I had never been particularly interested in assassinating anyone, never had the need to even consider performing such a thing to begin with.
That was probably a strange thing to think about while walking through a town where I had just watched a man get stabbed nearly to death, by my own brother all while he was stealing away the mans daughter all because he simply liked the way she looked and knew no other way to get the girl for himself.
But there was a difference between wanting someone dead and realizing that someone needed to die. At least, that was what I told myself. Walter was alive, thanks to my own efforts through manipulating his status board.
That was the important part, i had saved my brother from staining his soul with the greatest taboo in all of nature, the Natural Recovery boost I had given him had apparently been enough to keep him from dying, although I suspected he would be sore for quite some time, while his own mental strength was surely being tested right now as well.
His daughter was gone, the hope of getting her back was nonexistant and worse yet he had a pretty good idea of just what kind of a life was instore for her after being taken away by a noble.
The baron and his knights were nobles, and so long as the girl remained on his lands without significant cause nobody could intrude on those lands.
Which meant the local authorities would do nothing, not because they didnt want to but because they couldnt without breaching the kingdoms laws, and that was truer still even for myself.
If i went in to save the girl, or even just cleaned up my mess by taking Cole himself out, i would be a commoner taking on a Knight the lowest rung of nobility sure, but a noble no less.
Which would make me a criminal, that was the part I needed to avoid, I didn't want to become some outlaw wandering from town to town while knights hunted me.
I didnt personally care about the kingdom, its nobles, or even its laws, but what i did care about was the results of my own actions, I cared that i had created this monster and as such was responsible for the death he almost caused, and the atrocious deeds he was probably getting up to right now.
I returned to my room at the inn, locking the door behind me before i took up a seat on the bed.
For several minutes, I simply stared at the wall.
My mind going over everything, Cole, his sword plunged into Walters chest, the look of terror and saddness on the girl as she was dragged away, then my eyes wandering over to the stat panel up before my eyes, tracking over the entries and tabs.
I clenching my fist as i resisted the thought which had entered my mind, but the repeating memories of that scene was chipping away at that resistance.
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In the end i returned to the common problem, the one where i couldnt really just walk into the barons estate to deal with cole, doing so would make me become a wanted man, one who at least viewed by the public as being worse than Cole himself.
I needed something quieter, something that didn't require me to fight an entire noble household of knights and guards, something that wouldn't expose me as being the one who dealt with Cole, all the while still removing him from being the source of the problem.
No one else needed to die, so long as i could remove Cole, thats what i thought but then again if i saw injustice going down in front of me, or if these knights were assisting cole in his unspeakable acts, they would receive the same sentence of justice from me.
Scanning the status board and my memories of having seen dozens if not hundreds of others status boards over the years, one skill in particular aligned almost perfectly with my current needs.
"Stealth. That's exactly what I need."
But Stealth was only just the beginning, requiring only a single point investment to unlock but beyond that was going to be others, he could remember the specific adventurer who had the stealth skill already unlocked but just from what he could remember there seemed to be a bunch of different types of stealth, and it would matter most on what kind of stealth he needed and if he could afford the cost given he only had 10 points in total spare right now.
Having lost my resistance to what i was going to do, he pulled up the stat board, quickly pathed to the Agility skill tree, located Stealth and purchased it for one point, only nine remaining.
After unlocking Stealth, three more skills revealed themselves;
Life Obfuscation
Mana Ofuscation
Imperceptibility
Just from the first two's names it was pretty clear they would hide him, or his magic not that he even had any, but the last one stumped him, he had never seen it before, nor had he even heard of it.
Deciding it was worth testing out, he invested a single point into Imperceptibilitiy, but even with that nothing happened, so he tried again, now with two points in it.
Still nothing, but then the door to his room unlocked and in stepped the innkeepers wife.
It was still the middle of the day and given the bucket of water in his arms, she was here to clean the room, only even after putting the basin down she didnt even acknowledge Carter sitting there on the bed.
He didnt understand, he'd been living here for a while now and had a good relationship with the proprietress, so why was she ignoring him now?
Aha! that was when his thoughts turned back to his status, Imperceptibility, did that make him basically invisible in the eyes of others if he chose so?
If that was the case this was the perfect skill for what he needed to do, not announcing himself but also fearing revealing himself, Carter got up and quietly left the room, making his way downstairs and taking a seat in the dining area of the inn.
Two points and she couldnt see me, but a trained knight, they would have better senses right?
The board showed the highest level the skill could go was 5, that meant at least another 3 points before it was maxed out, that was a cost he could afford to make right now.
Once the skill was maxed out a third tier of skills revealed themselves to be unlocked, Assassination and Snipe being the new skills.
Assassination was the deed i was planning to commit so, this again was a perfect investment, and luckily after only placing one point it was shown it would only take three in total to max it as well.
No fourth tier was revealed once he maxed out assassination as well which left him with only one point remaining, and since he goal was still stealth, he invested that one point into Life Obfuscation.
This meant all his spare points were spent, but what Carter didnt know was as he stood right now, he was probably the best assassin in the entire kingdom if not the world, even though he had not yet even gone through with his first ever assassination.