C28 - First Target
For the following days, Kahn received training and combat experience from one of the most elite fighters in all different professions.
Let it be Archers or Magicians, Kahn not only learned a few of their core techniques and spells; he also excelled at them by a huge margin compared to others who would usually take months to reach that level.
All his trainers left with their jaws dropping on the ground, every single one of them not believing the talent this young man had in their respective fields.
And after one week of repeated training sessions, Kahn was finally done in being proficient in them and reaching more than 50% mastery in these skills, spells & combat techniques. The current Kahn would be able to use any weapon belonging to any class and different spells and combat techniques unique to these classes without any problem.
This left a sour taste in all his trainers who thought he was wasting his god-gifted talent by focusing on swordsmananship instead. Few of them even offering him to become their disciple. But Kahn refused all of them.
The agreed date of the first week was over and the days of his hunting began from today.
Kahn was sipping some morning herbal tea inside the Golden Crow restaurant as by now, he too was addicted to this aromatic & soul soothing tea.
Today, he was going to receive a detailed report on all his targets, their routines and the best locations to carry out the assassinations as agreed during their initial planning.
Kahn was to get familiar with different professions and their weaknesses and Solomon & Arkham's people were to gather more detailed and sure-shot intel on all of their potential targets.
As Kahn was basking in the delicious taste of the tea, a slim elven archer sat across the opposite side of the table. He didn't make any greetings and ordered some breakfast.
Both he and Kahn didn't speak a word to each other either. If anyone looked at them, they'd think that these two were nothing but strangers to each other.
As the Elven archer finished his breakfast, he suddenly took out a small book and passed it to Kahn from under the table, completely hidden from everyone's eyes.
The Elf gave a slight nod and left the place in a hurry. Kahn took the small book and placed it in his Space Ring. Soon, Kahn left for the adventurer association and after he finally reached there, he registered himself for the dungeon exploration list and paid a small fee for buying a dungeon pass.
Unlike many Novels & Mangas he read in his previous life; the dungeons in Rakos Empire were monitored by both the adventurer association & the military platoons stationed close to these dungeons in case of a monster tide occurred. They will be the first line of defense. The dungeon passes were used as permission to explore and also to keep a record of all the people entering the dungeons in case they went missing or needed reinforcement during life and death situations.
It was also to stop the unregulated & unrecorded flow of resources adventurers gained from these dungeons.
Kahn had 3 objectives for his dungeon visit today.
The first was obviously to hunt monsters & absorb their abilities. 2nd was to use this opportunity to increase his combat experience & improve his combat mastery using the different techniques he had learned in the past week. 3rd was to deliver upon his first target mentioned inside the small book.
On his way to the closest dungeon which was barely 5 kilometers away from the city, Kahn went to a merchant shop and bought some smoke bombs and tear gas bombs.
Normally, adventurers used it to hunt down groups of low-level monsters that traveled in groups. But Kahn was going to use them for some other purpose.
He also bought a black cloak to hide in the crowd and to avoid the eyes of fellow adventurers.
When Kahn finally reached the closest dungeon towards the city named the Bromnir dungeon, he entered after showing his pass. Surprisingly, he wasn't the only one entering while wearing a black cloak. There were many individuals who did the same. Out of 10, at least 2 would be wearing black cloaks as far as Kahn could see. Many trying to hide their identities.
[Good for me. This way, no one would be able to link me to the incident either.] Thought Kahn as he entered the gigantic cave-like door to the dungeon that was filled with plenty of adventurers going in and out like ants gathering around sugar.
Kahn had placed his longsword inside the space ring and currently had a normal-looking bow on his back with a quiver full of arrows. He was entering the dungeon as an archer this time.
After entering the first floor, Kahn didn't waste time wandering around and asked a nearby adventurer about the directions towards the 9th floor.
The first 2 floors were flooded with people and only from the 3rd floor, did the real battles began.
Kahn kept descending the downstairs and walked nearly a few miles down the ground to finally reach the 9th-floor door. As the floor level increased, the stronger monsters & creatures would one face. After the 7th floor, no one would dare venture further without a team of allies.
So watching a lone archer going below the 7th floor surprised many but it was still acceptable for them as there were always risk-takers. Here, you were responsible for your own life. And nobody would care if you lived or died in this place.
Each floor in these dungeons covered the area of a big town having perimeters of around 6 to 8 kilometers on average. Here, many different monster species lived and hunted for resources. And so did the adventurers.
To the residents of these dungeons, any outsider would be no different than food so they attacked these adventurers at the first sight.
The 9th floor was an area of crevices and withered trees. This floor was a hunting ground for many big adventurer teams & the residents of this floor being none other than Kobolds.
These monsters had very sensitive noses and hearing. So they were very hard to hunt in a group unless you had a bigger group of your own.
"Finally. I'm here. Now, where are those bastards?" spoke Kahn to himself. He started looking around for groups of people.
After walking for more than ten minutes, Kahn finally found a group of more than 20 adventurers full of mixed-race people and humans trying to fight off against a pack of kobolds. All these people had an emblem on their chest; the emblem indicating the adventurer team he had seen before.
This was his first target as the book had provided him intel on...
The Groundhog adventurer team.
From the intel he received, The Groundhog adventurer team had more than 400 members.
Stragabor being their leader and his family who had a rich background funding the whole team.
There were dozens of groups like the one before Kahn, sent to dungeons to hunt for monsters, raw materials & monster cores and later be sold in the market.
In other words, this group was no different than workers farming for resources and later give it all to their bosses.
Kahn maintained a kilometer distance from this group and activated his Hunter Intent skill which let him gauge the strength of his targets about whether they were stronger than him or not. This ability also had a very long reach and was no different than a filter system for Kahn.
[The Strongest among them seems like between level 32 to 35. But the numbers are too big for me to hunt alone. Also bringing all of their attention towards a single target won't be easy. If I want to kill them efficiently without any fail, I need to give them a big target.] Kahn thought to himself as a plan hatched in his mind.
Kahn ran amongst the withered trees and went far away from the Groundhog adventurer team members.
Since he lacked numbers, he would use outside help.
Not only was he planning to overcome his disadvantage with numbers.. He was going to use the oldest and yet most efficient battle strategy in the book.
Kahn let out an evil grin as he finalized his plan..
"Killing two birds with one stone."