Cashel (25 y/o, Male, Human, Magic Swordsman)
Level: 34
Title: Murderer
HP: 315/315
MP: 104/104
Strength: 156 (+20)
Endurance: 131
Agility: 126
Magic: 102
Luck: 89
Skills: Sword Mastery (Rank B), Herculean Strength (Rank E), White Magic (Rank E), Covert Action (Rank E), Concealment (Rank F), Conversation (Rank E)
Passive Effects: Concealment (Rank F)
✦ ✦ ✦
His stats were even higher than Clotho’s, and he possessed a few skills that would likely raise eyebrows if exposed. But most of all, his title was...well, self-explanatory. That said, it didn’t seem like he was going to back off. He had apparently set his crosshairs on me. Fine, then, let’s go with it.
“How about a competition instead?”
“A competition?”
“Mhm. Why don’t we compete to see who can defeat the Black Spirit Knight first? With me going at it alone, of course.”
“This is hardly an opponent that can be challenged solo, my friend. As I said before, I’ll be going with my own party. Are you sure about those conditions?”
“Sure as I can be.”
If he’s coming for me anyway, I might as well spring a trap of my own. In all likelihood, Cashel is planning to assault me either while I’m in the middle of fighting the Black Spirit Knight, when I’m tired right after the fight, or while I’m on the road. I have no idea if he enjoys killing just for the sake of it or if he wants to steal my credit. Either way, he should make for a worthy opponent. It’s the perfect opportunity to gauge the results of my training and leveling so far. I might even get to try that special move out...
::Honey, your way of thinking is slowly devolving into that of a battle junkie.::
Oh, shush.
“Haha, if you’re that confident, then sure, count me in.”
“Great, let’s get this competition started. Ange-san, please help me complete the paperwork for the quest.”
“Kelvin-san...”
The expression on Ange-san’s face was still filled with worry and she looked to be on the verge of tears, but I was past the point of backing out. It’s time to see how far my power can take me.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So...what’d you think of him?”
Cashel had left the guild and was now in a dark alleyway. Waiting there for him were two men who had been mingling and having casual conversations with adventurers in the guild’s bar earlier.
“Boss, that newcomer, he might be more of a bigshot than we thought,” answered the disheveled man with a slim build, who painted the very picture of a scraggly bandit. “My Analyze Eye is Rank C. At the very least, he possesses Concealment at a rank even higher than that.”
“And here I was thinking him a bit too sure of his abilities. So he’s got something that he’s hiding, then.”
“Hey, Cashel, you gonna play and kill him too, right? Lemme fight him first!” blustered the huge man with bursting muscles. Cashel merely laughed and shrugged, by now quite used to dealing with this roughneck, who had less self-restraint than a five-year-old.
“Raji, calm down a bit, will you? That fool actually challenged me to a competition. We have to respect that fiery will of his, don’t we? As his ‘seniors.’”
“Ahh, so this is a learning opportunity for him. Raji, don’t break him with brute force like you did the one before. Teaching is all about being gentle.”
“I dunno ‘bout these things! I’ll do what I always do!”
“What a meathead, as usual...”
It was about half a year ago that Cashel had started working with these two. At the time, he’d happened to come across a village that was being sacked. Although he was an adventurer, he was also a thrill killer who was always on the hunt for fresh prey. Sometimes he would use his well-chiseled features as a lure, while at other times he would go straight in from the front with his swordsmanship. And thanks to the Covert Action and Concealment skills that he owned, he had managed to stay well-hidden.
The name of the smaller man was Gimul. He had once been part of a well-known gang, but the bandits had been thoroughly destroyed in a fight with a high-ranked adventurer. With the help of Analyze Eye, he’d managed to obtain key information ahead of time and had slipped away before anyone else. His craftiness and ability to take quick action were what had saved him. For days he had lived under nothing but the sky, and all he had managed to take with him was a single knife. He knew only one way of making a living.
The hulk of a man was Raji. He’d been a mercenary who waded through battlefields in pursuit of blood. However, he enjoyed killing not only enemy soldiers but civilians as well, and in such cruel and brutal ways that both countries had ultimately placed a bounty on his head. Killing the bounty hunters who took it upon themselves to come for him had been fun for a while, but eventually even that lost its appeal. At that point, he’d decided to set off for some place far away, hopping from country to country as he went.
It was in that fateful village where these three had met each other. Neither the country nor guild had time or resources to send help, so the village had been completely decimated. The only thing left behind was a scene of carnage and a mountain of corpses that Cashel had cast Concealment on. His skill was Rank F, which meant that anyone who possessed Analyze Eye would see through it with a single look. However, it had earned them enough time to escape scot-free.
What the three men had between them was by no means friendship, but rather a temporary alliance built on similar interests. With Parth as their base, they had managed to have their fun without getting caught so far. But rumors that Cashel was using his status as an adventurer to prey on newcomers had recently begun to circulate after some of their “fun” had gotten out of hand. The suspicions now falling on their partner didn’t bother Gimul or Raji much, however, as they knew they could easily abandon him at any time. Since the three of them only met under the veil of night, no one else even knew about their relationship. If the opportunity ever arose, the two thugs were more than ready to sell out Cashel and collect the bounty themselves.
This was the current dynamic between the men when Kelvin arrived in Parth. Cashel had been away on an expedition, while Gimul and Raji whiled away their days in the guild bar. It was only a matter of time before Kelvin, with his ability to complete quests quickly one after another, had caught their eye.
“But still, to compete with us for the Black Spirit Knight subjugation quest on his own? What the hell is he thinking?”
“Who knows? He’s probably just overconfident that he could pull it off.”
“That’s good! That’s good! Gonna be fun to kill!”
“Well...if it ever comes to it, we’ll leave things to you, Raji.”
Gimul and Raji had no way of knowing it, but Cashel was actually planning on using the competition to get rid of them both. Naturally, he had caught on to their plan to shift the blame for the string of dead newcomers onto himself. This particular subjugation quest had been ranked ‘D’ simply because the Black Spirit Knight in question had appeared within the depths of the Ancient Castle of Evil Spirits, a dungeon of the same level. Nobody who attempted the quest had ever returned, though
On the way back from his previous expedition, Cashel had made a small detour to do a little scouting. It had taken but a single glimpse for him to realize that this Black Spirit Knight was far different from the others. I can use him to get rid of these two fools, thought Cashel. And so he had concocted a foolproof plan for their demise, with a typical thrill kill session as bait.
What would eventually lead to the downfall of all three men was the fact that not a single one of them had thought to be wary of the newcomer that they were targeting. Gimul’s Analyze Eye proving ineffective should have already warned them that maybe, just maybe, this individual was not exactly a “newcomer” in the true sense of the word.