Instant Death

Chapter 2: How is someone able to enjoy another world so leisurely…?

The Dark Garden is an assassination guild.

Of course, it’s an illegal organization, closed off to the public.

As its name suggests, the guild actively undertakes assassination jobs. However, the ultimate purpose of the guild isn’t for the sake of exchanging a service for money.

This is because the guild’s founder and manager, a man named Miyanaga Ryōsuke, already possesses a vast amount of monetary assets.

As one can see from his name, Ryōsuke is one of the various people who came over to this world from Japan. After being summoned by one of the Sages, achieving great accomplishments, and attaining the qualifications for becoming his Sage’s acolyte, he set out to adventure all over the world, amassing his wealth.

He became an acolyte, but not because he didn’t have the potential to become the Sage. Instead, he thought becoming a Sage would be troublesome. So, he conceded the title to someone else, thus acquiring a position to move as he pleases.

He began practicing assassination because he had gotten tired of working as a champion of justice.

Protect a village from thieves. Rescue someone’s kidnapped daughter. Subjugate a water fae that had been causing a drought. Conduct peace talks between two nations constantly engrossed in war.

Even though he had shown every corner of the world a crazy, ferocious display of success, his life gradually became one of boredom.

At one point, after dispatching on a quest that was all too similar to one he had done before, he began to question the meaning of it all. As soon as he started thinking about it this way, he noticed that every quest was organized in the same way, just with somewhat different parameters.

And after that, he began to desire change.

For something stimulating. For something even more interesting.

With this thought, he ultimately began to try his hand at crime. He felt that he might as well venture into the things he hadn’t so far.

At first, he engaged in theft, but this lost his interest before long. Due to his ability, simple theft was nothing more than an easy victory. There wasn’t anything he particularly wanted to steal in the first place.

Since he’s never had any trouble with women, he didn’t see any reason to start assaulting them, so in the end, he decided to start killing people.

Even though murder wasn’t anything particularly difficult for him, he ultimately felt as though there was drama whenever he killed someone at random.

A person has various connections while they’re alive, which then acts as a source of drama once that connection has been cut by death.

In which case, he decided that instead of killing indiscriminately, he would take the lives of opponents who seemed interesting.

So, Ryōsuke began to accept assassination requests. He decided to accept the requests that seemed to target particularly interesting individuals.

If someone requests an assassination, there’s likely to be conflicts and unavoidable circumstances mixed in. Regardless of whether or not it was simple domestic infighting or something on a more national level, it’s incredibly interesting to watch these conflicts unfold from the sidelines.

Thus, Ryōsuke began handling assassination work, and along the way, he ended up managing a guild as well.

Getting involved with the underworld of society is inevitable for anyone working as an assassin. Due to this, Ryōsuke ended up destroying the similar organizations that picked fights with him for taking their customers. His one-man organization became a place of employment for those who had been crowded out of their work when their old organizations fell, such as the Yakuza. And before Ryōsuke realized it, things had ended up this way.

This is the same Ryōsuke’s who, in the eyes of the public, was the manager of a flower shop.

In his two-story building, he had chosen to make the first floor into the shop, and the second into his own living quarters.

One day, after finishing his work down in the flower shop, he returned upstairs, only to find that a letter had been placed on his desk.

An assassination request.

He didn’t know who the client was, nor how the letter had gotten there.

Ryōsuke thought that its appearance was exceedingly interesting.

As one would expect, he wasn’t the type who would spread around the knowledge that he was the head of an assassination guild. Only a select few members from the guild would know this information, so whenever the guild receives a request, there’s a good number of people it has to go through before it’s able to trace back to him.

Nevertheless, this client already knew about him and had even personally provided him with a paper request. He was entirely unsure about how they were able to do that.

For Ryōsuke, who could be thought of as an extraordinarily unique existence out of those who have been given the Sage’s gift, the fact that there was someone out there capable of stealing a march on him was incredibly exciting.

The details of the request were for him to kill a boy who had been selected as a Sage candidate.

A boy who had come here from another world shouldn’t have very significant relationships made with the people of this world yet, so his death shouldn’t cause very much of an impact. The target himself wasn’t all that interesting, rather what made the request unusual was that it specified for a very detailed means of going about killing him.

The fact that the requestor was interfering with the way he went about doing his work got on his nerves, but this request went so far to suggest that he should first let one of his subordinates give the assassination a try. In that way, he’d be able to understand the requestor’s intentions. The fact that this was written as part of the request was enough to immediately seize his attention.

At any rate, Ryōsuke thought about how to approach the subject.

＊＊＊＊＊

“Would you mind doing that a little bit later!?” (Tomochika)

Evening.

Tomochika, having just returned from an expedition into Hell, reflexively called out as she saw Yogiri playing a game whilst sprawled out on his bed.

There hadn’t been any problems with the expedition so far because all of the participating classmates were simply overpowered. That being said, what started out as a journey into dark narrow tunnels eventually became a venture into a labyrinth, that suddenly became a forest, and then into a freezing-cold midwinter desert, which then became a scorching-hot zone of lava. All of this while monsters descended on them in great numbers. Hell was a stressful place.

At the very least, Tomochika wanted to be thanked for her hard work after returning to the surface. She had been thinking this, but it seemed that Yogiri was entirely dedicated to lazing about.

“Ah, this is a Japanese1 guy we’re talking about, he’s well on his way to becoming a pimp, isn’t he?” (Carol)

“If he was a pimp, I imagine he’d snuggle up to the woman he’s sponging off of to maintain his own livelihood, right?” (Tomochika)

“Hoh? So you want him to snuggle up to you, is it?” (Carol)

“I wasn’t saying that about myself in particular!” (Tomochika)

In a fluster, Tomochika responded to Carol, who had a smirk on her face.

“No, Takatō-kun is fine like this, you know? He doesn’t have to do anything.” (Ryōko)

“Yup. Right here we have Ninomiya-san, willing to be a woman who spoils a pimp.” (Carol)

Since Ryōko didn’t want Yogiri to be doing anything in the first place, she probably thought that the current state of affairs was a preferable one.

“Ah, you’re back.” (Yogiri)

Yogiri put his gaming console into sleep mode and got up from the bed.

“Hey, come to think of it, where are your fellow pimps?” (Carol)

They had all come to Yogiri’s room, but there should have been two other people since it was the room for Group 7. Despite that, Yogiri was the only one there.

“If you’re talking about Izumida and Aihara, they were transferred to another group.” (Yogiri)

Yūgo Izumida and Yukimasa Aihara were considered non-useful students, just like Yogiri.

However, it was discovered that the cooking made with Yūgo’s Cook class has the ability to raise the power of other abilities when eaten. At the same time, it was discovered the Yukimasa’s Reader class allowed him to easily master skills and magic by reading about them in books.

As a result, it seems that it was decided that they would help participate in the capture of Hell.

“Do you mean to say there’s nothing more for you to comment there?” (Tomochika)

“Annoyingly, they still think of me as someone who does absolutely nothing useful.” (Yogiri)

Even for Yogiri, being treated like a good-for-nothing doesn’t seem to make him feel very good.

“Have you been doing anything though?” (Tomochika.)

“For the time being, I’ve been practicing my swordsmanship while thinking about what to do from here. David has been overseeing it.” (Yogiri)

David was the vice-commanding officer of the guards defending the city’s southern gates. Tomochika thought that he was a disgusting sort of man, but it seems that he kept surprisingly good company.

“Swordsmanship huh? I don’t exactly think that’s a waste of time, but…” (Tomochika)

Tomochika’s words trailed off. Even if Yogiri hastily learned martial arts as a temporary solution to being useless, she still didn’t think they would be very useful.

Yogiri has the ability of instant death. He’s an unrivaled existence in battle who ends fights before they can even begin. That is to say, there’s no reason for swordsmanship in the first place.

“Ah, I’m not thinking about trying to fight with fencing alone. What I’m saying is that, if I concentrate my power and apply it like this. Watch.” (Yogiri)

That said, Yogiri pointed his finger at the vase on the table.

There was a red rose inside of it.

As everyone looked over to it, a single petal lightly fell from the rose.

“This is?” (Carol)

“I tried to experiment with my ability when I was with Tomochika before. At the time I didn’t think that there was much of a point to it, but recently I remembered that it’ll be a necessary tool to have in order to get information out of that Sage.” (Yogiri)

Tomochika remembered the situation he was talking about.

Yogiri’s ability was way too strong. So much so that it’s usefulness can be limited. Therefore, he tested out whether or not he was able to use it while taking it easy on somebody.

At the time, the results were horrifying.

The target would generally just die when even one part of the body abruptly stopped functioning.

Even if he was able to limit his ability to the point where the target didn’t die, he didn’t have very precise control over it in the first place. After all, identifying the exact areas to use the power on was extremely difficult.

Back then, it was just troublesome that there wasn’t very much benefit in using it as a threat.

“No, uh… I don’t think you need to be using it so readily though.” (Ryōko)

Ryōko spoke, her face slowly tensing up.

At any rate, she was afraid of Yogiri. She didn’t want him to be proactive about using his ability.

“I think it’s been effective to practice aiming at specific parts of my opponent’s body while going through the motions of swordplay.” (Yogiri)

“Well okay, but what’s with you lazing about in your room just now?” (Tomochika)

“What? Don’t go accusing me of being lazy okay? I’ll have you know I’ve been doing things out in town as well. Like eating. And walking.” (Yogiri)

“How is someone able to enjoy another world so leisurely…?” (Tomochika)

Tomochika wanted to add on: ‘Let’s just annihilate Hell with Yogiri’s ability already!’

However, Yogiri essentially only uses his ability for the sake of self-defense.

Moreover, even if Yogiri did go and subjugate Hell, she didn’t know if the Sage would then show herself as a result. There was no choice but to proceed with things in line with the Sage’s instructions to the class.

“Oh! Then, would you like to go out on a date in the town together, just the two of us?” (Carol)

“I wonder why Carol wants to take it in that direction…” (Tomochika)

Tomochika thought that she didn’t mind, but Carol’s question lit a fire within her and was somehow displeasing for her to hear.

“Ah, come to think of it, when I go out to town from time to time, it seems like I’m being targeted.” (Yogiri)

“Eh? What are you saying?” (Tomochika)

“What I’m saying is that I felt killing intent.” (Yogiri)

“From how you’re putting it, I’m guessing that it’s unclear who it is?” (Carol)

“Yeah. It seemed like I was being targeted from a pretty far way away.” (Yogiri)

“I wonder what that means? Maybe it was just some random slasher?” (Carol)

If that was the case, they were unlucky.

By choosing Yogiri of all people as their victim, they would then end up becoming a victim themselves.

“No, it seemed more like they’ve been focusing on me directly. It would be directed toward me every time I went out into town over the last several days.” (Yogiri)

“Wait a-! That’s serious, isn’t it?” (Tomochika)

“Well, the malice was unpleasant, but there’s no risk of any actual harm anymore.” (Yogiri)

“So you’re saying some evil people are all just laying dead somewhere?” (Tomochika)

Yogiri was every bit as unconcerned as usual. It made Tomochika think about how heavy it truly was to handle the death of a person.

“Isn’t it okay if they’re malicious?” (Carol)

“Yeah, I believe that the scoundrels trying to make passes at Takatō-kun should die.” (Ryōko)

In contrast, Ryōko and Carol seemed indifferent about the life or death of evil people.

“Well, if the evil guys keep dying and he continues to get targeted despite that, doesn’t that mean that the mastermind behind it all is still out there?” (Tomochika)

Fundamentally, Yogiri has been using his power against enemies who have been showing him killing intent. Because there’s only one person dying, there appears to be some sort of person running things behind the scenes, requesting his assassination. So as a result, that person is sending in assassins one after another to try to get the job done.

“That’s why I was hoping that you’d be willing to help me out a little bit.” (Yogiri)

Like that, it was decided to go out with Yogiri the next day.

Note: Carol says the word ‘Japanese’ in English. She’s playfully acting like a foreigner. Not sure how else to convey this. Also I chose the term ‘pimp’ that had previously been kept as it’s Japanese word of ‘himo’. Pimp just fits the context the best.