The battle between Zich and the assassins looked fierce. One sword constantly collided against three daggers, and the sound of their sharp exchanges rang across the whole space. However, this battle only looked fierce. Zich and even the assassins knew that the battle was not intense for Zich at all.
While fighting, Zich calmly analyzed his opponents. ‘Hmmm. There’s no special technique in their movements or skills.’
The assassins lowered their stance and desperately tried to find any openings in Zich’s attacks. However, no matter how hard they tried to find openings, Zich blocked all of their attacks with complete ease—eventually, they had no choice but to accept their assured defeat.
If Zich wanted to summarize his current battle in one sentence, it would be: ‘I’m playing with them.’ He was going to ‘play’ with the assassins, and the assassins would have no choice but to follow his lead. Zich’s easygoing attitude in this battle was not a good sight to see. Regardless of how great the difference in their strengths was, carelessness could lead to dangerous mistakes.
On the other hand, Zich didn’t just ‘play’ absentmindedly either. He was trying to find clues about the assassins’ identities by drawing out their different skills and movements. However, the assassins’ movements were sharp but colorless; their movements held no shred of ingenuity or uniqueness. Even though they were getting pushed back, it was only because they had little experience with one-on-one fights and because their opponent was Zich. Their skills and movements were perfect as assassins.
‘Their organization won’t be easy to take care of.’
In order to make people into assassins like this—with no special characteristics or style but a ‘tool’ to kill—the organization needed to go through a considerable amount of investment and hard work.
‘Should I capture one of them and ask?’
Zich’s sword style changed. In an instant, he flicked away all the assassins’ daggers and began to push them back.
‘First, I got the three of them.’
Zich recalled how the assassins he met in Suol exploded themselves to stop him. During that time, he had no time to even capture one of the assassins. But now, he had more time than he needed.
‘I’m just going to get one of them for now.’
Zich was about to make a guy next to him faint, but the assassin suddenly reached out with his hands.
Booom!
An explosion erupted. Hans and Snoc, who were each taking care of an assassin, jumped in surprise. While they were fighting their opponents, they snuck a glance towards the explosion.
“Sir Z-Zich?” Snoc asked Zich with concern in his voice. The assassins fighting Hans and Snoc made low laughs, as if they were confident that Zich had died. Snoc bit his lip in worry.
However, Hans was not worried at all.
Whoosh!
Hans just made one quick glance towards Zich’s direction and began swinging his sword towards his opponent again. The assassin who had been laughing a moment ago hurriedly attempted to block Hans’ sword in surprise.
‘There’s no way Sir Zich will die from that.’
Hans was calmer than Snoc, because he had stayed a longer time with Zich and had a higher level of trust.
‘If Sir Zich died from something like that, the Steelwall family wouldn’t have fallen into a state of chaos, and I wouldn’t have been dragged all the way here.’
With this thought in his mind, Hans’ sword style became rougher.
Flash!
The aftermath of the explosion disappeared in an instant. The assassins, who had moved their bodies back since the beginning of the explosion, shivered in shock. As Hans expected, Zich was calmly standing in the middle of where the explosion erupted.
“Oh, it’s an artifact?”
Zich was in a good mood. He was familiar with this style of attack, and how the assassins carried around artifacts.
“It’s you guys.”
Zich was elated to see assassins from the same organization like the ones in Suol. Zich’s happy expression was like a tiger jumping into a herd of sheep.
A promise was a promise. Zich wanted to fervently keep his promise with the robed man in Suol—that as soon as he met anyone in his organization, he would send them to his side in hell. So far, the assassins had only lasted this long because Zich went easy on them. As soon as he became more serious, his opponents were pushed back mercilessly. The assassins used up their artifacts without reservation, and Zich sliced through all of them.
“Agh!”
A long wound appeared on one of the assassin’s bodies. It was not enough to warrant death, but it was impossible for the injured assassin to continue fighting.
‘Done with one.’
Worried that they might sacrifice themselves, Zich raised his sword towards their heads to make them faint. However, before he could make them faint, one of the two remaining assassins blew a whistle.
Fweeet!
“Tch!”
Noticing that something was off, Zich clicked his tongue.
Crashhh!
An explosion that was incomparably larger than the first one erupted. The magnitude of the explosion was not large, but the intensity of the explosion was at the highest level. While crushing their own bodies, the assassins attempted to harm Zich. However, as if he was escaping small fiery sparks, Zich dusted off his clothes and moved away from the explosion.
‘This is why I wanted to quickly finish this.’
If they were assassins from the same organization as the one from Suol, there was a high chance that they would explode themselves. With that thought in mind, Zich had wanted to quickly capture them.
‘The quality of their skills is actually higher than the ones from Suol.’
When the robed man told Zich that he had quickly gathered a group of “low-level” assassins for his mission in Suol, it seemed the robed man was telling him the truth. Zich turned around. Hans and Snoc were on the ground and blinking their eyes. They were full of scratches and some of the injuries looked very deep, but they didn’t look like they were about to die. Before the assassins exploded themselves, Zich blew away their opponents, so Snoc and Hans had time to escape.
“What are you doing? Get up.”
Hans and Snoc quickly got up with Zich’s command. After giving each of them a potion, Zich looked back at the sight of the explosion. He felt regretful that he wasn’t able to get more information out of them, but he soon dusted away this feeling. The assassins he just fought didn’t seem like they knew any important secrets. But most of all—
‘I think I’m going to see more of them in the future.’
Zich was sure of it.
* * *
It was late in the night. Zich stuffed more sticks into the bonfire and tried to keep the fire going. Tired from their long and arduous battle, Hans and Snoc crashed to bed as soon as they got the chance. On the other hand, Zich looked like a carefree man immersed in his daily routine, as he looked over his fire. Yet, he was deeply lost in thought, thinking about the assassins they beat today.
‘Without a doubt, I’m sure they are from the same organization as the ones from Suol. But I wonder why those guys are here right now.’
Zich tried to analyze the assassins he met in Suol. First, their goal was related to Snoc and Nowem, and their main goal was to make Nowem into the ‘Tyrant of the Earth.’ Before the incident, Zich had never imagined that Nowem (who caused a whole kingdom to collapse before he regressed) could have been made in such a forceful manner.
‘I wonder why they are trying to make Nowem or Demon People in general, and what they are doing all the way here. If I assume that they still have similar goals…’
Joachim was here. In the distant future, Joachim would become the ‘The Demonic Vampire’ and serve under Zich, the Demon Lord.
‘They keep appearing near places where Demon People will appear.’
Zich didn’t want to exclude the possibility of a coincidence, but he felt as if these two events were deeply connected.
‘If these guys are really the bastards who tried to make Joachim into a Demon Person, then…’
To think about it, Zich remembered that a bunch of Demon People came out during this time—to the extent it would be called the Demon People Era.
‘Is there a group of people actually trying to make Demon People?’
If this was true, it would be an extremely newsworthy event, because it meant someone or some group was controlling people into becoming Demon People and unleashing chaos into this world.
‘Of course, they probably didn’t make every Demon Person. I’m sure there were those who naturally became a Demon Person like me…’
Zich’s face suddenly turned deathly serious.
‘Wait, is there any evidence that my transformation as a Demon Person really had no outside influence?’
There was no evidence. In the first place, Zich had never thought that an organization was purposely making Demon People. As Snoc became ‘The Tyrant of the Earth, Nowem’ because of the assassins, how could he be so sure that there was no one trying to make him the ‘Demon Lord of Strength, Zich Moore?’
‘To think about it, as soon as I left the Steelwall family, I experienced various events as if someone had planned it all out.’
And all the events were perfectly laid out for Zich to become a Demon Person.
‘I just thought that the world was chaotic, so I experienced a lot of dangerous situations, but…’
But what if they were the result of someone else?
‘…This is interesting.’
Up until now, Zich thought he became a Demon Lord through his own free will. But now there was a possibility that someone decided his whole path from the very beginning.
‘Okay, let’s calm down for now. I’m not even sure if this is certain.’
But no matter how much Zich thought about it, he could not help but feel pissed. Before he regressed, there were many frustrating situations, but this was the first time he felt really annoyed.
‘This means that there might be some bastards who used me like a puppet.’
Perhaps, if this was true…
‘I’m never going to forgive them.’
Zich was never going to forgive them. Until now, he just thought of the assassin group as bad guys that irritated him. He simply wanted to send them all to hell whenever he met one of them. But from now on, Zich’s stance on them changed from an irritating group to an ‘organization that might have played around with his life.’
And if this was true, Zich was going to use everything in his power to erase the organization from the face of the Earth. Zich thought all this and then swallowed his anger. Nothing would come off from being angry by himself. Even though Zich usually lived however he felt like, for important matters, he was much more serious. He planned to engrave this anger deep inside his heart and cultivate it further to make it burn hotter, stronger, and sharper.
‘But why did these guys attack me?’
After he swallowed his anger inside, Zich began thinking again.
‘Do they know I crushed their comrades in Suol?’
If the assassins Zich fought today were connected to the assassins in Suol, there was a much higher possibility that this might be true. However, this was not likely. Zich had definitely killed everyone who was involved in Snoc’s kidnapping. The organization wouldn’t have received any news about Zich for that reason. Moreover, Zich also discovered Snoc’s kidnapping by accident so he was sure that he had not been part of the organizations’ plans.
‘Then what are some other possibilities?’
Zich considered the possibility that the Dracul family might be conspiring against Joachim without knowing anything about the assassin organization or what happened in Suol. Then, he thought about how the mysterious organization’s goal here was to make Joachim into a Demon Person. That meant…
‘Am I an unexpected variable for all of them?’
Since he came out of nowhere and began helping Joachim, Zich would have been a hindrance to the organization and Joachim’s family plans. But Zich didn’t make a definite conclusion. So far, it was just one of his highly probable theories.
‘Then I should stick closely to Joachim for now.’
If the organization wanted to make Joachim into a Demon Person, the organization would try all possible means to make contact with him. Since Zich was planning to help out Joachim anyways, this was not a hard decision to make.
“You are not asleep yet.”
Zich suddenly heard a familiar voice and turned his head back. It was Joachim, and he was moving closer towards him.
“How are you? Is it not time for you to sleep? If you sleep late, it might be difficult for you to wake up in the morning.”
“There’s nothing for me to do anyways. Is there any reason why I have to wake up early in the morning?”
Joachim made a bitter smile. He seemed sad about his current situation since he and his soldiers had to camp out near a village that recently went through an epidemic.
“Is it alright if I sit next to you?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Zich stared at Joachim who sat across from him. He looked the same as before but a little younger. However, his personality was totally different from Zich’s past life and made Zich wonder how and to what degree he should help Joachim. But he slowly reached his conclusion.
‘I’m going to at least help him out until I’m sure he won’t become a Demon Person.’
Even if Joachim became the Demonic Vampire again, Zich wouldn’t feel any hatred or dislike towards Joachim—instead, he might actually welcome Joachim like an old friend. However, no matter how he saw it, the Vampire, Joachim Dracul, was a bad person. And since Zich made the resolution to live a kind life by beating the crap out of bad guys, his past subordinates couldn’t be an exception to this rule. If Joachim really became a Demon Person, it was likely that Zich might have to fight and kill him off.
‘For that to not happen, it would be better for him to not become a Demon Person.’ Zich decided.