"The First Prince of the Shak Kingdom?"
He stared at the now-deserted dune crest.
An Kai muttered to himself.
He kept monitoring the feedback from his [Meditation], trying to locate any sources of malice.
He found no malice, but he did pick up a trace of an unusual emotion...
It seemed to be... reverence?
"What kind of lunatic reveres his enemy?!"
The situation reminded him of his first encounter with Sally Bukelin.
Then he remembered the [Summoning] he had obtained from her...
If a fallen princess of a duchy could provide an unranked spell, surely the First Prince of a kingdom could provide eight or ten!
Just then.
Atop the dune, about a hundred meters to the left of the spot An Kai had just bombarded.
A figure suddenly appeared.
Was he the one giving off that reverence?
Before An Kai could investigate what was wrong with that fellow, Malken, the Tier Five assassin, had already closed in on him...
Darkglow Dagger in hand, his eyes calm and his face expressionless, he seemed to regard killing An Kai as a trivial matter.
After watching An Kai fight those traitors, Malken had a fairly good estimate of his strength.
No higher than the fifth level of Tier Four, and a mage at that.
Of course, that information had not come from that damned Detector, but from his extensive experience.
Everyone knew that mages had frail bodies.
Once a Tier Five [Assassin] like him got within reach of a frail mage, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Even if An Kai were a fifth-tier mage, Malken was confident he could slit his throat in one strike!
Holding his dagger in a reverse grip, Malken slashed at An Kai's neck. At his speed, half a second was all he needed to cut An