Chapter Seven: The First Encounter

Dizziness—

Accompanying the dizziness was a sense of detachment, as if his soul had been pulled from the world itself. Amy licked his dry lips and, almost instinctively, came to a halt. In an instant, the healthy flush vanished from his handsome face, leaving behind an unnatural crimson.

—He retched.

Bending forward, he doubled over as a scarlet hue seeped between his fingers. But the boy quickly wiped it away with the back of his hand—only after carefully cleaning himself with a silk handkerchief did he lift his head. Though his complexion was still ashen, his eyes, black as ink, shone with an unprecedented brightness.

“An eye for an eye, blood for blood— a tooth for a tooth.”

He spoke, and it was as if flames danced in his gaze.

Then—

Footsteps resumed. One step, then another, and another—he narrowed his eyes as he looked at the door before him, concealing the cold glint that flickered in their inky depths. Lowering his lashes, he moved with the docility of a lamb, treading quietly across the ground, yet within the silent foggy night, he was brewing the deepest intent to kill.

He paused, then advanced.

The cool night wind ruffled his clothes on the stone steps, and the swinging key ring at his fingertips shattered the midnight calm.

“Jingle—jingle—”

The boy stopped, his gaze lingering on the door faintly reflecting the dim moonlight. He grasped the swaying brass key and slid it straight into the keyhole. Turning the lock gently, a thick iron chain slipped down like a silken ribbon, crashing to the ground with a clatter. The solid and unadorned door was stripped of its defenses, opening the last barrier to him.

Yet his movements were stiff, and sweat beaded in his palm.

But it lasted only an instant before his resolve hardened—retrieving the key with awkward determination, he left the chain on the ground and pushed open the not-so-heavy door.

As expected, the flash of a blade arrived right on cue.

—It was beautiful.

Amy even had the leisure to admire it.

No, this strike truly was beautiful; both the timing and the angle were flawless. In the eyes of a true expert, it possessed an almost artistic grace—there could be no doubt that the assassin was a master of the curved blade. He possessed not only a preternatural instinct for combat but could also, from a human perspective, seize upon the tiniest sliver of opportunity, turning the impossible into reality. In the lower districts—no, in all of Hemtica—he was surely not a nameless figure.

But, alas…

A trace of regret flickered in the boy’s eyes. Confronted with the fierce strike so close at hand, he neither dodged defensively nor met it head-on. Instead, he bent naturally, rolling aside with practiced ease, as though he had rehearsed the movement a thousand times. Breaking free of the blade’s path, he—

—drew his sword.

Its name was Darkblood; where it was drawn, blood would follow.

The sudden shift took the assassin by surprise. He had chosen the perfect time and place to ensure a fatal strike—people always regard their own homes as the safest sanctuary, and in most cases, the moment of returning home is when their vigilance is lowest. Acting at that instant, the odds of success were maximized. What’s more, the moment the door opened, hemmed in on both sides by solid walls, Amy Ulysses had almost no room to maneuver and was forced to receive the meticulously prepared strike.

And yet—

At the most perilous moment, he made the perfect choice. Whether by Lady Luck’s favor or by some innate, unimaginable instinct for battle, the boy found the greatest flaw in the assassin’s web and rolled straight past the lethal arc, revealing the venomous fangs of a serpent.

—This is bad!

For the first time, emotion flickered in the black eyes behind the killer’s mask. But the moment passed in a heartbeat. Knowing his attack had overcommitted and could not be pulled back, the assassin did not hesitate; he abandoned all thought of retreating and, instead, threw his weight sideways. His abdominal muscles contracted, curling his already slight frame into something like a monkey, compact as a newborn child. Thus, the boy’s killing thrust, limited by the sword’s short reach, managed only to graze his skin.

Blood spattered as the killer crashed to the ground.

It was inevitable—under such circumstances, this was the best option. Compared to evisceration, surrendering the initiative was a small price to pay. More important now was the boy’s pursuit.

Indeed—

Amy’s pursuit.

Amy Ulysses had never received formal combat training, nor had he often dealt with assassins. He knew little of their methods, yet some people are born with gifts and instincts that exceed mere effort. He was a natural in the arts of violence and battle. The assassin’s bizarre techniques might have unsettled an ordinary person, but Amy was unmoved. Missing the first strike, he gave his enemy no moment to recover; his second sword fell without pause.

In an instant, the situation reversed.

The predator who had woven his web became the prey, while the one ensnared became the hunter. There was no ground for negotiation between these two mistrustful souls—only a fight to the death would determine victor and survivor.

The killer understood this. Beneath the mask that was neither weeping nor smiling, his face was coldly drawn. He did not panic as Amy’s blade descended, but calmly raised his right arm to intercept the blow, without so much as a grunt of pain. His left hand twirled, producing a second curved blade from who knew where, and stabbed upward at the boy looming above.

Amy had no wish to trade his life with an assassin’s. Even knowing the move was meant to force him back, he had to retreat a step, surrendering the hard-won advantage. Yet this didn’t mean he would let his foe escape. As soon as he slipped aside from the blade, he lunged again, sword Darkblood cleaving down with the force of a comet.

But the killer, having bought a moment’s respite, had no intention of pointless entanglement now that he’d lost the initiative. Seizing the chance bought by his dual-blade feint, he threw his whole body into motion—waist, abdomen, shoulders, elbows, feet—moving like an eel through water, narrowly evading Darkblood’s arc and rolling into the nearby weeds, vanishing without a sound.

The grass was not high, only to the knee, yet Amy stopped at its edge.

—Never follow into the woods.

Even if it was only a patch of weeds, the old adage passed down from the ancients flashed through the boy’s mind. But the hesitation lasted only a moment before the killing intent surging in his heart could not be suppressed—leaving a tiger to return to the mountain was not the act of a wise man.

With a cold laugh, he plunged into the grass.

Perhaps it was the effect of the Nameless Fog, but the weeds in the courtyard, neglected for months, had grown to waist height. For the assassin, masked in a rictus of laughter and tears, such cover was the perfect terrain to maximize his advantage.

So Amy was doubly cautious, his vigilance at its peak, missing nothing in the slightest stir of grass or wind.

—Something moved!

Thanks to his heightened attention, he immediately detected a disturbance in the grass. Without bothering to crouch or hide—confident he could prevail in a frontal clash—the boy swept aside the weeds with his sword and rushed toward the source of the sound.

But what met his eyes was merely the hilt of a curved blade buried deep in the earth.

He’d been tricked!

Amy’s reaction was swift; the moment he sensed something wrong, he spun around. But his foe was faster. Seeing that his thrown blade had drawn Amy’s focus, the assassin spared not a moment, retreating immediately, unwilling to prolong the encounter. In the span of a few heartbeats, they had opened a distance of nearly ten meters.

By then, pursuit was futile.

The killer burst from the yard, vanishing into the foggy night like a fish in water.

“This is trouble,” Amy muttered.

He stared into the murky night, falling into a long silence.

There is only one thing more unsettling than being the target of an assassination—and that is when the attempt is not finished. Barely ten minutes had passed between the first failed attempt and the second beginning. From that alone, it was clear that the killer in the grotesque mask was not one to give up halfway. In other words… as soon as his wounds healed, another attempt would likely follow.

Given the skills the assassin had shown tonight, it would be another life-and-death struggle.

“At least, I managed to wound him.” At this point, the boy could only comfort his battered spirit with that thought. “A blow from Darkblood… is not so easy to endure.”

Unfortunately, the trouble brought by this incident was far from over.

His mind barely recovered, Amy turned to close the door, his gaze pausing on the wrecked courtyard. His expression grew more pained than tears.

“This is a disaster… and the traces are hard to cover up… Looks like I’ll need to prepare a perfectly plausible explanation tonight, or there’ll be no way out…”

So thinking, Amy Ulysses sank into deep distress.