To the assassin's credit, the shock of Asher’s appearance didn’t keep them frozen for long. As soon as they realized they’d been set up, they snapped into action. Seven more pouches along their belt erupted with sand, which began swirling all around the room at incredible speed and forcing Asher to shield his eyes. With a curse, he slipped into the astral to keep himself from getting stabbed while he was blind, before reaching into his rift to yank out a pair of goggles he’d picked up from Polly, an alchemist in Dormaul. Accessing his rift while in the astral realm was a much larger drain on his energy than accessing it on the material realm, but he couldn’t exactly fight blind.

  Goggles in place, he let his skill drop, returning to the material realm within a storm of sand. Thankfully, incredibly small bits of matter didn’t seem to cause him any problem when it came to shifting between realms. If he were to try and return from the material realm with his foot in the coffee table, however, his foot would simply be sheared off, vanishing from existence.

  As soon as he appeared, a section of the storm froze in midair as if God had pressed the pause button on those few thousand grains of sand specifically. The sand clumped up and transformed into shards of glass, which then rocketed directly toward Asher from all directions.

  “Dear God,” he muttered, slipping into the astral again to prevent himself from getting utterly eviscerated by what looked like a few dozen jagged glass blades that were swirling around where he’d been standing moments ago. “The assassins in the capital are something else…”

  It had only been a few seconds since the start of the fight, and Asher hadn’t even gotten the chance to move yet. He had no idea how someone without a powerful defensive skill would ever survive against an opponent like this, but he supposed that was probably the point.

  Why hire an assassin in the first place if they couldn’t get the job done?

  Asher stood there within the astral, fighting the urge to scratch at his chin while he thought about how to best tackle this. Usually, he preferred throwing himself headfirst at his opponents, locking blades with them and overcoming the challenge in the moment. The problem here was that he couldn’t even find his opponent, let alone throw himself at them. Even with the goggles preventing the sand from physically blinding him, there was enough sand moving at high enough speeds that he couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. He also hadn’t detected any sort of impact on his Spatial Lock, which meant his opponent wasn’t trying to flee either, despite their initial shock at being tricked.

  So long as this sandstorm keeps up, I’m fighting completely blind, he realized, frowning at the thought. Which means…

  Let’s start with getting rid of that, shall we?

  Seeing as his Spatial Lock was already up and in place, Asher leaned on the second tier effect of the skill, sacrificing a large chunk of energy to yank the entirety of the bedroom Donvath had provided him into the astral realm. He’d learned with Samantha’s help and some practice that the skill’s second tier effect was odd in that the ground and structures weren’t dragged into the astral realm along with him, but pretty much everything else was. And when it came to the astral realm, every single movement drained a little bit of a person’s energy.

  Including things moving under a person’s skills.

  Spatial Lock - Lvl 27

  Almost immediately, the swirling sandstorm stopped, flinging sand everywhere as the assassin released their control on the tens of thousands of grains of sand. Asher could only laugh as, with his ability to see the room restored, he could finally make out the black-clad assassin stumbling backward, barely catching themselves from collapsing onto the very bed they’d stabbed earlier. Pulling the entire area within his Spatial Lock into the astral meant the drain caused by movement wasn’t nearly as bad when he was using Astral Dip, but he couldn’t imagine keeping that sandstorm skill up for even a split second had come without great cost.

  “My turn!” Asher said, rushing toward the assassin and mentally noting the slight drain to his energy with every step. While within the astral, he wasn’t capable of using Distortion to extend or compress space, but it was a more than worthy trade to get all that sand out of his way. Keeping one dagger near his chest, ready to deflect at a moment’s notice, he lashed out with his other toward the assassin’s throat.

  At the last second, a glass collar flickered into existence around the assassin’s neck, causing Asher’s blade to scrape off with a ring that made him wince as it hit his ears. Clearly expecting this, the assassin took advantage of his flinch to thrust a hand toward his chest, aimed directly at his heart. Asher barely spotted the jagged glass claws on the tips of their fingers that hadn’t existed moments before right as the attack came at him.

  Narrowly deflecting the claws with his second dagger, Asher leapt back from the upward swipe of the assassin’s second clawed hand, choosing to hurl his daggers forward as he did so. Throwing his blades was a move he still wasn’t the most proficient with, but he’d spent a few hours here and there practicing during their long caravan ride, and he was at least good enough to ensure his daggers hit their targets blade-first now.

  Asher's aim was true, but the assassin flopped back onto the bed, narrowly dodging the daggers and letting them fly overhead before bouncing back up.

  Directly into the line of the two new daggers Asher had hurled right behind the first two.

  To the mysterious assassin’s credit, they actually managed to get their glass claws up in time to block the first dagger, but they didn’t quite manage with the second. Asher’s steel blade sank deep into their shoulder as they twisted out of the way just a moment too late to avoid the attack entirely, and Asher couldn’t help but smile as he pulled two more daggers from his bandolier.

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  Gotcha.

  No matter what happened, now that he’d landed a decent wound and drawn blood, this fight was as good as done. Sever the Thread was arguably his deadliest skill, as it ensured that any wounds he inflicted were completely and utterly permanent. No amount of healing magic or health potions or skills could heal the wounds left by his hand during a fight, and the skill was powerful enough that not even resurrection magic could bring back someone he’d killed. At least if the lesser demons who now screamed at the sight of him were any indication. Though it wasn’t completely unbeatable, unfortunately, as Eight had already proven back in Whikoga’s sewers. The alchemist had used a combination of potions and skills to transform himself into a massive rat abomination, sloughing off his old flesh and replacing it with entirely new flesh free of any wounds, but Asher was rather confident that wasn’t something most people could do.

  And thank God for that. He’d fought enough rats down within those sewers to last a lifetime.

  Curious as to what the mysterious assassin would do now that they’d been wounded, Asher waited a beat as the assassin pulled the dagger from their shoulder and tossed it on the bed. To his surprise, some of the sand scattered about the room rose up and shot directly into the wound, packing in tight and sealing it more thoroughly than any bandage ever could. There was no way using sand of all things to seal a wound was sanitary, but it did actually stop the bleeding as intended.

  Before Asher could think about that for too long, however, the assassin surprised him by finally showing their third element. Pulling down the mask covering their face, his opponent opened their mouth and breathed out a torrent of fire directly at him, revealing that they did in fact have a Fire element after all.

  “Gya!” Asher shouted, throwing himself to the side as the intense heat washed over him. He managed to dodge the worst of it, but his left side received some rather nasty burns from being too close to the deadly flames. Unfortunately, while moving solid matter around within the astral drained a person’s energy, something more energy-based like fire didn’t seem to have the same effect.

  Landing in a roll, he popped back up, coming face to face with the assassin just as they finished taking another deep breath. Right before he could get cooked alive, Asher let the space within his Spatial Lock return to the material plane without him, allowing the assassin’s fire breath to wash through him with a relieved sigh as he himself remained within the astral. Before they could start up their sandstorm again, Asher darted forward, popping out of the astral directly in front of the assassin as he stabbed forward.

  Again, they managed to deflect one of his blades with a conjured plate of glass armor, and again, his other dagger managed to sneak through their defenses, stabbing deep into their shoulder once more. Asher had purposefully aimed for the same spot he’d struck the last time with the intention of severing the muscles and taking one of his opponent’s arms out of commission, and based on how the limb dropped lifelessly to their side, he was pretty certain he’d succeeded.

  Before he could celebrate, the sand all throughout the room kicked up again, swirling around even more violently than before as the assassin reactivated their skill. Only this time, Asher was already close enough to his opponent that it didn’t matter if his vision was impaired, and with his goggles in place, the sand couldn’t do much more than scrape against his skin. The coarse sand rubbing against his burned flesh was incredibly painful, but Complete Resilience helped him ignore that for now.

  Unfortunately, it seemed he’d put up enough of a showing that the assassin had decided to change tactics. Pointing their hand toward Asher, the assassin’s glass claws rocketed off of their fingers toward Asher like bullets without warning. The two of them were closer enough now that Asher didn’t have time to slip into the astral, and he grunted as he felt the five small blades slam into his gut and shoot out the other side, piercing straight through his serpent hide leathers. Thankfully, they’d missed hitting his spinal cord, but the sudden sharp pain of being unexpectedly stabbed five times gave him pause.

  Pause which the assassin took advantage of to try and run away.

  Fire blasted out of the assassin’s back as they rocketed toward the open window, not willing to miss this opportunity for a quick escape. Only rather than shoot through the opening to freedom, they instead slammed headfirst into Spatial Lock’s near-invisible barrier that was still in place. Dazed and likely concussed, the assassin stumbled backward, their good hand holding their head as they stared at the open window in confusion.

  Meaning they were rather unprepared for Asher’s dagger to pierce through their heart from behind.

  As the assassin crumpled to the ground and the swirling sands finally fell with them, Asher let out a pained grunt, shoving his daggers back into his bandolier before probing his midsection with his fingers. Hissing, he pulled out the two glass claws that hadn’t managed to fully exit his body, having gotten snagged on some important organ or other. If it weren’t for his Eternal Regeneration, he knew with certainty he’d be lying beside his assailant before long, bleeding out from his various wounds. As it was, he’d just need an hour or two before he was good as new. While damaged organs were a bit more complicated, flesh wounds and broken bones healed fast enough. Really the only thing that took him days to recover from at this point was missing limbs.

  Snatching the orb of shards floating over the assassin’s corpse, Asher laughed at the fact that the almost one hundred and twenty thousand brand-new shards barely made a dent in his overall total. It seemed yet another benefit of everything in the capital costing more was that anyone crazy enough to come after him would make quite the nice addition to his wallet. Other than leveling up Spatial Lock, he’d managed to increase two other skills as well.

  Astral Dip - Lvl 30

  Sever the Thread - Lvl 18

  Shards: 1,942,087

  It was a little depressing to only receive three skill increases for the battle, but he supposed overall, he hadn’t really used many skills other than Spatial Lock and Astral Dip. Though he was excited to see Sever the Thread quickly approaching the point of evolution, as he had absolutely no idea what to expect from the skill gaining an additional effect.

  Dismissing his notifications, Asher turned to look around the once pristine room used for visiting nobility. Piles of sand lay scattered absolutely everywhere, shards of glass were embedded in half the furniture, and a good chunk of the bed was currently on fire. Not to mention there was a dead assassin bleeding all over the floor, their sand-bandage skill having ended the moment they died. Shaking his head, Asher walked over to the door as he dropped his Spatial Lock, opening it and poking his head out into the hall of the royal palace. Knowing that there were always palace workers wandering about here and there at all hours of the day and night, he cleared his throat and called out into the seemingly empty hallway.

  “Uh… room service?”

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