Rise of the Blood Sovereign

Chapter 85  Midnight Dagger Headquarters

"Shade?"

"Yes?"

"Please take a seat, the agent will be in shortly."

"Alright."

Lyle took a seat inside the headquarters of the organization.

As the most powerful and influential underground organization of the empire, the Midnight Dagger not only specialized in assassinating but in spying, guarding, and more.

There were thousands of people moving through the headquarters every single day, hundreds of missions being given and completed, some perhaps failed.

That meant that the workload the agents and handlers had was incredibly high and they all had much to deal with.

Lyle, as a higher-up amongst the assassins, was of course given some preferential treatment.

He didn't have to stay in the main lounge where the Tier I and Tier II assassins were and could actually go a floor lower where the traffic was much lower and there were not a lot of people present.

The only ones on the floor were those that had the same rank as Lyle, and inside the organization, there were never many of them in the same place at the same time.

Night Blades were assassins that had reached the Golden Knight realm and were incredibly powerful and dangerous.

The organization was huge and there were quite a lot of such individuals, but only one person managed to reach the rank while being a Silver Knight, and that was Lyle.

Partly, it was thanks to Lyle's nearly spotless record and incredible proficiency, but partly it was because he had the backing of a Shadow.

"Hello, sorry for the wait." A woman said as she entered the small office where Lyle was sitting in and waiting for her. She was tall, almost as tall as Lyle, and was wearing a black skirt that fell down to her knees whilst hugging her legs and bottom firmly.

Even though barely anyone knew of the backing, it was enough for Lyle's master to do some things behind the scenes in order to get him the rank. Even so, Lyle did not disappoint and continued completing missions, although with lesser frequency and with a lot more difficulty thanks to the missions being much harder to be done.

It was still a wonder to many how Lyle was able to perform the missions and successfully complete almost all of them with his level of power. Some had even plotted against the young man, only to be taken care of by the man behind Lyle and turn obedient.

"Hello, sorry for the wait." A woman said as she entered the small office where Lyle was sitting in and waiting for her. She was tall, almost as tall as Lyle, and was wearing a black skirt that fell down to her knees whilst hugging her legs and bottom firmly.

She wore a thin blouse that accentuated her upper body, especially her chest, which although not incredibly large, was still nothing to scoff at.

Her hair was wavy and flowed down to her shoulders as a pair of glasses decorated her face and blue eyes.

"It's no problem," Lyle said as he nodded at her.

He was currently wearing a disguise, as were most assassins that entered the headquarters in order to hide their real identity. The stone was enough when it came to confirming their identity, and they would always wear a special badge whose only purpose was to let others know who they were.

The badge was made especially for assassins as well, but it served no function except for showing others who they were, which was a bit ironic considering the fact that everyone had different faces each time they entered the headquarters.

The badge is bound to a person and it is unable to be touched by others. Even being in the presence of others without the real owner of the badge was enough for the badge to explode and leave no traces behind.

"Mister Shade, there's much to be discussed." The woman said as she sat down and sighed as her whole demeanor changed.

An agent was a high-ranking individual in the organization that only dealt with important clients and assassins.

Those below Lyle's rank were all given a handler that would be giving them advice when it came to taking missions, and they would also be the ones they would have to report to after completing or failing them.

Those below the first tier were even worse off and had to use the first floor of the organization where there were only a couple of clerks that would be taking their reports while huge boards littered with missions stood to the side.

The assassins at that rank had to do everything by themselves and even had to wait in line for a long period of time before being able to give their report.

That was of course done on purpose.

It was mostly to weed out those that were incapable of creating their own plans to tackle simple missions and to make the assassins learn humility and patience when waiting in line.

Patience was the best friend of an assassin as missions that were seemingly impossible would become easy if the assassin was patient and shrewd enough.

"First of all, congratulations for managing to complete the mission, the body of the duke has been identified after less than a day after the assassination." The woman smiled gently at Lyle before returning to her previous deadpan expression.

"But there is a problem."

"The archmage Irin's real identity has been found out."

"I know," Lyle said as the woman took off her glasses and stared at him. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"So, would you kindly tell me how you were able to escape from magister Ilya, once one of the most powerful mages in the area that has seemingly managed to learn spatial magic during the time he was presumed dead?"

"Yes," Lyle said as he calmly looked at the woman without fear or nervousness.

"He tried to help the duke and wanted to teleport, but I used a disturbance scroll in order to break the spell."

"After killing the duke I jumped out from the castle, only to be followed by the archmage that was able to levitate, another spatial spell that he had learned."

"In total, I had witnessed 3 spatial spells, of which the last was Spatial Cut that had almost killed me," Lyle said as he narrated the events of that day, with some slight deviation from the truth.

"I had to enter the castle and use its layout to confuse the enemy in order to escape, after which I changed my looks and tried to stay inconspicuous."

"I knew something was wrong when the magister told the whole city of the duke's death."

"It was as if he was making me leave, although on the surface it seemed like the opposite," Lyle said as his expression changed, it was as if he was recounting the events of that day.

Of course, what Lyle was speaking right now was pure lies. He couldn't tell them that he was played by Ilya who was able to get him out of the city and follow him inside the forest.

He could not tell the organization how he was able to kill Ilya after the system's arrival and how he now possessed the spatial ring that Ilya had which was filled with gold, poison bottles, and books and notes that Ilya had gathered and written.

"I decided to take a gamble and used another scroll."

"I used the clone scroll to create a temporary clone of myself that ventured out of the city at night."

"As I had suspected, it seemed to have been a trap as I lost contact with the clone much earlier than normal since the spell would last for 10 hours."

"I had stayed inside the city for some time after that and had ventured inside the forest as well, partly it was in order to regain the power I had lost after the system arrived, but partly to try and find where my clone had died, which I was able to do after some time."

"You're talking about the area of the forest where everything had withered and died, right?" The woman asked Lyle who simply nodded at her.

"That was when I understood that we were all tricked, the man thought of to be the weakest archmage of the empire was an enemy that was in fact the most powerful, especially now that he possessed both spatial and poison magic."

"The magister did not show up after that, perhaps it was because the prince had shown himself, and with his identity, he probably had a Titled Knight guarding him."

"There was also the disturbance that everyone had felt in the forest after a couple of days." Lyle's words made the woman nod her head as she sighed.

"We are not sure, but the aura that was felt from the forest was at the very least Tier V, if such a being truly was in the forest back when Ilya had attacked and killed your clone, then he had probably run into whatever or whoever it was that possessed that aura." The woman said before putting her pen down.

"Of course, that is all speculation from the organization as we have no proof to back up any of the claims."

"I understand," Lyle said before taking out some parchments from his spatial ring.

"The parchments of the disturbance and clone scrolls, even though they are only bits of it, the left-over mana should be enough for the higher-ups to identify."

"Thank you, we will be in contact shortly, as for now, you should get some rest after dealing with such a mission, the rewards have also increased as the level of the mission had risen after finding out the truth."

"One more thing, however." The woman suddenly said as Lyle made his way to the door.

"Were you badly affected by the system's arrival, if yes, you can take a longer rest in order to return your power to what it once was."

"I see, then I think I will take that vacation." Lyle smiled at the woman who nodded at him.