The Eternal Assassin

The next few days fell into a familiar pattern. During the day, Asher would spend his time in the library, pushing his Incorporate and Comprehend skills to the limit as he conducted research about this world and did his best to shore up any of the obvious holes in his knowledge. While he read all about this new world and improved the skills tied to his Knowledge element, Rosh worked his magic in the lesser-traveled portions of the city, searching out the locations of dangerous gang members tied to the owner of the more powerful concealing artifact Asher needed.

The two of them would both break from their respective tasks and meet up for lunch and dinner back in the tavern they were staying at, discussing their findings and simply getting to know one another better. Asher learned all about Rosh's time spent as an instructor of logistics for Whikoga's standing army and the life the man led before his fall from grace, and in exchange, he told Rosh a heavily edited version of his life back on Earth, explaining what his apprenticeship back on Earth had been like and his hopes to one day become a 'gravekeeper'. Despite the fact that he'd been a fairly well-respected instructor before his debts forced him into accepting the Shard element, Rosh turned out to only be a couple of years older than him, and Asher was surprised by how quickly the two of them became good friends.

The fact that the only other people he was close with in the entire world were Samantha and her twelve-year-old brother might have played a role in that.

While Asher's days were spent getting to know Rosh better and relaxing in the library, evenings, however, were spent hunting down vicious criminals that Rosh informed him about. People similar to Inferno; those that had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and took pleasure in the suffering of others.

With Wilna's help in the library he studied basic geography, the current laws within the kingdom, and anything related to the Spatial element that he could find.

His biggest takeaways were that he'd actually managed to land in one of the smaller kingdoms in this world. The Noala Kingdom was a rather new kingdom, relative to its surrounding neighbors at least. Only founded about three hundred years ago, it was originally created as a result of what used to be called The Forever War that raged between the Lambit Republic and the Eight Crests. The Lambit Republic and the Eight Crests were two of the larger powerhouses on the continent of Poudoma, and after fighting a war that lasted longer than anyone could remember, a few armies from both sides ended up joining forces and carving out their own kingdom just to bring an end to the seemingly endless bloodshed.

What was most surprising to Asher was that rather than send in fresh armies to take back their stolen lands and continue the war, for some reason the two powerhouses decided to allow the Noala Kingdom to be formed. Now, the Noala Kingdom acted as something of a natural buffer between the two nations that continued to feud to this day, forcing them to only send the occasional war party to bother the other rather than wage all out destruction.

The Noala Kingdom, he learned, was ruled by High Prince Donvath, a direct descendent of the man who originally rallied the armies to join forces and form the kingdom all those centuries ago. It seemed Prince Donvath was a fairly intelligent and beloved ruler, as he had a knack for making decisions that almost always benefited the kingdom in the long run.

Unfortunately, while Asher's search for general knowledge was fruitful, his attempts to uncover more about fellow Spatial element holders weren't quite as successful. Records that talked about owners of the element were few and far between, and it seemed as though just about all of them were others like himself. People pulled to this world for one reason or another that didn't have any prior elements. And while there were not many records, just about all of them went one of two ways.

They ended up becoming powerful, famous heroes. Or they died extremely quickly.

If Asher didn't have his nightly excursions to distract himself from all the horrific descriptions of his fellow Spatial users dying, he thought he might have given up the search just from how depressing so many of their tales were.

While he wasn't able to find his target every evening, he managed to locate and take down three more monsters in human disguises over the rest of the week. Similar to Inferno, each and every one of his targets didn't just admit to their horrific acts, but bragged about them as they attempted to end Asher's life.

The first target Rosh gave him after Inferno was Slicer, a woman with elements of Pain, Blood, and Blades. A particularly nasty combination that allowed her to inflict excruciatingly painful wounds on people that refused to heal by natural means. Asher had barely spoken a word to the woman before she'd tried to cut him up, and it was only thanks to the fact that she went for causing maximum amounts of pain over immediately killing her prey that he survived. She'd caught him off guard by entering some sort of temporary, undying rage when he went for the killing blow, no doubt courtesy of her forbidden Blood element, and it took a full day of bedrest for Eternal Regeneration to finish healing up all the lacerations he'd received from the woman while waiting for her skill to time out.

Which meant Asher had plenty of time to review yet another painful lesson on the dangers in this world.

Once he'd recovered, he went after his next target, a large man known simply as Rock. He only had two elements, but his combination of Earth and Stone worked extremely well, the two elements transforming the already large man into what was essentially a one-man wrecking ball.

Asher actually encountered him while Rock was in the middle of extorting a poor merchant family for money, and he found the giant of a man slowly pressing his massive foot down on the prone father while the man's crying children begged him to stop.

That had been all the confession Asher needed, and despite his burning desire to take the heavyset man on in a head-to-head battle, he'd intervened before the collapsed merchant was turned into paste on his own shop floor. A quick thrust of his mithral dagger and a small tunnel of expanded space was all it took for him to end Rock's life from the shadows, and he stayed just long enough to witness the merchant's children help their father up before grabbing Rock's shards and slipping away through the astral.

His final target of the week had been a terrifying woman known simply as The Spider. According to Rosh, The Spider was Loratta's own personal assassin. Wielding elements of Poison and Shadow, she excelled in sneaking into homes and businesses of those that went against Loratta's wishes, poisoning their food and leaving without a trace.

It took Rosh nearly three days and a good number of bribes to track The Spider down, but he finally got her base's whereabouts to Asher. When Asher slipped into the alchemy lab disguised as a rundown building, he discovered a literal laundry list of crime lying right out in the open. The Spider kept detailed records of what ingredients went into her poisons, who they were intended for, and how quickly her targets died.

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When he discovered the section of her list describing how she would vary the dosage based on her target's age, she became the second person Asher killed without even talking to, slipping out of the astral directly in front of her bed and silencing her with a dagger thrust to the heart while she slept.

By the end of the week, Asher had started growing numb to all the horrific things he'd seen and learned about these people, and he no longer felt any remorse in the slightest for what he was doing.

Lying in bed, he stared up at the ceiling as he listened to the familiar scratching of quill on parchment. After sharing a room with the man for so long, Rosh's habit of writing before bed had started to become something of a soothing white noise to Asher after returning from his exhausting late night hunts. Letting the gentle scratching sounds wash over him, he took a look at all the progress he'd made over the last week.

Name: Asher Holden

Class: None

Element: Spatial

Ability: Astral Dip – Lvl 12

Ability: Distortion – Lvl 16

Ability: Personal Rift – Lvl 11

Ability: Spatial Lock – Lvl 2

Ability: (Locked)

Element: Knowledge

Ability: Identify – Lvl 15

Ability: Comprehend – Lvl 20

Ability: Incorporate – Lvl 15

Ability: Secret Seeker – Lvl 2

Ability: (Locked)

Element: Eternity

Ability: Eternal Regeneration – Lvl 14

Ability: Complete Resilience – Lvl 12

Ability: Eternal Mark – Lvl 6

Ability: Permanence – Lvl 3

Ability: (Locked)

Resistance: Darkness – Tier 2

Shards: 68,679

It was a testament to how well the two of them had gotten to know one another when Rosh picked up on his current mood without Asher saying a single thing. The quiet scratching of the former instructor's quill paused, and Asher heard Rosh's chair creak as he turned to look at him.

"How did things go with The Spider? Seeing as you're still alive, I assume she's joined the rest of Loratta's elites?"

"Yeah, she's dead," Asher confirmed, staring at the wooden ceiling as he thought back to the look of sheer shock and fear in the woman's eyes when he woke her up with a dagger to the heart. It wasn't until after he'd finished her off that he'd discovered she had coated every door handle in the building with an incredibly deadly poison that seeped directly through the skin. If it hadn't been for his Secret Seeker skill drawing his focus to the slightly discolored handles and earning its first level up, he very well may have died to the concentrated poison.

There was only one way to test if his Complete Resilience would have been up to the challenge, and Asher wasn't willing to tempt fate quite so hard just yet.

"I just don't understand how some people end up like that… She had what was basically a diary detailing how effective her poisons were on people, Rosh. And not just adults, but kids. It was horrible!"

"There are plenty of people who refuse to acknowledge even the gravest of threats on their lives, but will buckle in an instant if they think their child's life is in danger," Rosh said, his voice filled with disgust. "Now you see what kind of a monster Loratta truly is. I thought I knew the extent of her monstrosities when she forced me to take in the forbidden element, but that was only the tip of the iceberg."

"How does someone like her even happen?" Asher asked, sitting up and staring at his companion. "Everything I read about this kingdom's High Prince made the man out to be some sort of genius, perfect man. How could he let some horrific woman like this rule half the city in fear from the shadows?"

"It's a matter of scale unfortunately," Rosh sighed, shaking his head. "While Whikoga may seem large, in reality it is but one of eleven cities within the Noala Kingdom, and not even one of the larger ones. The High Prince no doubt has his hands full dealing with similar problems in the capital. Imagine the horrors a woman like Loratta could get up to if she had ten times the men and women under her command."

"Okay, then who is in charge of this city? Because clearly they're doing a terrible job and need to be fired."

"Elnor Frent, Head of the Frent family," Rosh said, quickly drawing a small crest containing a tree with branches carved into the shape of various weapons and showing it to him. "She's been in charge of the city for about a decade now. As this city is one of the closest to our border with the Lambit Republic, the Frent family was chosen to take control of the city due to their martial might."

"I can understand why they were chosen, but why hasn't the High Prince sent any of his oh-so-powerful truthseekers to check in on the place?" Asher demanded. "Surely, he doesn't just leave the noble families in charge of his cities without checking in on them periodically, right? Hell, I thought each of the main cities had its own truthseeker to help with this kind of stuff. Where's Whikoga's?!"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Rosh shrugged. "Perhaps the kingdom tries to make people think it has more truthseekers than it truly does? Or maybe there are simply bigger problems elsewhere. Don't forget, I was merely an instructor before I got roped into all this criminal underworld business. I can't tell you much more than what anyone else can, unless you're interested in learning more about logistics."

"I swear, if the reason is anything like 'Loratta is the lesser of two evils,' I'm going to punch the High Prince right in the face," Asher frowned, shaking a fist.

"You still have skills to unlock, right?" Rosh asked, rolling his eyes as he turned back to his writing. "Why don't you spend a portion of that giant haul of shards you're carrying and stop worrying about things outside of your control before anyone hears your open threats against the crown?"

Letting out a sigh of his own, Asher flopped back against the bed and pulled up his interface. Sure enough, even with all the bribes Rosh had to make to narrow down The Spider's hideout, his last attack had netted him enough shards to unlock the fifth and final skill of any of his three elements. And after reading up about all the amazing things the Spatial element users that survived to become renowned heroes were capable of doing, the choice was a simple one.

Making his choice, Asher spent the shards and eagerly read through his new notifications. To his surprise, not only did he receive a notification about his newest skill, but he also received one he'd been looking forward to for some time now.

Shards: 28,679

Recall (active) – Lvl 1 – Travel between marked locations at will.

Spatial Passive Unlocked: Switch your current class at will to any unique class you have unlocked.

Unique classes available:

-Demon Slayer

-Awakened Beast Hunter

-Assassin

Asher blinked at all the information suddenly thrust upon him, his grin only growing wider the more he read.

Well now… This looks interesting.