How to Become a Hunter (2)
“Nanny, what’s the matter all of a sudden?”
As I abruptly bolted upright, warm water sloshed violently over the edge of the large bath. Holding Emilia close against her chest, Catherine blinked in utter bewilderment.
“Catherine.”
Stepping out of the water, I slipped into a clean nightgown and knotted two towels firmly together in my hands.
“I’ll be stepping out ahead of you.”
“Pardon? But Her Imperial Highness’s bath is nearly finished. Aren’t you going to wait so we can head back together?”
“Nature calls rather urgently, so I must leave first.”
Offering a flimsy excuse, I slipped out of the bathing hall. The moment I set foot outside the annex housing the bathhouse, the chill of murderous intent hanging in the night air grew noticeably sharper.
Two of them?
Judging by the subtle fluctuations in the air, there were two intruders. Both carried the unmistakable, disciplined stealth of seasoned assassins.
Perhaps this is for the best.
At first, having my rare, relaxing bath interrupted had put me in a thoroughly foul mood, but on second thought, it felt remarkably fortuitous.
Shall I test the waters?
In a sense, it was an ideal trial. I wanted to see what kind of results I could produce after relentlessly conditioning this frail vessel—not as the continental supreme assassin Kyla Angel, but within the mortal flesh of Rachel Brown.
With a light, soundless leap, I launched myself toward the uninvited guests prowling through the 3rd Prince’s Palace. I needed to resolve the matter cleanly before the head maid or the royal siblings caught wind of their presence.
“Did they say the mark is the Third Prince?”
“Yeah. Just a twelve-year-old kid.”
The masked men were clad from head to toe in night-black garments. Their identities were none other than the notorious Human Hunter Gilbert Brothers. Composed of the elder brother, Gil, and the younger, Bert, they had earned considerable infamy throughout the underworld for always hunting as a synchronized pair.
“Child’s play. Let’s wrap this up and get out.”
“Right.”
The pair scanned their surroundings with seasoned vigilance.
“Still, for an imperial palace, the security is laughable.”
“Tell me about it. One of us would’ve been more than enough to handle this.”
Casting disdainful glances across the desolate grounds of the 3rd Prince’s Palace, they scaled the exterior wall and silently slipped through an unlatched window. Without making a single breath of sound, they infiltrated the inner corridors.
Exchanging a quick glance, the brothers shared a curt nod. Bert, the younger brother, crept up the stairs first to secure the landing and scout the upper hallway.
Crrrack—
In that breathless instant, a sickening snap resonated through the pitch-black corridor. A heartbeat later, Bert, who had led the ascent, collapsed limply onto his side like a marionette whose strings had been severed.
“Wh-what the…!”
Watching his brother drop lifelessly before his very eyes, Gil’s pupils dilated in raw shock.
An escort knight? But the briefing swore there was no guard detail here!
His panic lasted only a split second. Instinct taking over, Gil drew his twin daggers without hesitation.
Hmph! Knight or not, the darkness belongs to me. Now that he’s given away his presence, that bastard is dead—
Yet something felt dreadfully wrong. The presence he had distinctly pinpointed just beyond the corner of the corridor vanished into thin air without a whisper.
“How in the—ghk!”
Just as Gil stood half-dazed by the impossible disappearance, a thick, white linen towel looped tightly around his nose and mouth, constricting with ruthless leverage. A faint, lukewarm breath brushed against the nape of his neck.
“Sending two whole rats. Your master must have gold rotting in their vaults.”
The voice was chillingly low, coiling around his spine like a venomous viper slithering over bare skin. Gil froze dead in his tracks. The creature pinning him from behind was no righteous imperial knight.
They’re one of my own kind!
Worse, their caliber far exceeded his own. He hadn’t sensed a single breath or shift in the air until he had completely surrendered his blind spot.
They were definitely past that wall just a moment ago…
When had they circled behind him? Cold sweat beaded across Gil’s forehead as his eyes darted frantically in the dark. A soft, mocking chuckle grazed his ear.
“Speak. Who sent you?”
Gagged by the twisted cloth, Gil thrashed violently, driving his elbows backward.
“Unwilling to talk, I see.”
“Grrrgh—!”
The effortless, suffocating composure in that voice drove Gil into a blind fury. As he gathered every shred of strength to wrench himself free, his captor unexpectedly clicked her tongue and released him, gliding back a step.
“Tsk.”
“Damn you!”
The hallway was shrouded in total darkness, rendering the assailant’s features impossible to make out.
“How dare you lay a hand on my brother…!”
Gil knit his brow. The silhouette barely outlined against the faint shadows was surprisingly slender and diminutive.
“Your brother?”
“You bastard! I’ll make you regret ever crossing us—!”
“Don’t tell me… are you the Human Hunter brothers?”
Crazy bastard, how did they see through us so easily? Masking his inner turmoil, Gil bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.
“Ha! If you know our name, then you must be someone with a reputation of your own—”
“I wonder about that. Though I wouldn't call you an ‘us’ anymore.”
A thick vein bulged against Gil’s temple at the cold taunt.
“Die!”
He lunged with terrifying ferocity, driving his dagger in a lethal arc. Yet his opponent leaned back with uncanny leisure, evading the blade by a hair's breadth. It felt as though his steel had merely cleaved empty air.
“Damn it! Damn it all!”
He had never anticipated running into a monster of this caliber. The broker had explicitly guaranteed this was a harmless, simple assassination—so why was someone like this lurking in the shadows?
Where the hell did this bastard crawl out from? Who hired them?
With every strike that sliced through nothingness, Gil’s face drained into an ashen pallor.
“What an utter bore. You fools aren’t even worth a proper warm-up.”
“Wh-what did you say?”
The figure, who had spent the entire skirmish gracefully drifting out of reach, suddenly halted in place.
“Hey. Do you know what the most fundamental qualification of a true hunter is?”
A soft sneer drifted from the veiled shadows.
“Erasing your presence so thoroughly that the prey never realizes you exist until teeth pierce their throat.”
The moment the words ceased, the figure’s presence dissolved into thin air—as though she had never existed in the room at all.
“Son of a—”
Gil had lived as an assassin prowling the dark for over twenty years. Yet never in his entire life had the shadows terrified him as profoundly as they did right now. Gripped by bone-deep dread, he mustered every ounce of strength in his legs, desperate to throw himself out the open window.
“The instant you let me sense you, your life was already forfeit.”
Crrrack—
He didn’t even have time to scream. Gil crashed face-first onto the wooden floorboards, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, meeting the exact same fate as his younger brother.
The figure bent down without a word, retrieving the damp towel from the floor. A silver sliver of moonlight filtering through the window pane caught the side of her face.
“Tsk.”
The Third Prince’s nanny, Rachel Brown. Her emerald eyes gleamed with a murky, lethal indifference.
“They had quite the notorious reputation, so I actually got my hopes up.”
The Human Hunter brothers were killers Rachel remembered well from her past life. They had briefly drifted through the ranks of Breath of the Angel years ago, only to break away to peddle their freelance violence, infamous for their bitter hostility toward the guild.
“Hmm, let’s see what we have here.”
Rachel crouched and rifled through the dead men’s waistbands. Aside from custom daggers and assorted throwing spikes, she fished out five heavy gold coins.
“Well, at least these fools managed to cover the cost of their own trouble.”
It was an unexpectedly tidy sum. Rachel tossed a gold coin into the air, caught it with a deft flick of her wrist, and tucked it deep into the inner pocket of her nightgown.
“Now then.”
Tossing her still-damp hair over one shoulder, she tilted her head in thought.
“How should I dispose of the trash?”
A peaceful morning dawned, no different from any other day. Noting the empty seat beside him at the breakfast table, Edwin furrowed his brows.
“Catherine, where is Rachel?”
“Ah, the nanny?”
Catherine replied pleasantly while carefully ladling warm stew into Emilia’s porcelain bowl.
“She headed out at the crack of dawn to assist the gardener with his vegetable patch.”
“The vegetable patch?”
“Yes. She said something about going to spread fertilizer.”
Edwin brought to mind the secluded garden plot tucked behind his master’s cabin. Spreading fertilizer out of the blue, in a field overgrown with a tangled chaos of medicinal herbs and lethal poisons?
The young prince’s brow furrowed even deeper.
“Why would Rachel do that? Master usually handles all the fieldwork himself.”
“Well, the gardener is quite advanced in years, so heavy physical labor must be difficult for him. And since he strictly forbids any other maids from stepping foot near his cabin, there isn’t anyone else who can lend a hand.”
“Mmm.”
It had been Rachel who initially suggested restricting the domestic staff from approaching the cabin—a calculated measure to ensure no one discovered that the eccentric gardener Sage was actually the continent’s Great Sage.
Still, fertilizer of all things?
Why was his eccentric master dragging someone else’s nanny out into the dirt for such grimy chores? Pouting slightly, Edwin repeatedly prodded a slice of roasted meat with his fork.
“Oh, Your Highness, how was the reception to the refreshments this time?”
“Ah.”
Catherine still made regular visits to the Gloria Knights’ training grounds, bearing baskets filled with freshly baked pastries. Perhaps thanks to those deliveries, she had practically achieved the status of a living saint among the Third Division Knights.
“Everyone was thrilled.”
“Oh my, truly?”
“Yes. They said that because you look like an angel, the treats you make taste like heaven itself.”
“Good heavens, what shameless flattery! Still, they certainly have an eye for quality!”
Catherine let out a bright, delighted giggle.
“Ung? Cathy is an angel?”
Busily wielding her small silver spoon, Emilia tilted her head, a drop of broth adorning her chubby cheek.
“Cathy isn’t a human?”
“Oh my, Your Imperial Highness, what a tease! Of course I am human. Though I suppose it’s only natural one might occasionally mistake me for an angel, isn’t it?”
Catherine offered a shamelessly smug grin as she leaned down to dab Emilia’s chin with a napkin.
“Regardless, it truly is a pity. I have already set my heart on someone, you see. I couldn’t possibly entertain the affections of all those other knights.”
Edwin’s eyes rounded in surprise at her unexpected declaration.
“What? Someone you’ve set your heart on?”
“Your Highness, did you truly think I packed baskets brimming with treats to storm the knight order every other day for no reason?”
“…Weren’t you coming to cheer me on?”
“Ah, well, of course it started out purely to support Your Highness!”
Catherine clasped her cheeks in both hands, her pale face instantly flushing bright red like a ripe radish.
“Down the line, it became killing two birds with one stone—catching the pheasant and harvesting its eggs, gazing at my beloved while plucking mulberry leaves, that sort of thing!”
Edwin stared at her with a thoroughly skeptical squint.
“So you mean to say there’s someone in the knight order you fancy?”
“Yes! From the very first moment we met, intuition struck me like lightning: That man belongs to me!”
Just who on earth bestows that kind of intuition?
Chewing thoughtfully on his sliced meat, Edwin asked:
“And who might that be?”
Covering her lips with one slender hand, Catherine let out a sly, conspiratorial chuckle.
“Hehe, as for who it is…”
Leaning down to the prince’s ear, she whispered a single name.
“Whaaaaat?!”
Edwin recoiled in sheer disbelief, his chair scraping back against the parquet floor.
For the name that had tumbled from the head maid’s lips belonged to a knight the prince knew entirely too well.