failsafe Burn] rune would take care of erasing my work soon enough.
With everything back the way I found it, I slipped into the shadows and left the house.
Minutes later, I approached Asterios’ mansion.
It was buried deep among the trees, far from prying eyes.
I entered silently through the shadows, my presence slipping past guards without a hint of detection.
The inside of the mansion was still.
The only sounds were the faint hum of air vents and the occasional creak of settling wood.
I moved quickly toward Asterios’s bedroom.
The body double was sleeping peacefully.
I hid in the shadow beneath the bed, and flicked the Dreamroot Mist pill, and the Heartstiller outside of the shadow.
It was a normal dosage Dreamroot Mist pill.
The air shimmered faintly as the pills dissolved into a thin mist.
The body double inhaled without stirring.
The Dreamroot Mist ensured he stayed unconscious no matter what would happen soon.
A minute passed.
His breathing grew shallow, then uneven.
His head tilted slightly to one side on the pillow.
The faintest tremor ran through his fingers before they went still.
His chest no longer rose and fell.
From the outside, it looked like a man who had died peacefully in his sleep from a sudden heart attack.
Class Assassin gained.
+3 Strength, +3 Dexterity
’Finally.’
The notification confirmed the body double was actually dead.
I slipped back into the shadows, and left after making sure there were no traces of me or the assassination.
Morning, Asterios Dukas Mansion
The eastern sun was only beginning to light the sky when one of the maids approached the master bedroom.
She was young, dressed neatly in the standard black-and-white uniform.
Her hair was tied back in a bun.
A folded towel rested in her arms, the start of her morning routine.
She knocked gently on the bedroom door.
"Sir? I’ve brought your towel."
No answer.
She knocked again, a little louder. "Sir?"
Still nothing.
She hesitated, then pushed the door open just enough to peek inside.
"Sir, I’ve brought the towel."
The man on the bed wasn’t moving.
His eyes were shut. His skin was pale in the morning light. Something in the stillness of the room made her throat tighten.
She stepped inside.
She called his name again, a little louder this time.
There was still no reaction.
She stood to the side of the bed, placing a hand on his shoulder and shaking him gently.
"Sir? Please wake up."
No movement.
Her panic spiked. She checked his pulse and...
"Kyaaa!"
The towel fell from her hand.
As a Rank 1 Exorcist, she quickly composed herself, grabbed the landline phone on the bedside table and dialed the estate’s emergency extension.
"This is Anna, from the third floor! I... I think something’s happened to the Master. He’s not waking up. He’s not breathing!"