"Interesting…" The masked man tenses his entire being with his veins bulging like endless river streams. The green liquid burst out from the grazed wound, shooting it towards a neighbouring tree.
The liquid corrodes the centre manifesting a circular hollow.
'What in the world?!' Noah felt his 'world' turned upside once again. An assassin who had the endurance of a tank, a vigour so mighty as a warrior and a twisted philosophy catering to that of a lunatic.
The assassin guild master was not as fragile as an egg shell, he was as seasoned and tempered like the finest steel blade worked on by a revered blacksmith for decades.
"Fragile shadows are swept away by the first light of dawn. I stand firm, unbroken. What use is a blade if it shatters before the strike."
An assassin's greatest weakness was that they could shatter at any point. Failing a mission was synonymous to losing their life. The masked man indulges into his past, smiling to the joy he had achieved as someone whose knife was both sharpened but was impervious to damage to its durability.
Noah was someone who he thought would take him to greater heights, a height no warrior, tank or any class would ever take him.
"Noah… You truly are a diamond in a rough. A jewel I cannot leave unattended." His eyes stare into the bloodied and battered Noah as if he was staring into the empty, circular dam whose capacity hasn't been fulfilled.
Potential lied waiting in the midst of every nook and cranny of its essence. It waits for opportunities it could benefit from.
While the masked man spoke in acknowledgement of Noah's existence.
Noah on the other hand was teetering on the brink of unconsciousness, reveling in the impossible he was viewing in a blur.
He felt drained, but his eyes still gazed back towards the masked man who he felt a deep seated respect. Just this one battle, the levels had already rose to nigh unbeatable.
Noah was a tan man in a world governed and ran by the noble whites. He saw the cracked piece of the masked man's face which he thought was oddly tan as well.
As Noah leaned against the broken tree, splinters biting into his back, the ache in his body dragged him into the past. A familiar pain—a hunger that clawed at him not just physically but emotionally—echoed a memory from years ago.
—-
Ugh…
…
Did I finally die?
…
Wait…
…
I'm thinking right now…
…
When was it the last time I've felt so challenged…
…
'I despise my dad. Why did he do this to me?'Young Noah, at a delicate age of seven was abandoned. Laying his bruised skin against a tree, he was emaciated beyond belief. His dull eyes were glued to the bright sky covered by the many canopies.
'I miss mum… I want to eat her mushroom soup sprinkled with her secret spice.'
His exposed ribs growl a vocal calling, a calling for a need.
A horned rabbit passed by popping his head out of a bush. Just outside his peripheral,Young Noah happened to catch a glimpse of it.
It barred it sharp front teeth. Then, it dashed towards Noah knowing he was falling into the brink of death.
Looking at the way it waited for an opportunity to kill Young Noah, he understood the animalistic nature of it. It was hungry just like he was, it tried to stay alive just like he was.
"You are also like me…" Young Noah said with a grin.
But what the horned rabbit had failed to realise was that Young Noah hadn't lost all hope.
He saw a rabbit, he saw a new day a new Noah within the rabbit coming towards him. Young Noah wipes the drool off his lips.
His dull eyes started to set ablaze as he knew no one was going to care for him, he had to care for himself. A dog eat dog world, is this what his dad meant?
Young Noah grabbed a twig in a fit of hurry and used every ounce of power to thrust it directly towards the leaping horned rabbit.
The blood gushed out across Young Noah's face.
—-
Smacking the bottom of his palm against his temple, Noah winces to the sharp ringing buzzed in his left ear. His eyelids felt extremely heavy like hanging, attached leads, dizziness weighing in causing piles of puzzle pieces of memories to frantically disperse.
The wind whistles past by, he faintly listens to the slight ruffling of bushes nearby. The aching pain stretched from his neck down to his lower spine. Scratching his back, he felt the prickly bark splinters he had his back rest upon.
"What a terrible memory to recall." Stretching his arms outs, he lets out a raw yawn as he analyses the neighbouring vicinity.
"Crazy bastard." While the pain and exhaustion could be felt all around, his thoughts quickly shifted. Curious, he wondered if he still had the magical scroll.
Slightly surprised, he grapples onto a sealed scroll with a waxed seal, it was slightly crumpled.
Noah looks up to the sky with a low grunt, he couldn't comprehend such a confusing situation.
'Hmm… He is a bit too eccentric. Is that how he obtain his powers?' That thought made Noah chuckle a bit before kicking up the dirt in a fit of anger.
"Dammit!"
"This was my first loss!" Gnashing his teeth together he begins lashing out punches onto the broken tree he was resting upon before.
"I don't understand… He is an assassin for god sake."
Noah quietly laments on his guild master's strengths and weaknesses.
Putting a nail on his weaknesses was harder than pointing out a thousand strengths this man had.
The thought of thrusting a mountain was the same as trying to kill his guild master.
Placing his hands in his pockets, he begins strolling towards a bustling marketplace.
'I was weak. There's no point denying it. Tch—' The exhaustion only made his vengefulness ever more evident.
'I can't return there now… But it was where I slept!'
The thought stung, and his fists clenched harder than before. Frustration bubbled inside him as he realised he'd have no choice but to sleep in the woods again tonight. A low, defeated sigh escaped his lips as his gaze fell on a group of children laughing with their parents.
For a brief moment, a pang of sadness seeped into his chest. But he had an instant change of mind, 'Fuck you dad!'
Noah had never known that kind of happiness. Abandoned by his father at the age of seven, he had lived a solitary life in the woods. By eight, he'd taught himself the ways of a hunter-gatherer just to survive. At eleven, curiosity and determination had driven him to sneak into a noble's library, borrowing books to learn the Erdean language. He had been caught eventually, of course, and his punishment was cruel.
Sold off to a slave trader, he became a mere servant in a noble's house. But Noah had always been resourceful—and defiant. He escaped after months of planning, leaving behind a parting gift: the destruction of the noble's spoiled child's favourite toy, a rocking wooden horse.
Remembering till this point, Noah couldn't help but giggle thinking he got the nobles good.
'Serves them right like the snobbish little twats stuck behind a set of scrawny and weak guards.'
At fourteen, emboldened by his freedom, he applied to join an adventurer's guild, only to forget one glaring detail—his identity as a runaway slave. When the vengeful nobles tracked him down, it caused a huge scene that left Noah humiliated and on the run again.
By eighteen, his path had taken an unexpected turn. Stumbling into the assassin's guild by chance, he rose quickly through its ranks. His cunning, tenacity, and raw willpower earned him the position of C-Rank—a feat unheard of for someone with his background.
But now, walking aimlessly among the marketplace crowds, all of those victories felt hollow.
With a sudden lightbulb moment, a fragment of a memory resurfaced—vivid, yet distant. A fanciful lady, her laughter echoing like wind chimes, her presence as light and carefree as a summer breeze. For a moment, Noah hesitated, her happy and easygoing personality contrasting sharply with the weight of his own burdens.
He snickered, shaking his head.
"What a fool," he muttered under his breath, dismissing the thought like one might shoo away an annoying fly. It was too far removed from his reality, a fleeting relic of a simpler time that no longer held relevance.
Flaying his cape to the sky, he paused to take a deep breath, letting the sunlight warm his face for just a moment. Then, with the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, he turned sharply, striding away into the shadows.
The sunlight disappeared, swallowed by the consuming dark.0