Veteran Killer

When there was a gap in speed, fights tended to be one-sided.

But experienced fighters, ones with sharp instincts, could predict where an attack would land even when they were slower, blocking or countering accordingly.

That all came down to prediction.

Masters of person-to-person combat deliberately exposed openings in spots they were prepared to defend, baiting their opponent into attacking where they wanted.

The more trained the attacker, the more they'd go for the opening even knowing it could be bait.

Fundel was operating at that level.

The earlier slash had been blocked precisely because she'd gone for the nape the moment it presented itself, and he'd seen right through it.

One-on-one, she was confident she could win if she kept at it, but the longer this dragged on, the more it favored him.

"What's the matter? Don't think I'll let you run now."

Fundel closed the distance on the relaxed Finn.

Just as Finn was certain she could win, Fundel hadn't the slightest thought of losing.

The difference between them was this: Finn had spent a long time searching for a way to beat veterans like him.

She evaded Fundel's katar strikes with minimal movement.

The blades were almost certainly poisoned. Even a graze would be dangerous.

As long as she focused on evasion, she'd be fine.

She studied his movements while steadying her breathing.

This technique still didn't have a great success rate.

This would be her first time using it against a near-equal opponent in live combat.

She dodged a strike and planted a kick in his gut.

She put her hips into it and loaded her weight, but the size difference meant it barely pushed him back.

No matter how skilled she was, her body was still a girl's.

In raw physicality, she couldn't beat a trained adult man.

The distance opened up again.

Behind her, the ones incapacitated by the explosion were starting to regroup.

A look of composure settled over Fundel's face.

If he stalled, she'd lose.

(Here goes.)

Still relaxed, she stepped forward with her right foot.

At the same time, she activated the wind magic stone embedded in the sole of her right shoe.

Her body launched forward.

One misstep and she'd lose her balance and slam face-first into the ground.

In exchange for that risk, she gained explosive acceleration.

It exceeded human reaction speed.

On top of that, by moving from a completely relaxed state, she'd bypassed his ability to predict her next action.

From his perspective, she would have literally vanished.

The instant she moved, Fundel swung his katars, but she'd already kicked off the ceiling and was above him.

She bent her left knee and drove it straight into Fundel's face.

Something crunched.

With a choked sob, Fundel's body crumpled.

The fallen Fundel's nose was crushed flat, faint wheezing breaths escaping him.

He was alive.

Most of the force from the acceleration had dissipated when she kicked off the ceiling, but a direct hit at full power would have hurt her just as badly, so this was fine.

The muscle in her accelerating right leg throbbed with pain.

All she'd done was charge in a straight line and kick off a ceiling, and it had done this to her.

More self-destruct move than trump card.

With Fundel down, only one of the others remained uninjured. She dispatched the rest quickly.

They were nothing. Once Fundel fell, there wasn't a threat left.

She sat in a chair, dropped ice into a glass tumbler, and poured orange juice from a bottle on the shelf.

She downed it in one go.

Too sweet.

Since it wasn't to her taste, she let the glass slip.

It shattered on the floor, fragments scattering in every direction.

"Now then."

She crossed her legs and looked down at the man she'd bound and sat on the floor.

He was trembling at the sight of the half-dead Fundel.

"I'm not a patient person. When I ask you something, answer immediately. Clear?"

"Y-yeah, got it."

The defeat of an executive like Fundel had clearly shaken him.

The man nodded over and over.

Right now, the power of life and death rested entirely in her hands. What would happen if she lost her temper wasn't worth thinking about.

There were several things she wanted to ask, but first, the matter of the siblings who'd come with Azu.

This man knew more than the ones she'd roughed up upstairs, and he talked.

Azu was a target as well.

The cause was discovering the poppy seeds in the abandoned church's basement.

The client had paid Partilgar handsomely, and that was why Fundel had personally assembled his operations team and brought them to Kassad.

Assassins moved for money.

No matter how vile the employer, as long as the gold was good, it didn't matter.

Maybe that was why being called an assassin always left a bad taste in her mouth.

She didn't mind saying it about herself. Funny how that worked.

The one who raised her had been selective about jobs.

He'd never taken work he didn't like, and because of that, when illness caught up with him, he couldn't even afford his own medicine.

If not for the deal with Yohane, he might have suffered right up until the end.

That was part of why she felt grateful.

She was selective too.

Between what she earned from Yohane and not wanting to touch anything that turned her stomach, she could afford to be.

She uncrossed and recrossed her legs.

"So. Who's the client?"

"Come on, give me a break. You're in the business, you know how it is."

She kicked a shard of glass across the floor at him with her left foot.

Glass fragments rained down on his face.

A small shriek.

"You really think your organization's going to take you back after this mess? Start talking and make yourself useful."

"… A merchant and an official from Luido. Please, that's all I can say."

"Tch."

She stood from the chair and kicked the now-useless man in the head.

He went limp. Out cold.

She tied up every last one of them so they couldn't move.

Some of them could slip ordinary knots, so she bound them in a way that made escape impossible.

She'd pass this along to Yohane, who'd relay it to Jacob, and they'd handle it.

Unlike a pile of corpses, live captives could be dealt with cleanly as long as they got their stories straight.

This should keep the pursuers at bay for a while.

But unless they cut off the source, more would come.

Best to head back and talk it over.