A Trouble No Mask Could Hide
Even behind a mask, it was the kind of trouble anyone could spot at a glance.
Bandits were targets for everyone.
NPCs despised them, and players shunned them. Some of the major guilds, in particular, had posted colossal bounties on every bandit's head, no questions asked.
Well, this worked out beautifully. And to think it happened right when I needed it!
And one of those major guilds — Mashimasitta, a member of Iron God, ranked sixteenth among the guilds — couldn't hold back his laughter.
Mashimasitta was not one of the guild's core members.
For all the weight the name of a major guild carried, he fell short in skill, level, and gear alike, and he'd been posted as a retainer to Kudas — a kingdom far removed from the one where Iron God did its real work.
In plain terms, he'd been demoted and shipped off.
Kudas Kingdom was no backwater, granted, but the problem was Mashimasitta's position.
Everyone else gets pampered by their NPCs, and I'm stuck babysitting nobles?
In the kingdom where Iron God was based, he could have lived like an aristocrat. Here, he was nothing more than a servant — because both he and his guild held next to no influence within Kudas.
He had endured it anyway. Quitting the guild would have wasted everything he'd built, and the guild buffs were sweet. But then, at last, opportunity came knocking.
The bandits of Avis Kingdom, right next door, were running wild.
"Bandits?"
"Yes! The very ones Sir Knight-Commander Roms spoke of. It seems they've been gathering their forces to raid in earnest."
"Impossible. That vermin, scavenging the crumbs that fall off the trade routes — what could they possibly do?"
Vermin.
A slur for players, the so-called otherworlders — but Mashimasitta didn't so much as blink.
He wasn't a bandit, after all.
"Vermin or not, they're otherworlders all the same. Immortals. As long as they can't truly die, greed is bound to grow. You know how it is!"
"......"
"It would appear their greed has simply outgrown them."
In truth, this wasn't a guess at all — he knew it for a fact.
The bandit registry community, which tracked bandit information, had already posted that the bandit guilds inside Avis Kingdom had been scorched into ruin.
It also said that a new bandit named 'Rafina' had unified them into a single force.
Rafina. A superb assassin, presumed to carry stats rivaling a ranker inside the top 1,000.
Almost certainly one of the unlisted — a hidden ranker — and clearly aiming to trigger a World Quest in Avis Kingdom.
It was already public knowledge, courtesy of the Grim Reaper, that bandits who'd done nothing but plunder could swallow an entire kingdom.
To a powerhouse capable of bending every last bandit to her will, that information was impossible to overlook.
But could she actually pull it off?
Roms, Knight-Commander of Kudas Kingdom, drummed the table with a thick finger.
Even that light tapping radiated strength, unmistakably.
"...I left them be because they had their uses. They've forgotten their place."
"Exactly! This is the time to whip them into line! Leave them alone, and they'll come sticking their noses into Kudas territory next!"
"Very well. I shall go myself, with my Silver Knights."
"A wise choice, my lord!"
Mashimasitta bowed his head, grinning to himself.
Yes! So what are you going to do about it?
What could you even do, being a top-1,000 assassin who'd smashed every bandit guild in sight?
None of it mattered against the Silver Knights, average level 73 — or their level-89 Knight-Commander.
Especially Roms — an NPC so strong that unless you were a ranker inside the top 30, you could barely even fight him.
Overwhelming, both tactically and in raw strength.
Use this overpowered NPC to crush the bandit alliance, and with the massive rewards on top, his influence within the kingdom would multiply several-fold — no, tenfold, twentyfold.
Those Iron God bastards will have to look at me differently too. Khehe.
And so Rafina's plan — to raise a bandit coalition and swallow a whole kingdom — would collapse into nothing.
Life's a live match, kid.
Taste defeat and despair — and become the stepping-stone of my success!
...Or so it should have gone.
KRAAAGH!!
"They're over there! They showed up over th—"
"This way! Hold your spears steady and swing with your heads!"
Where in blazes are the scouts?! Do your one job and watch properly!
"What the hell is going on!!"
Why is everyone dying?! Do something, anything!
Shhk!
Thud!
Another knight was cut down by a dagger and slid from his horse.
Trained by the knight order, the warhorse lunged with animal instinct at the spot where the assassin had appeared — but she was long gone.
Her count was one.
On the way here, he'd picked up more intel: the woman called Rafina had founded a guild named Crazy Bitch.
According to players who could read the guild system, Crazy Bitch had exactly one member, with no additional recruits to speak of.
In other words—
AAAGH!
What in the...!
Everyone, stay calm!
This impossible carnage had a single author.
"I knew she was good, but this..."
"Mashi!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
At the summons of Roms — wounded, off in the distance — Mashimasitta closed the gap in a single stride.
He isn't going to kill me for botching this... right?
But contrary to his fears, Roms was only treating his wounds with his signature artifact, breathing hard through his teeth.
"Is it certain there is only one of them?"
"Yes! One assassin. Certain!"
"...A monster. What other information do you have on her?"
"Uh..."
What was there?
He'd relied entirely on the community, so honestly, he knew nothing.
It had barely been an hour or two since this Rafina woman started raising hell.
And treated as a demoted nobody, he hadn't gotten a shred of support from the guild, either.
"That she's a woman? And that she's terrifyingly cruel. A rabid bitch who kills everything in her path."
"I shall have to reevaluate your talents for gathering intelligence. Deeply disappointing."
"Excuse me?"
"Look there."
At Roms's gesture, Mashimasitta turned his head.
The knight who'd fallen from his horse earlier. Wondering why the man was pointing at a corpse, he looked — and only then understood what the horse meant.
Nnngh...
He's moving.
He didn't die.
And not just that knight.
Nngh!
AAAGH! My arm!
My leg...!
Every last one of them had been wounded too badly to rise properly — yet not a single man had died.
It was a world apart from how easily user necks had parted before.
"What is this..."
"She even attacked the horse to save a knight it was about to trample. And you know what's funnier?"
"...What?"
"She didn't kill the horse either."
???
What?
Is she even really a bandit? Killing players is fine, but NPCs and animals are off-limits? Is she a psychopath?
Or is she actually just a crazy bitch?
"...To receive mercy from a mere bandit. What a humiliation."
Thud!
Roms dismounted.
Drawing not a sword but a long spear of gleaming silver, he roared:
"I am Roms Zirnoa! Knight-Commander of the Kingdom of Kudas!"
……
"I ask no mercy from bandits! So show yourself — I shall fight you alone!"
"K-Knight-Commander Roms? Even so, it would be wiser to fight togeth—"
"Stay out of this. Your part in this affair is no small fault either."
I shall have to revise my assessment of you further, in due time.
"......"
"If you strike me down and kill me, the Kingdom of Kudas will never lay a hand on your rabble."
……
"But if you leave us alive and let us go, we will return to attack this place — dozens of times over, if that is what it takes."
……
"Until our very lives are spent."
With Roms's final words, a razor-sharp aura began to churn around him.
Merely standing in its reach gave the illusion that the air itself would slice open your skin.
Knights clutching their wounds swallowed hard, and Mashimasitta too swept his gaze nervously from side to side.
Krrrk...
The instant Roms gripped his spear hard enough to snap it—
"Not bad, actually."
The air warped, and she appeared.
Black hair and black eyes. A black assassin's garb.
A woman dressed head to toe in black.
So that's Rafina...
Barely any different from the photo he'd seen on the community.
Roms leveled his spear and glared at her.
"You are the leader of these bandits, then."
Now revealed, Rafina paid him no heed at first, surveying the field thick with the wounded.
At length, those dark eyes — deep wells of shadow — turned toward Roms.
"Would've been nicer if you'd left while I was letting you."
"A knight does not grovel for his life."
"Why go this far, though? Is this really a place worth gambling your life on?"
Doesn't look like it to me.
Rafina said that, and laughed.
Not quite mocking — more like the laughter had simply spilled out on its own.
Khff.
...Or maybe she's laughing just because she's a crazy bitch.
So thought Mashimasitta, hiding among the knights.
"A knight's duty is to guard the kingdom — and the people who live behind its walls."
Whoosh!
"You are a threat to that which we guard. What other answer do you need?"
"...Guarding. How fun."
Slide.
The black dagger in Rafina's hand breathed out a thick killing intent.
"But would that conviction hold right up to the moment of your death?"
"Naturally. My duty does not change."
"Turn around and leave, and I'll let you live. All the knights you have left, too."
But if you insist on fighting—
"You'll die for real. No resurrection. Forever."
"...I am prepared for that."
"Hm."
Shff.
"Very well, then."
Rafina dipped her head and lunged, blindingly fast.
The same speed as before — but this time, without her stealth, one could at least trace where she moved.
"...Kgh?!"
KRAANG─!!
Roms barely got his spear up in time to catch the dagger's charge and staggered backward.
The spearhaft sang — ziiing... — and Roms's face went utterly rigid.
Silence fell, and just as Roms gulped down air and reset his stance—
"...?"
"......Hm."
Instead of pressing the attack, Rafina had pulled far away, watching Roms with what looked unmistakably like dissatisfaction.
A trouble you could spot at a glance, even behind a mask.
"Why is that, I wonder."
"That... isn't a spear."
?