“Just as we expected, they are at it again. There are four of them, consisting of three brute fighters and one guild-farmer. They are definitely intent on killing us,” Jen said to Sam as they left the gates of the city.

Jen voiced the reasoning for their plan to Sam again, “If we continue dodging them it will only encourage them to strike at us when we are unprepared.”

“Agreed, we’ll lead them far out into the forest before losing them and then quickly return to the City,” Sam said coldly as he powered down their distraction charms to make it easier for the hired thugs to follow them.

Except for the Arc Guild, the other powerful adventuring guilds in the City didn’t give much thought to Sam and Jen after Director Loshen had checked them out and found them uninteresting. The leaders of the farmer’s guild, however, turned out to be a problem. Jen’s ability to locate and destroy the poison rods allowed many of the independent farmers to improve crop production, infuriating the farmer’s guild.

The farmer’s guild-leader had already ordered several of the local farmers beaten up and threatened the lives of their families. He also tried to have Sam and Jen killed on several occasions when they left the city to practice their skills or work on Sam’s gadgets in the forest.

Jen and Sam decided they were not going to sit passively and allow the problem to grow. Today was “go time” as Sam put it. After allowing the group to follow them far into the forest, Sam quickly powered up their forgetme charms, immediately losing their tail and racing back to the city gates.

At the City gates, Sam kept his forgetme charms powered up to avoid notice, while Jen used her Ninja skills to block all trace of any mana signatures they might send out. They might as well have been invisible while walking through the gates and crossing the city.

Jen pinged the location of the guild leader, and she knew he was in his office located in their guild hall. As they neared the farmer’s guild, Sam and Jen ghosted up to the roof of an adjacent building.

Jen had spent several weeks gathering intel on the farmer’s guild hall and the buildings surrounding it, just in case they had to pursue this course of action.

On the rooftop Sam pulled out and activated an enchanted silencing rod. Jen kept up her multi-focus, used one of her Ninja skills to block their mana signature, and used her psych skill to intercept any coms signals that might be relevant.

Sam pulled out his Winchester 308 rifle with a Nikon M-308 4-16x42mm riflescope. He took aim at the guild leader sitting next to the window where he worked, and without even a last question or comment to Jen, he pulled the trigger. The guild-leader’s head jerked backwards as his brains splattered across the room.

Jen had felt the need to say something to Sam before they assassinated the guild leader, but Sam’s death-like demeanor, had stilled her tongue. She now wanted to vomit all over the rooftop.

Jen and Sam left the city without a word. Once they located the thugs, Jen and Sam allowed the idiots to “find” them again, and then promptly led them back to the city gates using their superior agility to prevent any opportunity for the thugs to engage with them.

Now they had the guild’s own henchmen as alibis, and nobody would suspect them. Jen was sure from the intel she had gathered, that the guild members would start a blood-bath among themselves with opportunistic finger pointing, and they would be much too busy with their own power struggle to continue to bother them anymore.

Jen had taken lives before, and she had personally gathered intel on assassination targets before, but this cold surgical assassination was something different. She may not have pulled the trigger, but she was right next to Sam and was as directly responsible for taking the life of that dirt-bag guild leader as anyone. “I know he tried to kill us several times, but it just seemed dishonorable to kill a defenseless human.” Jen thought to herself.

Logically, she knew they could have made it a “fair” fight by killing the thugs, and then returning to the City to charge the guild hall and killing many “innocent” guild guards and killing everyone inside. Logically, she knew this would cause more death and possibly their own deaths, but she still “felt” like a murdering coward.

Jen knew Sam had performed several assassinations for the agency before meeting Kelly, and that Sam’s PTSD would cause him to sink into depression and regret when something would remind him too much of his past.

“Aren’t I doing the same thing right now, berating myself for being a coward?” Jen thought to herself. The image of the man’s head and brains exploding across the room was burned in her mind, and she could barely keep herself from throwing up as her mind replayed the image over and over again.