Chapter 48: What Will Suffice? 2
"Ahh, I'm all sweaty, I need to take a quick bath." He said, getting out of the chair as he started taking off his clothes leisurely, not in any rush. There was a wardrobe where he could keep the clothes, but he opted to drop them on the bed since he would be putting them on afterwards. Being a commoner, things such as night wears weren't so popularized.
Aldritch walked to the bed and placed the clothes. At the moment, he had on him just his inner shorts. After placing the clothes on the bed, he couldn't help but comment on the cold air that blew into the room continuously, if he didn't want to "fall sick", he needed to close the window.
As soon as he closed the window and locked it properly, his primal senses triggered in full alert as he instinctively shifted his body to the side.
*trakk!
"NOBODY COME IN, HOLD THE DOOR SHUT!" Aldritch shouted to the others outside in the sitting room.
As expected, they had sprung into action immediately, rushing towards the room without a second thought, but following Aldritch's command, they hesitated a bit and didn't go inside even though their minds and bodies wanted to do so.
'What's going on?' Ingrid thought to herself, her mind drawing close to a possibility. Outside her surprise for the way she reacted, she was trying to figure out what would have led to them being attacked like this.
"Someone is trying to kill our master…" Lina said angrily, frustrated by the fact that she couldn't help. Even though Olgud was quiet, his expression reflected his thoughts. He quickly got a rope made of cloth and tied it to the door and then holding tightly to it.
Within the room, Aldritch's eyes scanned the entire space but still couldn't find his assailant. It was indeed strange, one second he could feel the other party, the next he couldn't.
'They have to be using some kind of invisibility skill, that means I can only sense their killing intent and gaze.' He thought to himself.
In attempts to make himself look less stressed and clueless, he stood still in a neutral pose, looking to bait his assailant into another attack.
If one thing was clear from that single attack, it was that whoever he was up against was way faster than him, and their strength was also no joke since they could break in half an entire wooden table of decent quality.
Aldritch looked sideways at the table and noticed one detail, the table didn't exactly break, instead, it was more of a cut, and a clean one at that.
'I'm dealing with a very traditional assassin to the T, which means, there should be poison on their blade.' He thought to himself.
Suddenly, his neutral and calm stance morphed into a more stressed one where he was slightly crutched with his hands out wide by his side.
"I know you're still here, why don't you show yourself and fight like a real man."
Regardless of whether the assassin was a man or not, Aldritch didn't care, either way, it would give the assassin more reason to attack. If they were female, then even better, since the possibility of then getting ticked from being called a man was also a factor in there. After all, in this day and age, it could be normal for women to be discriminated against in many fields of work.
Aldritch kept taunting the assailant with similar words and even mockery until it paid off when he felt killing intent behind him. He intentionally turned late, so that the blade would have been stuck into his body by then, and it would look like he was defeated.
The blade went straight for the heart, and from the length, he could tell it was a dagger, then a voice spoke from behind.
"You didn't have to die, but it changes nothing, you're just an insignificant fly in the end, stupid man." The scornful voice of a female entered his ears.
'Worked even better than expected.' Aldritch thought to himself.
He immediately dropped on one knee before trying to turn back to look at the face of the killer, *smack!, a heavy punch landed on his face.
"Just die." The assassin said before retracting her dagger from Aldritch's back as he turned to face up.
Just as she turned towards the window to leave, pain so excruciating that it made her shout assaulted her body all over. If she could maintain a clear head in that moment, she would notice that it wasn't directed at her head, but she was suffering too much to even have noticed at that moment, as she clenched her chest with both hands.
Even though she tried to shout, after the initial scream, nothing was produced from her vocal chords, at least, no understandable sound.
"I don't have any attack skill in particular, but I did find a way to torture." Aldritch stood up casually from the floor and walked to the assassin after requesting for a sturdy rope to be handed to him.
Using his skill 'Blood Manipulation', Aldritch was able to make most of the blood within the assassin's body flow in the opposite direction amongst other things like inducing a heart attack by fiddling with the blood in her heart, all after causing the blood in her body to want to jump out of her skin.
The assassin couldn't handle it anymore and fainted.
Once Aldritch asked for the rope, Lina was the first to bust into the room with a snarl while holding her weapon ready to fight, but all she met was an unconscious body on the room floor. She felt the anger rise within her looking at the assassin and wanted to just pound the body into a bloody pulp, but once she looked at Aldritch's eyes, she understood and restrained herself.
"Are you alright, master?" She rushed to his side after dropping her blade.
"I am, nothing to worry about." The wound on his back closed rapidly while blood from his blood bank was consumed to facilitate the process. As for the poison, he was a vampire, a superior undead, there was no way poisons would have an effect on him, well, unless specially concocted for that purpose, maybe then.
"Strip her naked and make sure any weapon you can find on her is taken off and placed together by the side, then tie her to the chair; then, we can do some questioning."
Once the assassin was tied up to the chair firmly after everything had been done, she was woken up by a hard slap to the face.
'Wha-what is happening, where am I?' She questioned.
*Khuk
'Nocturnal vision'.
Immediately, her eyes accommodated the details of her surrounding, bringing into view Aldritch, a human lady and two green skinned monsters.
'Ogres? He can control monsters?' She thought to herself. The fact that there were ogres there was really shocking, given the fact that these monsters were tough to face even for people with adequate strength, mostly because of their battle prowess and overall strength.
'How can he manage such a thing? He must possess a unique ability that aids him to do so.'
Aldritch watched the assassin's inquisitive gaze, he could tell she was accessing everything going on at the moment.
"Good, you're awake. What is your name?" He asked. He waited for an answer, but the assassin refused to answer.
"How about why you were here, in the house of a commoner?" He asked again, but still no words were returned. Watching this, Lina grew impatient, seeing as how her master was being disrespected by the same person that attempted to kill him, the fingers on her blade tightened as she sneered at the assassin, "don't disrespect my master, answer him this instant!"
The assassin looked a bit confused at Lina, not understanding what she was saying. Even then, she could see that Lina was vexed and her hands held tightly to her blade. The assassin glared at Lina directly in the eye, then back at Aldritch, then she spat before him, returning her gaze to Lina.
This was an obvious sign of disrespect, and it really got to Lina who raised her blade against the assassin without even processing her thoughts.
Before her blade came down with the full judgment on the tied assailant, Olgud moved swiftly to stop her, successfully disarming her and taking the blade from her.
"All of you go out." Aldritch ordered.
Feeling that she had done wrong, Lina apologized immediately; Aldritch only waved his hand and they exited the room immediately leaving just him and the assassin.
"Nice trick, but unfortunately, I don't have time for all the foreplay, you will tell me what I want to know, whether you like it or not." He said.
Listening to him, the assassin laughed lightly, "you can't torture me physically or sexually, I've being trained, it won't work on me, you can't break me."
"Is that so? Then again, who ever said anything about torture?" Aldritch responded with a light smile as he looked her in the eyes.