Zhang, Zor Empire. As/A Year: 3084.

Milen Geyr

...

Standing at it's peak was the sun, it's heat filling the wind beneath with warmth as it every torrents swept past, ignoring the mountainous trees in it's path as it raced past two humans clawing and barring their teeth for blood.

Equally aloof in the presence of these people, the wind carried along it's journey, paying less heed to the weapon rushing at Milen.

The blade whooshed in rage at Milen, the same time a warm breeze stepped past his face, causing his ink black hair to flutter to its strut.

He first mentally applauded the dagger's speed, not finding it threatening in the slightest. And as it appeared at his face, he flicked the back of his hands at it, slapping it away with an even greater force- nearly negligible shockwaves rippled at the place of impact. The dagger stumbled to the side abruptly, finally stabbing the ground beside him.

"And that was meant to harm me?" An obviously belittling wicked smile crawled unto his face as he asked.

"Finally running out of pets, are they, for them to send an obvious amateur after me? Goodness gracious, my pride is taking a hit here!" Milen adds, feigning the expression of being malignantly wronged as he clutches at his chest, sucks in air sharply, and immediately continuing his chatter.

A cold glint cut across Milen's eyes as his expression turned serious, and he asked.

"The strengthening seal on that dagger for the reinforcement magic, is the Strigg clans unique material strengthening seal right? And the necessary magic energy is drawn from that amulet on your fingers into your artifact, right?"

Although Milen sneered at the assassin who was now struck with more shock, not just from how easily he deflected their attack but from how he detected their amulet's location and artifact seal, Milen felt more sullen that the speed of his hidden adversaries were growing more bold, and a powerful middle class clan is already within their span of influence.

The assassin being stunned was right, as it was quite vital in high fights where magic is inevitable, and as most people do not have the ability to utilize magic sources within them, that they have to rely on amulets. Amulets are well hidden in this scenario, and to cut off the heavy form of attack, the enemy needs to destroy the source which will then render the artifact useless. Mages do not need artifact as they are able to harness magic energy itself, and direct it through spells.

Amulets are not to be obscured or hidden to prevent object interference, and are very easily sighted as they mostly are like sparkling gems of different sizes, colours, and shape. Amulets are either low or high tiers magic items -gem stones- that can only hold one magic property or a max of three to nine spells (Magic tier spells differing what the amulet's tier). The smaller the amulet tier, the weaker it's output, and likewise spell's potency. There are cases of ancient amulets with extremely powerful forms of magic, but these still remain a myth to this moment, as mostly middle and low tier amulets can be seldom seen, while high tier amulets are like legends.

Thus, amulet users are very rare as there are extremely expensive to purchase, or found in ruins of extremely hazardous environment with scarce life.

So, with the unobstructed nature of amulets, attackers mostly use faints to throw off their enemy on the real location of their amulet, to prevent it from being destroyed. And with Milen immediately identifying the his assailant's amulet location which was a few among the many slender rings that filled their ten fingers, how could they not be shocked, especially taking note of all the "obvious" gem necklace like a choker around the assailant's neck meant as a trap.

Seals on the other hand are inscriptions that can fashioned into weapons, which can make it a true artifact.

Milen was able to detect the slight fluctuation of energy, and thus able to pinpoint the location of this amulet, and from experience, the type of seal used. Attributed to his beastly sharp senses cultivated from innate talent and countless battles of this twenty seven year old young man, and was even able to intricately identify the type of magic on the ring, from just a mere glance.

"Obviously a sixth-seventh rate assassin like you doesn't just have the ability to use magic, only a spare few can. And only with the help of amulet orbs which acts as pseudo magic core, can you work an artifact level weapon."
Weapons that can be used in tandem with magic are artifact who require magic energy to bring out it's full potential.

Milen continued.
"Besides, I know the number of weapons you've hidden in place, including the magic tokens and whatnot... I can feel the energy beaming from each of them."
Milen's words caused his assailant's face to immediately scrunch under their mask. He could vaguely make out the slight crease on the surface of the black cowl.

Even Milen was a bit surprised. Although he called them a sixth to seventh tier assassin, he knew deep down that the person before him was no mere low rank assassin, they were too wealthy to be some cheapskate. Possibly a cream top assassin from the Strigg clan. Milen was only surprised at first, but would not possibly hold this assassin in his eyes. Milen a being who is at the peak, a sixth tier assassin was only worse than a joke to him. But the assassin sadly didn't see it that way, they still believed that Milen was still within their control.

The assassin readjusted their steps and pulled back, obviously increasing their vigilance to the max. Milen being able to strip them naked, meant that he was no simple man. Too add, this man didn't look to even be thirty years of age.

What a man!

Milen chuckled a bit, immediately turned to the side, took a few steps and bent down to retrieve the dagger he had originally smacked away.

"Mother-cock-rider!" He excitedly called out loudly at his assailant without turning his head to look in their direction.
"You gotta aim better next time..." He slightly tugged out the dagger and it freed its grip with the earth. He then turned to face the black clothed assassin
"See, the trick is all in two places: your wrist and eyes." He threw the knife into the air, and as he free fell he stole it by the hilt.
"Just like a baby's head, the dynamics of throwing a knife is very fragile, and with magic, even more complicated." He took a moment to examine the dagger, which he then tried balancing the sharp hilt on his forefinger. It stood without pricking or drawing out any blood, but then, it unsteadily began swaying which he cautiously followed in the direction it bent to, trying to regain balance.

He couldn't get the blade's balance and it was getting futile to try, so he sprung it up again with the same finger, and caught it just as he did before. He spoke.
"Throwing weapons like this requires skill..." Milen lectured again, which left his assailant knitting their brows tighly. "Speed, power, precision, and one more thing, which you lack..." He held the dagger to his face, and ran his tongue on the fuller, from the hilt of the dagger, to the heel, with his eyes closed and face spiraling in excitement.

The assassin had their eyes narrowed at Milen's oddness, not daring to underestimate him. Milen on the other hand was the complete opposite. He knew this person before him was his prey, but he who loves his hunt would rather mess with it a bit or the meat might taste bland and boring. Milen secretly eyed his assailant like beast who enjoyed battles, while acting in an extremely carefree manner.

This was the intoxication of the hunt to Milen. When he gets in this stage, it was so hard to get him to stop playing with his food. This act had already become an habit over the years.

The assassin watched this devishly handsome man whose hair wad darker than a moonless night and eyes a beautiful blue that put even the deepest ocean to shame, as he stood part naked with a few light scars running over his chest, smiling as he scolded them.
The only thought that rang through their mind was...

"I landed a strange one this time..." The assassin muttered. Although Milen seemed weird, he didn't seem like a threat.

Milen's thumb and fore finger stuffed the blade's cold edges within them, and his concentration moved from it, to the person in front of him, finally putting on a serious face, forcing his assailant to be begin mustering up their defence. He suddenly grinned, drew his hand towards the side of his head like a knocked bow holding for a second, before he released. He struck his hand forward and fired the dagger back at the assassin who stood about fifty meters away from him.

Blink.

The blade seemed to have teleported, as it finally reappeared struck the assassin's left elbow. The whole process used less than one breath of time. Too quick! Impossible to react. A speed at the very peak.

How could the assailant not be shaken to the core of thier soul? They knew if Milen wanted to have that dagger go through their neck, they wouldn't even know the time they'd died, because they would be a thousand times dead before they even realized that they had died. And this very fact was the scariest part: this man was toying with them. Their very life was dancing to his pipes on the palms of his hands.

The assailant had thought he had a good chance to kill Milen. The information received was that he was merely a vagabond, a thug whose strength was mostly at the sixth rank, and although equally matched, the assassin still believe that they would easily finish the job. But seeing just one attack from Milen, who did not even manipulate magical energy, the assassin's body became a soulless husk.

After receiving the task from the clan, with a few seers from the clan who were able to pinpoint Milen's general cardinal point, they began their travel. Information on Milen was limited, but the price for assassinating him was extremely tempting.

But fate spilled a cruel joke: this man was millons of times better than them and what the information on him said, and those eyes of his: icy blue, sharp, and arrogant were those of a master killer who was fashioned from the very blade of death itself. They were deathly scared, completely ignoring the pain that gnawed at their right should, as they began to retreat, hoping at a chance to run.

Suddenly Milen spoke.

"What you lack my dear lady, is blood lust," As Milen softly said this line, a deathly cold aura intangibly spiked and suffocated the one who came to have his life. This slightly blue aura, forced Milen's assailant to be in a half kneeling position as sweat visibly soaked their cowl.

"the undying need to taste the blood of every foe before you. That fatal flaw of yours alone will cost you your life, by these very hands." He added finally, and fully retracted his aura, causing a strange silence to surge through the forest.

Deathly stillness. A freezing intangible miasma draped the whole two kilometers. The wind froze, the dancing trees went numb, even scurrying beast were equally petrified. The nearby peaking mountains that encamped the trees and Milen's abode equally echoed this silence, and for a second it was like time itself had paused.

This was the kind of power the assassin had only heard in legends. With just the retraction of his aura, it was as though time and space itself was sucked away. And for the one second this impossible phenomenon occurred, the Milen's assailant knees were already bent on the ground, the floor beneath their legs were soaked with sweat, and for once in their life did they feel what death meant.

Milen smiled as he drew his hands closer to his face, carefully examining the hands he planned on reaping his assassin's life with.

Shifting his gaze back to his assailant, he took a step, and the distance of a hundred meters was closed in less than a breath. In a breath, Milen had supposedly teleported before the them, and following a stifled growl front the kneeling assassin, Milen plucked the knife from their shoulder. The assassin immediately hand their hands on the wound surface to curt the bleeding, applying some pressure to help it clot quicker. As the blood ceaselessly flowed, they could feel how deep the wound was, and Milen being wantonly merciless, pulled the dagger that been completely buried in their skin slowly and steadily.

The assassin still stubbornly stifled their pleading groans, but suddenly their breath immediately spaced as they slowing lifted their head to meet Milen's freezing gaze and stretched out grin, and the last few sentences Milen said resurfaced in their head.

"Female? H-how? How did he know I was a woman?"

Milen indeed did call the assassin a woman, and it was at this time that the assassin realized that Milen was truly a monster.

Sweat, outburst of goosebumps spread like a plague; tongue taut, dry, and crisp; fingers numb; and heart erupting in overwhelming fear, cascaded over the assailant's skin as though standing at gunpoint with a sociopathic bloodthirsty beast softly caressing the trigger with a smile. It was as though they knew he was on a queue to discovering their real identity. The assassin's eyes got tighter with confusion warped in her myeiora, and Milen who was just an inch away could smell its reek which forced him into a more elated state.

"Who is this person?"
Noticing Milen's obvious excited state, she was at a loss. Never before had she been in such an hopeless situation where defense was practically impossible, and definitely not with the chuckling devil whom she knew lusted after the spillage of her blood.

"Those titties gotta be quite small...or did you wrap them up to seem smaller?" Milen's cold gaze suddenly became warm and were withdrawn from her face as he stared confusedly at her heaving chest.

His words immediately drew her from her comatose reverie and nerve wrenching fear, and she bravely responded by pulling out two more daggers, gritting her teeth to struggle for an escaping chance.

Escape? What a joke!

Her grip on the dagger was unsteady, as she forcefully tried to steady her breathing.

"Still confused?" He asked, and went further with an explanation. "One, you couldn't completely dispel the existence of the cleavage between the boobs, and someone with good insight as I when it comes to female physiological, cannot miss even a inch of boobs."

Milen lecherously spoke, making the masked female intensely disgusted.

"You might have been worth spending a night with, if you weren't gonna die. Sad, so so so sad!" He sniffed as he faked remorse, buried his head in his palm.

Hearing Milen's words, the female who had managed to bring herself up, swore in her heart that she would rather die than let the man before her touch a sliver of her skin. She wouldn't be sullied by him even in death.

Immediately squinted his head up to meet her green eyes, and a wide grin was taped to his face.

"Two, your myeiora. I can tell male from female just by giving their myeioras a second glace." He grew a smug. "You know those things are slightly different, and this difference cannot be hidden from me, right?"

The woman said nothing, but without even blinking launched at him. She leapt in the air still holding out two daggers facing the ground, and with a slight backward twist, she propelled herself away from Milen.

Milen only watched her acrobatics without reacting, feeling extreme excitement.

The assassin landed and took a swing at Milen's neck, sending a green colored slash of energy gunning for his neck.

Milen slightly tilted backwards, and it scurried past him, cutting numerous trees in two before all the energy was lost.

She swiftly adjusted her grip on the hilt, and had the heel's tip pointed at his chest. She didn't hesitate one bit to venture in for a stab, but this time with more speed, precision, and vengeance burned into her eyes as she roared for a swing. He grabbed her wrist, right as the blow was about to land, lifted her arms high into the air, and shot his head for her face, and bashed it into hers.

Still clutching her wrist, he drew back his head, gathered more momentum, and hammered the same spot he'd hit before. Her skin beneath the hood was cracked, and blood began soaking into it, thickening as it ran in the space between her eyes.

She tried twitching and twisting her wrist to escape his grasp, but his grip was too grounded. But with her other hands free, she formed a fist hoping it's force to crash into his face.

Milen as though reading her mind saw her clenched fingers, and sneered. His vacant hand equally folded only at the knuckles which was pointed straight, and without any announcements shot his arm like a spear into her shoulder, and decapitated it, forcing her fist to lose power and loosen up.

Tightening her jaw, the assassin's only option was to use her legs, and sadly it was as Milen had planned she would. She arched her knee, and initiated for his groin. Milen let her land a hit.

After the crash had impacted his lower area, Milen bent to look at his crotch, then back at her with a sneer mocking her weak knee jab.

Looking at her face, he could feel her despair gushing out, which was at him not only tanking her hit, but equally seeing through her attack.

He got bored.

Fighting a foe as weak as she was, only made him guilty, as his game wasn't giving him enough fun. Upon disappointment, he freed his grip, lending her a chance to attack, or escape. She was smart enough to choose the later, and jump back.

He sighed.
"I'm letting you go. You do not stand a chance. Run before you lose your life to this futile battle."

Although Milen had said he was certainly gonna kill her which she was already prepared for, but having played with her enough with feeling invigorated enough, he felt bored and simply tossed away his toy.

The assassin felt insulted. Her pride was in cinders. Pity is a smear to the ego of an assassin-a trample on their pride, so to her, it was pride and death, not cowardice and bliss. And after what Milen had just done to her, and the casual way he flung her aside like a dirty doll, the assassin couldn't stand it.

Noticing her convictions, another sigh from his lips plummeted to earth.
"Fine!" He squinted his eyes but decided to feign ignorance. "Well? get going, I have dishes to take care of."

Milen yawned and closed his eyes, pretending not to see, hoping she would just buzz off and not disturb him. He was literally turning a blind eye out of boredom.

Seeing a chance as his eyes were closed, she seized the chance to throw another dagger at him, but this time as the dagger whistled at him, Milen catches it by the tip, and casually drops it on the ground.

She groans in frustration, and rushed in and took a slash at his throat. His eyes were still shut, but he could hear the dagger cutting through the air, aiming for him. A clear opportunity to counter-attack appeared, and he snatched it. He folded his knee, bent lower than her attacks, shot his elbows above his head, and hit her wrist, blocking her and causing the daggers to slip from her fingers. She stumbled back, but before she could reclaim balance, he rushed in, raised his leg, launched it at his opponent's face. He kicked under her jaw, sending the poor girl flying and rolling away in the opposite way.

He walked over to where the assassin laid, who quickly got up, and took a desperate swing at his abdomen, having drawn out another reserved dagger. This time his eyes were already open and he bent away, and watched the blade's slow motion cut past him.

"That's the spirit chap..." He taunted. "You can do it!"
He felt riled...excited.

Since she wasn't appreciating his goodwill and chose to die, then he would deliver her the cruelest form of death time could permit.