Chương 11: CHAPTER 10: THE BEAST’S THEATER (PART 1)

"You need to leave Mizugaon tonight, Shin. No, scratch that—you need to pack your things and run right this damn second," Jax whispered fiercely, his massive upper body leaning so far across the low, scarred wooden table that his leather pauldrons nearly knocked over our clay mugs. The air inside the lower-district tavern was thick with the heavy smoke of grease-lamps, cheap ale, and the roasting fats of mountain-boar skewers.

The ambient noise of shouting mercenaries and clinking coins was deafening, but the small corner table Jax had dragged me to felt like an isolated island of ice. Jax's massive, scarred knuckles were white as he clutched his ale, his eyes darting toward the tavern entrance every few seconds.' Jax, baap re, calm down,' I muttered internally, keeping my outward voice perfectly level so the system matrix translated my response into smooth, calm Japanese for him.

"It's just a name a dead man screamed inside a cage. Why is everyone sweating so much over this?"

"Because you are a clueless village brat who doesn't understand what the Howling Shadow actually is!" Jax hissed, his voice dropping into a gravelly, terrified undertone that barely carried past our table.

"There are no public records, Shin. There are only rumors and ghost stories told by high-tier survivors. They are an elite, mythical assassination organization that operates across the entire kingdom. They don't take common contracts. They charge an impossibly high price—Gold Kobans that could buy an entire merchant district. And they follow absolute, unforgiving rules." He leaned in closer, his breath smelling of bitter hops.

"If a client signs a blood contract with them and fails to pay, or if the target somehow survives the initial strike, the contract doesn't cancel. They take the client's head as collateral for the insult, and then they complete the hit themselves to protect their perfect record. They never, ever leave a target alive. They will hunt you across every province, through every dungeon, until the debt is cleared in blood. You undid their poison on Lord Kaelen Ryuma, Shin. You insulted their craft."

I kept my expression neutral, taking a slow, measured sip of my water. So they are a high-level professional clean-up crew with an obsessive corporate pride. Great. My peaceful vacation just keeps getting better and better. That very night, the warning stopped being a rumor. The midnight air was cold and damp as I walked down the narrow, twisting timber alleys of the lower district, heading back toward my clinic.

Walking right beside me was Guildmaster Ozu, his heavy indigo Haori coat wrapped tight around his shoulders as he accompanied me under the guise of an administrative stroll.

Swish! A sharp, microscopic whistle tore through the darkness—a sound so fast and faint that a normal human ear would have missed it entirely. I didn't even have time to turn my head, but right beside me, Guildmaster Ozu's slate-grey eyes suddenly flashed with a sharp, piercing crimson luminescence.

[SKILL INVOLVED: A-RANK APPRAISAL EYE — PASSIVE PERCEPTION ARRANGEMENT] With the explosive, terrifying reflexes of a retired S-Rank veteran, Ozu's arm shot out like a whip. He grabbed the shoulder of my rough hemp Yukata and violently yanked my fifteen-year-old body behind his massive frame. In the exact same motion, he raised his reinforced leather sleeve.

Thwack! A heavy, five-pointed black steel shuriken embedded itself deep into the thick leather of his sleeve, the metal vibrating with such force that it tore a small gash in the fabric. I leaned out from behind him, my eyes instantly tracking the dark, glistening green residue coating the edges of the metal.' Paralytic neurotoxin,' my clinical brain instantly calculated, reading the viscosity of the liquid.' One scratch and your respiratory muscles lock up in forty seconds.'

"Who's there?!" Ozu roared, his dense internal mana flaring outward in a visible wave of blue energy that shattered a stack of empty wooden crates along the alley wall. The alley was completely empty. There were no footsteps, no shifting shadows, no residual mana traces. Only the faint, mocking echo of a distant wolf's howl seemed to ripple through the midnight mist above the rooftops before vanishing entirely. Ozu lowered his arm, his breath heavy as he looked down at the poison-coated metal.

When he turned to face me, the old man's face was strained with a deep, crushing guilt.

"They are already inside the town perimeter," he muttered, his voice trembling slightly.

"It's my fault, Shin... because I recorded your false status entry in the central archive, their network caught the anomaly. They know someone in Mizugaon can neutralize high-tier toxins. They are targeting you to clear the ledger." He grabbed my arm with a grip like an iron vise.

"You cannot stay here. If they launch a full team strike, this entire town will become a slaughterhouse. I've already arranged an escape route. Early tomorrow morning, a trusted traveling merchant family is leaving for Shin-Varanasi—the frontier hub town built directly above the multi-tiered Kage-Varanasi Abyss Dungeon. The local environment there is a chaotic mess of high-level adventurers and constant mana fluctuations. It's the only place big enough to mask your signature. You must flee."

Before the first rays of the sun could even cross the horizon, I found myself sitting in the back of a covered, rustic horse cart, watching the timber walls of Mizugaon fade into the morning mist. I had bid a quiet, secret farewell to Jax and Kiran in the dead of night, leaving before the party could get dragged into my mess. The driver was a rugged, middle-aged commoner named Devoken, his rough hands covered in horse-feed dust as he guided the reins.

Sitting right beside him at the front was his quiet wife, Radhami, her head covered in a simple grey shawl. Tucked into the straw blankets right next to me in the back were their two young boys, Rohanzu and Soshi, who were quietly giggling and playing with small, carved wooden toys, completely oblivious to the weight of the world. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

As the cart trundled along the rocky, isolated perimeter road, the flat terrain suddenly split open to our left, revealing a massive, terrifyingly deep ravine that dropped thousands of feet down into pitch-black subterranean darkness. The jagged volcanic rock walls of the canyon were covered in strange, glowing blue moss that flickered like dying stars.

"Young master," Devoken called out from the driver's seat, pointing his wooden whip toward the sheer edge.

"See that big split in the earth? That's the No Man's Land of the outer valley. It was formed after a catastrophic volcanic eruption centuries ago. The old herbs-merchants say the bottom is filled with mythical medicines and ancient flora that can cure any core fracture, but it's called No Man's Land because no adventurer has ever come back out alive. The beasts down there don't know mercy." I looked down into the deep, suffocating abyss, a quiet, cynical smirk playing on my lips beneath my hood.'

Itna Khatarnaak name. Sahi hai, no man's land. A very comforting name for a morning drive.'

"Sounds like the perfect place for a quiet medical retreat," I called back aloud. Suddenly, the horses let out a terrified, high-pitched shriek, their hooves skidding violently against the loose gravel of the dirt road. The cart lurched forward, throwing me against the wooden frame. A thick, pungent grey smoke was rolling across the path ahead, completely obscuring the road.

In the very middle of the track lay an overturned, smashed merchant cart, its heavy timber wheels spinning idly in the air as loose cargo lay scattered in the dirt.' Abey yaar, stop the cart,' I muttered internally, my surgeon's instincts instantly flaring as I prepared to jump out to check the wreckage for survivors.

"Wait, young master! Don't go!" Devoken yelled, his face turning completely pale as he reached back to grab my sleeve, his voice filled with sudden panic.

"In these wild border ridges, an overturned cart is the oldest bandit trap in the book! We need to turn the horses right now!"

"There might be people dying under those heavy planks, Devoken," I said, my voice dropping its timid orphan act and adopting the calm, heavy authority of a chief consultant as I easily brushed his hand off and stepped down onto the dirt road. I approached the smoking wreckage cautiously, my posture low, my two matte black short daggers already drawn and hidden completely within the wide sleeves of my new charcoal cloak. But as I cleared the thick smoke and kicked aside a broken piece of wood, my heart sank.

The cart was entirely empty. There was no blood, no cargo, no signs of a collision—it was a pure, deliberate decoy.

"Trap! Devoken, turn back!" I shouted, turning around to sprint toward the horse cart. But it was already too late. Out from the long shadows of the surrounding volcanic rocks, five figures materialized like solid ghosts, cutting off every single escape route. They wore pitch-black hooded cloaks that absorbed the morning light, their faces completely covered by dark cloth masks. Stamped clearly onto the right shoulder of each cloak was the unmistakable silver emblem of a howling wolf.

The man leading the perimeter stood out from the rest—his forearms were tightly wrapped in a distinct, crimson-red dragon band, and his presence radiated a suffocating, bloodthirsty mana pressure that made the surrounding air feel thick and hard to breathe. They had already swarmed the horse cart before I could even take three steps. Three long, serrated steel daggers were pressed directly against the throats of Devoken, Radhami, and the two sobbing boys.

The assassins looked like merciless beasts in human skin, their cold eyes fixed on me with a terrifying hunger.

'I have never seen something this vile in my entire medical career,' I thought, my knuckles turning white against the hilts of my hidden daggers.' They are targeting civilians just to corner a medic.'

"Leave them alone," I commanded, stepping forward slowly, keeping my voice level and calm.

"Are you bandits? Tell me the amount you want. I will give you whatever money or silver is inside my spatial bag. There's no need to spill blood over common freight." The five cloaked figures paused, and then, a low, guttural, terrifying laughter erupted from beneath their cloth masks, a sound that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Bandits? We...?" the leader with the red dragon band sneered, his eyes locking onto my charcoal-grey cloak with a sickening amusement.

"Are you that famous 'Ghost Medic' of the village? Boy, we are the Howling Shadow. A peasant's pouch of silver cannot buy out a noble death contract. We are here to balance the ledger." The moment that name left his mouth, Devoken's face contorted into pure, unmitigated terror. The realization of who was holding the blade to his throat completely shattered his sanity. He turned his head violently toward me, his voice cracking into a bitter, hysterical rage as tears streamed down his face.

"You?! They are here for you?! You absolute curse of a brat! If I knew you were carrying a death mark from the shadows, I would have run you over with my own wheels before letting you near my children! You brought the reapers to my family!" Radhami began to scream hysterically alongside him, her mind completely snapping from the terror as the family fractured into a panicked, screaming mess of bitter curses directed straight at my face.

"Shut up," one of the black-cloaked assassins hissed. With a brutal, mocking laugh, the assassin reached down and violently tore open the top of Radhami's linen vest in front of her bound husband and weeping children, intentionally degrading her to break their spirits for his own amusement. I saw Radhami froze, like her mind completely giving way under the psychological trauma. As if driven by the desperate hope that compliance might save her children she stopped resisting entirely.

Her eyes went glassy and blank as she began to mechanically nod, desperately trying to cooperate with the assassin's touch. But the Howling Shadow was entirely merciless. They weren't just executing a contract; they were putting on a psychological theater.

"Look at her," the lead assassin laughed, mocking her desperation.

"A mother's love is truly a pathetic thing to watch." Enraged, humiliated, and pushed past the absolute brink of human sanity by the sight of his wife's degradation, Devoken let out a primal, monstrous roar that didn't even sound human. With a burst of frantic, suicidal adrenaline, he managed to slide his rough hand into his lower boot pocket, drawing a hidden, rusty skinning dagger. But he didn't attack the assassins flanking him. He knew he was a level-two commoner; he couldn't touch a shadow.

In a desperate, tragic act to end her humiliation and save her from further defilement, Devoken lunged sideways and drove the rusty blade straight into his own wife's chest. Radhami let out a soft, surprised gasp, her body slumping backward into the straw as the light instantly left her eyes. The assassin stepped back, not angry, but casually clapping his hands in genuine amusement.

"Oh? Splendid! Truly magnificent! I was just playing with her, but you actually slaughtered her yourself! What a spectacular show for the children!" I stood completely frozen on the dirt road, my clinical brain reeling in absolute horror. These aren't human beings. They are absolute beasts. They had deliberately used psychological warfare to force a father to murder his own wife just to enjoy the show as an audience.

Devoken fell to his knees in the pooling blood of the cart, his body trembling violently as the adrenaline faded, leaving behind nothing but an empty shell. He looked up across the space, his eyes locking onto mine. He didn't curse me anymore. He pointed a shaking, blood-slicked finger toward the back of the cart where his two little boys, Rohanzu and Soshi, were screaming in agony, their faces caked in tears.

"Save our children... please, mister..." Devoken choked out, his voice thick with blood before he swiftly dragged the rusty blade across his own throat. He collapsed forward, his life ending instantly.

"Devoken!" I screamed. Driven by pure, unadulterated adrenaline, I jumped forward as fast as my fifteen-year-old legs could carry me, completely throwing away my low-profile camouflage. My SSS-Rank mana surged into my legs. I reached into my sleeve, pulled out a long, heavy surgical scalpel from my spatial pouch, and hurled it with maximum force directly at the face of the assassin who was reaching for the two screaming boys.

Fwip! The assassin casually tilted his frame by a mere millimeter, the heavy silver scalpel nicking the edge of his black hood before embedding itself deep into the wooden cart wheel behind him. Before my feet could even land on the next stride, a sudden, ice-cold wind shifted violently right behind my left shoulder. My SSS-Rank system didn't even have time to generate a blue warning interface box before a massive, heavy mental pressure slammed into the back of my skull like a physical sledgehammer.

Crack! I felt something deeply structural break within my baseline adjusted mana channels, the agonizing feedback causing my vision to spark with static. A sharp, burning agony erupted near my left leg as a hidden shadow blade sliced clean through my clothes and my midnight-steel scale vest, cutting deep into my thigh. The world violently tilted on its axis. As blood pooled rapidly from the deep gash in my leg, my vision began to blur into absolute, suffocating darkness.

My body collapsed heavily onto the rocky gravel of the road, the sheer momentum rolling my losing consciousness toward the edge of the deep ravine.' I don't know what happens next...' I thought, my mind completely fading away into the void as the cold dirt rushed up to meet my face.' I just have one single, desperate thought... can I save those two boys?'