Chapter 10 | The Assassin Receives a Test
Feeling a little tense, I met with Father.
“Lugh, how’s it going with Tarte?” he asked.
“After two years of training, she’s now around the same skill level as the best of the branch family. She’s not especially talented, but she is a very hard worker,” I explained.
“I see. Her training seems to be progressing smoothly, but that’s not what I’m asking.”
“… At this point, I’ve found nothing. I’ve been monitoring her consistently over the last two years, and discreetly searching through everyday conversation, but she really seems to be nothing more than a simple villager’s daughter,” I said.
“Perhaps I was overthinking things. I feared she may have been a spy sent to our family to steal our knowledge and technology,” my father admitted.
No matter how you looked at it, my first encounter with Tarte was definitely too good to be true.
I searched the entire domain for a mage and hadn’t turned up anything, but then a girl suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Father had been right to suspect a setup.
The possibility that Tarte was a spy planted by someone who knew I was searching for a mage had also occurred to me.
More than anything, I thought back to what Tarte had said—that a goddess had appeared in her dream and told her that she would meet me.
Over the past two years, there’d never once been any reason to doubt Tarte’s intentions. If she really was a spy, her ability had to surpass both my father’s and my own.
“Father, is that the only matter you wished to discuss?” I asked.
“No, that’s not the main reason I called you. Your next training session will be a special one, because it’s also a test. If you pass and overcome one final extended period of training, I’ll acknowledge you as a full-fledged member of the clan, and you can start taking on real jobs,” he said.
“I’ll gladly take the test. What do I have to do?”
“You will fight me. Winning or losing is irrelevant. Just show me what you’re capable of.”
What an appealing idea it was. At last I was going to put all my training to work and come at my father with everything I had.
The test began.
The stage for our duel was the forest, a suitable environment for assassins.
This was not a head-to-head fight of physical strength. The format of the duel was to use stealth to search for your opponent and catch them using a surprise attack. That meant that whoever found their opponent first would have an overwhelming advantage.
While doing my best to stay hidden, I concentrated as hard as I could on not leaving even the slightest trace of where I’d been.
I leaped to the side just as an arrow pierced the ground where I’d been standing a moment before. It was a short projectile, the kind shot from bowguns.
Shiny black poison was spread onto the surface of the arrow. The concoction was a powerful mixture that was strong enough to knock a normal person out for as long as three days if it so much as grazed the skin. Evidently, my father was quite serious about this test.
“… I was really confident in my stealth, too.”
I wasn’t even able to hazard a guess at how Father had detected where I’d been hiding.
However, judging by the trajectory and angle of the arrow, I was able to pinpoint the location he’d shot it from. It was a spot roughly fifty meters southeast from my current position.
Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I enveloped myself in mana and ran. My mana capacity and instantaneous mana discharge were off the charts. Which meant my speed and strength were equally overpowered.
Normally, the mountain vegetation grew thick and made running difficult. I overcame this with a signature technique of mine. I kicked off a tree trunk and used a branch to propel myself into the air. The branch I landed on should’ve broken under my weight, but I covered it in mana the moment I landed, which was a highly advanced technique.
There he is. As soon as I spotted my father, I drew forth two knives from my pockets and threw them.
Knives were my primary weapon. I always walked around with multiple titanium-alloy knives on hand. Over the years, I’d come to shape them specifically for throwing.
The knives soared the through the air at nearly the speed of sound because I’d hurled them with mana-enhanced strength.
Father dodged one knife and knocked away the other, but I was still able to close the distance between us. I slashed at him with my reserve knife, but he blocked me by picking up and using one of the knives I’d thrown. He immediately chopped at my throat with his hand.
I narrowly dodged, then kicked. Father read me perfectly, catching my leg between his elbow and his knee and breaking it all in one motion.
Stifling a scream, I squirmed and threw him off me.
If I’d been unable to shake him off, that would have been the end of the test for sure. Scanning around, I was dismayed to discover that my father had vanished again.
I focused mana on healing my broken leg. With the help of Rapid Recovery, it would take only a minute to reconnect the bone.
“… He’s seriously a monster,” I muttered.
My strength and speed were both superior, plus I had the knowledge of two worlds at my disposal. Even with such advantages, my father held total control over the match, and I knew the reason. It was because he could read my movements.
Thanks to his total understanding of the human body, he could predict what I’d do next by following the motions of my muscles, heartbeat, pupils, perspiration, breathing, line of sight, smell, and the flow of my mana. Such was the power granted by the Tuatha Dé clan’s medical knowledge, purported to be the best in the world.
He was every bit as skilled as you’d expect the head of House Tuatha Dé to be.
Having trained under him for years, however, I could use all the same tricks. Given that I was able to combine what I’d learned in this world with what I’d learned in my previous life, my knowledge and options surpassed his.
Even so, my father was able to trick me with a fake-out that I should’ve seen coming. Conversely, he’d seen completely through my attempt to trick him. Though I was loath to admit it, we were likely separated by a wide gap in experience.
This was enough to shake the confidence I had in myself for having been the greatest assassin in my previous world. That just served to confirm how much I still had to learn and how much stronger I could become. I was definitely lucky to be the child of Cian Tuatha Dé.
“Get it together,” I said to myself. “I’m going to win.”
I closed my eyes and focused my senses. Pursuing my father would be playing right into his hands. Instead I was going to wait for him to make the first move.
We were both ready to kill.
As I’d hoped, he acted first this time.
A knife came flying at me. It was one of the titanium-alloy knives I’d thrown earlier.
I knocked it aside, but a second one instantly hurtled toward me from my blind spot. With incredible timing, I angled my body into a near-impossible position, just barely dodging.
I had no idea how Father was able to throw two knives from completely different directions at nearly the exact same time, but I did know that they were only meant to be a distraction.
The true strike came from above. While the previous two attacks had been detectable, Father had erased his presence completely before launching this one.
Father swung underhanded with my knife. I had no way to avoid it because of the awkward position I was in from dodging the first two blades he’d tossed. Thus, I didn’t avoid it. I twisted to make sure my father wouldn’t hit any vital points, and the knife pierced my shoulder. Ignoring the pain, I drew my hidden third knife and put it to Father’s throat.
“I win.” My declaration couldn’t have come any sooner. I was suppressing a violent nausea and dizziness. The knives Father had used were coated in poison. If I hadn’t built up a tolerance, I would’ve been knocked unconscious before I had a chance to strike back.
“Seems you’re right. I can’t believe I lost to a twelve-year-old…and you went easy on me, too. So much for my ambitions of being the most powerful Tuatha Dé in history.”
Father removed the knife, poured an antidote down my throat, and tended to my wound.
“I wasn’t going easy on you,” I said.
“Is not using magic and strengthening yourself with only the minimum amount of mana required to win not going easy on me?”
“That would have rendered the match meaningless. You said it before. This is a test, but it was also training. If I’d used my full strength and simply overwhelmed you, I wouldn’t have learned anything. That wouldn’t have been training.”
Before the match, Father had said I should think of this as training and that it made no difference whether I won or lost. It was clear he was telling me that it wasn’t winning that was important, but learning and improving my skills through practice.
A jovial smile broke through on my father’s face.
“That’s right, you got my message exactly. Seeing that winning wasn’t the most important thing was part of the test… It’s important that an assassin never loses sight of their goal. If you’d only been thinking of defeating me, I would have judged you unqualified in that aspect… With this, I have nothing left to teach you.”
“No, that isn’t true,” I refuted. “I’m still unable to match your skill. I only won because of a lucky gamble.”
“I’ve taught you everything I know, and you have shown me that you can put it into practice. Now all you need is experience. From here on, you need to move forward on your own two feet. I suggest you take initiative in searching for ways to become stronger… As promised, I will soon give you one last trial. It’s one that will grow your capabilities for use outside of battle.”
Whatever this final trial was to be, it likely wouldn’t involve medical science or assassination. Perhaps there was some other essential component of being a member of the Tuatha Dé family business.
After training, I took a bath, changed, and went outside with Tarte.
I was off to greet the citizens of the domain. As its future lord, I’d begun making an effort to do this with some regularity as of late.
“I made fertilizer and spread it over the fields just as you said, my lord. We had a bountiful harvest this year,” a commoner named Ruck said.
“I’m glad to hear it. I was wondering if you’d be willing to trade next time if I have any extra game, Ruck? Your green onions are delicious.”
“That would be great! But first, please accept these as a thank-you gift for the fertilizer. I would be honored for you to have some, my lord.” Ruck passed me a bundle of fresh green onions, which I accepted with a word of thanks.
More commoners came running in our direction.
“Mah cow…,” one man said through heavy panting. “Mah cow broke its back leg. Couldja please heal it for me?”
“Yes, lead the way,” I said.
We rushed over to the man’s cow. The treatment was simple, and I performed it free of charge.
In this world, the nobility held a lot of power. This was largely because they were the only ones who possessed mana, and they used that strength to protect the domain from monsters and other threats. Such great strength and protection often led to a near-religious devotion from citizens, which was why people obeyed the laws set by the ruling class and why they paid taxes.
Winning hearts took more than power alone, however. Earning my way into their good graces was important if I was to ever rule.
The sun had set by the time Tarte and I returned to the mansion.
“Nice work today, my lord. You’re always so popular,” Tarte said.
“I’m grateful for that, but I received way too many gifts. I’m not sure I can eat them all before they go bad…”
My basket was full of items given to me by local citizens.
Many had come to depend on me because of my elemental magic and what little I knew of agriculture from my past life. The former of which I’d been using to help out with some manual labor.
Just recently, I’d used my water affinity to refill a reservoir that had dried up due to drought, and afterward I’d ended up being treated like a god. There were nobles who taught their people that magic was sacred and never to be used for things like agriculture, but I didn’t see any reason not to use such a convenient power to help out.
“This bag is full, too.”
I opened my own bag, which was packed full of Fahr Stones.
Mana capacity increased the more you used mana. Knowing this, I’d always made an effort to discharge mana constantly at the rate that my Rapid Recovery allowed me to recover it. That seemed like a waste, however, which is why I started carrying Fahr Stones around.
Half a year ago, I’d conducted a thorough study on the Fahr Stone that Dia had left me as a parting gift and successfully created a spell to produce stones of my own. Since then, I’d been making as many as I could and storing mana in them.
Depositing the filled bag into storage, I started to load a new sack with yet unused Fahr Stones. I was confident that this large supply of weapons I was stockpiling would come in handy in the future.
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