The Foundation of Assassination is Patience

The training to become an assassin is diverse.

Hand-to-hand combat, knife handling, and she'd even studied pharmacology for poisoning.

Though she'd never done it, she also had knowledge of bedroom arts.

Thanks to special training, she could even cling to ceilings.

She suspected this was why assassins were often compared to spiders.

Among all that training, the most important was… patience.

This included sleep deprivation training.

When assassinating a target with guards or high alertness, you must seize a momentary opening without fail.

Any impatience leads to failure, and your own life becomes endangered.

To achieve this, you must continuously observe the target without sleep.

Long operations can mean staking out a target for days.

This involves great suffering, and some apparently lose their minds to hallucinations.

Fortunately, Finn had strong resistance to such suffering and could endure up to a week at most.

Humans can't maintain constant vigilance.

There's always a moment when exhaustion leads to letting their guard down.

(That makes twenty-five times.)

Finn had been spying on Princess Tianis's daily life using every means at her disposal.

Of course, her purpose was guarding the princess, and she had no impure intentions.

She'd been taught to carry out jobs without letting personal feelings interfere, and that hadn't changed.

Within that observation, she'd been counting the moments she'd strike if she were the assassin.

Twenty-five times in just one day of surveillance.

It was practically begging to be assassinated.

So many openings.

She decided to ignore Anatia's situation.

With that level of security, she could focus here without problems.

The only time assassination difficulty spiked was when Anatia was with the princess, but that was the only issue.

The attendant Kanon was alert but ultimately an amateur; in an emergency, the most she could do was use her body as a shield.

Though she'd reportedly recovered, she still had lingering effects from her injuries, and wasn't with the princess for long periods anyway.

This would be exceptionally easy if she were the one assassinating, but conversely, as someone protecting, it was extremely challenging.

She slightly regretted taking on this job.

Right now, Princess Tianis was taking a shower.

There was a maid assisting her, but there weren't even guards around.

(Bath time and bedtime are the most dangerous moments for assassination, yet she's so carefree.)

She was even happily humming.

What Finn saw there wasn't royalty or nobility, but just an ordinary girl.

Given her low position in the succession, she probably hadn't been taught how to protect herself.

It wouldn't be strange if there were a group secretly protecting the royal family, but considering Finn had been wandering around and staying in the castle without being discovered, they probably didn't exist.

Either that, or the sister who'd supposedly moved to a remote area for recuperation had selfishly taken them all with her.

Princess Tianis worked on documents until just before bed, then got into bed.

The people targeting the princess must already know that Finn had disabled the devices.

They should be making their move soon.

Finn periodically closed one eye to rest her eyes while guarding Princess Tianis.

The first day passed without incident.

The enemy seemed to be quite cowardly.

(They're slow to move. This makes them below third-rate.)

Four days passed with no movement.

During the times the princess was with Anatia, Finn pilfered food from the castle kitchen and cleaned herself in the staff bathrooms.

A proper assassin should have made some move by now…

Her extended wakefulness was dulling her thinking.

She used a special pill to sharpen her consciousness.

On the fifth day, there was finally movement.

The maid in charge of cleaning the princess's room entered, pretended to clean, and checked the contents of the magical tool Finn had disabled.

I see, so they used an inside person.

Low risk that way. But that's why it took time to confirm.

A different approach from Finn's, so it had slipped her mind.

But to not even consider it…

Perhaps from staying at Yohane's place, she'd let her guard down a little.

"Don't move."

"Eek! Who's there!?"

She immediately got behind the maid and grabbed both arms, pinning them to her back and pressing her against the wall.

This way, the other person couldn't see her face.

The magical tool fell from the maid's hands.

"Too bad for you. That's just junk now. You're going to tell me who you are, and what purpose you had for planting that."

"I-I don't know what you're…"

She twisted the arm she was holding upward, pushing it in a direction it wasn't supposed to bend.

A method that easily caused intense pain without leaving marks. If she felt like it, she could break it.

As expected, the maid gave in immediately.

"I'll talk, I'll talk, so please stop!"

"Just so you know, if you lie or hide something, I'll know right away."

Of course, that was a lie. She could somewhat detect lies from facial expressions and behavior, but she didn't have any ability to see through lies.

She gradually loosened the restraint.

Making someone confess while in pain risked them saying whatever to escape it.

Besides, it was easier to detect lies when the subject was calm.

Desperate to be saved, the maid started babbling.

Most of it was self-justification that was unbearable to listen to, but she learned a few things.

The maid had been hired with money by some small organization, given the magical tool, and told to plant it.

Apparently they'd told her this would cause a natural death, so no assassination would be suspected and she wouldn't be held responsible.

When Finn pointed out how ridiculous that was, the maid's face went pale.

No matter how complacent the Kingdom had become, if the last royal died suddenly, they'd at least search her room.

And once they found the magical tool, the first suspect would be this maid who did the cleaning.

Blinded by money, she hadn't realized something so simple.

"What should I do…?"

"I'd like to say 'not my problem,' but… if you quietly resign today and leave the capital, I'll let you go. Don't worry about pursuers. I'm going to clean up the organization that hired you."

The maid nodded repeatedly. Threatening her should keep her silent.

She thought she'd grown soft, but she was just following the instruction to avoid bloodying her hands if possible.

Besides, killing this maid would be pointless.

It was different people she needed to deal with.

Once this was done, she'd have Yohane advise improving the princess's security and hiring proper attendants.

She'd be on edge if this kind of thing kept happening.

But she felt somewhat relieved.

If they were using such shabby methods, they weren't major nobles.

Those types were skilled at self-preservation, always obsessing over maneuvering and position down to the smallest detail.

If she were dealing with them, this wouldn't be such an easy job to wrap up.