I could feel it, behind us, following me. Following all of us. It was… that was one of the strongest people I’ve run into so far. They were on the same power level as fucking Kasandra. And they were trailing after us. If I put it to a fight… I didn’t know. Fuck. I didn’t know because I didn’t know. I could feel a… a body. They were…

My face screwed up into a frown. I could usually feel a person, hell, I could usually feel the air, the plants, and everything with my power gauge. Air was kind of a void but a person or plant was ‘whole’. A severed hand isn’t powerful but attached to a martial artist it’s a deadly weapon. This time though… I could feel the power but not the body. I was sure it was an actual person but… it was so bizarre.

Are they fucking invisible? No… even if they were invisible, I’d still be able to ‘see’ them. This was… more. More than just invisible? I felt the black information void around them rapidly being eaten away. This was like an equation I knew the answer to already. Like something I’d seen before-

The mansion! Vanessa’s fucking mansion! A domain? No. No, a domain is a unique thing belonging to an object, typically a house. When a person has it, it’s called an aura. The thing Tyler has. But that domain was able to go to a different ‘space’. I was able to only feel that it was there and then disappeared beforehand… hell, not even that. I was only able to feel Vanessa before.

But I’d grown and so had my Ability. I could feel this person… except their Aura was… putting them into another dimension? With that thought, it was a like click had happened and I could see something that was almost always invisible to my senses. A shadow. A moving shadow.

This motherfucker wasn’t invisible, he was literally moving through shadows. I was ‘seeing’ a ‘moving’ shadow but it wasn’t that obvious. There wasn’t actually a moving shadow. He himself was moving from shadow to shadow, trailing us, watching us from ‘below’. Unnoticeable and damn near undetectable. Hell, I got the feeling that if he was weaker I might not have noticed him at all…

What an absolutely terrifying stealth ability.

Now… what on earth do we do about it? I doubted attacking every single shadow would actually do anything. Maybe Riary can do something special with her fire magic since it could apparently do whatever the hell it pleased… or maybe Tyler could do something fancy with his aura that could land a blow. The problem was that this person wasn’t weak. A single surprise attack back wasn’t going to cut it. We needed them out of the shadow… and there was no telling when that would be.

I looked up and… was momentarily hit with vertigo. I had forgotten we were underneath the ground, especially as I looked up into a very real sky and looked at what seemed to be like a very real sun. I had no idea if it set but I didn’t want to wait to find out. Fighting a fucking shadow user at night sounded like a recipe for disaster.

Fuck. There was something else… we weren’t far from the town. We’d avoided it but I could run back there in less than a few minutes. Someone stronger? This was a B-Rank dungeon, people didn’t often go alone. This bastard was probably part of a team, a team just as strong as him. I had been more than willing to face the dungeon and the people in it but… perhaps I’d bitten off a bit more than I could chew. I needed to be able to hit someone to kill them.

First things first though.

“Hey Riary.” I spoke up.

“Yeah?” Riary said with a side glance.

“Remember when you used to play pranks on me?” I said.

Riary narrowed her eyes… and I could see a faint blush creep up onto her cheeks that had nothing to do with our walking pace.

“What about it?”

“You know which one I hated the most?”

Now Riary had wide eyes. Tyler had no idea what Riary had done and he was listening in on the conversation curiously. I could practically see the nervous bullets falling from Riary. The last thing she wanted was for Tyler to learn about the time she’d made me drink her piss.

“Derek… what are you…”

“It was when you tied my shoelaces together… using your flames. I had to buy a whole new pair of shoes in that elven town.”

“Wait, was that why Derek was barefoot?!” Tyler cried out, taking the bait, thank god. “Riary, how could you?!”

While Tyler seemed to be getting angry, Riary frowned and looked at me seriously, her mind spinning. She knew she hadn’t done that. She damn well knew what her meanest prank was. So did Konohora who had just heard me lie and was now frowning as well, her mind similarly racing.

As Tyler began to tear into Riary a little, I knew they’d gotten the message. The only reason I’d be lying like that was to send a hidden message. And there were very few reasons I’d be trying to send a hidden message.

“Hey, it’s okay Tyler.” I spoke up, ending his tirade. “It’s water under the bridge, I was just making small talk you know. It’s pretty funny in hindsight. Actually, speaking of the past…” I said, looking around, my gaze crossing over where the assassin was. “This place is crazy. We’ve already run into a few strong dinosaurs. I worry about the strong B-Ranks that will be out here. You think the big tall dinosaur over there is like that? It might explain why none of the adventurers have attacked or killed it.”

Tyler huffed, seeing Riary’s frown and taking it for something else.

“I don’t know.” Tyler eventually said, realizing I was talking to him specifically. “Uh maybe? I don’t think people would just attack anything that moves…”

I launched into a conversation with Tyler, acting natural. Riary and Konohora were… better than I hoped but still not great. They were noticeably more tense and I worried we’d alerted the assassin below us. He wasn’t in any of our shadows but that could change at a moment’s notice. An assassin would have speed in spades. I’d have to be close to everyone. I’d have the best shot of reacting in time.

The problem was… he would definitely attack when we were either busy fighting or at night. Worse… if he didn’t attack at all but waited for his teammates to show up and they were just as strong as him… there were few ways to be more screwed than that.

We needed to take him out now.

A little while into our walk, Konohora moved up to me, grabbing my arm in hers. Tyler looked back, his eyes seeming to boggle at the sight, jaw dropping open a little. Which wasn’t good. I knew the basics of Assassin 101. The logical stuff that anyone can figure out with some thought. If your targets suddenly seem to be acting suspicious or different for some reason, you’ve probably been found out. I had to trust that this guy was the overconfident kind, especially since we were C-Rank and shouldn’t have any way to find him.

“Don’t let a fly get in your mouth Tyler. You know me and Konohora bonded a little in the jungle. It’s just some arm holding.”

“Uh that yeah but…” Tyler stammered out.

Riary snorted, before walking up and grabbing his arm as well.

Tyler blinked in surprise, before chuckling lightly, letting out a smile and just going along with it. Sorry Tyler… there’s just no good way to tell you. Maybe Riary can pass along some information.

Speaking of passing information… I could feel Konohora writing letters on my arm.

‘Danger?’

I returned in kind.

‘Assassin. In Shadows. Strong.’

Konohora didn’t even frown, in fact, she had her normal pleasant smile on her face as we just seemed like two couples, one team, walking towards the massive dinosaur that had only gotten much much bigger as we headed towards it. We were eating ground up at a decent pace and it was only now I was realizing just how big the damn thing was. Maybe innate fear alone kept people from trying to kill it. It looked docile enough and if it was some man eating super monster, good. We needed something to break this stalemate.

‘One?’

‘One.’

‘Fight?’

I thought about that one for a moment.

‘Fight. Unveil.’

‘Plan.’

Statement, not question. I didn’t know what Konohora had in mind but whatever it was, I believed she would- ah. Wait. I think I have an inkling of what she had in mind.

‘Safe?’

‘No.’

I very particularly didn’t frown.

‘When? My part?’

‘Soon. Sex.’

It took every single thing in my entire face, body, and mind to not react in some way. That was far, far away from what I had been planning or thinking she had in mind. An assassin, a good one, should always prioritize the healer. Anyone with decent fighting knowledge should. So Konohora would create an opportunity. I thought it’d be as simple as just… walking away from the group for a bit but… yeah. Yeah, I could see how that would leave an opening too good for the assassin to pass up...

Roughly half an hour of walking or so later, with my nerves fucking shot at every single movement from the man below, and we’d finally reached the Brachiosaurus. I could feel it now and… man, big it was, but it was just as ‘weak’ as a normal Brachiosaurus. I.e… something the average C-Rank wouldn’t really die to. Even better, it seemed pretty friendly. The second we came close it lowered its massive head down and a scene straight from jurrassic park played out. It blew air through its nose, pushing our hair back. Even with the tension, I saw Riary smile gently and Tyler practically begin to bounce up and down. I sometimes forgot he was an animal lover.

“Hey,” I called out. “This area seems pretty safe, if this guy isn’t having any issues with us. Konohora and I are going to… relax a little, okay? You two have fun. We’ll be a bit away. Just uh, yell before coming over, alright?” I said, with a slight chuckle.

Tyler simply shrugged, taking the words at face value while Riary nodded. Just nodded, but I caught the hard look in her eyes. She was ready to lay down an ocean of fire on command.

The void below, something I could only sense because the man was literally inside it, didn’t exactly seem to be… omnipresent. He had to be close, to trail after us. He could probably teleport around pretty easily and pretty far, but a few minutes walk still meant a slight adjustment from him to keep up.

As I felt him ‘shift’ to me and Konohora, I knew he’d taken the bait.

…except he didn’t attack. Even when we were a ‘decent’ distance away… he didn’t attack.

Fuuuuucccckkkk.

I smiled at Konohora and it wasn’t even strained.

“We really must stop fucking under these circumstances.”