Black Sail
Chapter 115: CXV. Shadow Messenger

Chapter 115: CXV. Shadow Messenger

Thief Guild assassination, is a matter of technique.

Face-to-face brute force killings are only for fools and ill-suited for those engaged in running gambling dens and cheating, instead they emphasize a leverage method of assassination that achieves a lot with a little.

The highest experts in the field of political assassination from the Thief Guild are called "Shadow Messengers", rumored to be blessed by the Night Goddess.

Just like how every impressive organization on the Western Continent comes with mythological endorsements, Diaz also cultivated corporate culture and backed it up with a rather intimidating evil god.

This Night Goddess isn’t a formal deity, known rather as the Shadow Lady or the unknowable, always hidden and omnipresent.

When a Shadow Messenger assassinates, the importance is on silence profound, blending into the night with the wind, subtly as moisture in the air.

Put plainly, it’s like Yang Ying’s figurine, BABY doll.

The endless darkness at sea and the cold abyss beneath impose a tremendous psychological burden on a person.

Even a minor mistake for this "Shadow Messenger" could lead to an unmarked grave.

Now, the Black Robed Man was clinging to the side of the ship’s railing with his glove’s claw blades, where any window’s narrow sill offers no foothold.

But that was no matter.

The strength in the fingers of the Black Robed Man was unbelievably powerful, supporting his entire body weight with just one hand, then withdrawing a pliable high-strength wire from his clothes and bending it into an L-shape in his mouth.

He then inserted this wire into the gap between two windows and slowly turned it to unhinge the window latch.

The moisture at sea caused the wooden frame to swell and deform, making every opening and closing of doors and windows emit a grating squeak.

"Who?"

A Lostra person noticed the noise.

"Aren’t the windows closed?"

"Must be the wind that opened them."

"With this rotten pirate ship, that’s the usual issue, I’ll go close it."

Just as the person responsible for transferring the dragon approached the window,

A claw as fast as lightning, silent and deadly like the scythe of the Death God from Netherworld, he didn’t even realize what happened before he was struck down in bewilderment.

A pointed blade at the tip of a finger instantly thrust into the throat as if piercing nothing, then Black Robed Man’s all five fingers penetrated, clamping the windpipe shut, blocking any air from escaping the lungs.

Though it seemed slow, everything was completed in less than a tenth of a second.

The Black Robed Man had already observed and recognized the faces and corresponding voices of the four individuals through a quick glance.

He began mimicking the voice of the deceased.

"Is there something on the sea surface, maybe a Siren?"

The voice released by the Black Robed Man was indistinguishable from the deceased, impossible to differentiate.

"A Siren? Maybe earlier you should’ve visited those two prostitutes; you’ve been driven mad waiting so long."

Another person continued to investigate, dismissing tales of Demon Hunters and spirits.

A Siren is a mythical creature with a human head and fish body residing in the sea, enchantingly beautiful with a melodious voice, luring people into the sea then devouring them alive.

The method was repeated.

The strike was swift as a specter, the other person coming to investigate also died instantly beneath the claw blade.

Even the Black Robed Man couldn’t manage two bodies while supporting himself with one hand.

He vaulted, smashing through the window, and both bodies collapsed with a thud.

A slender black figure like an arcing light, took advantage before they could fully react, dual daggers lunging towards one of the men.

"What?"

The remaining two swiftly entered combat mode, drawing long swords forged from Magic Energy Material, their killing intent surging.

The ones designated for the dragon’s transfer weren’t ordinary people.

In a flash, a Lostra stepped forward, delivering three swift slashes targeting chest, abdomen, and throat—each strike devastating and fast as a phantom.

The Black Robed Man was taken aback, such strong adaptability.

The clash of metal rang out.

Both his daggers were deflected, and he almost suffered an arm injury, promptly retreating back to the window side.

He was a top expert of the Thief Guild.

Not to say the elite of Lostra, even if it was Aran Sword King, unprepared, he would assassinate for all to see.

The Black Robed Man’s weapons were indeed too bizarre, pulling out two sets of playing cards from his clothes, it was time to get serious.

Just like the Hilara cards.

Hundreds of cards in the hands of the Black Robed Man seemed to have a life of their own, forming a stream of cards that diagonally stretched out, and then, more than twenty cards exploded toward two men at the same time, flipped by nimble fingers at incredibly tricky angles.

Click, click, click...

A few cards were merely feints to disrupt judgment; the seemingly fragile paper cards surprisingly embedded themselves a third of the way into the wall, bizarre beyond measure.

The two men’s sword movements were fierce, immediately shredding the entire room’s paper scraps into the air.

But the trajectory of these cards could not be considered with common sense; they could move in S-shaped or even more complex paths without losing momentum.

With a snap.

A Lostra man’s ear was sliced off by a card, falling to the ground with blood gushing out.

The leader among them sensed trouble, realizing they had encountered a first-class expert.

Both men attacked together.

The technique was too flashy.

The dizzying cards circled around, their power comparable to slashing attacks, immediately forcing one man to stagger back against the wall, the card’s wind force slicing a strange curved wound on his arm.

Cross Slash-like dual streams of cards converged and slaughtered toward the remaining leader.

The leader’s swordsmanship was exquisite, his sword dance shattered the stream of cards, reducing them to flying scraps; his sword strike was like lightning in the night, almost succeeding in its intent.

But then.

The light went out.

A card, timed perfectly, fluttered uncertainly in mid-air and struck the oil lamp, severing the wick and extinguishing it.

Countless trajectories formed a Killing Formation, assassinating from the darkness.

The room was pitch black.

Nothing was visible.

The man moved silently, concealing his figure with every action, making unexpectedly secret moves.

Only the two Lostra men, relying on their terrifying combat instincts, barely managed to resist, but their injuries worsened, and they didn’t even know where they were bleeding from.

Yet the sound of cards grinding meat and scraping bone was incessant.

Half a minute later.

The kerosene lamp was re-lit, revealing the scene in the room.

The floor was covered in scraps of paper and cards; besides the two who were instantly killed, the remaining two corpses were bloody and mutilated, their flesh gashed grievously with numerous cards embedded, having died from hemorrhagic shock.

The Black Robed Man was also breathing heavily; these men’s level had exceeded his expectations, were they truly here for the Netherworld Stele?

He too had received a fierce slash to his chest.

In the blind darkness, the leader remained calm, with meticulous thoughts he discerned the slight pattern in his moves, striking true with his swift speed and exaggerated force.

The Black Robed Man sat on the bed, lifted his shirt, revealing a wound about ten centimeters long and as thick as a finger, oozing blood; he was wearing high-grade soft armor made from Magic Beast scales.

But the force of the strike was too strong, even penetrating it; without this armor, his chances would have been slim.

He took a bottle of strong alcohol, without hesitation poured it over the wound, but he remained silent, just clenching his fist, his bones spasming.

Then he opened his Thief toolkit, containing Lock Picking tweezers, and cheating devices, filled with all sorts of mysterious parts.

He took out a needle and thread, and stitched up the wound himself; the needle passed through skin and flesh, looping round and round, sewing dozens of stitches until the wound was closed; then he cut the thread with a knife.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he went back to his duties.

After a search of the bodies, he found nothing useful, only a paper note on the leader which he carefully preserved; afterward, he disposed of all four corpses into the sea.

He then continued to search the room.

"Truly astonishing..."

The Black Robed Man made a new discovery; this group was carrying treasures worth more than eight hundred Golden Dragons, ten prism-shaped Purple Crystals containing powerful Magic Energy; perhaps the Golden Dragons were too conspicuous, so they switched to this more portable hard currency, which to the uninformed would just seem like jewelry for women.

Eight hundred Golden Dragons sold cheap? Typical of pirates, such foolish ideas; not just eight hundred, even eighty thousand should be tossed aside.

Finally.

The Black Robed Man also found an unfamiliar object; he didn’t even know what it was, a palm-sized wooden box with a red and a blue light, and a wooden dial.

He didn’t dare tamper with it, resembling a kind of transmitter; though he was somewhat versed in machinery, it was best not to dismantle such a delicate device.

It was probably a tool for coding messages.

The Black Robed Man took out the paper note he had found earlier, it probably contained codes; he would spend some time analyzing it, knowing some cryptography and semiotics, and after decoding it, impersonating a Lostra man would not be an issue.

No need for killing, retrieving the stele naturally was best; those two stones just needed to be stolen.