CHAPTER 165: ASSASSINS

I’m sitting in an armchair watching the Beatriz sleep, honestly I’m irritated.

’...’ I gave her my milk and it’s obvious she doesn’t know where it came from, but I’ve been called a cow several times and that’s really annoying, I’m not some kind of dairy cow, even if it was unintentional it’s still not cool.

Now all I do is stay in this room standing still waiting for something to happen, and in fact it has already happened, I noticed 7 presences trying to invade the church, by their stealth they are assassins.

But it’s really hard to hide from me without using magic specifically made for the living dead like me, so I know where they are, and I know they’ll soon arrive in this room.

This doesn’t interest me much, what interests me most is Beatriz, she’s crying and muttering things, and of course her body is trembling, but it’s not even cold.

I wonder what she’s dreaming about, since we have 7 unwanted visitors I get up and approach Beatriz, carefully covering her with the sheet before leaving the room.

Following the logic of Beatriz’s request and what I promised to protect her from assassins is also part of my duty, so I start to descend the church stairs and take a path that I think the assassins passed and sit waiting on the stairs.

"..." And after 10 minutes of waiting, 6 people dressed in black appear, they seem surprised to see me, but they just advance against me, but they underestimated me too much.

With an ice dagger I defend a cut on my back, and at the same moment ice lances pierce the body of the person who thought they were well hidden for an ambush.

"Don’t you think you’re treating me too lightly?" I ask as I get up, with ice magic I freeze the floor, walls and ceiling, locking everyone inside this frozen place.

"Aren’t you going to say anything?" I ask while they remain alert.

"Who are you?" The one who seems to be the leader asks me.

"I’m just a simple knight in the service of the saint" I say, blocking a hidden dagger thrown at my side using wires.

"By the movement, it seems you’ve come after her, what bad luck for you" I say, advancing against them as they scatter.

"What does the church do with a living dead like you in here?" The leader of the assassins asks as he blocks my attack.

"If you tell me who your boss is, I’ll tell you why I’m here" I say, kicking him and throwing him against the frozen wall.

Two of them are trying to attack me from the sides, but I cut off both their heads with a precise rotating cut.

"Four left" I say, taking calm steps, their leader throws a smoke bomb while they all take advantage of it to move in complete silence, but I use the vibrations in the ice and variation in ambient temperature to know exactly each position.

Using the smoke itself to hide, I pierce the throat of one, slowly bringing him down to avoid noise, and hold a dagger that comes towards my head, they are so weak that I don’t even need to fight, holding my head in my hands.

’Three left’ I create an ice axe and wait until a dagger is thrown, then I throw the axe in the same direction at high speed, hearing a wet thud on the floor.

’Less five, two left’ The two seem to be the most skilled, which I deduce to be the leader and another, but they appear to be moving away and trying to escape.

"..." I just wait, I have no reason to chase them, my time being a sex toy and Estella’s employee was not useless, I learned that even at a disadvantage I must always find ways to learn something new and overcome the problem.

So I thought of several things I could do, the ice on the walls, windows and doors in the farthest area has a powerful freezing effect, soon I hear screams.

As soon as they touch these parts, their bodies quickly gain freezing in the touched part, that is, their hands will turn to ice and break, shattering into fragments.

And I know how painful it is to have your body frozen, I calmly walk towards the scream, finding their leader without both hands, he seems to have tried to use both hands to break an exit.

As for his ally, he wasn’t so lucky, his ally tried to break a window with his leg, his leg froze and broke, unbalancing him and making him fall head-first in the worst possible place, causing his head to freeze and break.

"..." I approach the last one left, the leader of the assassins who thought he could easily invade here, it happens that Beatriz’s room has so many attack spells recorded that even if I don’t do anything, they would die just by entering there.

"So, do you want to tell me something?"

"Y-You freak" He says spitting on me, but I easily dodge it.

"Hmm, you know the saying, a thief who robs a thief has 100 years of forgiveness?" I say, spitting on him too.

"You know, I’m trying to be a good person, but torturing an evil person to help other people should qualify as something good, right? After all, goodness and evil are subjective and depend on each person’s opinion" I say, touching his leg that slowly freezes.

"AAAHHHH" He screams in pain as his bones begin to freeze until his leg shatters into ice shards and he starts to cry.

"I bet as an assassin you’ve already killed many, I’ve killed many too, and I regret it, but I don’t think you regret anything bad you’ve done."

"I deeply regret my mistakes, I was punished for them, and now I’m trying to improve as much as I can" I start to freeze his other leg as he screams in pain.

"I’ve suffered a lot, yes, I’ve suffered more than I should have, and as such I know that no matter how much resistance to pain you’ve had, a new pain is always painful" He probably has mental training in resistance to torture since he proved to be a very professional assassin.

But there’s no way an assassin is immune to the damage of freezing and shattering of ice.

I’ve died in many ways, but dying is always painful, because I always die in a new way.

"So, how about we just get this over with? Tell the truth, and I’ll stop torturing you" I’m not a fan of this, but I don’t mind doing it either, while I was getting Beatriz’s meal, I noticed how the people here like her.

She’s a good person, not someone who uses her authority for her own benefit, but someone who genuinely wants and tries to help others, and that’s more than enough for me to sympathize with her.

"I-I’ll tell! I’LL TELL!" He says nervously, screaming as I stop freezing his other leg, a few more seconds and it would have broken from the pressure of the ice and the environment.

"Why did you want to kill the saint? She’s a nice person" I ask what most puzzles me.

"I-I don’t know, ok, s-she has many enemies who d-don’t like the laws she uses to benefit commoners and slaves" He says crying, I notice him hiding a poisoned dagger in his back, but without his hands he has no way to use it.

He hid it by crawling backwards, I don’t know if he just doesn’t want to look suspicious anymore or if he’s going to try to use it.

’So in the end it’s just the nobles and their personal greed...Haaa...’ I’ve been through this before, when I was a saint in Alehandro’s world, the nobility can really be so rotten.

"What do you know about the saint? And who told you?"

"I-I don’t know who hired me...AAAHHHH" I break his leg with a punch, it shatters completely as he screams.

"Lies will not be tolerated."

"I-I swear! T-The boss just g-gave some information, I don’t know anything" He says desperately crying as the ice prevents him from bleeding.

"Boss, huh...so more attacks will happen for now...what do you know about the saint?"

"S-She has some strange addiction to her mother, and at night she usually cries in her sleep, keeping her almost unconscious and in a vulnerable state to be assassinated" The assassin says, trying to move away from me.

’Addiction to her mother?’ I think for a moment, the portrait of the mother in her room that stands out, her crying and murmuring, and her strange reaction of satisfaction with breast milk.

’She has... an Oedipus complex?’ This is a bit strange, but who am I to judge? If she feels feelings she shouldn’t for her mother beyond longing, it’s not something I should interfere with.

I deduce it’s an Oedipus complex because Beatriz obviously didn’t know her mother to develop longing, there’s no way to long for someone you’ve never known and only heard stories about.

Even if you can feel a lack, but not at the level that Beatriz demonstrates, according to this comment from the assassin that seems truthful given what I’ve already seen.

’If she has an Oedipus complex, and I’m very similar to her mother, as well as giving her my milk, there’s a chance it could get out of hand and she could become a Yandere, but she’s a good person, so it’s hard to say if she would be a malicious Yandere.’

Stopping giving my milk now would be difficult, it would be like saying I lied and can’t make the "potion" in the amounts I said, which would make me more suspicious.

"So you assassins want to take advantage of this vulnerability when she’s sleeping to kill her, good to know" I freeze the assassin’s head and break it with a punch, leaving only ice fragments.

’Regardless of whether she has an Oedipus complex or not, it doesn’t matter, I’ll just keep trying to help people by her side.’ She’s a saint, if I help her, I can help an incredible number of people.

I just start walking back to the room, undoing the ice I made so that no one else gets hurt or frozen.