Chapter 2: A Templar Knight Becomes an Assassin

This chapter still needs editing

A splash of cold water hit Angel's face, flowing down her smooth cheeks and washing away the last traces of fear and tension from her body.

The mirror reflected a bewildered young woman, about 18 years old, perhaps even younger. She had silky, pale golden hair and perfectly proportioned features set in a delicate face. Her deep purple eyes were like whirlpools, drawing Angel's gaze. Even the oversized, blood-stained shirt couldn't hide her tall, slender figure.

"This is me... No, this isn't me..." Angel thought, confused as she stared at the perfect female face.

Before waking up in the basement of this building, she had been a member of the Templar Knights, and more importantly, she had been male...

The knights were battle-hardened warriors, each worth ten ordinary soldiers. From their inception, they had fought on the front lines against heretics and evil forces. When the world situation changed and various national armies and religious groups united to combat suddenly appearing demonic powers, the knights became the backbone of different units, forming the last barrier against evil invading the mortal world.

But that was all in the past now. During a battle to eliminate a superior demon, Angel had been impaled through the heart by a flame spear thrown by the dying demon while protecting a friend. Her last memory was of her teammates gathered around her with grief-stricken faces before she lost consciousness.

She slowly reached out to touch the exquisite face of the girl in the mirror. The reflection mirrored her action, their fingers meeting. The girl seemed to have a strange allure, those purple eyes threatening to draw in Angel's soul.

"The Assassin pathway..."

After the initial panic subsided, memories from this body slowly surfaced in her mind, giving her some understanding of the current situation.

First, it was obvious that she was no longer in her original world.

Steam engines, potions, deities, curses... This was a world with a technological level between the first and second industrial revolutions, but it also had supernatural powers. Ordinary people could gain various special abilities through "potions," but they also faced the risk of madness and losing control at any time.

This was Tingen City, a medium-sized city in the Loen Kingdom on the Northern Continent. "She," Cole Granger, was an unofficial extraordinary being in Tingen City.

After giving birth to Cole's younger sister, Lily Granger, their mother died of an epidemic. Their father, a sailor in a long-distance merchant fleet, raised the Granger siblings alone. He died three years ago during a pirate attack while on a voyage to the Balam Empire on the Southern Continent...

Wait, siblings?

Angel delved deeper into the memories and couldn't help but smile bitterly.

If only she had "crossed over" even a day earlier, at least she would still have been male...

Just a few hours ago, Cole Granger had taken a self-concocted potion, attempting to advance from Sequence 8 "Instigator" of the Assassin pathway to Sequence 7 "Witch." She lost control at the last moment, causing the ritual to fail and resulting in her immediate death.

In this world, failing to advance often meant losing control or death. Relatively speaking, death might be the luckier outcome.

The characteristics of the "Witch" potion forcibly transformed the user's body into a female. Although Cole failed to advance, her body had completed the transformation before death, which led to Angel, who "replaced" him, becoming the current delicate female form.

She raised her hand, looking at the flawless skin and long fingers, finding it hard to imagine that this perfect female body had previously belonged to a male.

"You certainly deserved your fate, but you've left me with quite a mess..." Angel felt no regret for Cole's death, as he had been far from a good person in many ways.

Initially, Cole Granger pursued supernatural powers solely to provide a better life for himself and his sister. However, after consuming the "Assassin" potion a year ago, he began constantly playing the role of an assassin to satisfy his "mentor's" requirements and to master the potion more quickly. His hands gradually became stained with blood.

Then came the next sequence of the Assassin pathway: "Instigator."

Unlike Assassins who needed to personally eliminate targets, Instigators hid behind the scenes, using words to provoke evil thoughts in others, inciting conflicts and creating bloodshed. By the time Cole reached the point of advancing to "Witch," the number of deaths he was responsible for was no less than during his Assassin phase. In Angel's hazy memories, Cole was involved in several violent incidents among student groups at Tingen University, resulting in multiple deaths and disappearances.

By this stage, Cole Granger had completely lost his way, forgetting his original purpose for pursuing supernatural powers.

To advance from Sequence 9 to Sequence 7 in just one year indicated that he was a person of great talent. If such a person had taken the right path and received proper guidance in an orthodox church, he could have safely increased his power and progressed further, rather than rushing to advance without adequate preparation and dying in his own basement.

---

Having composed herself, Angel Grey left the bathroom.

The red moon unique to this world still hung high in the sky. This strange sight made her cautious about going outside, so she carefully inspected the building instead.

It was a two-story building with a basement. Judging by the buildings across the street, it appeared to be a row house facing the street. There were two entrances, one at the front and one at the back. The front door opened into the living room, with no porch, directly facing the currently empty street. The study and dining room were on either side of the street-facing living room. Near the back door were the kitchen, bathroom, and storage room. The back door opened from the kitchen into a narrow, dirty alley. The second floor had another bathroom and four bedrooms. Two of the smaller rooms seemed to be used as storage, filled with unused tools and broken furniture. The two street-facing rooms were in normal use, with the master bedroom having a small balcony. The basement entrance, where she had awakened, was located in the ground floor study. The gas lamps on the walls weren't lit, but she found she could clearly see in the dark.

"This body has night vision... This must be the dark vision ability Cole Granger gained after taking the Assassin potion. It seems I, or rather this body, still retains the supernatural abilities from the potion."

Using her night vision, she returned to the basement.

The radial pattern of blood on the floor had long since dried, solid evidence of Cole's failed advancement. The extent of the bloodstain and the amount of blood loss made Angel wonder if Cole had exploded into a mist of blood, and she was now an entirely different person who just happened to appear in the same spot.

"This will be troublesome to clean up. Even with a lot of water, the smell of blood won't dissipate for at least a week."

As she was worrying about how to clean the basement, she noticed a black, gel-like substance among the bloodstains.

She hadn't noticed it when leaving the basement earlier, assuming it was just a piece of internal organ or a blood clot. Now, with her night vision, she could clearly see the difference between it and the surrounding bloodstains.

The gel-like substance was about the size of an egg, half-spread on the ground due to gravity. Its color was close to purple-red, with what seemed to be light flowing across its surface. However, the area around it appeared to absorb the surrounding light, making the gel's own color stand out vividly.

As Angel approached the gel-like substance, she heard faint whispers in her ears, and her mood became irritable. A desire to destroy and kill arose in her heart, and the smell of blood in the basement intensified.

This was a Beyonder Characteristics!

According to Cole Granger's memories, when an extraordinary being dies, the power within their body condenses into a Beyonder Characteristics that matches their abilities, emerging from the corpse.

This gel-like substance was clearly what Cole left behind when he died. Considering that he had only consumed the "Assassin," "Instigator," and "Witch" potions, Angel deduced that it should belong to the "Witch" characteristic.

However, in Cole's memory, the characteristics expelled by dead extraordinary beings should contain their complete supernatural power from when they were alive. This meant that her current body should no longer possess the powers of an extraordinary being, yet the unique "night vision" was certainly not something an ordinary person could have.

Perhaps it was because she... no, because Cole Granger hadn't completely died?

Based on the abilities she possessed, her current body should be at the "Assassin" level?

The former Templar Knight, Angel Grey, could only smile bitterly.

She didn't rush to collect the valuable and dangerous Beyonder Characteristics. Instead, she left the basement and went to the study above.

Under a certain floorboard in the study was a small hidden compartment. Inside was a small metal box that Cole had prepared when purchasing potion materials, costing 20 pounds. According to the seller, it could isolate supernatural powers and prevent the spirituality of the materials inside from dissipating.

Unfortunately, Cole had no extra Beyonder materials, so this box had become his weapon storage box. Now it only contained a damaged revolver.

Although she didn't know if it really had such an effect or if it was just the vendor's exaggeration, this small box was the most suitable container Angel could find to store the Beyonder Characteristics. With a "better than nothing" attitude, she carefully picked up the characteristic, using her clothes as a barrier, and placed it in the box along with the previously stored revolver with its damaged hammer.

Fortunately, the moment the box closed, the whispers in her ears and the smell of blood in her nostrils immediately diminished by more than half.

Although it wasn't completely isolated, at least the side effects were now within an acceptable range.

Angel put the box back in the hidden compartment, covered it with a few books, and closed the trapdoor of the compartment. Finally, the whispers disappeared completely.

After disposing of the Beyonder Characteristics left by Cole, she went upstairs. Near the stairs was the secondary bedroom where Cole's sister, Lily Granger, lived. The decor was bright and girlish. The dressing table and full-length mirror were all there, and the bedding had lace trim, but everything was covered with dust sheets, with a thin layer of dust on top, suggesting it had been unoccupied for some time. On the bedside table were a few novels and a face-down photo frame. Angel picked up the frame and, in the crimson moonlight from the window, could barely make out a black and white photo of two people.

Next to the bedroom door were several height marks with ages written beside them. The highest mark said "18 years old, 156cm."

Obviously, clothes that fit a 156cm girl wouldn't suit this body...

Angel stood by the door to compare her height and found herself more than a head taller than the 156cm mark, meaning she was about 175cm tall. It seemed she would have to wear one of Cole's outfits for now. Although the size wouldn't be quite right, at least she could fit into them, which was better than wearing a little girl's clothes.

The master bedroom belonged to Cole Granger. Its decor was simple and clean, with a cool color scheme and no extra deColetions. The wardrobe contained only men's clothes, including two suits of the same color and several casual outfits. Angel casually held up a shirt against her body and found it to be the same size as the one she was wearing.

She took out a shirt and a pair of casual pants, then removed the blood-stained, stiff clothes she had been wearing and changed into the clean outfit by the bed. She took the photo downstairs to the more familiar study, turned on the gas lamp on the wall, and the soft yellow light dispelled the coldness brought by the red moonlight.

In the lamplight, Angel carefully examined the photo frame in her hand. As she had expected, it showed an unfamiliar man and woman. The man was in his early twenties, with short blond hair, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and casual pants. He was tall and thin, with delicate, soft features, his eyes and nose bridge very similar to Angel's current appearance. He wore black-framed glasses and had a somewhat deliberate beard, seemingly trying to make his androgynous face look more masculine. The girl was about 16 years old, wearing a dress, with a round face and long blonde hair tied in a single braid. She was holding a novel in both hands and leaning against the man's side.

Based on the girl's height and the novel she was holding, which Angel had seen in the upstairs bedroom, she determined that this was the owner of the secondary bedroom, the "sister" Lily Granger, who had left Tingen a year ago to study in Backlund.

The "brother" beside her, whose face bore a slight resemblance to Angel's current appearance, was naturally Cole Granger when he was male.

This photo was probably taken shortly after their father's death. Both siblings looked melancholic, in contrast to their bright clothing styles.

As Angel was carefully studying the details of the photo, a knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

"Knock knock knock—"

Who could it be?