Inside a manor. Breakfast was being served.

A slim old man, Dyrk Redwald was calmly reading the paper of the last day when he heard rapid footsteps heading towards him. He lowered the journal and looked at his sweating butler.

“Well, tell me what happened this time. What did that degenerate destroy while I was asleep?” Asked Dyrk.

“It’s exactly about him that I am here, Sir.” Lucas, the butler said. He then continued: “The latest news put him in a fight with six A rank assassins. He won under three minutes. He then went to join the Assassins Guild. They are now selling his true identity. He is also still inside the guild about to be tested for the Shadow master title.”

“Is this true?” Dyrk’s face had darkened.

“Yes, sir.” Answered Lucas.

“Good. Get over there and buy me that report no matter what price those swindlers ask. Hurry up. Send Jones to alert the others of what you just told me and tell them all that there is a meeting this very morning.” Dyrk ordered.

Every interested party was trying to be first to get that intelligence report about Nilus. They could only buy it at the assassin guild. Before everybody started sharing the information and proved that it was indeed the same, there was no other way to acquire it than the fastest way possible from the source before knock offs started appearing in the streets.

No one who bought it was stupid enough to share it for free nor give away his advantage.

No one was also stupid enough to resell at a low price under the nose of the assassin guild.

Who else to believe than the assassin guild, who had the real information and was well known in the trade?

In less than thirty minutes, all the reports about Nilus Hornraven that were sold amounted to 800,000 gold coins. More than two times his current bounty as Silent owl. Each report was sold at 20,000 gold coins. Few could afford that, but the few concerned had already been notified and were still lining up.

Inside the arena.

Nilus and Stewart had decided to wait until the arena was a t full capacity because Jeffrey could not help but interfere. It wasn’t even his own branch but he was doing his utmost to help. The agreed fifteen minutes slowly became 45 minutes and then an hour.

“Now we can start.” Said Jeffrey who was happily rubbing his hands.

Nilus stood up and finally entered the stage followed by Stewart.

“When you start attacking, the three minutes will start. I trust that you had enough time to prepare yourself. It’s not going to be easy.” Stewart said.

“It is alright. Let’s start now.” Nilus said.

“No weapon?” Stewart asked.

“They get in the way for me.” Nilus said.

“I highly encourage you to take this fight seriously. It will be your only chance at earning your title.” Stewart confidently said.

“Take care of yourself. My body is my weapon.” Said Nilus as attacked.

He almost disappeared from where he was standing and planned on landing a right punch like he always did. He missed.

Stewart had seen him coming and effortlessly evaded to the right. He used this opportunity to land a blow on the liver and on the solar plexus. He did it almost instantly.

“His fighting is weird. Just from his first attack, I can tell that he is inexperienced and never learned how to fight even if he says that his body is his weapon. These two blows of mine will surely teach him a thing or two about leaving himself open. I assume that he is a body enhancement aura wielder. I hope he reached the third stage or else he might die on me.” Thought Stewart as his two blows landed and further backed away to let Nilus continue his stride.

Nilus only felt a little pain. He had wanted to stop after seeing his punch landing on nothing but air. It all happened too fast for him to protect himself. He turned around and did the same thing again. He wanted to understand how Stewart who did not have an inner vision of aura and souls like he did could evade him when he was too fast for even the eye to follow at such a close distance.

“Sigh …He is doing the same thing again.” thought Stewart as he played around with Nilus’s punches.

It was a simple process. He saw him coming and countered with a few fast blows before he let Nilus continue just like baiting a bull.

“He must have used aura crystals to further temper his body until he reached the fourth stage of body enhancement. Not bad for a noble kid. It weird though, his family cannot allow such a fast level up in their declining state.” Thought Stewart.

It remained the same for the first minute.

“His body is not a normal fourth stage. Instead of just giving him strength, he also got a weapon like body that almost never feels pain and is too resilient. He is like a weapon himself just like he said. Otherwise, there is no way he could feel nothing after taking simple blows from a seventh stage body enhancer like me. Now that I think about it, he has yet to use his aura. The rumors say it is green but that is the Silent owl. Nilus was found to have been born unable to use aura. Then how did it get fixed so easily? Was he turned into a creature of the dark? No, I would’ve found out when I investigated him. But even I found nothing at all and here we are. I am going to force him to reveal his aura and be sure once and for all.” Thought Stewart

In the second minute, both were seriously fighting, but it was a one-sided battle.

Nilus was trying his best to evade Stewart’s onslaught.

“Maybe I should close my eyes, they are useless for now. I’ll keep following his aura and soul undulations with my mind.” Nilus closed his eyes.

The fight became like the first minute but in reverse. It was now Nilus who evaded. But he still could not attack.

Stewart was puzzled as he saw Nilus closing his eyes. He continued to attack but soon realized that the fight was no longer in his favor. He was the strongest of the two but could not land a blow as much as he wanted to like before.

“How is he doing it?” Stewart asked himself.

Nilus had focused all his power around the fifteen by fifteen meters stage. His only opponent, Stewart ,appeared in slow motion in his mind as he predicted his every movement. He was not fast enough to land a decisive blow or any kind of blow. He came up with the idea of catching one of Stewart’s arms and then whip him on the floor with all his strength as long as it took to force Stewart to use his aura for protection.

He had to wait for the right moment.

After a session of exchanges, he proceeded with the plan.

He succeded in grasping Stewart’s attacking left arm and then used it to swing him on the floor. He never released him. He kept whipping him on the floor.

Stewart who was seeing stars was cursing himself for falling into such an obvious trap. Now, he was going to pay for his lack of vigilance. As he tried to endure the last thirty seconds, Nilus crazily swung him over and over until Stewart abdicated and released his aura to create an armor around himself.

When Nilus saw the aura being released, he let his opponent go and took a breather.

The crowd of assassins cheered. Some had started to leave after seeing the conclusion.

Nilus patiently stood in front of the angry Stewart. He had just forced an SS ranked assassin to use his aura against him.

The three minutes had just ended.

Stewart stood up while massing his left shoulder. Nilus could hear crackling sounds.

“It’s been a long time since someone beat me into such a sorry state. The only time it happens is when I spar with my superiors or peers and I use everything I got.” Stewart said. He continued: ” I will give you your S rank as well as the Shadow Master title. Come with me, I will give you your membership card upstairs.”

They slowly left the stage. As they reached the betting stall, they observed that the earlier clerk had called for reinforcements. From Jeffery’s happy face, it seemed that the house won most of the bets.

The clerk from before approached Nilus and gave him a black card with ‘A.G’ written in the middle in white and big letters. He said while looking at Stewart: “Sir, I took the liberty to craft a membership card for him and deposited all his earnings inside of it.”

“Good, that saves us all a lot of time.” Said Stewart.

The clerk then turned to Nilus and explained: “As you can see, nothing but the logo is written on this card. But we use a special technique to inscribe whatever we need to inscribe with aura. It is impossible to forge. I took the liberty to convert your aura weapons into gold. Your winnings total 270,000 gold coins. You already have a bank account here with us and it is the same at any assassin guild branch. We also are partners with every main bank in the country so you can use them to deposit and withdraw your money. It is free here but elsewhere it’ll cost you. If you accept assassination contracts and complete them, the reward money will be automatically deposited into your account. As a Shadow Master title holder, you have access to many of our services for free. There is banking like I just mentioned, Access to intelligence reports S rank and lower, a postal service and a storage service. You can also write a will and we can guarantee that all your money and belongings will be sent to your next of kin should your death be confirmed. We also have a shop at each branch that you can visit. No one out there can compete with our products that are tailor made for Assassins only. You can even become an employee if you want to and you will be protected. As long as you meet the qualifications you will be able to do the many jobs that the assassin guild offers.”

Nilus intently listened and said after thinking for a while: “Do you have a job that lets me travel as I wish in the country? If not, I plan on taking contracts that lead me outside the city for now.”

“Ahem…” Jeffrey jumped into the conversation: “If you survive the thousands of assassins waiting for you outside, come to my Hedgebourne city, I have a good job for you. It will be a good fit for you if you still like playing hero.”

“As long as the target ends up dead, I am okay with anything.” Nilus said before he left.

In a spacious luxurious room, 17 individuals all had gloomy looks as they each read a booklet with the Assassin guild logo in the background of each page.

“There is a noble family named Hornraven in the city? Never heard of them.” A young man said. He was the eldest son of the Leerstrom family. Jaden Leerstrom.

“No one here has dealings with them. They are a declining family just like mentioned in the report. It is normal that we do not know of them. ” Davis Leerstrom, his father said.

Dyrk was too impatient to sit down as he read the booklet for the tenth time while pacing around the room. He said to the rest: ”It doesn’t make sense. For them to kill our businesses like this. Even after five years of ransacking, they are still a declining noble family. Why would the eldest son go on a rampage and give everything back to the poor without leaving some for his own family? Is he mocking us? What is their goal? This is insane. That boy cost us all millions in revenues and we are still trying to get back up.”

“Dyrk, you’ve read the entire thing many times already. Why do you ignore that the boy was born a cripple and the fact that his own father tried to kill him the same way we did?” Deo Gullscream said.

Dyrk stopped walking and fixed Deo before he said: “Because of the facts you moron. Can a cripple kill his way into every underground facility we had and liberate the prisoners without being at least an S rank? All the aura crystal on site at the moment were given as compensation to the same prisoners who provided them. He did not care about anything else. That Nilus was probably an S rank three years ago. An 19 year old S rank in a declining family? Even our own kids cannot compare with such speed. We sent assassins after him and he killed them almost instantly like it was seen by hundreds of people today. As for his father, putting a measly 25,000 gold coin on his head, I bet my life it was to give the kid and the family an excuse to be free of all suspicion. If the kid leaves the city and never comes back because he is scared for his life, who will suspect a cripple that even the father wants killed to be the Silent Owl? It was all too perfect. Fortunately, their plans were thwarted by the assassins who’d been itching to get the reward we put on his head and they put him on the map before he got out of the city through the Assassin guild. Those swindlers at the Assassin guild have been keeping the intelligence report on Nilus for a while and saw that it was indeed a good time to sell it now and rack in as much profit as possible. Heck…even the test for that degenerate’s promotion was monetized.” Dyrk Redwald stopped for a moment and made sure he had the attention of everyone in the room before he said: “There are still questions that remain unanswered. Who is Edward Hornraven and what is his goal to send his son after us? What are we to do if the jinx survives all the assassins on his tail? ” Dyrk stopped talking as he felt a headache assailing him already.

John Helder, a two-meter giant said with a raspy voice: ”What if Edward Hornraven is of his Majesty’s secret services? It would explain a lot. The secret families never do anything but depend on the king in exchange for their services. They may appear mundane on the surface but bathe in so much wealth that even us nobles cannot compare.”

He had said what everyone was afraid of thinking.

“What do we do now? We are screwed. We even put a bounty on his son.” Jaden Leerstrom said.

Dyrk said:“We do not have to worry about anything. No one knows who those facilities belonged to. No one will know who put the bounty on the Silent Owl. It could be anybody but us. It is just unfortunate that it happened to us because we never did anything illegal. The king does whatever he wants because of that divine sword of his and now his aura and body will soon follow as they reach the divine stage while we keep supplying our hard-earned aura to him indefinitely. He knows about what we do and as long we do not kill anyone, it is okay. We need to keep that jinx away from us. Let’s raise his bounty if he survives today. As for whether they are a real declining family or a real secret family, we will never know and it is not our business to know. Let’s just keep watching them for a while and see what their next move is.”