“Grey! There’s news.” Grey turned around. They’d been scouring the area between Phurst and Xechond town for nearly two weeks now. They’d decided to take a quick break in Xechond town while Kel contacted Colonel Mariche and Grey asked around for information. Despite the surprising number of shady individuals in the town Grey had only managed to find a single lead: a necromancer named Phil. Grey had talked to him while the necromancer was three tankards into what looked like a long evening. Apparently, he had seen a body fall from the sky and then soul bound said corpse. The problem was that it was nowhere to be found and everyone else in the tavern insisted that Phil couldn’t animate a mouse, much less soul-bind a human. The corpse was nowhere to be found and there was little-to-no evidence it had ever existed in the first place. But Phil’s description matched the noob nearly exactly, plus or minus an arm, so they searched. After all, it would be Grey’s ass if they didn’t find it, and if the body had resurrected as a ghoul? Or an angry dead? Grey didn’t even want to think about it.

“What’s up Kel? Good news I hope.”

“Well it’s hard to say. Colonel Mariche said to head back for review and that the issue with the noob is no longer a priority.”

“What? Why?”

“I haven’t heard anything definite from the Colonel, but there were rumors of an above average foreigner being transported in so they might want us to move for back-up since one dead body doesn’t deserve this much manpower.”

“Damn. Alright I’ll head to Phurst town right away. How about you?”

“I received a few delivery quests for the regional towns so I’ll make a few pit stops on the way but I should see you there.”

“Alright. Good luck Kel.” Grey gave a stiff salute and began walking back the way he came. Kel cordially flipped him the bird before speeding out of town.

>------------

“MORNING, FEATHERS~!!”

“AUghughgu fukc…” I started at the loud shouting and as a result slammed my head into the bunk above mine. An agony I’ll be sure to return to Cat soon. Immediately, if possible.

“Hoh!” Cat leapt out of the way of the spiraling marble-sized fireball I flicked at him. “Ha ha ha up and at ‘em Little Bird it’s training time!” Cat hummed a little and waved me out of the door. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and pulled on the stiff, straw colored shirt and cloth pants the guild had given me.

“Oi, Cat! Wait up!” I pulled on my shoes and ran to see where Cat had gone. Looking around I didn’t see anyone in the now somewhat dim guild house. With a quiet pat, Cat’s fist tapped my shoulder.

“C’mon Little bird we can’t train here~” I glanced back at Cat then looked around at the empty area reminiscent of a cafeteria.

“Hmm, I’ve been wondering but where is everyone?” I asked as I trotted alongside Cat towards what I assumed was a training room.

“You probably won’t see anyone else during your time here~ Most of our members are either on extended missions or receive their missions by going to guild information points around Taron. The guild house is only used during important occasions or for strategy briefings involving really big missions. You’ll see eventually~” As he was explaining, Cat opened a sliding door to reveal a wide, open room covered in sections of hard and padded floor. “For now, just worry about leveling up your skills, and yourself.”

“How?” I queried, following Cat into the middle of the room.

“Easy~! First I’m going to beat you~” Cat smiled warmly while sharply pivoting his shoulders and sinking a fist into my stomach.

“Priiiiiiiiiiiiiick” I breathed out as the air was forcibly expelled from my lungs.

“Ahahah don’t fret little bird~ you have to get used to moving your body to be an effective assassin~” I shot him a simmering glare before rotating my own hips and throwing a hook into his side. With a few audible cracks he bounced a few feet before collapsing onto the mat that I was already face-down on.

“Cat…” I croaked, “did you hit me?” Cat, still lying on the mat, turned his face to me with a pained expression.

“Nope, feathers, you had a critical failure while punching and probably broke something. And I had a critical failure while dodging and dislocated my back, or hip, or something.” He groaned. “Fucking hell, feathers.” Ah. It was my new skill, aura of misfortune. I forgot to check my status plate. With another groan, and being careful not to move my hips, which were screaming in pain, I checked my status plate.

Origin

----Lvl 2----

Effects ::: Can return things back to the way they were once a day / Can revive user once a month / Can, with a 0.0125% chance, return acquired skills to their original form

Aura of Misfortune

Effects ::: Massively increases chance of catastrophic failure for any action in all combatants within a radius of ( -1 x user’s luck x 10) meters. Minimum of one.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” Cat asked, still groaning slightly. I told him what aura of misfortune did. “Holy shit. I can’t tell if it’s really good or really bad.”

“Same.” I grimaced. “Well for now let’s fix this.” I said while activating origin on myself. It worked flawlessly so I guess the ‘combatants’ part only refers to people who are actually fighting. Maybe that means assassination will work as long as I finish them before we’re considered ‘combatants’? I brought up the idea to Cat. He grinned while wincing.

“Only one way to find out~ Ouch! Also can you come over here and drag me to the nurse? I’m in pain.” I laughed a bit then did as he asked. Soon enough I heard faint screams coming from the medic’s office while I looked for something to eat. After eating I found Cat waiting in the training room. “Ah good you’re back. Meet Angela, our resident medic.” Cat said while gesturing to a tall, blonde woman wearing what looked like a military version of a white lab coat. She smiled and held out her hand.

“Jin.” I said taking it.

“Angela, nice to meet you. It seems you’ll be giving me a lot of work.” She chuckled with an evil glint in her eye.

“Ah yeah, sorry about that.”

“No no, no problem at all.” She said, smiling again. Here Cat clapped his hands and waved me over.

“Ok, feathers first thing we need to do is determine how far we can go with sparring before it counts as combat, otherwise I won’t be able to train you at all.”

“Won’t that end really badly?” I asked.

Cat smiled kindly before slamming his foot into my face.

“You used Origin on yourself instead of me, Little Bird~. You didn’t even hesitate, did you~? That wasn’t very gentlemanly was it~?” Cat asked my prone form with more and more ice in his voice.

“Ah.” I moaned into the floor. “So that’s why you introduced Angela.”

With that we started fighting once again, more than regularly stopping to get put back together by Angela. After a few hours we determined that combatants meant we had to be facing each other with the intent to fight, and a hit had to land. Though, evidenced by Cat’s leather armor, the hit could land on armor and it would still work. This meant that Cat could teach me assassination, sneaking, dodging, and that sort of thing but had no way to teach me what a real fight felt like. “Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, with that ability you’ll never get into a real fight. All of your fights will be either a win or lose with the first attack or a draw since you’ll both be incapacitated. Though I suppose if you had a partner you would be unstoppable.” The partner idea was something we had talked about for a bit in the middle of training. The idea was that I could fight anyone I wanted, no matter how strong, and we would both be incapacitated. In that scenario a partner could finish them off without it being counted as combat. The only issue with that idea is that I would have to survive getting hit which, against like a royal guard or a dragon, I absolutely would not. A very interesting thing we found, though, was that magic didn’t count as combat for some reason.

“Hey Cat, doesn’t that make me utterly defenseless against mages?” Is what I had asked when we found out, and his response was simply, “Yep, guess you have to kill them first huh~?” Yayyyy. So after figuring out my limitations, Cat made a training schedule for me. The things he decided I needed, were medical training, training to expand my mana pool, training with projectile weapons, training to become more sneaky, and basic thief training.

“This is what you need little bird,” Cat said while dropping onto his butt and wiping his forehead with a rag. “You can fight with magic, and both origin and enigma can work to make you the perfect infiltrator, but if you ever try melee combat both you and your opponent with be incapacitated basically immediately.”

Cat chucked a rag to me and pulled out a water skin.

“But that doesn’t make you immune to them either cause they might be able to bounce back after breaking something. Say you fight a werewolf, for instance. They can kill you with one hit and regenerate broken bones. You need to be able to either incapacitate them without hitting them yourself or escape. Also, if you get surrounded by people with bows or ranged magic tech, you can’t just stand there and wait for their stuff to fail ‘cause you won’t be considered a combatant. So you need skill in projectile weapons, and medical skill for when it fails.”

Not ‘if’, I noticed with grim humor. I considered for a moment while unclipping the practice armor I’d been wearing. So I would have to learn stealth, magic, and healing at the absolute minimum while also being proficient in some kind of ranged combat in case they have magic resistance.

“How long would that even take? Teaching me four different disciplines enough to be useful?” I wiped my forehead and looked over at Cat, who was unclipping his own practice armor.

“Well~ If we manage to combine a few of them we can probably do it in a year~?”

Cat drank some water while the armor fell to the floor. His cotton shirt, which looked way comfier than my tweed nonsense – the stingy prick- , was slick with sweat, and I could see it sticking to his…boobs?

“Your perfect fighting style is to rely on stealth and magic while ‘parrying’ ranged and melee attacks with your own then fixing whatever damage you take from the resulting failure.” What the fuck why does Cat have boobs? I mean, he (she?) is kinda pretty for a dude but I thought he was just one of those pretty boys you see in chick flicks?

“Honestly~? It’s gonna be hard, little bird.”

“So am I. Let’s do this.” I gave Cat a thumbs up. Cat laughed and flicked her hand at me.

“Angela! Quick~! Little Bird got a knife stuck in his head~!”

‘I will kill you someday, Cat.’ I thought before passing out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Focus, Feathers~!” Your mana is too weak to just brute force this! No! No! No! You have to be gentle~! You have the dexterity to do this so stop trying to just use your muscles! Why do you keep flexing~? If you’re trying to get the intimidate skill, you’ll have to be at least twice as bulky as that. Those scrawny arms won’t scare anyone~”

Dear Diary:

Cat was very mean to me. Angela fixes my limbs everyday but her healing magic doesn’t work on emotions. Ahhh how am I supposed to focus on fighting now that I know she doesn’t have a penis? Am I being unreasonable? Am I just projecting my need for emotional validation on the nearest accessible creature with two legs and boobs? No. No, it’s the world that’s wrong. I’m beautiful and everyone should love me.