I Became the Daughter of the Academy’s Villain

<596 – Delicious Linked Quest (20)>

– As an assassin maid, your talents have obvious limits. Pursuing perfection as a maid has led to facing those limitations and wasting your growth.

– Give up your chance at becoming the next direct subordinate. The position you currently hold is your best chance and your limit.

Reef recalled.

The cruel reality declared by the current Maid Jang to him.

“The Assassin Maid of the Foundation is nothing special. You can’t even surpass Shecilly’s sword.”

He barely had the energy to retort against the jibes of the saintess holding a sniper rifle.

The saintess wielding three swords was already losing interest, only desperately trying to parry the single sword that led her.

At that moment, she felt the limits of her talent more than ever.

– Poison techniques. Manufacturing techniques. Stealth techniques. Disguise techniques. Assassination techniques. Throwing techniques—beyond all combative skills, the fixation on performing maid duties, crafting, and support jobs was utterly pointless. Are you now beginning to realize how futile that obsession was?

– An assassin maid is merely someone who wears the guise of a maid to gain assassination opportunities. You are paying the price for the foolishness of forgetting that essence.

– Heh. Thank you. I’ll gladly take the position of next direct subordinate that you couldn’t ascend to.

The holy pages flying between the sword swings of the swordsman saintess grazed Reef’s clothes.

The attire on his arms and legs tore away, revealing his skin, and though the sides of his clothes were ripped wide open, it showed an intent to toy with him.

In the face of such brutal humiliation that trampled his self-esteem, Reef recalled the mocking smile of the rivals at the maid training center.

– I hold your sacrifice and service in the highest regard. To repay the lives taken from me, I will walk the path of a true maid, faithfully serving from the lowest ranks. I was genuinely impressed by that resolve.

– For an excellent maid, nurturing talents in the rear is far more appropriate than stepping out as an assassin. Although the maid skills you learned may not bloom at your level, they will greatly benefit the maids who come after you.

– Do not be disheartened by your own efforts and achievements. Someone will become an excellent assassin maid and prove that this path wasn’t wrong by achieving what you could not.

The director did not deny her path.

He even went so far as to directly encourage her to step back and walk the educator’s path.

For that, he was grateful to have met Lady Oknodie.

That was all.

Reef was no longer a naïve battle weapon.

Although he couldn’t recognize them at a glance due to his excellent physical stats and combat skills taught by the Church, there was a basic technique in their breathing and movements.

No matter how remarkable a competent person may be, the basic martial arts they learned first will unconsciously shape their actions and become a lasting habit.

Such fundamentals fell under a maid’s virtue—observation.

That was not an unfamiliar basic technique.

As an assassin maid from the maid training center, it was something she should have known well.

‘They’ve taken the lead. The Foundation has even seized the qualities of a saintess.’

There were ladies who received support from the Foundation in a manner different from the Gift Academy.

They had trained under the Church’s saintess guidance, rising to official saintesses from their apprentice statuses.

If such formidable “ace ladies” appeared, there would only be one person to issue commands to them.

‘Director. Are you suggesting I should lay down my life in front of you?’

Struggling to keep up with the swords.

Clothes being sliced away with repeated mockery.

More painful than the humiliation and shame inflicted by the saintesses, Reef realized what hurt him most.

– I heard that if you go to Professor Jonnas’s classroom, you can meet the Dark Princess Oknodie.

– It’s nothing special. I simply wished to ask the Dark Princess herself about her objectives, as she played a key role in the founding ceremony of the Saintess Alliance.

– If you don’t calmly tell us Professor Jonnas and the Dark Princess’s locations, we have our plans too.

It wasn’t the director.

Had it been him, he might have closed his eyes, resigned to the thought that taking his life would be fine.

To them, he was merely a boredom relief.

To stop the Saintess Alliance.

To approach the lady who declared the founding ceremony.

To capture Jonnas, the Butler, and force the lady’s actions was merely a brief amusement.

He was.

The assassin maid was.

The human named Reef was worth no more than that.

‘Don’t make me laugh.’

Reef erupted with poison.

Poison that affects just by contact wafted up in a visually harmful green mist, causing the Blind Saintess’s holy pages to spin faster.

Using overwhelming rotational force, the defense technique disrupted the invasion of the mist while scattering the poison.

That was Reef’s intention.

A perfect defense can sometimes obscure one’s own vision and allow the enemy’s presence to slip away.

‘Against an opponent superior in stats and abilities, an assassin doesn’t need to outshine at every moment.’

If one is a ruler, they must always be stronger than others.

If one is a warrior, being just a breath stronger than others is enough.

An assassin only requires a single moment.

[Throwing Technique]

Mana-infused sewing needles flew in lines, powerful enough to pierce through the spinning holy pages.

“A pitiful resistance.”

[Line of Fire]
[High-Speed Fire]
[Extreme Focus]
[Magic Shell Continuous Loading]
[Forced Targeting]

The sounds of the mana-infused bullets rang out one after another between the whirling pages.

The atmosphere froze as dozens of needles got entangled, the air pushed back, causing dozens of needles to bounce away, and mana exploded to detonate the needles.

Therefore, the sniper saintess’s aim was lost as she had to fend off the needles shot from the broomstick needlestorm.

“!”

[High-Speed Run]
[Mechanical Activation]

The holy pages defending against the incoming poison tilted momentarily, throwing their angles upward.

The terrain manipulation technique set up for the intrusion provided a brief opening in the Blind Saintess’s perfect defense.

‘What a maid can do is only to diligently guard her master’s future, preparing for safety day by day.’

Plain and unremarkable, efforts so obvious in daily life they become invisible if not acknowledged.

The time spent, too trivial and fleeting for her as she descended from the position of the director’s next direct subordinate to uphold.

However, because she didn’t look down on those efforts and time, diligently cherishing them, Reef found a chance.

‘Creating an opening between the two saintesses, and seizing a chance to breach the final saintess while she’s negligent.’

Under the sweeping range of the spinning holy pages, Reef launched the most powerful [Throw] she could wield.

Rolling Serving Tray.

Following the broomstick needle assault, she threw the tray that was holding the tea set, which bent at the perfect angle and aimed for the swordsman saintess’s ankle.

[Extreme Focus]
[Clarity of Mind]
[Domain Expansion]

Of course, the swordsman who surpassed a certain level may not wield various magic like a magician, but would synchronize their mana flow technique with their senses to emit outward.

At the moment that it becomes a finely spread field of sensation rather than an attack technique focused on destruction and cutting like sword qi, the swordsman attains their own region where they can detect and respond to all types of intrusions within a certain range.

[Finishing Move: Heavy Strike]

The powerful destructive strike forbidding entry shattered the serving tray.

At the same time, the poison housed within the tray burst forth.

“!!”

Biological poison. Mineral poison. Chemical poison.

Mushroom poison. Maritime poison. Bacterial poison.

Nerve poison. Heart poison. Skin poison.

As all sorts of poisons began chemical reactions, manifesting signs of explosive diffusion with different speeds and powers, the swordsman saintess’s sword glimmered.

The swordsman saintess’s territory expanded in three overlapping circles, creating a Venn diagram.

In the overlapping area of the circles, her sword moved more than twice as fast.

[Great Sword Area + Swift Sword Area]
[Advanced Sword Technique: Sword Pressure Expansion]

With a strike as powerful as smashing a giant surface, it pushed the entire air along the sword path.

Many poisons were scattered or pushed away by that strike, but during the mix, some of the composite poison created a positive reaction and rode back up along the sword path.

Thus, at the overlapping central area of all three regions, the swordsman saintess’s sword accelerated for the last time.

[Great Sword Area + Swift Sword Area + True Sword Area]
[Sure Kill Move: Trinity Force]

The combined sword of the three realms was heavier than Reef’s thrown weapon, faster than the dispersion of her poison, and pushed back all space without leaving any gap.

It was clear that the swordsman saintess’s realm was far superior to Reef and pushed away all poisons.

At that moment, Reef’s psychological warfare finally shone.

‘The air has been completely pushed away?!’

The bullets fired at Reef after completely blocking the sewing needles traveled in a straight line, not warped in the temporarily created vacuum, rendering her aim meaningless.

The holy pages of the blind saintess, who had been angered for getting hit back by the assassin maid, were buffeted away by the pressure of her sword aiming to clear out the poison.

‘Oh no, my strike is now affecting everyone else!’

Even the swordsman saintess realized that her attack had disturbed the other two saintesses and fell into mental confusion.

A sophisticated psychological battle, crafting an assassination route through the hands of others, was possible only for a maid!

Setting the opponent’s senses on edge and inducing them to unleash a perfect response, every calculation and plan had achieved a successful result.

As a result.
The attack formations of the three saintesses all fell apart.

A gap that had never existed had been forcibly created.

Although each of them could surpass Reef individually, against the surprise assault of the assassin maid, a single candy flew through the gaps between the three saintesses, who had lost their numerical superiority.

[Condensed Bomb]
[Sure Kill Poison]

The poison candy exploded at the most appropriate moment, flying perfectly to the center.

The three saintesses gazed at the dangerous magical candy bubbling with ominous mana, and their [Safety Techniques] instantaneously grasped the candy’s true nature.

[Classification: Mana Poison]
[Danger Level: Instant Kill]
[Estimated Effect: Penetrate the body’s vital organs through mana to destroy all functions]

Certain poisons can amplify their power while sacrificing growth and consistently infusing mana.

An assassin who had already reached their growth limit couldn’t challenge it, and someone with too low an ability couldn’t amplify the potent poison.

This extreme poison crafting technique was something only Reef could create in the entire world, a perilous toxin that even the strongest saint-class beings could not lightly attempt to cleanse.

‘That cannot touch me!’

All three saintesses immediately expanded their domains, and simultaneously, if any one of their domains lost power, that person would be exposed to the sure-kill poison.

Knowing that it was Reef’s intention, the saintesses did not relent, pushing the extreme poison away from one another to survive.

The alliance of the saintesses fragmented in an instant, and as they each desperately expanded their areas to survive, the weakest among them, the sniper saintess, fell.

“You, how dare you play tricks on us without knowing your place?!”

“Punish the arrogant fool. Excommunication Chapter 3, Verse 9.”

The once-in-a-lifetime chance passed by.

Yet, no regrets lingered.

Having taken out one from the secret weapons trained by both the Foundation and Church with her wit, Reef proved herself.

In the director’s eyes, she had become weak enough that he barely acknowledged her, and while she might have been discarded, her sincerity was not inadequate to stand before their abilities.

The director, who failed to recognize her, was wrong, but both Jonnas and the lady, who esteemed her, were right.

‘Jonnas and the lady’s safety, I leave up to you. Please cover my back.’

Rather than cowardly dying with her back turned to the approaching death, she chose to face it head-on and faint while looking forward.

That was why she could witness which strike from the swordsman saintess Shecilly was approaching.

“Shuriken…?”

A shuriken flying from afar, infused with mana, produced a small new kind in mid-air with a pop.

“Why would you fight well and then give up on your own accord?”

“Lady?! Why are you here…!”

“The communication instructor informed me. The saintesses are rampaging around the campus looking for me.”

The lady, always with a radiant smile, tilted her head while looking at the genuinely angry saintesses.

“But why are they angry? I’m the one who got mad because they touched my people!”

Although Reef had seen countless expressions from the lady, she had never seen her smile while looking angrily at others.

Reef realized she might be witnessing the lady’s genuinely furious demeanor for the first time.

That smiling, angry expression was…

strikingly similar to the director’s.

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