The Martial Unity

Apparently, Master Reina took her duties of teaching him seriously. She put on a pair of spectacles, changing into a more formal attire while taking Rui to a classroom set-up.

"Now then," She remarked, pushing up her spectacles. "Let us begin. Please begin noting."

"I'll be fine."

"Very well, but I will not be pleased if you are unable to follow." She told him with an officious tone.

Rui sighed. "Do you really need to do all this?" 

"What are you saying? I take my duties as a teacher very seriously!" She insisted, pushing up her spectacles.

"Right."

"Now then... What is assassination?" She asked, writing the word 'assassination' on the board.

"The field of killing."

"Very good." She nodded, drawing an arrow before writing down his response. "Now what is an assassination?"

"Any intended elimination of a target," Rui replied.

"Also correct." She nodded, writing that down. "Now... What is the difference between murder and an assassination?"

Rui considered the question for a moment. "Murder is unlawful killing, while assassination can be murder or not. There is a large intersection. Assassinations are generally murders that are authorized or commissioned, while murders alone are willful of the murderer's own intentions."

Following that logic, his killing of Chairman Deacon would fall under murder rather than assassination. He was not commissioned or authorized by any power, and he was doing it for his own person.

"You are not an assassin." She said, almost reading his thoughts. "Not by definition, anyway. You are still a worthier assassin than others in philosophy, but even the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles were your targets for your own personal gain. At most, you also fulfilled some debt to the Beggar's Sect I imagine."

She stared straight into Rui's eyes. "You are not an assassin. You are a murderer."

The words struck at Rui for some reason. It wasn't that he wasn't aware of the definition and how he technically fell under it, it was just something that that never really hit him or clicked the way it did when she bluntly told him. 

It was almost as if he had subconsciously disassociated himself with murderers, but in reality, he was a textbook example of a murderer. Perhaps that was the reason she had started out with such a silly dive into the basics of the concepts surrounding killing. Perhaps she had sensed that he was subconsciously not facing the truth as it was.

Being around the Shadow Isles and constantly hearing about assassins and assassinations may have made it easier for him to avoid the association.

"Martial Artists kill." Rui shrugged. "It's the way of the world, especially the Martial World. Anyone who delves into this world knows the risks and still goes in, that's no different from consenting to the possibility of death as far as I am concerned."

"It's interesting you interpreted that as an accusation." Master Reina smiled. "Regardless, it is good to be cognizant of the truth."

Rui narrowed his eyes. 

"Don't look at me like that. It's part of your training. Self-awareness is important to Martial Artists, I can promise you that. Also, it's a shame you didn't break down in guilt. That's always fun to watch." She smirked before returning to the whiteboard. "Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let us begin with an actual dive into the technicalities of assassinations. Assassinations can be divided into many categories based on certain parameters such as directness, range, and explicitness. A good assassin is capable of engaging in all of the categories since there will be times when you're forced to rely on only one of them..."

Rui listened as she continued adding more detail to the classification of assassinations, turning it from simple categories into more elaborate divisions.

Directness, range, and explicitness turned out to be among the most prominent parameters of classification. 

Directness was a measure of how direct the cause of death of the victim of the assassin was. Did the assassin directly drive a knife into the victim's heart, causing them to die? Or did they cause a certain chain of actions that eventually led to the death of the victim?

Things such as poisoning food were one step removed from killing the victim. Manipulating circumstances or people to unfold in such a way that it led to the death of the victim was also several steps more elaborate than simply driving a knife into the victim's heart.

"Do such assassinations even happen enough to warrant creating a separate category?" Rui raised an eyebrow. 

"Of course." Master Reina nodded. "Many assassins rely on indirect assassinations. Whether it be poisoning one of the ingredients that would eventually be cooked to find its way into the victim's food. Or triggering calamity that would kill the victim. Or causing circumstances that would cause someone else to do the dirty work. There are advantages to relying on such indirect manners of assassination. Why don't you tell us what advantages such manners of assassinations have, for the sake of the class?"

Rui glanced around at the empty classroom, turning back to her. "Such forms of assassination can be much harder to prevent than direct assassinations. It is much more difficult to detect such an assassination because the assassin is so removed from the cause of death. Compared to simply guarding the target from a stabber, it is much more difficult to vet all the guards, to check all the food, to scout all the paths to ensure that there is nothing that can kill them."

She nodded, pleased. "And what are the disadvantages of such a form of assassination?"

Rui paused for a moment, before replying. "Just as its harder to prevent such an assassination, it's also harder to successfully pull off such an assassination. Because the assassin is further removed from the actual cause of death, there is a greater margin of error. It is possible that a victim may just decide to not eat food that happened to be poisoned, or not go down a path where a carefully planned set of events were meant to kill them. It surrenders initiative to fate, and various events and variables can cause the entire plan to go off-rails."