For close to four weeks, Asher felt like his time had been wasted. It wasn’t a complete waste since he was able to just explore the city and live a fairly normal life. He’d spent his second day picking pockets in order to save up enough money to have a roof over his head, the thought of sleeping on the streets didn’t really seem appealing to him. Once again Bartholomew came to the rescue with his housing issue. The man had a couple of rooms for rent in his tavern, and he was charging a silver a night. Asher couldn’t really fault the man, the building’s main function was that of a tavern. The silver a night gave him a room and bed which were the only necessities that needed to be met.

He may have gone a bit overboard though because as he looked at his inventory menu:

Platinum: 0

Gold: 203

Silver: 430

Copper: 0

After his stealing spree, he’d noticed that security near the business district had tightened. There were guards in eyeshot in almost every direction. He decided after that… that he probably shouldn’t steal for the duration of his assignment. Plus he didn’t really need to, he wasn’t some kind of kleptomaniac or anything. He could’ve pocketed all the copper pieces as well, but he just opted into leaving piles of the coins in different parts of the slums. At this point, everything he was doing was in terms of silver and gold, so those were the coins he kept. Plus, he was positive some poor soul would love to randomly find a pile of money.

Between surveillance, exploring the food stalls, and hanging out with Bartholomew, Asher’s time flew by. He did have to admit that keeping his eyes on Dominick was the most tiring part of his days and nights. The man frankly didn’t have an interesting schedule. Get up, eat, party, women, eat, drink, and just generally walk around like an arrogant asshole. He didn’t know if the man was always like this or if having his security detail had emboldened him to act in his true nature. Either way, Asher had more fun doing literally anything else. It was in this same situation of boredom that Asher had found himself, sitting on a roof eating a kebab while staring at another man who was enjoying himself with the company of a woman in the privacy of his home. Asher didn’t really try to watch this when it happened, he was more decent than that, but once the man made any movements outside of the bedroom, it was game on.

In Asher’s travels throughout the city he’d made a couple purchases. For starters he needed a way to disguise himself and hide his identity. All distinguishing features had to be taken care of, most notably, his face and hair. He’d decided to solve this issue by buying a black hooded cloak. He’d also found a costume shop that sold masks and ended up buying a plain white mannequin mask that only had eye slits. Hide identity? Check. He wasn’t worried about hiding his body, because the accelerated aging was already doing that on its own. He’d been in training for roughly more than half a year and he now had the appearance of a ten year old.

It was nearing the end of his allotted time in the city and all the boxes had been checked off.

Surveillance and intelligence gathering? Check.

Hide identity in case someone spotted him in the act? Check.

Get money to live? Check.

Try out great food? Double check.

Tonight was the night. Dominick would cross the threshold from the land of the living into that of the dead and it would be at Asher's hands. Asher didn’t have any real personal issue with the man, but he’d been given a job and he never really slacked off when it came to work. It did help that the guy just seemed like a total sleezeball who was the embodiment of lust and greed.

As he stared near the bedroom, he’d noticed some movement. A few moments later he saw a couple of women exiting the home giggling and gossiping with each other as they put some money in their respective coin purses. Tonight was the night.

In the weeks he’d been watching Dominick, he noticed one glaring issue with the man’s security. While ten guards were nothing to scoff at, they never posted a security detail inside of Dominick’s residence at night. They remained nearby, but the fact that they weren’t readily in the residence rendered their number advantage to zero. The skirmish would be one on one for as long as he kept the man from alerting guards. Asher had no intention of fighting anyone other than Dominick, the man wouldn’t get a chance to scream.

Dominick had been living like a king. He’d been spending nearly every night with a different woman, he did invite his favorites back though. Sometimes he’d have multiple lady friends over so that they could enjoy each other's company. It didn’t matter to him if he had to incentivize the women with money, he had plenty of it to spare for the time being. The guards did an excellent job of minding their own business while still being on point and at the ready should the time come for it.

He had just finished a few rounds with a couple of his lady friends before finally sending them off. He was a tad bit exhausted and wiping the sweat off himself as he heard the women exiting the house.

“Another good night,” he said with a slimy grin etched onto his face. “Man, I love this!”

As he was wiping himself off he felt like he was being watched and out of the corner of his eye, it seemed like a shadow in the room moved a bit.

Asher peered into the room, seeing a shadow dancing in the corner of it. He used ‘Shadow Step’ and felt as his body reduced it’s presence. He felt the shadows envelop him as he moved forward, suddenly appearing in the room watching the man towel himself off.

Skill: Shadow Step

Use stamina to quickly cover distances in a single step. The amount of stamina used is affected by the distance traveled. Shadow Step is limited to eyesight. This skill can be used to phase through solid objects using this skill. A shadow MUST be present in order to “step” into it.

The man didn’t seem to notice Asher, he glanced over for a brief moment before going back to wiping his head off. Asher was surprised when he saw two notification menus pop up in his view, he quickly acknowledged them.

— Skill Learned! —

Skill: Sneak Attack

“The most dangerous attack is the one that they never saw coming.”

The user of this skill deals extra damage when it hits a target with a weapon attack from stealth, when the target is near an ally of the skill user, or if the target is distracted and doesn’t notice the skill user.

— Skill Learned! —

Skill: Assassinate

“Strike first, strike hard.”

The user of this skill has an increased chance of landing attacks against any creature, so long as the skill user is the first to attack. Any hit the skill user lands against a surprised creature is a critical hit, dealing devastating amounts of damage.

Asher summoned the shortbow from his inventory and quickly took aim at the man. He felt the inherent urge to use the newly acquired skills. This man had no clue Asher was there with him, and Asher knew it. “Fuck it might as well try them both out..” Asher thought to himself.

He activated both of the skills and let his arrow fly.

The fact that the man’s arms were up as he toweled off his head didn’t help him as the arrow flew beneath his elbow, through his ribs and hitting him squarely in his heart. The man’s lung was ravaged by the arrow, as he simply slumped forward and fell onto the floor.

“That’s it?” Asher thought to himself. With everything he’d heard, with how much this job had been hyped up, Asher couldn’t help but feel one thing. Disappointment. He thought there would be some kind of fight, some sort of skirmish, where all the plans got thrown out the window and he’d have to race against the clock trying to finish Dominick off before the guards came. None of that happened, everything went smoothly as he looked at Dominick laying in a growing puddle of his own blood.

The man let out a muffled groan as Asher walked over. He must have heard the soft footsteps because he turned his head weakly to face his assassin.

“Y-Y-You..” he sputtered out.

“It’s nothing personal, just a job that had to be done.” Asher said softly as the man’s head fell limp. He was dead, the blood spreading out across the floor. Asher was lost in thought for a moment because the request specifically said to bring a token back as proof of completion. Asher still didn’t know how to read and he had no clue what an identifying document would look like, it isn’t like there were social security cards in this world. As he thought about what to do, he looked down and saw the man’s hand with the serpent tattooed on it.

“Go in there and check on em.” One guard said to another.

“Yeah he’s usually a loud asshole at this time of night, it’s weird for things to be this calm.” Another guard agreed.

“Fine..” a third guard said as they walked towards the house. The house was unusually quiet, typically around this time of night the man known as Dominick Black would be halfway towards being drunk with a couple of women from the brothel. The women had left, but still, the man typically drank and partied every night. Laughing throughout the night, bragging about what he’d done to The Syndicate to the guards, and generally just being a pain in the ass. The guard opened up the door and walked in.

“Dominick, Dominick Black you okay in here?!” The guard yelled out. “You’re being unusually quiet, it’s not like you to–” his sentence was cut off as something landed on his head. He reached up to where the thing had landed and when he pulled his hand away, he saw that it was stained with blood. He quickly ran up the stairs and found the man laying in a puddle of his own blood, lifeless. His left hand had been severed and was missing. The guard quickly looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was no sign of a struggle, not a single noise had been made, none of the guards heard or saw anything. It couldn’t have been the women since they’d been searched before and after exiting the home. They’d even heard and seen Dominick moving about in the residence up until a little while ago. The only trace that anyone had ever been in the room was a small set of bloody footprints that abruptly stopped near the window of the room. The guard began yelling as he ran down the stairs and out of the house.

“He’s dead! He’s fucking dead! They got to him!”

“What do you mean he’s dead, we’ve been here the entire time!” one guard said.

“I mean, he’s dead. What you wanna go check on him, think I made a mistake or something?!”

“Shut up! Both of you! Raise the damn alarm and spread out, we need to catch whoever did it!”

Asher was halfway through the slums when he heard the horns blowing in the distance. Looks like his deed didn’t go unnoticed, but it didn’t matter. There was so much distance between him and Dominick Black’s corpse that they’d probably detain hundreds of other people in the area before even considering the idea of fanning out into the rest of the city. It also helped that Asher seemed to be able to store almost anything in his inventory space, as he saw ‘Dominick Black’s Severed Hand’ occupy one of his bag’s slots. He’d have to explore the extent of his inventory space’s storage abilities at a later time.

He turned down an alleyway only to find himself staring at an unfamiliar figure.

“Hello, boy.” The man said in a deep, guttural voice, dripping with killing intent.