The Martial Unity

The dynamics of the Derschek Region shifted as a small chunk of the less committed assassins left the region and the Shadow Isles, unwilling to get tangled up by what was clearly a veteran Martial Senior assassin targeting them.

The supply of assassins was reduced by a little, increasing their scarcity and driving up the prices of the assassination services.

"We have already measured a nine-percent decrease in the number of commissioned assassinations per capita across all Realms across a ten-day time period." The professor exclaimed.

"That's good, but it will need to plummet much more than that," Rui remarked. "Still, considering that the median prices of assassinations across all Realms have experienced a slump after only five assassinations. It has given me a good picture of how entrenched the assassination industry is. Unfortunately, for my next targets, killing a single Martial Senior will not be nearly as effective as it was the first five times."

"What do you plan to do then?" Professor Carl asked.

"I eventually plan to take out the few Martial Seniors that have grouped together in a pair in hopes that that will deter me from killing any of them," Rui replied as his tone grew sharper.

"I will show them that they cannot deter me with such a trivial measure. If they want to hinder me, they'll need to huddle up like they're homeless on a freezing winter night."

"Isn't there a chance that one of the duo might be able to survive your assassination attempt and reveal the manner in which you kill your targets?" Professor Carl asked.

"It's impossible to kill both within the same assassination," Rui admitted. As much as he wanted to claim that such a thing was trivially easy for him, he would be dishonest in doing so. "However, I can definitely kill one of them."

you're saying that

anything about my assassination style for too much longer." Rui replied. "I'll take out as many individual Martial Seniors as I can, but once I reach the duos, the secret will

that affect

up is not going to save them. One of them will die, and the other may escape for a while,

Carl. "Because you're the youngest Martial Squire, your Martial Heart

"I am not an assassin. Despite my

narrowed. "...I'm at my strongest when I'm prepared for

had a predictive model on his opponent built from the get-go. He could massively outperform his usual strength and was truly

of that, his opponent was an assassin, someone who specialized in covertly

second surviving Martial Senior managed to pinpoint the

I succeed in assassinating one of the two that belong in a pair, and defeat the second one in head-on combat. They will understand that they cannot survive me without extreme measures." Rui calmly concluded. "Of course, in most cases, the second surviving member of a pair would rather

It was enough.

"So you've planned everything."

Isles and this is the best plan that I can think of. It's impractical to try and kill every assassin one by one. Scaring most of

and your operations. We have commissioned many Martial Seniors before. None have managed to make anything more than insignificant progress before leaving because they

smiled as the excited professor rattled