Assassination. What was it, really? The act of killing, yes, but where did the line end? Luke mulled it over as he walked through the forest toward Bastion. Assassination was the taking of a life, but along the way he had discovered something else: a strange, almost intoxicating satisfaction in the art of planning. Like chess, seeing every move before it happened, watching your opponent scramble, and savoring the moment you whispered "checkmate." That was the thread he tugged on, the strange current running beneath it all.

That was when it struck him, what he began to call the art of assassination. And it wasn't in the kill itself. The true artistry was in the preparation. That's how an assassin thought. That's how his class had always meant for him to think. Not a butcher. Not a brute. A strategist. A chess player.

Over the months he had spent watching Bartholomew, Luke realized the man wasn't just a player, he was a prodigy. A genius at the game. He had arrived in the tutorial and somehow crowned himself king. He had an army at his back and a purpose driving him, no matter how twisted. Bartholomew didn't want the tutorial to end. And to make that nightmare real, he'd crafted a brilliant, sinister plan that stretched on for years. He fed a war against the one man who could stand as his equal: Marshall.

It took a trained soldier, someone with iron discipline and reckless courage, to confront Bartholomew. And not the weakened husk he had become near the end. No, the Bartholomew Marshall had faced was one surrounded by soldiers and zealots, an army ready to bleed for his ambition. That man had dragged Marshall into a war that burned for years, all while Bartholomew quietly recruited the strongest and most influential survivors into his faction. And all the while, he built his Safe Zone, turning a dying husk of a city into something resembling a society.

And then, in a single night, he removed both Angelica and Marshall from the board. Two of his fiercest enemies, gone in one strike. With them out of the way, he became the undisputed sovereign of the tutorial. His work, years in the making, was complete.

He had created not just a functioning city, but a society with trade, with order, and, most importantly, with families. He had drawn out the war with Marshall on purpose, giving ordinary people enough time to settle, to connect, to fall in love. Couples formed. Children were born. Families took root even in that artificial prison.

And families changed everything. The fresh arrivals, unanchored, reckless, with nothing to lose, those people would still hurl themselves into suicidal quests. But a father with children, a mother with a life carved out in safety? They wouldn't gamble what they'd built. They wouldn't leave.

It was a long game. Cunning. Ruthless. And when Angelica and Marshall finally fell, Bartholomew sealed his victory. The Safe Zone became a true society. He built an economy, expanded protection across the territory, and the survivors worshiped him for it. A flawless checkmate, set on a board no one else even realized they were playing.

Except for one piece still unaccounted for: Luke.

As an opponent, Luke respected Bartholomew's brilliance. It was in crossing blades with his schemes, day after day, that Luke had begun to evolve. He started thinking further ahead, beyond the immediate strike. He began weaving traps instead of merely lunging for a kill. That fusion, assassin's precision married to strategist's foresight, was what he now called the art of assassination.

Like a spider buried beneath its own webbed trap, waiting for the prey to step into place before it struck. Predators were assassins by nature, and predators were strategic by necessity. The two instincts had always been one.

And so Luke had begun playing that game the moment he realized he would have to face Bartholomew. Every step from then on had been a move. Every silence, every feint, a piece slid across the board.

When he walked beside Ronan through the corridors with Charlie at his side, he gave her a subtle command without words.

"Mark Ronan."

Charlie reached out, brushing his arm.

[Mark of Doom has been activated]

The skill had a double edge.

[Mark of Doom (Rare)]: Touch a target to apply an invisible seal that increases damage taken by 10%. Marked enemies become prioritized targets, making it easier to focus them down. Ideal for eliminating high-risk threats quickly. The mark remains until it expires or the target leaves your perception range.

Ronan now carried that penalty, every strike against him would hit harder.

"The bastard's a healer armed with way too many dangerous skills. How long do you think he'll last in a fight?" Luke asked, masking the intent behind his move.

"He's got… eight thousand mana," Ronan muttered.

"Eight thousand?" Luke's eyes narrowed.

Of course. That explained it. Bartholomew's mana pool was massive, enough to fuel constant area damage and sustain it far longer than they could withstand. And this wasn't speculation, it was Bartholomew's own design. He'd lured them into his fortress after the ambush, after the strike on their Safe Zone. He had planned to kill them that very night. It was the king's final gambit, the last move of Bastion's ruler on his board of war.

As they reviewed his skills, recounting what they knew, Luke's suspicion only deepened: Bartholomew wasn't reckless, he was deliberate. Calculating. Every piece had been placed with intent.

"We're close," Ronan whispered as they slowed their pace.

Princess Charlie walked ahead of Luke. At the end of the corridor, they peered through a gap in the wall. Beyond lay the chamber of the mechanism. Bartholomew himself had carved the opening, the only way into the sealed room where the device could be shut down.

Ronan's resolve was clear. He was ready to die. Maybe out of kindness, maybe naivety, or maybe guilt. Guilt for the years he'd stood at Bartholomew's side. And Luke wasn't about to absolve him of that. Ronan carried part of the blame, for Angelica's death, for the fact Luke was still trapped here in this cursed tutorial, away from his family. That was why he was willing to cross that line with Ronan.

Ronan would take more punishment from Bartholomew, would wither under his blows, all for the sake of the plan. But in return, Luke decided to give something back.

He reached into his pocket dimension, drew something out, and held it out to Ronan.

"What's this?" Ronan asked.

A bottle glimmered in his palm, liquid sloshing inside.

"My only super-antidote," Luke said.

Ronan would take ten percent more damage under the Mark, but in exchange, he'd gain temporary immunity to poison. The fight would last longer, though he'd still be exposed to the ravages of disease.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Why are you giving it to me?" Ronan's voice was uncertain.

"Your strongest skill, Iron Skin, already bleeds HP per second," Luke explained smoothly. "Now you're about to fight an enemy who stacks poison and disease damage over time. Strategically, you and Charlie hold the line. I'll stay at range."

It was a lie. He would never reveal the true plan.

Ronan stared at the vial, then exhaled heavily. "Thank you."

Luke drew an arrow from his quiver, his tone flat, sharp. "Don't thank me. It's strategy."

There were two paths to killing Bartholomew, and both depended on how far Ronan was willing to go. If Ronan was ready to pay for his sins, Luke would forgive him. If not, then Ronan would simply become Luke's blade. The king of Bastion had barriers to stop arrows, but if Ronan's death was timed right, the Mark of Doom would synergize with something else entirely.

[Doom Explosion (Rare)]: Enemies marked by [Mark of Doom], upon death, unleash a dark explosion that devastates the surrounding area, dealing AoE damage and spreading destruction. Each death becomes not just the end of the foe, but a weapon against all nearby.

That was the real plan. He'd only need a single arrow to finish it, fired into an already marked Ronan. Or maybe he wouldn't need to lift a finger at all. Because when Bartholomew struck Ronan down, he would also be sealing his own fate.

And even if the King of Bastion didn't die outright from the explosion, the blast alone would tear him apart, limbs, face, legs, everything. It would cripple him so badly that in the half-second it took to comprehend what had happened, an arrow would already be driving through his skull.

The truth was simple: just as Bartholomew had declared his checkmate, Luke had placed his own the moment Ronan stepped into that chamber to kill him.

If Luke were a cold, methodical assassin, he would have ended it there, an arrow in Ronan, triggering Doom Explosion, and Bartholomew would have fallen. That line stood right before him, waiting to be crossed. But he knew if he did, there would be no turning back. He would have discarded the last piece of his humanity.

And that humanity wasn't something he had claimed for himself. It was something given to him, by the family that had taken him in when he had no one. His adoptive parents, his brothers. They were the ones who had reached out, who had cared. That was why he guarded it so fiercely.

So he didn't cross it. Even though he could have, in the first second of battle. Instead, he shifted to his second plan. If Bartholomew was a man of strategy, then Luke would beat him at his own game. The trick was simple: give Bartholomew exactly what he wanted. Victory.

That surge of dopamine, that intoxicating rush when a plan clicks into place. Passing a brutal exam, winning a match, landing a coveted job. For strategic minds, that feeling was a drug. It blinded them, it hooked them. And Luke handed it to Bartholomew on a silver platter.

Ronan fell, undone by disease, just as Luke intended. The Mark of Doom made every effect hit harder. And because Ronan was immune to poison, he hadn't taken double damage, which meant that even unconscious, his health wasn't depleted. He had time left, maybe a full minute of life clinging stubbornly to his body. A minute was all Luke needed. Either he would act, or Ronan's body would detonate and drag Bartholomew into the grave with him.

Luke didn't fight to survive. No, he fought to claim Bartholomew's death for himself. That was what drove him. That was what he wanted.

Bartholomew had endured. He had survived. That alone was an accomplishment, and in surviving, he had revealed everything Luke needed to know.

"It's over. I won!" Bartholomew roared, triumph dripping from every word.

Ronan lay unconscious at his feet.

"In a few minutes Ronan will be dead," Bartholomew said, voice echoing through the chamber. "Then it'll just be the two of you left. But I've already learned how to cage her. I'm always two steps ahead of my own death."

A faint smile curved Luke's lips. Bartholomew was drunk on victory, and Luke had fed him the illusion until he choked on it. He'd given the King of Bastion everything a strategic genius craved, now he would rip it away. It was Luke's checkmate. And ironically, the man who called himself a king would learn what that really meant.

He sprinted forward, bow in hand, loosing arrows at the torches. Darkness swallowed the chamber, stripping Bartholomew of sight.

Charlie was still trapped. Luke couldn't call her into his soul while she was being tortured by constant damage, and Ronan was still down. By every calculation, Bartholomew was right, he held the advantage. He had already crushed two enemies. That left only the weakest opponent standing before him.

But that was when Luke made his move. He wasn't going to sacrifice Ronan. He couldn't wait for Doom Explosion to trigger. He had to act. And staying inside the mechanism chamber meant being caught in Bartholomew's area-of-effect plague. Thirty seconds in range, and Luke would be dead.

By plunging Bartholomew into darkness, Luke opened fire. The first test was simple: gauge his enemy's perception. Throughout the entire battle, Bartholomew had dodged Ronan's and Charlie's deadliest strikes with surgical precision. Whether it was heightened senses or sheer cunning didn't matter. Stripped of vision, he would bleed weakness.

The shadows cut away Bartholomew's sightline, narrowing his awareness and forcing him into a brutal dilemma. Focus on the mechanism, or focus on the Knight?

He assumed Luke's desperation was all about activating the mechanism, and in a way, it was. There were people dying outside, and time mattered. But recklessness was poison. In that balance, his own survival outweighed everything. He would not let urgency unravel his plan.

"You'll die too if you stay this close!" Bartholomew's voice tore through the gloom.

Luke answered only with silence, loosing arrows from shifting angles, each strike slamming into barriers or skimming past, throwing Bartholomew's attention into chaos. Defend against arrows, shield the mechanism, contain Charlie, too many fronts, all bleeding him at once.

But Luke carried his own bind. Too close and Bartholomew's plague and poison would eat him alive. Too far and the mage's mana barriers would shrug off every shot. Charging straight in with the kukri would be suicide, he'd be pinned inside a dome or fried by the crown's electricity in seconds. Every option led to a trap.

So he played the long game. A mind game.

He shot and retreated, weaving unpredictably, feeding Bartholomew half-truths in the rhythm of his arrows. Sometimes he even wasted a shot against the barrier deliberately, letting the man believe he had Luke cornered, reacting just in time.

"It won't work!" Bartholomew roared. "I still have the advantage!"

That was when the grip came from behind. Not Luke. The Orc General.

Charlie had moved her hand. Her spectral soldier surged into existence, materialized right on top of Bartholomew. Keeping her prisoner at his side had not been a strength, it was the king's fatal error. The very piece he thought was locked down became the blade at his throat. Even the electric field of the crown hadn't seen it coming. The orc wasn't approaching, wasn't charging. He was simply born inside the perimeter, conjured from nothing.

This was Luke's strategy all along: feed Bartholomew control, let him savor the illusion of mastery, only to strip it away piece by piece. Every time the king countered, every time he reacted, he danced to Luke's rhythm.

"What?!" Bartholomew's cry broke in confusion as the orc materialized behind him, its massive hands locking him in place.

Luke stepped from the shadows, his kukri already in motion. Empowered by [Demonic Predator's Hands], the blade pulsed with the corrosive acid of Dark Blood. A barrier flared up in desperation, but the kukri shredded through it like glass, driving deep into Bartholomew's chest.

From the very beginning, Luke could have ended this fight in countless ways, cleaner, faster, deadlier. But there was something he had discovered in the art of assassination: the pleasure of watching a target believe he held every advantage, only to feel it all collapse beneath him. He emerged into the open, watching the so-called king writhe on the ground, stripped of everything that made him untouchable.

It wasn't just about killing. It was about purpose. Just as Angelica had been forced to watch her brother die, losing everything she loved, betrayed by a friend under Bartholomew's orders, Luke had made sure the man tasted the same ruin. He tore away his faith in intellect, shattered his strategy, stole his victory. And the poison that had eaten Angelica alive in her final moments now burned inside him, mirrored in the acid chewing through his heart with the hunger of a predator.

"It's over, Bartholomew," Luke said, his voice steady. "I'm going to fulfill the promise I made to the owner of this bow."

That was how an assassin worked. Patient. Calculated. And, in the end, merciless.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.