Chapter 11 | The Assassin Receives His Final Trial
After I’d passed the test, Father started taking me along on jobs. I began assisting with both our public medical jobs and our top secret assassination missions.
This likely meant that he judged me capable enough to not be a burden during real jobs. My father’s brilliance in the field was incredible to watch, even more so than during training. Although he told me there was nothing left that he could teach me, I was sure I had more to learn from him.
In my previous life, I was never once captivated by the skill of another person, but every time I saw Father at work, I had to fight to contain my shouts of wonder.
What I was aiming for was a perfect marriage of the knowledge I brought from my previous life and the new knowledge I gained in this one.
“You performed amazingly on that job, too.”
“Yeah, it went well… It seems like you have a good understanding of why I’m taking you along on both medical and assassination jobs, Lugh.”
“Yes, it’s to get a sense of work in the actual field. It also provides good chances to study the composition of buildings, the placement of guards, and the strength of our targets, all of which may become useful during future assassinations. It’s not too often you get a chance to enter a noble’s estate.”
The estates of nobles were more than simple living spaces. They also served as fortresses to repel attacks from thieves and other threats.
If we were to one day sneak into a noble’s home as assassins, knowing the layout of their estate beforehand would be an incredible boon. Our role as doctors was convenient for this reason, as it allowed us to be invited into estates for a legitimate reason. Even if the noble we were visiting wasn’t our target yet, they could become one in the future.
“That’s correct. You really were made to be an assassin. To an almost scary degree,” my father said.
“I am your son, after all.”
For a second, I saw a somber expression cross Father’s face, and I was confused. Surely he couldn’t possibly have been troubled over raising his son to be an assassin. There’s no way someone as skilled as him would’ve allowed himself to have that kind of doubt.
We were on a medical job today, but my father had put on such an amazing display during an assassination three days ago that I was still trembling a bit.
Being the experienced assassin that I was, I understood the greatness of that performance. My father had made the whole thing look so easy that a normal person would’ve thought sneaking into a mansion and slitting someone’s throat while they slept was the simplest thing in the world. That’s what made Father so amazing. Jobs looked so effortless when he did them, no matter the difficulty.
“Lugh, I have yet to speak with you about your final trial, correct?”
“Yes. I’ve been curious about it.”
Back on the day of the test, my father had said that there would be one more trial.
“The Tuatha Dé clan receives many assignments like the previous one, where all we have to do is sneak into the target’s home and kill them. Those jobs are simple because it’s easy to avoid leaving behind any evidence. However, there are nobles who are more cautious and make infiltration more difficult by setting up many barriers and employing a strict security system. In these types of situations, we get near the target through other means, such as falsifying our identities to do things like attending a party that our target is sponsoring. Occasionally, there are also times when we can gain entry to a place because the target invites us there willingly.”
I often did the same things in my first life. I’d disguised myself as a chef, a college professor, a pianist, a coordinator, an architect, a card dealer, and more, all to get close to my mark.
“There are also cases where we are given an opportunity to enter a residence as doctors, which allows us to make it look like our target died of an illness. However, our target conveniently becoming our patient is a rare occurrence—and not something we can count on. For that reason, we have false identities. The most commonly used identities are chefs and merchants. Nobles usually have a personal chef, but if they are throwing a large-scale party, they will need more staff and will reach out to the culinary association. The culinary association will then dispatch top-class chefs to the noble’s estate… And we have a connection in the culinary association who can get us in as one of those chefs.”
“I’m surprised. I’ve never once seen you cook, Father,” I said. If he could pass for a cook at a noble party, he was probably more skilled than my mother. She’d surely be upset to know something like that. “So that means I will have to improve my skill as a chef.”
“There’s actually another practice that should take precedence. I want you to become a merchant. Nobles are creatures who are always seeking satisfaction, and they have the power and wealth to obtain anything they want. As a result, they have a habit of constantly wanting new things: a treasure from a land across the sea, a jewel more beautiful than anything anyone has ever laid eyes on, or a transcendent work of art. If a merchant carrying such items were to visit their estate, the lord or lady of the manor would welcome them with open arms…especially if they held a famed reputation.”
“And you have a connection who can help me obtain this reputation, Father?”
“Correct. I have three names: Cian Tuatha Dé, a baron of the Alvanian Kingdom; Tori Bahara, a chef from Alster; and Dowaf Garner, a merchant and head of the Calrad Company. All are entered in the family register and exist in records as though they were all real people. If someone decided to check for one of my fake identities and found that the family register was falsified, my secret would be out. It is for that reason that the moment I was born, Tori and Dowaf were born as well.”
“Does that mean I can assume I also have other identities in the family register?” I asked.
“Yes. The moment you came into this world, two other people appeared as well: Illig Balor, the illegitimate son of the head of the Balor Company, born of a prostitute, and Saphir Ogma, the son of a blacksmith.”
Falsifying the family register later would’ve led to too many inconsistencies in the records.
That’s why two false identities had been fabricated the moment I was born. This way, if someone checked the records, nothing would seem out of the ordinary. An unfortunate complication was that taxes needed to be paid for the fake identities, and my father likely owed large sums of remuneration to those families to not end up in their debt.
It was surely difficult, but going that extra mile was part of what made the Tuatha Dé clan the best of the best.
“Ogma the blacksmith aside, that’s impressive you got the head of the Balor Company to cooperate with falsifying the family register. The Balor Company is one of the most prominent trading companies even in the large commercial city of the Milteu domain,” I said.
Milteu is directly south of the Tuatha Dé domain, faces the sea, and houses the largest port city in the Alvanian Kingdom. It is the liveliest center of trade in the country.
Given the number of influential trading companies situated there, Milteu was a more powerful region than Tuatha Dé.
“He owes me a debt from long ago. I want you to live there for two years, until you turn fourteen. You will live as Balor’s son and train as a merchant. As far as the public knows, Balor put your other identity, Illig Balor, up for adoption to avoid upsetting his wife. You are returning to your father because his legitimate son has fallen ill and he needs you to take over his son’s duties… That’s the story.”
It was a perfectly natural excuse for Illig to suddenly return to his father. Spending two long years living there and studying commerce was a concerning request, however. Still, I trusted that my father wouldn’t have given me a pointless order. There had to be some deeper meaning to this.
“I will learn about the world, build personal connections, and prepare an information network. I will grow Illig’s name to be famous beyond the Balor Company, enabling myself to freely visit the homes of nobles. That is what I should try to accomplish during my two years at the Balor Company,” I stated confidently.
Father gave a satisfied smile. Milteu was the country’s largest center of trade thanks to its ports. Goods were brought there from around the world, and people gathered from all over the country seeking them. It was a place where I could gather all kinds of information. In many ways, Milteu was more the center of our country than even the royal capital.
Spending two years there would surely broaden my view of society, and I’d gain a deeper understanding of how the world worked.
Living as a merchant would be a great opportunity to make a variety of connections and grow my personal network.
Trading companies build up large communication webs as a way to ensure successful business. Such a resource was equally useful for an assassin.
If I was able to grow the reputation of Illig to the point where nobles delighted in hearing my name and would invite me into their homes without so much as a second thought, I would be free to use it as a pass to enter the home of any potential target.
This trial had four objectives. The first was to spend two years as Illig Balor and make him into a fully realized person. Second was to continue to acquire the abilities and tools necessary as an assassin to kill the hero. Third was to improve at gathering information from around the world. I still hadn’t found the hero, and I didn’t even know if he’d been born yet. The fourth and final objective was to gain capital, build information networks, and make personal connections, any of which were capable of being a more powerful weapon than pure combat strength alone.
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