Chapter 185: Assasination [2]
"WHAT?!"
The three councillors stumbled backward in sheer terror, their boots sliding against the blood-slicked floorboards.
The sudden, impossible speed she demonstrated transcended anything a normal Martial Master could achieve.
"A woman?!" one councillor stammered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his sword hilt. "How... how did you bypass the guards outside?! Who sent you?! Was it Mayor Henar?!"
Alisa tilted her head slightly, her lopsided grin widening into a look of absolute, condescending amusement.
"Mayor Henar?" she asked softly, her voice smooth, melodic, and chillingly cold. "That pathetic fat swine isn’t fit to sweep the floors of the man I serve. As for your guards outside..."
She casually raised her left hand, flicking her wrist toward the center of the table.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Three severed, bloodied heads rolled across the polished mahogany, coming to a rest right beside Ackher’s wine goblet.
They were the commanders of his elite private guard—dead before they could even draw their blades.
Chief Strategist Ackher’s jaw clenched, his eyes bloodshot with a mixture of raw rage and cold, creeping terror.
He recognized her instantly from the descriptions circulating through the commercial district since morning.
"You..." Ackher growled, his voice trembling slightly. "You are the merchant’s wife... the beauty from The Sleeping Boar Inn!"
"Wife?" Alisa chuckled, a musical sound that sent a cold shudder down the spine of every man in the room. "I am merely a humble servant to the Apostle of the God of Beasts.
But you... Chief Strategist... you have served your purpose in my master’s grand grand design quite well."
Ackher’s hawkish eyes narrowed into sharp slits. "What purpose?! What are you talking about, woman?!"
"Your little political feud with the Mayor made for a magnificent backdrop," Alisa explained casually, tossing her blood-stained dagger from one hand to the other.
"Those four Martial Warriors buried in your garden? The explosion in the market? Master Jarden laid those seeds so you and Henar would tear each other apart while Kaelos City burns to the ground."
The room fell into an absolute, suffocating silence as the gravity of her words hit them like a physical blow.
They hadn’t been framed by Mayor Henar.
They hadn’t been targeted by internal rivals.
They had all been played like mindless puppets by a nameless traveler who had walked into their city just a day ago!
"You arrogant bitch!" one of the councillors shrieked, his mind snapping under the pressure.
Unable to bear her condescending gaze any longer, he unleashed every drop of his Martial Master mana, his longsword igniting with a sharp, azure glow as he lunged forward to split her skull in two.
"DIE!"
Alisa didn’t even move from her seat atop the table.
She merely raised her emerald eyes, her lopsided smirk melting away into an expression of utter, cold indifference.
THOOM!
Without a second of restraint, Alisa completely unsealed her internal power, unleashing the crushing, absolute aura of a Middle-Enlightened stage Martial General!
A violent shockwave of golden and emerald mana exploded through the subterranean chamber.
The stone walls cracked, the heavy mahogany table shattered into splinters beneath her, and the candle flames were instantly snuffed out.
The attacking councillor froze mid-air, the crushing weight of her Martial General pressure slamming into his chest like a falling mountain.
His mana blade vanished instantly, and he was hurled backward, his ribs snapping as he slammed violently into the stone wall, coughing up a fountain of dark blood.
"A... A Martial General?!" Chief Strategist Ackher screamed in absolute, terror-stricken despair, his knees buckling under the suffocating weight of her aura.
"How is a mundane traveler’s wife a Martial General?!"
Alisa glided off the shattered remains of the table, landing silently on her feet.
Her twin Phantom Veil daggers flashed in the dim, shadowed room like twin streaks of green lightning.
"The hunt has begun," Alisa whispered softly, her voice echoing right behind Ackher’s ear.
"And none of you are leaving this room alive."
Chief Strategist Ackher growled, a guttural, desperate sound tearing from his throat.
The sheer weight of Alisa’s Martial General aura had threatened to crush his spirit, but his instinct for survival forced his legs to lock.
He pushed through the suffocating pressure, recovering his footing as he rose to his full height.
With a flick of his wrist, Ackher uncoiled a long, vicious whip crafted from dark steel and lined with serrated bone spikes.
He channeled every ounce of his Peak-Enlightened stage Martial Master core into the weapon, enveloping the entire length of the spiky whip in a roaring shroud of harsh, emerald-green mana.
"Tell me, who really sent you?!" Ackher roared, his face contorted in a violent mixture of panic and rage.
"Was it a rival city?! Was it the Sect? Was it the city’s hidden lords?! ANSWER ME!"
Alisa tilted her head, blinking her large, emerald eyes in a mock display of innocent curiosity.
She widened her cute, sparkling eyes, looking at him as if he were nothing more than a barking stray dog.
"Wouldn’t you like to know?" she cooed, her tone dripping with playful mockery.
"DIE, YOU BITCH!"
Ackher unleashed his whip with a thunderous crack.
The air in the enclosed subterranean chamber tore open as the emerald-clad bone spikes whistled through the darkness, aiming to slice Alisa’s slender body into pieces.
CRACK!
The strike obliterated the stone wall behind where she had been standing, sending clouds of dust and shattered rock flying.
But Alisa was already gone.
She leapt gracefully into the air like a phantom, her crimson gown fluttering around her as she executed a flawless backflip over the sweeping path of the whip.
She landed lightly on the edge of a shattered stone pillar, dancing effortlessly around the erratic, destructive strikes.
The single remaining councillor, sensing an opening as Alisa landed, let out a war cry and surged forward.
He held a massive war-axe above his head, surging with every drop of his remaining mana, aiming to split her down the middle in one decisive, fatal strike.
"DIE FOR OUR CAUSE!" the councillor screamed.
His axe cleaved down with terrifying force, but Alisa was far too nimble.
With a microscopic shift of her heels, she tilted her body just half an inch to the left.
The massive heavy axe blade brushed past her cheek, chopping harmlessly into the floor.
Alisa stood completely unshaken right beside the overextended councillor.
Her playful smirk faded instantly, replaced by a gaze as vast and silent as the night sky.
Her emerald eyes flickered with a deep, abyssal glow as dense, ink-black shadows suddenly swirled around her feet, climbing up her body like living, liquid silk.
Once a cultivator broke through the mortal bottleneck and ascended into the Martial General realm, their soul formed a deep, innate harmony with the natural world.
They gained absolute affinity over a single path of nature.
While most realm ascendants bound themselves to the common elemental forces—lightning, fire, water, wind, or earth—Alisa’s divine foundation had bound her to a far rarer, far more lethal aspect of nature.
Shadow.
Shadow was as much a part of nature as the wind or the earth. And under her absolute command, the dark realm obeyed her every whim.
The ink-black shadows completely enveloped Alisa’s silhouette, and in a fraction of a second, she vanished into thin air, leaving no aura, no scent, and no presence behind.
The councillor’s eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing horror. "Where... where did she go?!"
Before he could even turn his head, a cold, soft whisper tickled his right ear from the dark space right beside him.
"Right here."
SCHLICK!
Alisa materialized out of the shadows at his side.
Her Phantom Veil dagger flashed in a brilliant emerald arc, plunging straight through his throat and severing his spine in one seamless motion.
The councillor choked on his own blood for a fraction of a second before his lifeless body collapsed onto the cold stone floor.
"NO! DAMN YOU!"
Chief Strategist Ackher roared in absolute madness.
Driven past the point of reason, he attacked her without a single moment of hesitation.
He lashed his spiky whip in a blinding frenzy, the emerald mana tearing up the subterranean room in a desperate bid to cover every inch of space around her.
Ackher had never been lucky enough to awaken a rare, active innate skill during his years of cultivation.
But Because of that limitation, he had spent decades relentlessly refining his pure mana manipulation techniques to perfection, mastering the speed, path, and density of his whip strikes to a level few could match.
He believed his raw, perfected technique could bridge the gap.
But against a true Martial General who commanded the laws of nature?
It was utterly futile.
Alisa’s expression turned utterly serious.
The playful temptress vanished, leaving behind only a pure, unadulterated death executioner.
In that singular, split second, the shadows in the room expanded.
SWISH—
Ackher’s vision tilted unnaturally. The chaotic roar of his own emerald mana suddenly fell dead silent.
He saw the ceiling of the secret chamber spin across his line of sight, followed by the sight of a headless torso wrapped in a silver-trimmed robe, holding a spiky whip that slowly went limp.
THUD!
Chief Strategist Ackher’s severed head struck the stone floor, rolling to a stop in the center of the dark room, his eyes wide open in frozen, eternal disbelief.
Alisa stepped out of the shadow cast by his falling corpse, flicking the crimson blood off her Phantom Veil dagger with a single, elegant motion before sheathing it back into her waist belt.
She glanced down at the carnage with cold, unbothered eyes, then raised her gaze toward the ceiling above, sensing the chaotic vibrations of the city guards marching through the streets.
"Three down," Alisa murmured softly, a wicked smirk returning to her lips as she dissolved back into the shadows.
"Now... to let the Mayor know his rival has been ’assassinated’."