Day 4 (19), The Flashback (3)

Myles approaches his house, jumping across the rooftops in the abandoned district. A few blocks away from his home, he starts to do complicated maneuvers and laps around the houses to shake off any tails.

He's on his way back from turning in a mission and getting the medicine, thus he was worried about any would-be thieves who would try to steal it. The medicine from the top three families in the capital was vastly different in quality compared to those found in the Outer Walls after all.

Once he was confident that there were no tails, Myles approached his front door. He unlocks the many mechanisms while secretly disarming the runes he laid out. The door creaks open, letting the morning light in.

'Rachel should still be asleep right now, I'll have to give her her medicine later. Looks like I'll be able to head back to HQ earlier than planned.' Myles stores his salary inside the secret hole in the wall.

He tidies up the living room and stores Rachel's medicine away in the cupboards. After doing some small chores, his body drifts towards the couch, collapsing onto it. Myles stares at the ceiling, recalling his missions; an insatiable emotion grips his heart, threatening to devour every ounce of his sanity. His fist clenched as his lungs felt suffocated… The guilt clobbered his state of mind.

~A flashback within a flashback… I'll allow it.~

In his last mission, Myles was tasked to assassinate a family of 3, a father, mother, and a 12 year old child. The child accidentally bumped into the young master of the Shadowtrap family, causing him to drop the flowers that were prepared for one of the Guild's Receptionists.

Not that it mattered much anyways since the young master was too focused on an unknown man holding her hand. Still, in his moment of rage, he told his assassins to kill the family after orchestrating something else for the unknown man.

It was Myles first solo mission and it just had to be them. That child was not only the same age as Rachel, but bore a striking resemblance to her as well. Because it was his first solo mission, he knew his supervisor would come later and make sure he did the job right. There was no room to save anyone, for doing so would put his sister's medicine, and thus her life, at risk.

To make matters worse, Rachel's disease has been getting out of control, her coughs getting progressively worse. Almost every cough is now accompanied by blood. The extra medicine required to stabilize her condition drained any savings they had, making them unable to afford the priests' fee.

'Fuck… I should head in early to pick up another task.' And with that thought, Myles silently left his house. He raced across the rooftops once more, stopping 10 blocks away from HQ. He circled around HQ so it'd appear he came from a different direction his house is in.

He silently entered through a secret entrance and went to the main office to meet his supervisor. Being the supervisor's disciple, he got his tasks directly from him; unlike the others who followed a system similar to the Adventurer's Guild.

He was about to enter the office, but he heard another voice that didn't belong to his supervisor. Thus he instinctually concealed all signs of his presence and waited outside for the conversation to be done.

~Heck this is annoying… It's basically just audio from here on out.~

"You really have a good disciple, Victor." - unknown voice

"Thank you Ralph. Don't think about snatching him away like you did the others. You could even say the young master picked him himself." - Myles' supervisor, Victor.'

"Oh? How so?" - unknown voice in a confused tone.

"We didn't even know of his existence until his parents denied service to the young master because he didn't pay. That night was also the night we killed his parents." - Victor, in a bragging tone. Stifled laughs could be heard throughout him speaking.

"It wasn't until we did any investigation later that we found out their parents forced them to leave the house to avoid getting killed. They were smart, that's for sure. When we finally found the kids we discovered that their eldest son had a shadow and fire affinity. He's also very talented; with no resources he managed to get to the second circle." - Victor

"Wow… That's insane. Not even our young master could pull that off." - Ralph.

"Right? Here's the kicker though, his younger sister is sick. So we waited until winter then destroyed a part of their house to make her illness worse. After that we had someone bribe all the medicine shopkeepers close by to raise their medicine prices whenever they saw someone who looked like Myles." - Victor. He takes a pause for breath, his proud smile seemingly visible just from his tone.

"After that we just had to wait until he came to us. To keep him from hiring a priest, we even swapped some pouches of medicine for things that'll make his sister's illness worse." - Victor.

"Damn… was all that really worth it for such a lowly commoner though?" - Ralph

"You'd be surprised. He should surpass me within a month or two in terms of assassination techniques. At that point I won't even be able to detect his presence!" - Victor, in a tone that a father would use to brag about their son.

Myles' rage was boundless. The boundaries of his irises flared up, tinting them a deep blood red. A darkness darker than night spread outwards from his pupils. His eyes at that moment were blazing darkness itself.

He had to forcibly calm his breaths in order to prevent being discovered. 'Screw a couple months, old man. I've already surpassed you.' Myles was about to leave when he heard something interesting.

"I would like to meet him, when is he coming back?" - Ralph

"Aw hell no. Keep your mittens away from this one, he's mine. He should be back within an hour then we'll need to head out again for another task. Our dumb young master can't wait until his plans are in motion and want us to kill him now…" Victor lets out a deep, frustrated sigh.

'If it's someone he has plans against, it should be that unknown man from the guild. It was reported that he had no mana fluctuations at all, so it should be an easy task. I can kill my supervisor then, take his money, and flee with Rachel.' After formulating his plan, Myles leaves swiftly and quietly, hanging around the area for an hour before going back to the main office.

~Well dang… Let's skip the rest of it since I'm certain the unknown man they were talking about is me. Hmm… That means Myles planned to assassinate his supervisor after killing me. Rip their plans. Now I just need to end this flashback so I can take care of some stuff and finally go to sleep.

~...how do I do that? Hecking heck to the heck… this is definitely going to leave some brain damage.~

After several attempts of withdrawing his mana, Cain finally succeeded in breaking the link between him and Myles, thus ending the flashback.