It’s about time, Sérignan.
The woman cursed under her breath. “Dammit! You still had guards?!”
“Enough,” I said.
Pulling a Toxic Swarm’s stinger—a lovely little thing full of paralyzing poison—from under my pillow, I stabbed it into the assassin. The woman collapsed to the ground, convulsing as the paralyzing toxin circulated through her body.
“Now then, we have our assassin. What do we do with her now...?” I murmured, eyeing the quivering body.
♱
We discovered the assassins’ guild headquarters thanks to Sérignan’s merciless interrogation techniques. The assassin remained tight-lipped at first, but after we employed torture methods a human never could, she eventually broke down in tears and exposed the location of their HQ.
She was of no use to us after that, so we used a Toxic Swarm’s stinger to reduce her to a puddle of molten flesh.
The assassins’ guild headquarters was hidden in a restaurant. It was a pretty aged building that looked like it could crumble any day now. It hardly saw any foot traffic, and it didn’t look like a place that turned a profit. Using such a dilapidated business as their front actually felt like a poor move to me. It looked so bad that it begged the onlooker to question how it functioned as a business.
“What do we do now, Your Majesty?” Sérignan asked. “Do we storm their base?”
“Not yet.” I shook my head. “We need definitive proof of who sent them after us first. Then we crush them. Once we have the proof we need, we can take our time to find the right way to cook them alive.”
An assassins’ guild getting cooked in a restaurant, eh?
“Then for now we focus on gaining that definitive proof?”
“At all costs.”
Crushing the assassins’ guild meant we’d be safe in the immediate future. But if we left the person who’d hired them at large, it wouldn’t be long before they got adventurers desperate for money or Nyrnal operatives to attack us. We needed that proof to snip those attacks in the bud.
“Well, for the time being, let’s have the Masquerade Swarms keep watch. The enemy’s bound to make a move now. They failed to get me twice, after all.”
With that said, I had the Masquerade Swarms handle surveillance on the enemy. We rented a room in a nearby inn and continued waiting for the enemy. Ventura did ask us why we changed inns, and I told him we had our reasons. I didn’t tell him something serious happened, though.
“Your Majesty, a man has just entered the restaurant. It’s our target.”
“Good work, Maska. All right, the target moved, so let’s get going. It’s time to launch our raid.”
I thought to myself that we should leave his judgment to this country’s people.
♱
We closed in on the assassins’ guild base. Maska joined us along the way, offering us extra protection. Three thugs stood in front of the building. As we approached, they turned to look at us.
“Hey, ladies. Sorry, but the place is rented out for today. Hit up somewhere else.”
Oh?
I was under the impression that the guild knew what we looked like, so I thought they might try to attack us on sight. Apparently not, though.
“No, I think we’ll stay here,” I said. “Sérignan, go get us a seat.”
“Very well, Your Majesty,” Sérignan said, drawing her blade.
The next moment, the three thugs sank to the ground in a pool of blood. Sérignan had slashed at them as she drew the blade, an impressively swift technique that had cut them dead before they even realized what happened.
Sérignan turned to me, continuing our little charade. “Now then, please take your seat.”
“Yes, I think we’ll have dinner here today,” I replied coolly.
With nasty smiles on our lips, Sérignan and I kicked down the doors to the restaurant. That was our way of giving a hearty hello.
“Wh-What?!”
“It’s that woman and her guard! Charge ’em!”
The men huddled inside the restaurant panicked upon seeing us. All of them were armed.
Talk about a shady establishment.
“Sérignan, Maska, handle them,” I ordered.
“By your will, Your Majesty!”
Sérignan blitzed through the restaurant faster than the eye could see, cutting down the men filing into the place. Blood splattered, painting the walls with a layer of red ink. The Masquerade Swarm used a shortbow to shoot them down. It used the arms of its Mimesis form to accurately wield the bow, and each of its arrows pierced through the chest of an assassin.
“Maska, undo your Mimesis.”
It gave a solemn nod. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Maska’s head split open into a pair of large fangs. Insectile legs burst out of its back, and its human legs turned into a pair of stingers. The assassins’ guild members watched its transformation, their faces turning a hilarious shade of blue.
“M-Monsters! Monsters are coming!”
“Goddammit, no one said they used monsters!”
Once they lost their composure, the battle was all but over. To think I was ever frightened of these people... That these people were the ones that had hurt Lysa. It would have been funny if it weren’t so infuriating.
“H-Help!” one of them called out.
“Don’t falter! They’re just using monsters; this doesn’t mean—”
The other man never finished his sentence. Sérignan lopped off his head, and the Masquerade Swarm sank its fangs into his stomach.
It was a massacre. A one-sided slaughter. The assassins’ guild members were helpless to stop Sérignan and the Masquerade Swarm. Maybe it wasn’t that surprising. After all, they’d made assassination their livelihood, so they might not be skilled at close-quarters combat. The only thing these filthy assassins were good for was stabbing people in the back.
“We’ve taken care of them, Your Majesty,” Sérignan reported.
“Good work, Sérignan. But this is a bit of a pickle. We don’t have anyone to take our orders, do we? I might have to file a complaint to the management about the service here.”