The Martial Unity

Unfortunately, they couldn't do anything. They quickly headed to gather the corpses of their peers.

Yet the Martial Seniors of the Duchy had other ideas.

"Those corpses belong to us." They growled. "They will be displayed to our people."

"You think we're just going to give you them?" A Senior assassin snorted. "You're lucky we're not killing you."

The tension spiked between the two forces.

"How about we each take one?" One of the Martial Seniors from the duchy proposed.

This wasn't an unattractive idea. None of them wanted to fight at the moment. The assassins from the Shadow Isles were most afraid of the Voidreaper coming for them at any moment.

The buddy system proved to be entirely useless against the Voidreaper as he could comfortably demolish duos. Even if he couldn't kill both of them in a pair, one was guaranteed to die, which meant that there was a chance that any of them could die at any moment.

This was especially the case since he wasn't that far from this location. 

Perhaps he was watching them right now, preparing to take a shot.

Just the thought of it sent a chill down their spines. It made them want to end this conflict and get out of there.

"Deal." The assassins remarked. "We'll take this one. No compromises there."

They quickly collected Senior Jeanno's body before heading back to the Shadow Isles in a hurry.

Rui heaved a sigh as he felt the distant presence retreating. 

His mind immediately surged into thought as he analyzed and processed his current circumstances, extrapolating and predicting the future.

The first inevitable outcome was that they would learn more about Death's Sympathy.

This was within his predictions of inevitable outcomes. There was no way to kill both Martial Seniors in a pair without giving away some hints about the limitation of his technique.

With just some deductive reasoning, one could conclude that his technique could not be fired too quickly in rapid succession, since he wasn't able to land a Death's Sympathy before the man's Martial heart activated.

Another clue that could be derived was the fact that he could not cleanly assassinate his opponent using Death's Sympathy when they had active wind-based defenses up. This was a little bit more complex, but they most likely knew that Senior Jeanno had an active wind-based defense. 

Unless there weren't any seductively intelligent analysts, it wouldn't take them long to conclude that those wind-based defenses kicking into action were most likely what protected Senior Jeanno from being assassinated. Either that or the Martial Heart.

From there, it could be further inferred that the technique was exclusively an assassination tool and not something that worked against someone in combat mode. That also explained why the Voidreaper needed to engage Senior Jeanno and beat him down before killing him with the technique.

Rui had modeled hundreds of potential tactics and strategies to prevent the disclosure of this strategically important, yet none of them allowed him to prevent his targets from learning at least this much.

However, he wasn't too concerned.

'What are they going to do?'

They couldn't keep the Martial Heart permanently active, that was extremely impractical. They also couldn't keep up a wind-based defensive technique all the time either. That was quite impractical as well, even with potions.

It was like asking someone to keep jogging for the rest of their life in order to stay alive. 

An absurd demand.

One possibility was keeping up wind-based defenses around their residential area. However, that protected them only while they were inside their homes. The second they stepped out, they were walking targets.

There was no practical solution.

Nothing they did, or could do could allow them to remain and maintain a normal meaningful life.

There was one solution, of course.

"Leave and never come back." Rui mused.

He had avoided putting so much as a scratch on the assassins that left the Shadow Isles. The ones that stayed back knew that their former colleagues and seekers had gotten away harmlessly and relocated to start working somewhere else.

it was an attractive choice if there was anything that held them back, it would be the reason they came to the Shadow Isles in the first place.

The Silent Shadow.

Yet when was the last time they actually thought about the Silent Shadow? When was the last time they actively exerted themselves to earn her approval?

They had all long become dependent on relying on the efforts of Lady Crina. They simply dedicated a portion of their earnings towards her investigations and forgot about it.

Instinctively, most of them had all come to recognize the truth. 

They were unworthy.

It was harsh, but there wasn't much else to conclude. Especially when some of them had been around for quite a long time. It was clear that this simply wasn't working out.

The reason that they stayed nonetheless was because the Derschek Region was a boost to their ego.

In the Derschek Region, assassins were kings. They were at the top of the food chain. They decided who lived and who died. They were the main characters.

This was not the case across the continent where assassins had a more discreet and clandestine presence.

They came for a boost in power, they stayed for a boost in ego. 

Perhaps the only assassin of their Realm that hadn't followed in their path was the Voidreaper. An assassin who didn't care for the glory of being feared and respected like a ruler.

Whatever his goal was, he was accomplishing it by assassinating, as assassins did. Compared to them, he was cut from a different cloth.

Perhaps, if they were like him, they might have been able to earn the approval of the Silent Shadow. Even now that they had come to make this insight, they still didn't have the drive or the fire to implement it. They would rather run away from the mess than do what they did best to overcome tribulations.

And that was why they were unworthy.