A Loyal Parasite Named Whitey
"Kghhk! I'll kill you! I swear I'll kill you!!"
I nodded as I watched Raven gasp for breath.
There's real potential in him, no doubt about it.
The Servant Worm was a parasite latched onto the heart. Worse, its venom sharpened every nerve in the body. The pain must have been considerable, and yet Raven had endured it.
A cold glint flashed. Even through all of that, Raven had driven a dagger toward me.
Truly a man destined to become the King of Assassins.
I didn't bother to block the dagger. As expected, it stopped just short of my throat.
"Let's say you're right."
Raven glared at me with bloodshot eyes.
"Even so, all that would change is the master of my Servant Worm, wouldn't it?"
"That's right."
"Then why should I take such a risk just to change masters of some worm?"
A fair question. Since it didn't erase the worm, merely opening up one's chest to swap owners sounded like a terrible bargain.
"Do you know where the Poison King is?"
At my question, I could see Raven's jaw clench tight.
Naturally, he wouldn't. The Poison King was a wretched creature who didn't trust even his own flesh and blood. Even the executives of Full Moon didn't know his whereabouts—there was no way Raven would.
"I'll be at Elysium Academy. Rather than a Poison King you can't even locate, I'm the better option, aren't I?"
I said this while pointing at the piss-poor blue shirt I was wearing.
In an instant, life sparked back into Raven's eyes. But, befitting a wily assassin, he didn't come over right away.
"In the end, it'd be useless as long as the restrictions are in place, wouldn't it?"
"The restrictions are the Poison King's power. All I can do is issue a 'come' or a 'stay,' at best."
"...And what if you approached me targeting my heart?"
"Why would I?"
"Why would you, you say—"
Raven slowly lowered his gaze. He found the guard baton leveled at his own throat, and his eyes wavered.
"So. Are you going to do it or not?"
Instead of answering, Raven spun the dagger he'd been holding toward me in a full rotation—straight into his own chest.
The spray of red blood splashed across my face. Raven himself stared at me, expressionless. He seemed to want to seize the psychological upper hand, but—
"Oh dear, I hadn't mixed the batch yet, and you've already split open. This will take a moment, so hold it closed."
When I gave the glass bottle a light shake, Raven's eyes trembled.
Smiling, I bit into my thumb. The blood that dripped from its tip mixed into the honey inside the bottle, turning it a strange, uncanny hue.
The moment I pressed the bottle against Raven's split chest, the reaction was immediate.
With a horrid, wet schlorp, the flesh inside tore apart, and from the fissure wriggled a worm as thick as my thumb.
The Servant Worm.
It looked like a white earthworm, but its head was lined with a ring of grotesque teeth.
"Cuter than I expected."
"Just... hurry up?"
As I admired the worm, Raven urged me on in a strained, choked voice. For Raven to react this much, the pain had to be severe.
"Still, it's your companion worm. Shouldn't I give it a proper name?"
"What the—"
Raven glared at me with eyes brimming with murderous intent. If looks could kill, I'd have died a hundred times over.
Sadly, one cannot kill with a glance.
"Hmm, what would be a good name? Rang-y? Or maybe Jangsung, for a long life?"
As I moved the bottle, the white worm followed it.
Each time it did, a gruesome sound erupted from inside his chest, and Raven's body twisted. His mouth gaped wide open, and from between his teeth came the sound of bones grinding. The agony must have been unbearable, yet still Raven refused to scream.
It stirred a needless stubbornness in me.
"Anything's fine—"
"No, we can't just call it 'anything.' This is a companion worm you'll keep for life. They say a name shapes the one who bears it, you know. Since it's white, how about Whitey? That works nicely."
Raven was even more viciously tough than I'd imagined. His whole body was contorting and tearing itself apart, and he still hadn't made a sound.
Though, of course, it was pointless.
"Whitey it is, then. Whitey, dinner time."
The worm slammed its head into the glass bottle. Glug, glug—it ate heartily.
Having drained the bottle in moments, the worm turned to look at me. It was a fairly horrifying sight, but somehow endearing all the same.
Soon the worm burrowed back inside. The problem was that the well-fed creature had grown noticeably bigger than before.
Schlorp, schlorp—the horrible sounds erupted one after another—
And finally, Raven could bear it no longer and screamed.
"Keeeeeagh!"
A shrill cry, utterly unlike the stoic weight he'd been carrying just moments before.
"So it wasn't Whitey after all—it was Stinger."
I chuckled and traced the sign of the holy cross. Divine power surged up strongly.
Reciting a prayer for the first time in ages, a blaze of pure white light flared to life.
At the sight of it, a faint hope rose in Raven's eyes. He looked like a man beholding a saint.
Among the effects of divine power was anesthesia, meant to prevent death from shock due to pain.
Unfortunately, I was no ordained priest. I was a Battle Priest, built for one purpose and one purpose only: combat.
Anesthesia dulls the senses, so the divine power of a Battle Priest carries no anesthetic effect whatsoever.
Well, he'd manage.
He was destined to be the King of Assassins, after all.
"This is going to sting a little."
Having given my courteous warning, I pressed my hand, laden with pure white light, against Raven's chest. As the light settled, his splayed-open chest knitted shut at remarkable speed.
It was a truly miraculous rate of recovery—and yet Raven's mouth fell open even wider.
He fought the scream with everything he had. What a stubborn, vicious creature he was.
And so time passed—how much, I couldn't say—
until Raven suddenly went still.
"Did he die?"
I nudged him with my foot, but Raven didn't stir in the slightest. Looking closer, he wasn't even breathing. He genuinely appeared dead.
The moment I reached out a hand toward him, a silver gleam flashed cold. A dagger was aimed at my throat.
The pain had ended mere seconds ago—and he was already going for my neck.
Truly a sinister creature.
Excellent.
It meant he had exactly that much talent for assassination.
Quite satisfied, I adjusted my grip on the guard baton.
Raven's mouth twisted at the corner as he looked at the man before him.
The Servant Worm was a vicious parasite. Under the Poison King, merely harboring a disloyal thought had felt like his heart would burst—yet now, here he was driving a dagger at this man, and nothing happened.
Maybe the ratio of blood in the mixture really had been kept low, as the man said. Or maybe the man simply couldn't control the worm properly.
He couldn't know the reason. But it was an opportunity.
Die.
Without a flicker of hesitation, Raven thrust the dagger. Simultaneously, he spat the poison needle hidden in his mouth, and without stopping there, he drove his heel toward the man's thigh—a slender, venom-coated blade springing from the tip of his shoe.
Three attacks, unleashed at once.
It was a secret technique that had never once been stopped, and so Raven was certain of victory.
Then, the man's guard baton moved.
And its movement was smooth to the point of being uncanny.
The baton deflected the dagger. No—it looked almost as if the dagger had impaled itself on the baton. The baton didn't stop; it flowed. The poison needle was blocked, and the foot driving for the thigh met the baton's tip dead on.
All of it so natural that it seemed self-evident, as if it could have gone no other way.
He read my every attack completely.
The instant Raven looked up at the man in astonishment, the baton cracked against his skull.
Thud! The impact felt like a hammer blow, and Raven lost his balance for an instant. He scrambled to recover his stance, bracing for a follow-up strike.
But the man didn't attack.
"Cheap tricks like that only work on children."
A technique never once stopped in his entire life—and he called it a cheap trick.
Raven's blood boiled, but the man had deflected it all so effortlessly that there was nothing to argue.
"What kind of assassin attacks head-on? An assassin skulks in the shadows and goes for the back of the neck. Now, again."
The man waved the baton lazily.
Again?
The arrogance was almost comical.
Raven forced down his surging anger. Anger did nothing but poison him.
The man was right about one thing: Raven was an assassin. He was most dangerous not from the front, but when striking from behind.
The lamp in the room went out. Darkness flooded the space, and Raven melted into it.
The man remained exactly where he was, unmoving.
Poison needles didn't work on this man. Better to focus on the dagger.
Having made his judgment, Raven carefully read the man's breathing. And just as the man inhaled, Raven moved.
No footfalls. No breath. Raven drove his dagger into the back of the man's skull.
A perfect assassination. No time to react—
Then pain bloomed in his abdomen. The guard baton was buried in Raven's stomach.
How?
Not a single sound had been made. It was a flawless assassination—how had he reacted—
"I told you to go for the back, and you actually go for the back? More naive than you look."
At the man's words, Raven bit his lip until it nearly split.
"Still, you were somewhat better than before. Now, again."
The man waved the baton lazily once more.
Raven felt something was off about all this, but he didn't dwell on it. Kill the man, and he'd win his freedom. So all he had to do was kill the man—simple.
...No. It was not simple at all.
He threw himself at the man again and again, and he couldn't so much as ruffle a single hair on the man's head.
And what made it worse—
"Your shoulder telegraphs every thrust. It's practically announcing the trajectory. Twist your shoulder."
"Why only the rear? Do you have some particular taste for it?"
"Your heartbeat is far too loud. Quiet it down."
Every failure was met with the man's corrections.
The man blocked each of Raven's moves and fixed them one by one, like a private tutor giving lessons.
And so Raven arrived at a single conclusion.
I cannot win.
Raven's dagger came to a halt.
"Done already? Well, I suppose the space is rather cramped. With more room to work with, you'd do better than this."
The man clicked his tongue lightly. He looked for all the world as if he were actually looking forward to being assassinated.
"...Why?"
At Raven's question, the man's mouth curled up. A dry smile.
"A healthy dose of tension is good for the circulation."
Raven was one of Full Moon's most promising assassins.
And this man spoke of "a healthy dose of tension."
It was an absurd reason. The real problem was that he hadn't sounded like he was joking at all.
Raven had found the man harder to deal with than the Poison King himself.
That can't be right.
Raven forced himself to shake his head. There was no way that man in a guard uniform could be stronger than the Poison King, master of Full Moon.
It was simply that the space was too small.
The essence of assassination lay in the impossibility of knowing when or where the strike would come. In a confined space like this, it lost its efficiency.
Just then, the man looked down at Raven and spoke.
"Every time you carry out one of my orders, I'll give you an Assassination Coupon."
An Assassination Coupon?
At the bizarre term, Raven's brow furrowed.
"And if you attempt an assassination without a coupon, Whitey gets fed."
Feeding Whitey!
Raven shuddered involuntarily.
The agony he'd just endured had been beyond description. Go through that even once more, and he might truly die.
First, then, I'll collect these Assassination Coupons. The foundation of assassination is knowing your target.
This was not cowardice. It was the cold, rational judgment befitting an assassin.
"Now, I'll issue your first order."
At the man's calm voice, Raven dropped to one knee.
This was a man who toyed with Raven like a child, who knew the secrets of the Servant Worm—and the problem was that Raven had no idea who he actually was.
A commission always carried intent. Trace a commission backward, and the client's identity would naturally come to light.
"Your first order is to clean the third-floor bathrooms."
...Nothing. He could deduce absolutely nothing.