"The truth?" Alan repeated dumbly.
Ralph Da Ghoul merely smiled. He stretched out a hand and retrieved something from the shadows. In a single motion, he threw a cloak over himself, concealing his features. Alan stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded.
Then it hit him.
"Sheldon Umbra," he whispered.
"That's right." Ralph Da Ghoul threw off the hood, exposing his face once more. He smiled and took another step toward the astonished assassin. "Ralph Da Ghoul and Sheldon Umbra are one and the same."
For a moment, Alan wasn't able to wrap his mind around what was happening. Then rage filled his mind.
"You lied to me!" he screamed. "You tricked me! You deceived us all!"
"That's rich, coming from you," Ralph Da Ghoul replied, amused. "Especially when you were the one who tried to poison me to death and usurp my leadership."
"That's…that's…" Alan spluttered.
"So it's okay if you do it, but not okay if someone else does it to you?" Ralph Da Ghoul shook his head. "You really remind me of the other members in your party. Miranda Miller. Duke Bradley. Hero Herman and the Supreme Priestess Irene. Yvonne. All of you seem to carry double standards.'
Alan didn't deny that. Seemed like he had suffered from their bad influence.
Even so, he couldn't just give up here. The enemy was a demon. He didn't think the leader of the League of Shadows was also a demon, one of the Divine Generals who lorded over one of the twelve Demonic Legions. If this was true, then this was a grave threat to the Havan Kingdom…and to humanity.
He had to eliminate this massive threat right here and now.
Casting a shadow spell to seal his wound for now, he disappeared into the shadows. Ralph Da Ghoul remained impassive, not even bothering to look around. Seizing the chance, Alan emerged from the shadows behind the leader of the League of Shadows and brought both of his daggers down, aiming for his blind spot.
Ralph Da Ghoul raised a hand without even turning around. Alan's eyes widened briefly, but before he knew what was going on, both daggers were knocked out of his hands and he was sent flying. Blood spurted from his mouth when he hit the wall, his body jarred by the tremendous impact. Sliding down, he coughed.
Raising his head, he stared at Ralph Da Ghoul fearfully. For a moment he caught sight of a gigantic hooded skeleton above the middle-aged assassin. The grim reaper, wielding a scythe, with chains rattling all over its cloaked figure, its eyes glowing a baleful red. Cold perspiration poured down his face and he shuddered in fear.
"I can't beat him," he whispered in realization.
"Now you know." Ralph Da Ghoul slowly turned to face his former mentee. He smiled frostily. "Have you already forgotten, Alan? I was the one who taught you everything you know."
Alan swallowed, dread filling him. He understood at this moment how vastly outmatched he was. It went without saying – while everything he knew was indeed taught to him by Ralph Da Ghoul, there was a lot more techniques and skills that his mentor had not taught him.
Suddenly, he comprehended that Ralph Da Ghoul's middle-aged appearance was merely a façade. That the guy was a lot older than he looked.
"What's the matter?" Ralph Da Ghoul asked, cocking his head to the side and maintaining that cold smile. "Are you not going to attack again?"
Alan gulped and then disappeared into the shadows. He fled as best as he could, emerging outside the base and running. Without a pause, he dove into the shadows once more, traveling the distance limit of a hundred meters or so before emerging once more and repeating the spell.
He had no idea how else to escape his former master.
Inside the castle, Ralph Da Ghoul watched from a window, snickering. One of his subordinates, a hooded assassin, materialized next to him, his head bowed.
"Do we not pursue the traitor, my lord?" he asked.
The leader of the League of Shadows scoffed.
"There is no need to. Let him run."
The loyal assassin hesitated. "Is that wise, my lord?"
"He's wounded. He can't get very far. And besides…"
The Divine General of the Shadow Legion grinned, his dark eyes watching the shadow trail that Alan took.
"…there's someone else who wants to kill Alan far more than I do."
Alan continued running for as long as his stamina could last him, especially with the wound he had sustained. Sealing the bleeding and the deep wound his abdomen with shadow magic was only a temporary measure. He needed emergency treatment…healing magic, if possible, but he doubted he would be able to find a priest.
They would find him suspicious and turn him away. No matter how kind priests were, his injury and identity would draw questions – the kind he couldn't afford to have asked right now. The League of Shadows had planted spies everywhere and no doubt his former master would be on the lookout for him. Seeking treatment at a church was the equivalent of revealing his whereabouts to the League of Shadows. He would be at the mercy of the operatives stationed there. Moreover, given his current wounds, he was in no condition to fight.
Fortunately, he didn't need healing magic. As an assassin of the League of Shadows, he had trained in basic first aid. As long as he could find a place to rest, he would stich his own wound, consume antibiotics to prevent infection, and rest for as long as was necessary to heal.
Then he would plan anew.
But first he had to find a safe and secure location…one that even the League of Shadows wouldn't find him.
"Where…?"
Frowning, he asked himself if there existed such a place. He ran through several options in his mind and finally came to a decision.
"If it's that place, then maybe…!"
Pushing himself to his physical limits, Alan ran for as far as his wounded body could go, under the cover of darkness and through the unseen routes hidden within the shadows.
It took him several hours, but he finally reached the place he thought safe. It was the Wayne Manor, and he recalled how he had assassinated its occupant just a month or so ago. Not just the lord of the manor, Duke Wayne, but also all of the servants.
Alan had been ruthless and thorough. No one was to be left alive. He had to tie up loose ends and all that.
Most of all, he enjoyed killing. He was an assassin, after all. His calling was to take the lives of others. Hunting his targets and taking them down…much like how a hunter celebrated his victory over the greatest monster and taking its head as a trophy.
To Alan, there was no greater target or monster than humans or demons.
Normally, he would be thrilled at hunting a target as powerful and ranked highly as Ralph Da Ghoul or Sheldon Umbra. However, he had just received a taste of cruel reality.
The man who taught him all his assassination skills was on a completely different level. He was much more powerful than him.
And with the entire League of Shadows, as well as the Shadow Legion, behind him, there was nothing Alan could do.
"No…there is."
Alan grimaced when he stitched his wound close, gritting his teeth and biting a damp cloth to prevent himself from biting his tongue from the pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the tears leak from his eyes, but determinedly opened his eyes once more and continued to sew his skin together with a sterilized needle.
After the arduous process, he sagged against the wall and waited for the throbbing pain to subside. It wouldn't fade, but he would get used to it. For now, he bandaged himself to stop the bleeding, which was a lot less now that he had stitched the wound close.
All he could do now was to wait for his injury to heal.
With his emergency treatment complete, Alan could finally move his mind to other things. He took a deep breath and evaluated his situation.
Yeah, he had been branded a traitor. His current target now had the full might of the League of Shadows and the Shadow Legion behind him, but there was still something that Alan could do. As an assassin, he just needed to eliminate the leader. That was the job of an assassin, after all.
Cut off the head and the body will fall. That was the assassin's creed. A single strike would deal far more damage to the entire organization than military might.
Honestly, it sucked that he would no longer take over as the new leader of the League of Shadows, but that was fine. All he needed to do was eliminate Ralph Da Ghoul and then he would be safe for a while as the organization went into chaos. Undoubtedly they would retaliate – they would send more killers after him as revenge, but if Alan could assassinate Ralph Da Ghoul, then surely none of the other assassins would pose much of a threat to him.
From there he could create an assassination organization of his own, one that would rival…no, surpass that of his master's League of Shadows.
But first he had to survive.
Looking around, Alan couldn't help but smile. This place was perfect. Even the assassins in the League of Shadows would never imagine that he would sneak into the abandoned home of one of his former targets to hide in. Well, they might trace him here eventually – they were professional killers, after all – but right now they would probably prioritize the other more commonly known locations. His contacts in other cities or towns. Temples where he was likely to go for medical treatment. Shadow hideouts that most assassins established over the line of their work.
Not a burned out manor where they took out one of their targets…
Alan would just wait here for a few days to heal enough so that he could move from here. No doubt operatives would visit this place eventually, and he intended to be far from here when they did. But the wound he had suffered was far too grievous.
Tap.
Alan froze at the sound and slowly turned around to scan the place. He swallowed, hoping that he was just imagining things.
Unlikely. Alan was a seasoned and well trained killer. He would never make such mistakes.
His instincts screamed at him and he quickly hurled himself away. Just in time too, as something erupted from the shadows and stabbed the place where his body had occupied a millisecond ago.
Hitting the ground, Alan rolled away as far as he could. Burning agony flared up in his eviscerated abdomen, almost as if a burning knife had just seared through his skin. The stitches held the flaps of skin together for now, but their insistent pulling reminded him that the tender flesh had barely even begun to heal. Nausea filled him and he coughed.
Rising slowly to his feet, he watched the blade sink back into the shadows.
"No choice," he muttered. Taking a deep breath, he also disappeared into the shadows and began his escape.
Clearly the Wayne Manor had been compromised. He had underestimated his opponents. He didn't think the League of Shadows would track him to this place so quickly. How did they know? Or did they read his intentions?
The assassins of the League of Shadows weren't enemies he could afford to underestimate. Alan cursed himself for his mistake, wishing that he had thought of a better place. He had been so sure, so confident that they wouldn't think of this location…at least not for a few days.
But now they had found him. There was no use regretting. He would have to escape. If he couldn't, then he would fight and kill them all. As long as Ralph Da Ghoul wasn't among their number, he was confident he could defeat them.
In the entirety of the League of Shadows, only his former master was capable of defeating him. Otherwise he was the bane of everyone else.
Reaching the distance limit of his shadow travel spell, Alan leaped out of the darkness and into the open reality once more. He prepared to descend into the shadows once more, but another blade struck at him from the black shapes, preventing him from escaping.
"Ugh!"
The maneuver was something that Alan remembered during his training under Ralph Da Ghoul. To prevent a fellow shadow magic user from escaping into the shadows, one would have to strike him right before he could enter the darkness.
Of course his fellow assassins would have learned that too…
"Eh?"
Alan froze when he recognized the silhouette of the person emerging from the shadows. He was extremely familiar, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a cynical grin. He looked perpetually unchanged from before, save for a single black sword that he wielded.
Unchanged, from Alan's memories. Those plain features, which gave him the appearance of a nerdy scholar…or mage. But from what Alan could remember, this mage should only be capable of casting ice spells, not shadow spells.
Yet he was sure that the spell he had just used was shadow magic.
No…was it that black sword he was holding?
Alan studied the figure, his mouth dry. There were other changes too. A second sword hung from his waist, its crimson blade hidden in a dark scabbard. A whip the color of night coiled around his belt. A utility harness with all sorts of devices packed into its storage pouches.
"You…" he breathed.
"It's been a long time, Alan," the familiar figure said with a grin. The assassin flinched but tightened his grip on his daggers.
"It has, indeed," he agreed. "I never expected to see you here, Klein."