Ken was busy trying to make the capital a proper city in which his approval was at least at 10%. He wasn’t even sure of how approval could be negative. Were dead people also not approving of him?

However, fussing over something like this was not useful, and so Ken continued his efforts of rebuilding Cayden’s capital.

In the Western continent, where land was small and all countries shared borders with each other, Alice had finally made her preparations.

Looking around, she pulled out the twin blades she had decided to use as her weapons, and nodded to her team members, who nodded back to her and began lighting the piled of leaved they had collected and drenched in poison on fire.

Since each of them had already taken the antidote, It would not affect them.

‘Spread the fire.’ Alice whispered to he squad who began the next step of the plan to spread the fire in all directions to make it seem like a real forest fire instead of something man-made.

Quickly, the wind picked up the fire and spread it over a large area, just as Alice had planned.

“Disperse quick, and stay hidden no matter what happens alright? If something happens to me, just retreat back to Leon, just keep going in that direction until you come across a village and find your way from there, and report everything to Leon. Got it?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Although they listened to their squad leader, there were by no means any feelings of loyalty strong enough that would make them sacrifice their lives for her.

With the orders given, Alice also backed away from the rapidly spreading fire, and waited for a while for the smoke to settle through the enemy camp. This did not take too much time, and Alice then tied a black cloth around her face and charged in.

Silently avoiding sticks and stones on the ground, Alice entered the base without alerting anyone, since most people were pre-occupied with the smoke.

The camp itself was actually a village that had been taken over by the Roland Kingdom’s army as a strategic location within Roland’s borders.

Using the clearly visible red markers, Alice cleverly avoided enemies and slowly made her way to the house with the battalion. The poisonous smoke would last for about 10 minutes in total, since once the leaves they had collected fully burnt up, only normal smoke from the trees would be left. However, that smoke would simply rise into the sky like a pillar instead of spreading in many directions like leaves.

This was the reason why Leon Kingdom used them as signals, since the smoke remained below the treeline, and travelled for kilometres while remaining there. The colour of the smoke would give them messages, and the direction it came from would give them the location of the soldiers that sent the message, without alerting the enemy of the friendly soldier’s locations.

Therefore, Alice only had as much time as the leaves she had collected lasted.

Now, she had around 7 minutes left, and time was running low.

However, she did not rush into the building and instead waited for a while until a soldier with keys came over to check on the prisoners and make sure they had not escaped, along with 4 other soldiers.

Alice simply waited in the shadows, her black clothes masked by darkness as she observed them and followed behind them.

They soon arrived at the first cell, where nearly 20 Leon soldiers were simply sitting dejectedly, with all hope lost.

However, they soon noticed Alice who was following behind the Rolandians, and almost reacted since they could recognise Rattling death, who was no longer rattling. Thankfully Alice’s quick and signals made them shut up and sit back down without reacting much.

‘I’ll be back’

Alice followed the Rolandian soldiers and they checked all the cells, and Alice had already memories which keys were used for which cell door. Now, all she needed was the keys themselves.

Waiting for the soldiers to let their guards down, Alice acted, picking off one enemy at a time while remaining in the shadows.

“Kkkukk”

Before the soldier she chose could react in any way, his head and neck had a dagger each, piercing completely through the skull and neck, before being dragged away, all in almost an instant.

Within a few instants, Alice had killed off a level 10 soldier as if it was nothing. This in fact did give her a tonne of exp since she was not even level 5 yet.

However, she did not stop there, and killed off each one of the soldiers one by one starting from the ones at the back and making her way to the leader of the group, and the one who had the keys.

*Thud* The leader’s corpse fell to the ground spewing blood, and Alice took this corpse and put it in the shadows of the lamps in the building.

This scene sent shivers through the spines of many of the people present here. The rattlesnake had grown past its rattling, becoming a far more deadly viper, hidden in plain sight under the cover of darkness, always poised for a deadly strike.

And so the rumour of Rattling Death transformed into the legend of the Silent Night.