Episode 304
Zeke and his companions set up camp around the canyon.
There were monsters roaming nearby, but they were quickly dispatched by Clone’s swift strikes.
Once the camp was established, Zeke sent ghost soldiers to scout the interior of the canyon.
“The path is narrow, with plenty of spots perfect for an ambush.”
While it seemed unlikely that the frenzied monsters would lay in wait, the Empire might send hunting dogs to track them down.
The terrain presented numerous disadvantages.
The real trouble began at night.
Most monsters were nocturnal, and as darkness fell, they began to crawl up from the canyon toward the camp.
Grrrr—
Zeke, on watch, spotted the nocturnal creatures and immediately summoned his familiars.
In the darkness, warriors with crocodile faces and dragon warriors appeared silently.
Zeke commanded Kaiman, “Eliminate any enemies approaching your vicinity.”
[As you command, my master.]
Kaiman and the dragon warriors vanished into the shadows, dealing with the monsters with stealth and precision.
While Kaiman kept watch, Zeke used ghost soldiers to search for any mages controlling the monsters.
Despite a thorough search, he found no trace of such mages.
“Could they be moving without orders from a mage?”
This suggested that the Empire had developed a stimulant effective not only on humans and other races but on monsters as well.
Zeke realized the Empire was moving faster than in his previous life.
“But rushing things always leads to problems. The fact that there’s a breach in the intelligence agency, which should be the most disciplined, indicates issues within the Imperial forces.”
Zeke planned to exploit this weakness.
It seemed inevitable that the Empire would start a continental war. Therefore, it was crucial to weaken their power and steer the situation to his advantage.
Returning to the camp, Zeke cast a stamina recovery buff on Liam, who was on guard, and entered the tent.
“Should I ride Bucephalus to the old castle and assess the situation?”
As Zeke pondered his next move, the phoenix dozing on his shoulder suddenly perked up and began pecking at his head.
“What’s gotten into you? You just ate. Hungry again already?”
Sensing something amiss from the phoenix’s agitation, Zeke stood up and activated Hershion.
Almost simultaneously, a rift opened beside him, and something lunged out.
Swish!
A sharp blade narrowly missed Zeke’s nose.
Zeke quickly drew Bahamut and swung it at the mysterious assassin.
Boom!
The assassin hit by Bahamut was slammed into the ground, and Zeke readied himself, eyeing his opponent.
To his surprise, the assassin rose again.
“What the…?”
The assassin’s tattered nightwear revealed a body made entirely of solid minerals, with hands as sharp as blades, making the body itself a weapon.
Suddenly, the tent floor turned to sand, and Zeke felt something pulling his feet down.
“These aren’t ordinary assassins.”
The mineral-bodied assassin swung its sharp arm at Zeke.
In response, Zeke activated his Resonant Wave.
Vroooom!
The wave spread in all directions, repelling the charging assassin and allowing Zeke to use his illusionary step to get behind the attacker.
He channeled the Resonant Wave into his fist and struck the mineral-bodied assassin.
Crack!
The impact sent the assassin rolling across the ground, shaken by the internal shock.
“Ugh!”
Despite its mineral body, the assassin seemed to feel pain, groaning as it tried to rise and flee the tent.
But as it attempted to escape, something struck it, sending it tumbling back inside.
Clone entered the tent, brandishing a mace and fuming.
“Who do these bastards think they are, barging in here!”
Zeke extended a hand to Clone, saying, “Well done, Clone. Stand back.”
He then unleashed a field of gravitational force on the fallen assassin.
Rumble!
The immense pressure crushed everything in the tent, including the mineral-bodied assassin, forcing it to its knees.
Zeke approached slowly, lifting the tattered clothes and prodding the hard skin with his toe.
“It doesn’t seem like magic. More like a unique bloodline ability. Crystallizing the body, perhaps.”
Muttering to himself, he drew Anexi’s dagger and stabbed at the assassin’s back.
Thud!
The indestructible dagger bounced off the assassin’s body.
Zeke twirled the dagger, remarking, “This level of bloodline ability… must be one of the Nostra Family’s Six.”
The assassin struggled to escape the pressure.
The Six, to which Sion belonged, was an elite assassination unit of bloodline ability users.
Despite deploying three of them to assassinate Zeke Draker, they failed again.
The assassin realized Zeke Draker’s abilities far exceeded those of a typical Red Knight.
“I must report this to the higher-ups!”
Seeing the assassin’s futile struggle, Zeke said, “Trying to escape? Save your strength.”
With that, he began retracting the chains buried in the ground.
Rustle—
The ground, like a sand trap, revealed another member of the Six, bound by soul-sealing magic.
This one wore a skull mask and had the ability to turn the ground to sand.
Zeke had encountered this ability before when transporting Dario.
Recognizing the ability as soon as the ground shifted, Zeke had used soul-sealing magic to prevent the assassin from escaping as sand, successfully capturing him.
At Zeke’s signal, Clone and the others entered the tent.
Clone and Liam glared menacingly at the assassins.
Boris said to Zeke, “I’ll find out who sent them.”
But Zeke shook his head. “These bloodline ability users won’t break under ordinary interrogation.”
Deciding to handle the interrogation himself, Zeke gave orders and sent the others out.
He approached the crystallization ability user.
“Why is the Nostra Family in the Ghetto region?”
Zeke struck the mineral-covered shoulder with Bahamut.
The crystallized skin was so tough that the blade barely penetrated.
So Zeke tried a different approach.
Fwoosh!
Pure flames, conjured from elemental power, ignited on the sword and clung to the assassin’s body.
The white flames began to melt the crystallized skin.
The assassin writhed in agony.
“Feeling more talkative now?”
Despite the pain, the assassin remained silent.
When Zeke withdrew the flames, the melted crystals fell to the ground like beads.
“Stubborn, aren’t you?”
Protected by the hard crystals, the assassin seemed unlikely to speak easily.
Zeke decided to neutralize the bloodline ability first.
He opened his blood eye toward the assassin.
“Look here.”
The power of the blood eye seeped into the assassin.
Rustle—
Sensing something amiss, the assassin clutched her head, trying to resist the blood eye’s power.
But resistance was futile.
Under the blood eye’s command, the assassin deactivated her crystallization ability.
Rustle—
The hard crystals vanished, revealing normal human skin.
The assassin was a silver-haired woman.
Zeke asked her, “Why are you in the Ghetto region?”
”…To assassinate Zeke Draker.”
“Who ordered my assassination?”
The assassin trembled at Zeke’s question.
“Is it a binding spell?”
Recalling the many binding spells on Sion, Zeke changed his question.
“How did you bypass the perimeter and get in here?”
”…A spatial ability user opened a portal for us.”
Zeke remembered the spatial ability user who had previously escaped his grasp.
“So, that one is also part of the Six.”
He asked her, “Where is the spatial ability user now?”
The assassin shook her head. “We don’t know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If we succeeded in the assassination, we were to signal, and he would come to extract us via spatial movement. But since we failed, he likely escaped alone.”
Zeke turned to the skull-masked assassin beside her.
“So, you were abandoned.”
Zeke kicked off the skull mask, revealing an ordinary-looking man’s face.
The man glared at Zeke with a look of frustration.
He hadn’t anticipated failure, making the current situation feel unreal.
During the Dario mission, they believed their failure was due to their own complacency.
Zion, who had been assigned to the mission with them, was difficult to coordinate with due to his unstable powers.
This time, however, they took no chances and deployed two of the strongest and most composed members of Six.
Their mission had a perfect success rate.
The leader of Six, who had the ability to teleport, was adept at assigning the right missions to the right people and utilizing them effectively.
So, they never imagined they would fail so spectacularly.
In truth, the man was secretly panicking. He knew all too well the fate of an assassin captured by the enemy.
From the moment he was caught, he had tried to swallow the poison he had hidden and bite his tongue to end his life, but somehow, he kept recovering instead of dying.
“Biting your tongue won’t help, so just give up and stay put.”
The assassin was startled by Zeke’s words, then resigned himself with a look of despair.
Zeke suspected that, like Zion, these captives were also under some kind of mental conditioning or brainwashing.
‘I should send them to Arina for re-education.’
He didn’t know how she did it, but once Arina got her hands on them, the enemies always turned into devout followers. It seemed best to leave it to her.
Zeke restrained the two from Six thoroughly to prevent any escape and began to think of ways to turn the sudden appearance of the assassins to his advantage.
Once they were secured, Zeke called his team into the tent.
“We need to pretend we’ve been injured in an assassination attempt.”
Felix was taken aback by this.
“You mean to make it look like the assassination succeeded?”
Zeke nodded.
“Exactly. The Empire must have found out I was here. That’s why they hired the Nostra family to send those assassins.”
There was only one person in the Empire who would pull such a stunt.
‘Morgan Buffon. He’s the only one who would come up with a scheme like this.’
Zeke continued.
“Boris, head back to the autonomous district and release the Imperial Intelligence prisoners we captured earlier.”
Boris understood immediately.
“You want us to release false information.”
“Yes, let them return with news that I was attacked and that the mutated Red Plague has spread to the knights, causing chaos.”
“You plan to use the attack to our advantage.”
“If they hear I’m injured, the Empire will surely react.”
“Understood, my lord.”
Zeke planned to set a trap to draw out Morgan Buffon.
‘To lure that snake out, we need to be thoroughly prepared.’
The next day, Zeke disappeared, leaving his team to return to the autonomous district with the captured assassins.
Following Zeke’s instructions, they leaked false information and deliberately weakened their defenses to create an opening.
The intelligence agents, as intended, managed to escape the camp.
And a few days later, the target fell right into the trap Zeke had set.