Laughing Coffin
An infamous evil group of misfits whose only purpose in life is 'entertainment'.
Unfortunately for everyone, their definition of 'entertainment' was a tad bit different than what normal people find entertaining.
For most of the members of Laughing Coffin, the pain and misery of others is a source of joy.
They've existed for over a hundred years now, and countless people and factions have tried to destroy the group, but for some reason it's impossible to find any trace of them.
It's almost as if they don't even live in this world, which is why there was even a search for them in Morgov, but even there, no one found any trace of them.
In the past, a few of their members were captured for interrogation, but they all committed suicide before anyone could question them; even mind-reading or similar abilities don't work on their members.
For the past 100 years, Laughing Coffin members have consistently hunted down and assassinated a bunch of prodigies or other people who could help progress the world and civilization, like scholars and researchers.
It's almost like their only purpose is to constantly hinder and sabotage the growth of the world and its population.
Thankfully, for the past 10 years, there haven't been any sightings of members of this group, due to which most people have already forgotten about them.
However, the people who have personally witnessed the brutality and carnage that this group has brought could never forget them.
This is the reason behind the extremely tight security around today's birthday venue; however, the biggest security measures aren't the countless guards, CCTVs, and other defence mechanisms.
But rather, the guests invited to today's party, most of them are nobles or other highly influential people, which also means most of them are powerhouses due to the nature of this world.
All these measures were taken to protect William; after all, he's the prime target for groups like Laughing Coffin, aka someone who will greatly benefit the world given the opportunity to grow.
Measures like this were taken every year for his birthday and pretty much most other noble children.
The infamous group hadn't made any appearances over the past ten years, so people were a bit more relaxed this year, hoping that they wouldn't have to deal with that group of psychos ever again.
After all, the world was in an era of peace, and a group like Laughing Coffin is just a dark stain of the past. It's only fair for people to want to now move on rather than always being on edge and wary of a potential attack.
In a way, it was fair to say the world had grown soft, which isn't necessarily a bad thing after all. This greatly enhanced the quality of life of citizens, and with people not needing to fight for their lives every day, more important problems of civilization could be tackled.
Unfortunately for the world, their worst nightmare had come back to life, and if their plan succeeds, they're about to have the worst reality check of their lifetime.
***
"Wow, dude, weren't you a bit too rude back then?" Zack asked, genuinely concerned by his best friend's rudeness to the girl, who probably just wanted to be his friend.
In the past, William used to be somewhat of a loner, with his only friends being himself and Lilly.
However, over the past 2 years, his friend had gotten a lot more social and approachable.
So it was a bit weird seeing him suddenly be mean to a girl who just wanted to be his friend.
"Meh, leave it; if I'm too friendly with her, she'll just misunderstand and eventually get her heart broken," William retorted, trying to defend himself.
Zack couldn't really retort, as even to him, it was obvious that the girl had a crush on his friend.
A bunch of other girls had already fallen for Williams charms, and they were all rejected for being too 'weak and boring'.
While Zack could somewhat understand why William was so arrogant and picky when choosing a partner,
He was sure that his best friend would be the natural enemy of the common guy.
After all, he was born with status, wealth, looks, and talent.
Aside from his somewhat shitty personality, William was quite literally the perfect guy.
Of course, Zack had no reason to be jealous of him; after all, he too was born with a golden spoon.
"Anyways moving on, wanna eat something?" William asked Zack, to which Zack happily agreed. After all, despite their looks, the brother-sister duo were quite the foodies, always surprising William with their unnatural talent to devour food.
Just as William was making his way towards the food section, he called a waiter over to bring him a glass of orange juice.
An observation that William had made about his new body with the memories of before he regained his memory was that he really loved fruit juices. Due to the mana present in the atmosphere, the quality of fruits and vegetables in this new world was at a level of purity that couldn't be compared to his past life.
This was already his 12th glass of juice.
Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting-Ting
However, once William grabbed the juice, his passive skill [Danger Sense] started ringing like crazy.
He wasn't sure behind the reason until he took a closer look at the glass in his hand.
And then his gaze moved towards the butler, who was observing him intently, waiting for him to drink the juice.
So, not wanting to appear suspicious, he drank it like usual.
Of course,he didn't actually drink it; he just opened a miniature portal to his shadow domain inside his mouth, sending the 'poisoned' juice over there instead.
William was pretty sure this was an assassination attempt on him and that the glass was poisoned.
Sure, he had a poison resistance skill, but that didn't mean he was going to test his luck playing around with poison.
He had already gone through an assassination attempt once in his second life and more attempts than he could count in his past life.
So it's safe to say he was a veteran of surviving attempts like these.
After a few seconds of thinking, he quickly thought up a plan to bail out all the assasins and get rid of them at once, but just to be on the safe side, he asked Zephyr about how strong the butler was, to which he replied.
[Wow, you're really using a God to power scale for you? But fine, I'm feeling generous. This guy is quite weaker than you, so you don't need to call for help. If anything, this should serve as a good learning experience to get used to your new powers in a life-or-death battle before you leave the safety of your parents house.]
William smirked upon hearing that as he placed the now empty glass on the tray the butler was holding, as he said to Zack.
"Go and eat some food without me; I need to use the restroom real quick. I'll be back in a jiffy," he said as he made his way towards the restroom.
"Chh, I told you to not drink so much juice," Zack replied in a tone suggesting he already knew this was about to happen as he made his way towards the corner where food was placed.
***
Now standing in front of the mirror, William washed his face.
He was all alone in the restroom right now; he had already checked; there wasn't anyone else here after all; what he was about to do couldn't be seen by anyone else.
Now he was just waiting for the assassins to finally come to claim their lives.
Thankfully, he didn't need to wait long, as after a few minutes, two identical-looking buttlers made their way inside and locked the door behind them.
The butlers were both brown-haired and had brown eyes with average facial features. They also looked completely indistinguishable from one another aside from their hair cuts; one of them had a buzz cut while the other had shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail, due to which William assumed that they were twins.
They smiled upon seeing William as they used an S-rank artifact that was given to them by their higher-ups to separate the space inside the restroom into a sub-dimension.
Finally, seeing everything going perfectly, the long-haired man smiled as he eyed William and said,
"It's nothing personal, kid; we're just following orders, but since you're going to die anyway, it's only fair for you to know the names of your killers so you can spread our infamy in heaven."
"My name's Zaratul," the long-haired man proudly said.
"People call me Baratul" The short-haired man followed his brother's introduction.
Both men didn't take the kid in front of them seriously; after all, why would they?
He's just a 10 years old, after all; if they needed to even be scared of a little kid, they might as well just commit suicide.
Unfortunately for them, they picked the wrong kid to target this time. As soon as the hunter was about to become the prey and a dance of pure brutality was about to ensue.
"The name's William Verhein; make sure to spread my name in hell, as I'll be sending many bastards like you over there soon." William retorted as he removed his silver ring,dying the whole sub-dimension in his own crimson aura.
***
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