"You're a demon aren't you?"
Leo took a step back.
"What do you mean?"
My father shouted at me.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING ISAAC? HOW COULD YOU CALL MY FRIEND A DEMON!!!"
I was disappointed in father. How could such a dense amount of demonic mana go unnoticed. I ignored him.
"I give you ten seconds to explain to me what a demon like you is doing here."
Leo stammered and couldn't form any words. He quickly transformed into a demon and as soon as he tried to run, he was grabbed by my invisible mana arms.
"A human like you can do telekinesis to this level?!?!?"
I honestly couldn't be bothered with him right then. I just wanted to do some magic. I then had a bright idea.
"Father. If it's alright with you, can I take him back for some research?"
He was silent. He was weirdly calm but silent. Ashley on the other hand was wide eyed in shock. She couldn't move at all. I turned around and walked away.
"I'll take that as a yes then."
Before I walked out the door, Leo made a loud screeching sound which I could only assume was at a frequency only other demons could hear. I snapped his neck with my telekinesis. At first I was mad but then the thought of gaining all these soon to be demon corpses made me happy. I happily though to myself.
"I can practically smell another breakthrough in my magic. "
It didn't take long before my presence detection started going off. In total, I can sense about 31 demons approaching from the east.
"Damn. They'll pass by where I train."
I turned around and looked at dad.
"I'll be taking this body with me father. Don't worry about the rest also."
I teleported along with the corpse out of father's study. I appeared at the mountain peak just a little further from where I usually train.
"I don't know why but I keep getting the feeling that father is way more powerful than he seems. I'm pretty sure he already detected those demons long ago. I'll keep presence detection on just in case he followed me."
The demons were about 2km away. Soon, a devious plan came to mind.
"I think it's time to try some new magic."
I extended my hand and pointed my finger in the direction they were coming from. Instead of trying to see them, I focused more on sensing their magic power.
"Hakushi (White Death)"
I let loose a highly white concentrated beam from my finger. It consisted of several magics with destructive properties like water and wind for extra boost and penetration, fire and earth for extra damage boost and corrosion affect. With that combination, it was no wider than my finger, almost totally invisible.
"It's not complete yet but it should be enough to deal with them."
It went through three of them with ease, killing them instantly. The rest of the demons stopped moving, wondering what happened. The holes expanded a bit after the ray went through, showing the corrosive affect was working.
"Looks like I have to improve the corrosion factor a bit. Ah! I should also increase the temperature of the beam. Let me try it."
I extended my hand and pointed my finger at them.
"Hakushi"
I hit another demon square in the head, incinerating it cleanly. The corrosion effect applied immediately and the hole kept expanding to the point that you could fit about 4 thumbs in it. This time, a demon managed to spot where the beam was coming and immediately he alerted his companions. They then began to fly towards me a max speed.
"Are they idiots? They should fly erratically if they want me to miss."
With that I began picking them off one by one but they soon entered the 1km range. I knew I wouldn't be able to take care of all of them before they arrived.
"I guess this ends the experiment then."
I extended my hand and assembled different magic circles in front of me. All of them were for high ranking fire magic with my own variations. I have one huge circle for the initial spell, two small circles to supply extra mana and another two circles to suppress it so that it's radius doesn't go beyond five metres. I also summoned two clones of myself to guard me incase of an unexpected attack. I waited for them to reach the 500 metre range.
"Volkano"
Like a volcanoe, a super concentrated blast of fire was released at them. They had no time to react. It incinerated all of them instantly. It then hit me.
"GOD DAMNIT!!! I JUST LOST 22 PERFECTLY GOOD CORPSES!!!"
I had gotten carried away at testing out my new magic since it was my first real live combat experience. As I was about to go and collect the four remaining corpses, my clones were suddenly killed and before I could even react, there was a knife to my throat. I felt more annoyance than fear. The person spoke.
"Are you Isaac Blake?"
It was a girl. I retorted.
"I don't recall another Isaac so I'm assuming, yes?"
The person stiffened. As soon as the knife loosened, I let loose a rock pillar which catapulted the woman into the sky. I summoned five clones and sent them to attack the woman. I tried using Hakushi several times but she dodged it. As she killed my clones, she came closer. I became nervous.
"Damnit. ROCK PILLAR."
I summoned under me, a rock pillar that reached 20 metres in height. I thought that was fine but she started running up the pillar. Before I could even jumped off the pillar, the woman accelerated and in a flash, knocked me out. I wished I had learnt flight magic sooner.
When I came to, I found myself feeling strangely weak. I couldn't draw my mana at all. I looked at my hands. Strange bracelets were on them. There were also bracelets on my feet, waist and neck. A wooden sword was in front of me. When I looked up, I saw my father in front of me. He smirked
"Even in this situation you're strangely calm. You honestly surprise me Isaac."
I looked around. This seems to be some underground basement. I noticed the woman who I fought with before. She was wearing black and had her face was covered. Her black hair was wrapped up in a ponytail. She seemed to be thirteen of fourteen. The situation I'm in wasn't hopeful so I had an idea.
"Is this your illegitimate daughter dad?"
Father fumed.
"There you go with your nonsense you brat! She isn't my daughter!"
I looked at her again. I smiled
"Yeah you're right. She'd be less prettier if she had your genes."
She smiled. Dad roared.
"SO THAT MUST MEAN YOU'RE UGLY TOO HUH?"
"Normally that'd be the case but I was saved by mom's genes."
As dad started ranting again, I tried triggering the mana inside of me. The bracelet on my neck was slowly cracking. I thought to myself.
"If I can just get my neck free, I'd be able to use breath attacks."
The girl noticed this but it was too late. I sucked in air and blew it out. It was to fast for her to dodge. She crashed into the wall. My next target was father but he was nowhere to be seen, until I felt a presence behind my back. There was no time to think before I felt a clasp go around my neck. A new bracelet was put on me. The mana that I was so happy to have recieved gradually receded again. I began thinking.
"Judging by the mana I have left. I can only make one more move. I have to time this right."
I drew in my breath again and blew it out as hard as I can. This time I was propelled backwards. With dad behind me, I expected to crush him between me and the wall however, at the last moment, he vanished. Before I hit the wall, I felt something grab me. It was dad and he was smiling brightly.
"You have surpassed all of my expectations. You detected that Leo was a demon, you killed 31 demons on your own and you even had an ingenious plan of escaping. If I didn't have an extra bracelet, you could've possibly escaped from here."
I wanted to retort and say how cheesy his praises were but when I saw tears of joy in his eyes, I couldn't help but smile. I never had anyone feel genuinely proud of me. This is the first time I recieved sincere praises.
"Thanks dad. Thanks a lot."
At that moment, mom walked in.
"Oh my. A passionate father son bonding session I see. Don't mind me though. I'm just here to grab Ashley."
I was confused.
"But there's no Ashley here."
Mon laughed as she moved over to the woman in black.
"She's Ashley."
"HUH?!"
"Don't be surprised. She's a martial artist."
Visibly confused, I was about to speak but dad cuts in.
"We'll explain later. For now there's something important we have to do."
Dad removed the bracelets from me and I stood up. I felt my mana come back to me and it felt good.
"Now then. Please explain what all of this was."
Dad suddenly got all serious and spoke.
"You see Isaac, to the outside world we're a noble family of merchants but on the inside, we're a family of assassins. This test was to see whether you were worthy enough of being told this secret. Usually we'd have waited until you were sixteen but we feared you'd be too powerful for us to even test you by then. So then, any questions?"
A question that had been residing in my mind popped up.
"Are all the people here assassins? I mean including the maids and workers?"
Mom smiled.
"How keen of you to notice. Yes everyone here is a top notch assassin."
It finally made sense. The people here had far higher magic power than normal and no matter how much I tried, there were times when I couldn't sense the maids until they were actually in front of me.
"Then may I ask what are the criteria that makes you fail the test and what happens to family members who are judged to be not worthy?"
Mother went and and picked up the desk I blew away. She spoke.
"Of course we'll send you away from here. We'll find an excuse like maybe you've been hired as a teacher at some Academy or you've been invited to join the King's Guard. We also have seperate family branches and we can always send you to them. That's what happened with your uncles and aunts. If we judged that they failed, we'd stage a rescue operation and send them away after. As for the criteria, we'll expose you to some mild violence to gauge how you'll handle intense situations and we'll test your morality to see whether you're, in layman's terms, a pathetic person who wouldn't even kill a rapist or a judge of the night who will uphold absolute justice."
I then became confused.
"But I didn't take any of these morality tests. I was simply captured."
Father laughed.
"You had passed when you slaughtered those demons. When we bought Leo over, we were going to kill him later anyway but your mother suggested I bring you over to see if you could detect whether he was a demon or not. To my surprise you noticed immediately. You even interrogated him, showing that you simply viewed him as an intruder, not a demon. You were also very decisive in killing him. I won't even begin to talk about your combat ability."
I slumped down. I hated how I felt helpless in the combat situation.
"My whole life I focused on magic since I found it amazing that we could shoot flames put of our hands. However, I truly felt helpless when I faced you. All that power I had faded with a mere bracelet."
Mom patted my head.
"Regardless of everything, the thing you can truly rely on is your own body. That's why we'll train you. You'll become our family's next assassin. Welcome to the Assassins Guild."