No to Being the Suffering Heroine!

======[ Ashel Kazaar ]======

After accepting Yuron’s secret request on the condition of placing three orphans in good adoptive homes and filling the empty slots with new orphans, Ashel wasted no time preparing for the request the moment she left Yuron’s mansion.

Vroom vroom… ‘I’ve got all my weapons… If they’re part of an assassination organization, they’ll be sensitive to my presence, so I’ll need smell-erasing potions… And just in case, some poison and smoke bombs….’

She prepared twice as thoroughly as usual. If she used up everything attached to her belt and pouches, she’d have to live on black bread for a while.

Chew chew… ‘Well, it’s better than dying while trying to save a few coins.’

The request was clearly dangerous and tricky, so thorough preparation was key.

The target was a dangerous figure who had wiped out the leader and core members of the Abandon in one go. Not to mention, this wasn’t a pretty death—this was a notorious serial killer who had hacked their victims into pieces and scattered them around.

About an hour later, after finishing all her preparations, Ashel headed straight to the slums.

At that moment, Hilde was sound asleep in her mansion on Fountain Garden Street 6, but Ashel had no way of knowing that.

After all, given that this woman had declared her intent to dominate the slums in the name of Abandon, Ashel assumed she would obviously be lurking somewhere in the slums.

After about twenty minutes…

“Well, well, who do we have here? It’s Ashel!”

“I didn’t expect to see you here… Good timing, really.”

Arriving in front of a set of dilapidated, dirty stairs leading to the slums, Ashel ran into three riffraff who were also trying to go down the stairs.

“Hmmm… Who are you guys?”

Though they were wearing tattered cloaks and trying to conceal themselves, they were surprisingly well-built for slum dwellers, and their slightly exposed skin looked fairly clean.

To Ashel, these men seemed all kinds of suspicious.

“Uh… What was it? Oh right. The boss wants to see you. Apparently, there’s work for you to take. Just follow us.”

“What?”

Ashel glared at them with fire in her eyes.

“Who the hell do you think you are, telling me to come? Do I look like some crazy mutt who follows orders when told to come and go at will?”

Ashel bared her teeth and growled, revealing her sharp fangs.

The men, startled by her blatant hostility, instinctively touched their waists, then flinched and frowned at each other.

“Hah, look at that….”

Being momentarily outmatched by a girl who was younger and smaller than them stung their pride.

“So, you plan to ignore our boss’s call…? You’d do well not to.”

“Is that a threat? You bastards really…!”

“Whoa, whoa. Calm down. This is a warning, not a threat.”

The man in the middle shrugged and stepped forward, while the other two subtly gripped the hilts of their knives at their waists and glared at Ashel.

They seemed ready to draw their knives at any moment. Though they joked about it being just a warning, it was, in fact, a threat.

“Better watch yourself. If we’re not around, you won’t find anyone else willing to give you work, you know? You do need to eat.”

There was an undercurrent of tension flowing between them, hinting that continuing to act disrespectfully could lead to trouble.

“……”

“……”

“Tch, fine! I’ll go, alright? Just lead me.”

After a moment of silence, Ashel finally decided to surrender, clicking her tongue in annoyance and folding her arms as she retorted.

“Should’ve said that sooner. Let’s go.”

The man in front smirked, as if he’d predicted her response, then relaxed and turned, pointing towards the deeper parts of the slums.

Thud.

In that instant, a dagger was plunged into the man’s throat.

A surprise attack, exploiting the moment he turned his head. It was Ashel’s dagger, which she had swiftly pulled from under her arm.

“Gah, guh?!”

“Die, you bastard!”

The ragged man, trembling as he clutched the dagger piercing his throat, was met with a powerful kick to the back by Ashel, causing her to rush toward the second man.

“What the hell…!”

The second man, shocked by the sight of his friend stumbling down the stairs with a hole in his neck, hastily drew his knife from its sheath at his waist.

“Too late!”

However, his response was already delayed.

By the time he drew the knife, Ashel had already slipped inside and stabbed his shoulder with her dagger, jumping up to evade his swinging weapon.

Then, using the dagger as a pivot, she landed behind him, catching his throat tight with her arm.

“Ghh…!”

“Called for the boss? You’re delusional. That scumbag Perb has been dead for ages. You think I wouldn’t know?”

The man, choking from the arm around his throat, felt the life being squeezed out of him. His nasty face quickly flushed red and then turned purple.

“Hans-! You bitch-!!”

The third riffraff, running in with an axe in hand.

Ashel swiftly drew a new dagger and stabbed the man she held in the side three times before twisting his body to use him as a shield against the axe.

Crash!

“Die, you scum! ”

The man who had just taken the axe to the chest stared wide-eyed as he twitched in agony.

The axe had shattered his ribs and tore into his lungs. His vision blurred from blood loss and the struggle for breath, causing the river of death to shimmer before him.

“H-Hans!? No, this can’t be…!”

The panicking axeman accidentally pulled the weapon from his comrade’s chest, causing blood to spray across his face.

-Splat!

At the same time, the first man, already missing his head, crashed to the bottom of the stairs, his skull shattered.

“One hit kill? Impressive skills!”

Ashel mocked while kicking the corpse of the fallen man at the axeman.

“You psycho…!”

The axeman, reflexively trying to catch the body but realizing what was happening, twisted his body to dodge it and swung the axe.

Whoosh!

The cold steel of the axe sliced through the air with ferocity. The blood-stained blade glimmered with red.

Hmm, brute strength won’t work… then…

Ashel ducked low, avoiding the blade as it passed overhead, rolling back to create distance while dodging the follow-up attacks seamlessly.

She moved with the speed of a beast.

“How stingy! You could’ve gone easy; we’re part of the same crew, after all.”

“Shut up! I’ll kill you!”

“Were you always this mean?”

With each jibe, the axeman lost more of his sanity.

Having lost two comrades in an instant, and having killed one with his own hands, it was no wonder he was furious.

“Aaaah! Die, you biatch! Aaaah!”

The man swung the axe wildly.

“Damn, it’s noisy. You lost your mind?”

“Aaaahhh!”

Fueled by rage, the attacks came faster and stronger than before, but with so much force behind them, they were too predictable and straightforward.

“Then you die.”

The openings were so clear that Ashel could easily exploit them.

Thwack!

In a low stance, Ashel lunged forward and buried her blade deep in the axeman’s groin.

The steel blade pierced through his leather pants and flesh and protruded out of his back.

“Aaaahhhhhh!”

The intense pain was beyond what any rage could withstand, causing him to drop the axe and drop to his knees.

“Who the hell are you calling a bitch? I’m a wolf, you mutt.”

She glared into the eyes of the kneeling man, spitting out a final jab before plunging her dagger into his eye, ending his life.

Thwack!

“Guu…uh…”

The axeman fell backward, leaving his gruesome eye and optic nerve dangling on the withdrawn blade.

“Huff…”

After swiftly taking out all three men, Ashel took a moment to catch her breath as she gazed down at the sprawled corpses.

‘What were these bastards up to?‘

Though they were dressed identically to riffraff affiliated with Abandon, their smell was completely different, and the weapons they carried were of surprisingly high quality.

Their physique and agility were also above the level of mere riffraff.

‘If I had confronted them head-on, it wouldn’t have been easy…‘

Thanks to the surprise attack, she achieved an overwhelming victory, but the three men she had just killed were skilled operatives in Abandon’s highest tier.

And Ashel recognized all their faces well.

This meant they had either hidden their true abilities, intentionally stayed low-ranked, or weren’t even affiliated with Abandon in the first place.

Ashel suspected it was the latter. If they were true riffraff, they wouldn’t have been carrying such high-quality steel weapons.

‘Who the hell sent these guys…? It can’t be the Guild or the Piacere Family… Or could it be those damn Black Eagles?‘

It was clear that they were spies sent by another organization, but Ashel couldn’t pinpoint which one.

‘… No, it can’t be the Black Eagles. Being an assassination organization, they wouldn’t fall for such a simple trick, right?‘

By process of elimination, it was certain they belonged to the Piacere Family or the Guild, but beyond that, there was no way to find out. The dead don’t speak.

‘If they were just a bit weaker, I might’ve been able to spare one to interrogate… What a shame.‘

It wasn’t easy to subdue them without killing, given their skill level.

If she hadn’t riled up the last axeman’s sanity with taunts, she might’ve had to take a blow or two herself.

‘Anyway, this whole situation feels… really suspicious.‘

As Ashel retrieved her daggers from the corpses, her gaze drifted toward the darkened slums below.

She already suspected the request would be tricky, but she hadn’t expected to face such suspicious characters right at the start.

‘What if I’m seriously screwed?‘

Going through such an ordeal before even starting the job made Ashel feel as though it was a bad omen for her future.

‘Ah, damn, maybe I should have turned it down.‘

Of course, she couldn’t just back out of a request she had already accepted because she felt uneasy, so she had no other choice.

Ashel scratched her head in frustration, grimacing before letting out a deep sigh and making her way down the stairs.

The slums welcomed her.

In every alley, drugged-out junkies lay moaning, and rather than the usual grimy, rotten scenes with beggars and thugs…

“Kraaack! You damn beasts!”

“Kill them all! Find that bitch from the Black Eagles!”

Screams and cries rang out, and the scene was a butcher’s den filled with blades and blood.

“… What the hell?”

Ashel stood there wide-eyed, her mouth agape in shock, involuntarily cursed.

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