The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat - Volume 4 - Chapter 22

Chapter 22 | The Assassin Sets a Trap

We sprinted as the demon raced toward us with incredible speed. Our destination was one of the spots where we’d laid a trap.

“Uh, it’s a little late to say this now, but I think it would have been better to continue fighting them individually,” Nevan remarked, somehow able to speak normally as we dashed.

“You’re not wrong. They were definitely weaker when spread out. However, there are two reasons I disliked that option,” I responded.

“Let me hear them.”

“First, I hoped to limit damage to the city. We don’t know how long it would’ve taken to go around wiping all the monsters out. Many innocents could’ve died.”

“You’re so compassionate.”

“I told you earlier. I’m not swayed by emotion, but I prefer to save the lives I can.”

I’d elected not to evacuate Jombull beforehand because I was afraid the demon would change its target. Still, I was gathering the monsters together, thereby limiting potential destruction, and I’d also made preparations using Nevan’s political influence and my own authority as a Holy Knight so that the populace could be quickly led to safety in case anything went awry.

“What’s your second reason?”

“Rounding them up like this will be much quicker and safer than slaying them all individually.”

Fighting the lionesses had made me keenly aware of how dangerous they were, as well as the best way to combat them. Dia and Tarte would have been in trouble had the battle dragged on too long.

“I see. I knew I could count on you.”

“I’d rather hear you say that after we’ve won.”

We turned the corner onto a wide street, though it wasn’t quite spacious enough to be dubbed a main thoroughfare. A pack of lions was at our heels.

The demon finally shows himself, I thought. Beast King Liogel was among our pursuers. His presence was so intense that it nearly felt overwhelming.

The females were already big, but he was a size larger. All of the demons I had previously encountered were humanoid, but Liogel was far more animalistic. He possessed a golden mane, and powerful mana burned within him.

Upon close inspection, I spied him gathering natural magic power from the atmosphere.

“They’ve caught up to us! Should we try to stop them?!” Tarte cried out in panic.

Just as she said, the monsters had closed the gap all but completely, and there were still more of them arriving.

Dia was the slowest on our team, and the rest of us were running at her pace so she could keep up. The monsters would be on us in a mere ten seconds.

“No. This is fine,” I stated.

At this rate, our enemies would pounce before we reached the traps, but if we could gain a few seconds with a final spurt, the timing would be perfect.

“Dia, Nevan, proceed as planned. Tarte, carry Nevan on your back,” I commanded.

Nodding, Dia responded, “Okay, I’ll go ahead and start my incantation.”

“My time has finally arrived,” Nevan declared.

Dia and Nevan began intoning as they ran. They were both casting powerful spells that required nearly all of their mana, which meant they had to drop their physical strengthening and decelerate.

I picked up Dia while Tarte took Nevan, and we increased our pace from that of a long-distance race to that of a one-hundred-meter dash. Neither of us would last long while supporting another person, but a full sprint should earn us ten extra seconds before the demon and his monsters reached us. That brief amount of time was all we needed to get to the traps and for Dia and Nevan to complete their incantations.

Sure enough, our final push got us there without being caught.

The demon Liogel was behind us with twenty-seven of his underlings in tow. They were aligned precisely the way I wanted, thanks to the spacious street.

The timing and their positioning could not have been more spot-on.

“Dia!”

“Steel Rampart!”

Dia activated the spell that she had been preparing. It was an original one she had created.

An enormous metal wall erupted from the ground.

If it had been shallow, the monsters would have merely leaped over. However, Dia’s Steel Rampart was ridiculously big—five meters thick and fifteen meters tall. Its incredible scale was why she needed so much time to execute the spell.

Those lionesses at the front of the pack crashed spectacularly into the barrier. The ones slightly behind them made a snap decision to jump, but they also collided with the wall after failing to scale it.

The creatures descended into mass confusion as they piled up in front of the obstruction.

Even still, we needed to maintain our focus. Our enemies were in disarray now, but once they calmed down, they’d realize they could leap over the houses flanking either side of the street.

We couldn’t allow them enough time to notice that.

“Stun Flare!”

Nevan finished her incantation next.

It was a light spell that Dia had crafted after Nevan explained the basics of the element. Dia had finished it just in time, despite only beginning her studies on light magic a few days ago.

Nevan lobbed luminous spheres the size of human heads over the wall, aiming for the traffic jam of monsters.

“Put your backs to the wall and close your eyes!” I shouted.

One second later, a soundless flash bathed the world in a white glow.

Stun Flare was not an attack spell—it was designed for suppression. The magic produced an intense flash.

However, when Nevan, one of the top five greatest mages in the country, released it with her full strength, it did far more than temporarily blind. It burned out the retinas of any who saw the spell, robbing them of sight forever.

It was a surefire way to destroy a target’s vision. At the very least, it would sear the eyes of the lions and agitate them further.

Dia stopped the creatures in their tracks with Steel Rampart, and Nevan nailed them in place using Stun Flare. Our preparation was now complete.

“Put on your masks!” I commanded, covering my face with one myself. Then I pressed a switch I had stored inside my jacket.

The houses surrounding the now-immobile lions blew up. They were buildings we had purchased beforehand and were filled with bombs.

Like Stun Flare, the explosives were not intended to kill the monsters. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that a blast of that scale was enough to kill a demon and all of his underlings.

They were actually sound and stink bombs.

The explosives released a sound loud enough to shatter all the glass in nearby panes.

The noise could rupture one’s eardrums, rock their brain, and utterly destroy their semicircular canals. The stench would knock the strongest of people unconscious in an instant and wreck their olfactory cells.

If we hadn’t worn our masks, we would’ve lost our hearing and sense of smell for the rest of our lives.

I ran to the other side of the rampart immediately after the explosion and started an incantation. No lionesses tried to stop me.

That wasn’t a surprise. Stun Flare had blinded them, and the traps had ruptured their eardrums and ruined their noses. With those three senses gone, they were unable to perceive anything.

Because these monsters took after cats, they possessed superior smell and hearing. I’d found a way to turn their overly sensitive noses and ears against them and inflict massive damage.

That had been my goal all along. If I couldn’t kill them all, I decided that it was optimal to prioritize rendering them helpless.

Now I could pursue Liogel without fear of interference from his underlings. He was recovering by using his power as a demon, but he still couldn’t see me.

I pulled a specially made cannon fitted on a large pedestal from my Leather Crane Bag. The bullet was 720 mm, six times larger than what I used for Cannon Strike. The ends were flat, and a hook was attached to the sizable projectile.

This was what I intended to use to knock the demon far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to restore the monsters as we wiped them out. I’d designed the bullet so that it wouldn’t penetrate Liogel’s body but instead dig into his flesh and send him flying from the force of impact.

The cannon was loaded with Fahr Stones, enabling me to fire it using the mana I had poured into the spell I was chanting.

“Cannon Strike!”

I launched the warhead from its barrel.

Liogel’s eyes, ears, and nose were all wrecked like the lionesses’, and he had not yet healed. The attack was guaranteed to hit him. At least, I thought so.

Guess I should’ve expected no less of the Beast King, I mused, impressed.

Although Liogel shouldn’t have been able to see, he used his right arm to knock the bullet aside, even as it raced toward him quicker than the speed of sound.

“I CAN SEE YOU!!!”

The projectile blew off Liogel’s right arm, but he successfully diverted it while remaining rooted to the spot.

It was an astonishing feat, to be sure. Fortunately, I had a backup plan that I was already working to enact.

I dashed forward immediately after the Cannon Strike, and the moment I finished another incantation, I touched Liogel’s body where he couldn’t reach now that his arm was gone.

It was time for my ace in the hole…

“God spear, Gungnir!”

Going by firepower alone, this was the strongest spell I had. Its major drawback was that it took ten minutes for the spear to come back down. This time, however, I had devised a trick to get around that.

That trick was to skip the spear and just launch my target into the sky instead. I would lift the enemy into the air until just before they reached outer space and then slam them back down to the ground. No living creature could endure something like that. It was a maneuver I’d devised for killing the hero.

Admittedly, using Gungnir this way was not without its own set of drawbacks. I needed a massive amount of mana to use it, so I couldn’t devote any to physical strengthening. It still took a long time to cast, too.

What’s more, I needed to touch my opponent while only having access to my natural strength during the long incantation process. That didn’t seem doable in a fight against the hero. However, if it was an assassination, and she wasn’t aware of me, it would be possible for me to reach her.

This was my current best option for killing Epona.

“Enjoy your trip through the skies.”

“YOU BRAAAAAAAAAT!” Liogel screamed as he flew up into the air, his body quickly picking up speed. He was going to crash into the ground outside of the city, die, and then surely revive.

I was fine with that. What I wanted was time.

“Tarte, Dia, Nevan. Time to kill the monsters and incinerate the corpses. Then we’ll head to where the demon is going to land.”

The monsters were now nothing more than powerless lions. Slaying them all would be a breeze. Liogel would not be able to restore them once they had burned to ash.

I had calculated where the demon was going to land. With his pack out of the picture, we would be able to defeat him.

“Holy cow, you come up with the dirtiest tricks.”

“You are as amazing as ever, my lord.”

Dia and Tarte emerged from behind the wall and made conversation as they got to work on finishing off the lionesses.

“So this is how an assassin fights. Everything you do is so meticulous and logical. Your preparation was scrupulous; you completely prevented the monsters from exercising their strengths, and now they’re helpless. This is wonderful,” Nevan praised.

The lionesses were capable as a pack, so I’d prevented them from fighting that way. They possessed superior senses, so I’d overloaded those and destroyed them.

Honest head-on battles were for knights.

“I had sufficient information this time and was able to prepare in advance. Laying a foundation before the kill is key to the assassination,” I replied.

Wielding a blade was merely the final touch. An assassin’s true strength lay in the process that got them there.

Similarly, wiping out these monsters was only part of the preparation for slaying the real target, Liogel.

So I couldn’t let up my guard. Not until Liogel breathed his last breath.