“I’m Elena.”
“Elena?
Who’s that?”
‘See?
You don’t even know me.’
“Why did you ask if you were just going to ask that?”
“I wasn’t asking for your name!
I asked for your identity!”
“I’m an ordinary client.”
Camila stared at her with utter disbelief.
“Alright, ‘Miss.
Ordinary Client’.
What kind of life have you lived until now?”
“A normal life in a very remote village.”
A flicker of interest crossed Camila’s eyes.
“Where is this remote village?”
“Do I have to tell you everything?”
Instead of answering, Camila applied a fraction more pressure with the blade.
Like a true assassin, her actions spoke louder than her words.
“It’s a small village you wouldn’t find even if I told you the region.
We just call it ‘the village’.
It doesn’t have a name.”
“What, is it some kind of town for fugitives?”
“Not exactly, but close enough.”
The village where Elena lived answered to no lord.
It was easier for the authorities to pretend it didn’t exist than to travel to such a harsh place to collect taxes.
It was a village that didn’t exist on paper, and its people, by extension, had no official existence.
Almost none of them possessed identification tags.
Only then did the pressure at her throat ease, though the blade remained, a silent threat.
Camila seemed lost in thought.
“Since when does the assassin’s guild refuse a request with a knife to the throat?” Elena asked.
No guild accepted every job.
They weighed the risks and could simply say no.
Camila’s reaction was far too extreme.
‘Come to think of it, this whole inn is suspicious.’
Things she hadn’t noticed before were now becoming clear.
Her senses were far sharper than when she’d left her village.
Demonic beasts were powerful creatures, skilled at concealing their presence, and Elena had spent two months in the mountains learning to avoid them, an experience that had inadvertently honed her senses to a razor’s edge.
She usually kept them suppressed in crowded places like Etin; the flood of sensory information was exhausting.
But now, with a knife at her throat, she had to be ready to counterattack.
Her heightened awareness instinctively cataloged every person in the inn.
‘There are no strong individuals here.’ For a supposed branch of an assassin’s guild, everyone was completely ordinary.
Camila was the only one who exuded any real danger.
Even for a small outpost, this was wrong.
‘Don’t tell me this isn’t a branch office at all.’
Just as Elena looked at Camila in alarm, Camila spoke.
“You really came to make a request?” She sounded as if she’d just heard the most ridiculous thing in the world.
“Yes,” Elena confirmed.
‘It’s not for an assassination, but it’s still a request.’ Assassinations required extensive preparation; knowing your target was paramount.
To that end, guilds naturally collected and managed their own information or had ways to acquire it quickly.
Elena wanted to tap into that network.
“To think I’d meet a client here,” Camila muttered, letting out a dry laugh as she finally stepped back.
The dagger vanished, tucked away at her waist in a single fluid motion that spoke of immense skill.
“Don’t tell me this branch has never taken a single job?”
“You really weren’t sent by the guild, were you?” Camila countered.
“What guild?”
“The assassin’s guild.”
The words hung in the air, thick with unspoken history.
Elena could sense it now—Camila had once held a high rank, but her relationship with the guild was now deeply complicated.
The Crescent Moon was based in the Blake Empire, so a branch in the Linsta Kingdom had seemed odd.
A large guild might expand, but Camila’s reaction proved that wasn’t the case.
‘Could she have a backstory straight out of a novel?’ Like an heir to a guild who lost everything to a traitor and now dreams of revenge… ‘No, something like that couldn’t possibly happen, right?’ Elena dismissed her fancy imagination.
What else could it be?
And why was she even wasting time thinking about it?
‘Ignore it.’ Her own problems were overwhelming enough.
“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Elena said, turning toward the door.
“I’ll keep your secret from your husband.”
To her senses, Derek was just an ordinary man who likely knew nothing of his wife’s past.
She reached for the handle.
‘Thud!’
Camila moved like lightning, slamming the door shut again.
She stared at Elena, her gaze intense.
Elena met it coolly, feigning ignorance.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You heard me,” Camila said, her eyes sharp.
“Heard what?”
“That the assassin’s guild might come for me.”
“…You weren’t quite that specific,” Elena replied.
‘And please don’t give me information I don’t want.’
“But you understood the situation, didn’t you?”
“I’d rather not,” Elena said flatly.
A smirk touched Camila’s lips.
‘What’s so funny?’
She moved to a sofa and sat down.
“Sit.
What kind of request do you want to make?”
Elena remained standing.
“Are you even in a position to fulfill one?”
“That depends on the request.
Who do you want dead?”
Camila casually pulled out her dagger and began tossing it in the air.
It was meant as a show of confidence, but knowing the state of this “branch,” it felt more like a bluff.
Still, Elena knew better than to underestimate her.
She hadn’t sensed Camila was an assassin until she saw the earring.
But her needs were different.
“It’s not an assassination.
I just want information.”
“We’re not an information guild.”
In the era Elena remembered from her dreams, dedicated information guilds didn’t exist.
People in need of secrets went to assassins.
“I don’t know where to find an information guild, and I happened to end up here.
The assassin’s guild I knew was also excellent at intelligence gathering.”
Camila watched her with a peculiar expression.
“Let’s hear the request.”
“But you said you don’t have an information network.”
“You seem to have the gist of things, so I won’t lie.
You’re right, I don’t.
Not anymore.”
“Then what’s the point of hearing it?”
“Because whatever it is, I know more than you do, and I can find out more than you can.”
She had a point.
Camila had lived here for years; she was bound to know more than a newcomer.
Elena relented, crossing the room to sit opposite her.
“I want to obtain the passenger lists for all ships that have docked here.
From four years ago until last year.”
Unsure of the exact date, she gave a generous timeframe.
“That’s not difficult,” Camila replied lightly.
“Not difficult?”
“Of course not.
I’ve lived here for years.
The security at the immigration office is a joke.
I can just sneak in and take them.”
Even if she was no longer active, a trained assassin never lost her habits.
She would have already mapped out her surroundings and gathered basic intel.
And judging by her earlier agility, sneaking around would be child’s play.
Hiring Camila seemed far more promising than dealing with that sleazy manager.
And yet, for some reason, the words to formally hire her wouldn’t come.
“So, will you make a formal request?” Camila’s cheerful smile was unnerving.
“If you say the word, I can have them for you within the hour.”
“How much is the fee?” Elena asked, her voice cautious.
“I doubt it’s the standard rate.”
“You catch on quick.”
“It would be strange not to, with that look on your face.”
“I want information in return.”
“Information?”
What could Elena possibly offer Camila?
“I want to know how you learned of the Crescent Moon emblem.”
Another impossible question.
Her ability was beyond anyone’s comprehension, even the people from her dreams.
“I can’t tell you that,” Elena said, inventing a quick excuse.
“I made a promise to the one who taught me to keep it a secret.”
She looked away, desperate to change the subject, and missed the way Camila’s gaze deepened with speculation.
Camila Preston had once been the youngest elite assassin in Crescent Moon, the first and greatest of the assassin guilds—until an internal rebellion tore it apart.
Abandoned as a child, on the verge of starving to death, she was found by the Crescent Moon’s guild master.
From that day forward, he was her father, and the guild was her home.
The training was brutal, but Camila had loved Crescent Moon with all her heart.
She was a prodigy.
The guild master, having brought her in himself, showed her great favor, and she rose through the ranks with astonishing speed.
But one day, the vice-guildmaster and several high-ranking executives staged a coup.
The guild master was their first target.
With its leader gone, Crescent Moon descended into chaos.
The traitors moved quickly, erasing all traces of the old guild and establishing a new one in its place: Black Night.
Not everyone accepted the new order.
Those with pride in Crescent Moon resisted.
The original guild had a code—a laughable one, perhaps, but a code nonetheless.
They called themselves “righteous villains,” only accepting contracts on targets who were truly evil.
Black Night, however, would do anything for money.
Dissatisfaction festered among the veteran assassins.
The vice-guildmaster pretended to negotiate, all while secretly eliminating the opposition.
But assassins are quick to sense danger.
The loyalists saw his treachery for what it was.
Those who honored the old ways scattered, going into hiding to escape Black Night’s purge.
So many fled that the guild was effectively split in two.
Camila was one of them, living in hiding, waiting for the day Crescent Moon could be revived.
Many shared her hope, but they lacked a crucial element: a legitimate cause.
Most of the dissenters were united only by their refusal to accept traitors, but none among them had the standing to rally the others.
They could only wait, holding their breath for the return of someone who embodied the true spirit of Crescent Moon.
To identify one another, they used a long-forgotten emblem from the guild’s earliest days.
Black Night had destroyed all records, so only true comrades—people like Camila—could recognize the ancient mark.
And Camila knew every one of them.
While they didn’t keep in constant contact, they had a system for passing along news.
It was impossible for a complete stranger to know the symbol.
‘Except for one possibility.’ Camila thought of the one person they were all waiting for.
The dead guild master had a son—the true heir, who had run away with a woman long before the guild’s fall.
She’d heard the woman had been pregnant.
‘If she had a child, wouldn’t they be about this woman’s age?’
She scanned Elena from head to toe.
It wasn’t just the age.
First, there was the emblem.
It was a relic, unknown even to most assassins from before the fall.
Only someone with an interest in the guild’s deepest history would know it.
For this woman to recognize it instantly meant she was intimately familiar with Crescent Moon’s hidden past.
‘And then there was her reaction when I held the blade to her throat.’
That was the second reason.
Camila couldn’t get a read on her.
Even with a knife at her neck, a situation where a single slip could mean death, the woman hadn’t flinched.
It wasn’t an act.
Camila had been touching her, so she would have felt Elena’s heart race.
To all outward appearances, the woman was ordinary, with no signs of being a trained fighter.
But could an ordinary person be so calm before a blade?
No.
It meant she had a hidden strength, a concealed power so profound that even an elite assassin couldn’t sense it.
And a secret aura was the hallmark of an assassin.
‘She’s so young.’ Elena looked to have just reached adulthood.
It wasn’t a disguise.
To attain such skill at her age would require a legendary teacher.
‘Someone like the official heir to the Crescent Moon guild, for example.’ He wouldn’t have taught just anyone.
He would have taught his own blood.
A message she’d received from a comrade two months ago echoed in her mind:
‘An individual presumed to be the heir has been discovered.
The disguise is excellent, so I did not recognize them at first, but upon reflection, there are similarities.
I will begin tracking.
Note – He learned that Crescent Moon is gone and seemed shocked.’
It had been an unbelievable report.
The heir had been missing for years, despite their best efforts to find him.
Now, a potential heir had surfaced.
And shortly after, a mysterious woman appeared, testing her with an ancient symbol.
‘Can this all be a coincidence?’ Unlikely.
This woman had approached her with a purpose.
She seemed to be gauging Camila’s skill, and by extension, whether the Crescent Moon guild was still functional.
Who else would care about such things?
This woman had to be the one Camila had been waiting for.
‘She could be the former guild master’s granddaughter.’ She could be the figurehead they needed to revive Crescent Moon.
Camila’s heart hammered with anticipation.
She had tried to pry for more information, but the woman was a vault.
‘She wants me to prove my skills first…’ Fair enough.
To orchestrate a revenge plot, one needed to be meticulous.
Camila decided then and there to prove her worth.
Elena watched Camila, who seemed to have drifted off into her own world, and felt a growing unease.
‘I don’t think I said anything strange…’ But as Camila stared into the middle distance, a disturbing, fanatical light began to gleam in her eyes.
“Excuse me?” Elena called out.
“Hm?
What is it?” Camila snapped back to reality, her expression instantly serene.
The sudden shift to friendliness was even more unnerving.
“In any case, I can’t give you the information you want,” Elena said firmly.
“I’ll pay for the request with money.
If that’s a problem, then I won’t make the request at all—”
“Fine.”
“What?”
“I’ll take the request,” Camila declared.
“Just wait one hour.”
“Wha—?”
And with that, she was gone.
Left alone in the office, Elena was completely baffled.
“What in the world is wrong with her?” She replayed their conversation in her mind, but no answers came.
Finally, she decided to let it go.
She would get the information and continue tracking her parents.
Whatever scheme Camila was hatching, it wouldn’t matter.
‘I can just leave.’ She had no reason to ever return.
Elena settled comfortably on the sofa to wait.
Her hand drifted unconsciously into her pocket, and her fingers brushed against the folded note.
‘Ah, the manager…’ She belatedly remembered the man from the immigration office, who was waiting for her.
‘He’ll probably curse me out for a bit and then go home.’ Meeting him would have ended badly anyway.
He hadn’t hidden his intentions, and she had no intention of tolerating them.
‘It’s better for his pride to be wounded by being stood up than for his bones to be broken for his greed.’
Pushing the thought of the manager from her mind, Elena closed her eyes.