Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 69: Grandmaster Assassin

Chapter 69: Grandmaster Assassin

The Grandmaster moved forward—unhurried, yet with an air of absolute inevitability.

Each step he took felt like the toll of a funeral bell.

The pressure of his aura crushed the battlefield, freezing muscle, mana, and even thought. Dust and leaves remained suspended in the air, caught in the unnatural stillness. No one moved. No one dared.

He passed the two fallen assassins, his glowing violet eyes barely acknowledging them. Their broken forms tensed beneath his gaze, yet he offered them no salvation—only the confirmation of what they already knew:

They were no longer relevant.

As he walked by, he extended a hand without breaking stride. A ripple of dark energy surged outward. The two assassins convulsed violently, their bodies withering—flesh collapsing into bone, bone into ash—as they were reduced to nothing by his poison mana.

Then he reached the nearest guard.

Still kneeling. Still straining to breathe.

From his sleeve slid a curved dagger, its obsidian edge lined with glowing green etchings that pulsed like veins—mana-infused poison, refined and fatal.

"I was told our little boys wouldn’t be able to bring you down," he said casually, voice low and smooth like oil across the steel. "And they were right."

He stepped past the first guard.

A flick of the wrist—silent, precise.

The guard’s head rolled off his shoulders.

Another step. Another flick.

Two more fell.

Clean. Efficient. Personal.

Anippe, Merit’s Shwt, trembled beside her, eyes wide with helpless fury, but neither of them could move. Not under this pressure.

Not under him.

The Grandmaster turned slightly, facing them now with unsettling ease.

"One cannot expect much when pitting blades against divinity," he said, voice tinged with mock admiration. "Those born of higher gods are always... stubborn to kill."

His eyes landed on Merit at last.

"I was sent as insurance," he continued, drawing closer, dagger spinning lazily in his hand. "And if I must be honest, this has been a delight. I rarely get to deal with the upper branches of divine trees."

He stopped only a few paces from her.

"So then, Princess Merit..." The dagger caught moonlight, gleaming like a fang. "Any last words before I uproot you?"

....

Merit could barely move. Every instinct screamed at her to act, to raise her hand, call her power—but her body refused to obey. The Grandmaster’s aura had crushed them all like insects beneath an unseen boot. Even her Shwt beside her was paralyzed, breathing sharp and shallow, sweat trickling down her temple.

She watched as he walked—slow, unhurried—toward the wounded guards. The curve of his blade shimmered with venomous mana. His steps were deliberate, his expression unreadable.

As she looked at him,

Her mind, sharp and honed from years of political warfare, raced in silence—analyzing every word, every movement, every possibility.

With her trying to calculate every possible situation.

’Damn it’ Merit thought

If she had her Grandmaster guards, this assassin wouldn’t have made it ten steps. They would have crushed him.

But she didn’t.

Because of the stupid rule.

A bitter, law set in place by the Patricians to prevent royal heirs from growing soft behind others’ strength. A law that forbade any Royal from having Grandmaster-ranked guards until they reached that rank.

Even then, they were only allowed ten guards.

Fifteen for elders. Fifteen for his wives.

Only Thutmose—the Earth Clan’s pride—was given the right to command more: twenty guards, ten of them Grandmasters.

She was given ten Masters.

And now they were all dead.

Her rage seethed beneath the aura. Her lip twitched. Her jaw clenched.

’Do I have to use that right now’ Merit thought as she looked at the grandmaster who was a few steps away from

Merit’s pulse thundered in her ears. The Grandmaster assassin stood just a few paces away—death in the shape of a man, drenched in poison and shadow.

And yet...

Her fingers twitched. Just enough.

Her mind whirred with frantic calculations, each second stretched out like an eternity as she dissected every possible outcome and navigated through countless scenarios. The weight of the moment pressed heavily upon her, and she felt the pulsing urgency in her veins. There was only one move remaining—a desperate measure she had long dreaded, reserved solely for the direst of circumstances, when the stakes were nothing less than her survival or the preservation of her hard-won claim.

Her lips curled into a small, bitter smile.

’It seems I will finally use the gift you gave me, Father.’

With a flick of her finger, she summoned her space ring—its surface flickering under resistance, fighting against the barrier laced into the air.

The Grandmaster’s eyes widened.

He had felt it too. The restrictive field his men had layered around the area should have made it impossible to access dimensional storage or escape through teleportation. No magic, no tools, no hope.

Yet...

A snap of light broke through. Just a flicker. But enough.

The ring glowed. It was no ordinary ring.

It was layered with a secondary enchantment, one buried beneath the primary spatial functions. An override script, ancient and powerful, designed to allow the bearer a few seconds of retrieval through even the strongest restriction fields—at a cost.

The mana drain hit Merit like a crashing wave.

Her knees buckled. Her breath caught.

Her hand emerged, holding a flat, plate-like artifact made of polished steel. It was engraved with deep, glowing runes that pulsed with power. Alongside it, she held a vial filled with a mana potion. The air around the artifact warped slightly, and time itself seemed to slow as its presence fully revealed itself.

A Grandmaster-ranked artifact.

In this world, just like warriors and mages were ranked—Novice, Intermediate, Advance, Expert, Master, Grandmaster, Legend, Mystic, and Demi-god —so too were artifacts and pills. And this one was among the rarest of its kind, the kind that could turn fate with a single activation.

It had been given to her by the Patrician on her twentieth birthday.

Her father, who saw strength as the only true currency of survival, had still pressed the artifact into her hand that day without a word of sentiment. A gesture that spoke volumes despite his silence.

A frown came over the assassin’s face the moment he saw it.

"Impossible." His voice broke through the tense quiet. "The field—your ring shouldn’t have—"

But it had.

Merit slammed the plate to the ground.

Mana surged.

Runes ignited.

The plate lifted on its own, floating upward into the sky like a glowing meteor reversing gravity. The moment it reached fifteen feet above them, it detonated with brilliance—not an explosion of fire or sound, but a silent shockwave of suppression.

A dome of shimmering silver-blue light expanded outward, locking over the battlefield with a low, resonant hum.

The Grandmaster staggered.

His aura flickered.

His eyes went wide as his power twisted—then recoiled. The connection to his domain—that intimate link to the world’s will—snapped like a rope under strain.

He gasped, for the first time, truly shaken.

"What...?"

Merit rose to her feet slowly, her breathing labored, sweat trailing down her cheek.

"Grandmaster-rank artifact," she said with a rasp, "designed to isolate power... to sever domain influence temporarily... and suppress anyone foolish enough to stand too close."

She stepped forward now, her aura stabilizing under the protective zone.

"You were expecting a helpless princess," she continued, her voice gaining strength, "but instead... you’ve entered my territory."

The assassin stepped back once, instincts kicking in—but the barrier didn’t budge. His poison mana swirled erratically, fragmented, as if unsure of its master.

Merit raised a hand, mana gathering behind her palm.

"Let’s see how deadly you are... without your domain to back you up."

....

The Grandmaster stood still for a moment inside the shimmering dome, feeling the suppression pulsing against his skin like needles of ice. His aura, once suffocating, was now merely a shadow of what it had been.

But he didn’t flinch.

He just growled. "Even without my powers... even with my strength held back,

I’m still stronger than both of you put together." His voice was sharp like metal scraping against stone.

He tilted his head slightly as if listening to the crackle of tension in the air.

"It will just take longer to kill you. That’s all."

Anippe’s eyes narrowed, already drawing her blades, her body positioned protectively beside Merit—but Merit knew the truth.

He wasn’t wrong.

A Grandmaster wasn’t just someone with power. Their entire body had undergone reconstruction—flesh, nerves, even bones hardened and reinforced to survive the weight of their aura. Their senses were honed, and reaction time was beyond human calculation. Every movement held lethal precision.

And worse...

She and Anippe were tired.

They had already clashed with the first wave—six assassins, all at the Master rank—and though they’d won decisively, it had cost them. Mana was used. Wounds layered beneath the surface. Focus slightly dulled by fatigue.

Merit’s body still trembled from the artifact retrieval.

Her chest rose and fell, heavier now. Slower.

The SOS beacon had been triggered the moment the first dagger flew.

But rescue hadn’t arrived yet.

And now, the strongest assassins remained, pacing like a beast in a cage designed to weaken—not contain.

Merit’s fingers twitched again.

Anippe tensed, her foot sliding an inch.

The Grandmaster smiled.

And vanished.