—The Assassin Sect had not been completely wiped out.
This was a shocking fact, enough to overturn the historical records.
Yet no matter how shocking it was, a fact remained a fact.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka revealed that fact.
"Although the nineteenth Old Man of the Mountain to inherit the name 'Hassan-i Sabbah' was destroyed by the Mongols in 1256 along with the sect and its stronghold, the Assassin Sect had actually already trained the twentieth Old Man of the Mountain by then."
This Hassan, who had originally been meant to inherit the position of the next Old Man of the Mountain, had not died in that extermination. Instead, he was secretly sent away and eventually drifted to an island nation in the Far East.
There, in order to rebuild the Assassin Sect, that Hassan hid among the deep forests of the Far Eastern island nation while gathering many children through every possible means—captivity, abduction, theft, purchase, and sale. He intended to train them harshly into outstanding Assassins, select the best among them to inherit the name Hassan, and pray that one day they could return to the world and resume the Assassin Sect's missionary work.
Unfortunately, before he could fulfill that long-cherished wish, that Hassan died in a foreign land, leaving behind only an organization that had inherited the Assassin Sect's Assassination Arts.
To survive, the Assassin Sect could only become Assassins, hiring themselves out to the upper echelons of the time, hiding in the shadows of history, and doing work that could not bear the light of day.
As for the sect's development, the Hassan of the Assassin Sect at the time inherited the previous Hassan's will. He gathered many gifted children not only from local nations but from all over the world, training them into the finest Assassins and