The Martial Unity

The air was tense. Rui heaved a deep sigh as he narrowed his eyes, focusing. He was on a rooftop in the Verkens Kingdom, about sixteen kilometers away from his target; Sam Sevian.

It had taken some time and a member of the Beggar's Sect, feigning as a street musician, but he had grown certain of the man's innate resonance frequencies, while also having developed a predictive model of the man over time.

He had everything he needed.

Now, all he needed was the earliest opportunity when Senior Sam left the Shadow Isles and headed towards the Derschek Region to complete the latest commission that he had undertaken from a relative of King Verkens.

As time passed, Rui grew increasingly sharp.

It wasn't long before the moment had arrived. Rui heaved a deep sigh before activating his Martial Heart.

BADUMP!

Instantly, all of his senses peaked to the maximum as they received active empowerment from the Martial Heart. Streaks of glowing red lines emerged from his head spreading across his flesh as he resembled a mountain laden with streams of lava, ready to erupt at any moment.

He focused his senses on his target as he activated the Void Pathfinder technique

THWOOM THWOOM THWOOM

Rui fired three Mighty Roar Flash Blasts of three different frequencies and speeds that flashed across the air, crossing the distance in less than two seconds.

It was nigh instantaneous, yet from his perspective, it took forever. He waited incredibly long to watch his attacks cross a huge distance. He didn't want to deactivate his Martial Heart since he needed it to make a quick getaway if he did get caught.

Thankfully, he didn't need it after all. The attack hit true and center, smoothly passing through his skull before his eyes rolled backward and his body went limp, falling over.

THUD

The corpse of the Martial Senior collapsed.

Rui grinned with jubilation as he witnessed his first successful assassination with Death's Sympathy. As much as he wanted to celebrate, he knew that he needed to get out of here without being identified.

Thankfully, the man's body was only discovered after Rui left the kingdom, eventually reaching the Beggar's Sect before proudly declaring the first operation complete.

Yet it appeared that the professor was already aware of his success.

"Remarkable." The man murmured, dumbfounded. "If it's this easy for you to kill a Martial Senior then..."

What truly surprised Rui was how big of a deal it became in the following days. According to the reports from the Beggar's Sect, the assassination community at large was shell-shocked at the abrupt death of a Martial Senior.

Although Senior Sam Sevian was not the strongest Martial Senior, he was still a full-fledged Martial Senior.

He was not someone who could be killed by anything less than a Martial Senior. No one bought the idea that a Martial Squire could have done him off before his Martial Heart activated. All the Martial Seniors knew that his Martial Heart would have long kicked in reflexively, preventing him from dying due to a lack of it.

None of them bought the idea that he had succumbed to some health condition. The Martial Body was extremely hard to kill through disease or compromised health. Furthermore, Senior Sam was not known to have such conditions. 

There was only one conclusion that the assassination community at large came to.

He had been assassinated.

Not killed, but assassinated. The fact that he was taken out when he was about to begin working on a commission showed that he was specifically being targeted.

That immediately ruled out the forces of the Derschek Region, since there were almost no native Senior-level assassins. Most of the Martial Senior assassins that operated in this region resided in the Shadow Isles, and all of them were people who migrated to the Shadow Isles looking for the Silent Shadow.

Thus, whoever assassinated Senior Sam, was most likely a Martial Senior assassin of the Shadow Isles.

None of the Martial Seniors complained. They were not friends and were competitors, in fact. Yet the sheer inexplicability of his death was something that many of them found unnerving.

Every assassin had a signature. A manner of killing that was largely unique to them.

Poison, decapitation, strangulation, suffocation.

Although their identities as assassins were inscrutable to many, they were a small community and kept an eye on their peers.

The fact that the cause of Sam's death had not been identified was surprising. The fact that there were no signs of struggle, no signs of resistance, no signs of conflict was especially unnerving.

It meant that whoever took Sam out was so far superior to him that they could get it done instantly without any flaws or imperfections. 

The ideal assassination.

Had one asked any of the Martial Seniors whether they were capable of killing Senior Sam that perfectly and cleanly, none of them would have been able to say yes if they were being perfectly honest.

Assassinating a fellow peer was possible, but it was almost always a messy operation that almost always resulted in a battle.

"Yet, according to the many reports that we have gathered, such a thing did not occur even in the slightest." A man reported. "Not even the windows or tiles were cracked. It is inconceivable that any conflict ensued."

The man paused, before glancing to his right. "What do you think, lady Crina?"

Many had gathered in a meeting around a table. 

Many waited as they gazed at the elderly woman at the table.

She opened her eyes.

Eyes that hid an unfathomable depth to them.

A single word escaped her mouth.

"Interesting."

Many people in the Derschek Region and the Shadow Isles had many questions regarding the incident. Yet there were no answers to be provided. They could only move on and eventually forget about the incident.

At the end of the day, although the assassination was extremely strange and bizarre, an assassination was an assassination. It was far too commonplace in the Derschek Region. Once people got over the novelties of this particularly mysterious case, it was destined to be buried.

Unless, of course, it was merely a prelude to what was to come.