“Humph…Humph… How?…. How?!… Ugh!”

In a dark spooky forest, a figure could be seen dashing with a decent speed between the tree branches, cloak blowing behind the figure that from the body proportion looked to be a woman.

Her face was concealed by a hood and a half mask, leaving only a pair of deep brown eyes revealed, none of her skin could be seen as her entire body was covered in some type of black leather or latex bodysuit.

“This was supposed to be my final job” she growled, looking down for a split second at the massive claw wound on her left abdomen. The area was soaked and stank of fresh crimson blood that had a green liquid mixed.

WOOF! WOOF!

The growls of giant hounds were coming from her behind echoing in the forest like a thumping thunder, breaking the rhythm of her breath and heartbeat.

“Shit” The woman’s eyes widened under her hood, she quickly took a small green vial from her pocket and poured the liquid inside her wound.

“Fuck! This is a flawed product, they were supposed to hide the scent of blood”

She cursed again, taking another red vial, a healing potion and drank a sip, her left hand and feet began to move even faster than before and the effect kicked in instantly.

The girl had too many pockets, sixteen in total, some were located at upper thighs, upper arm, her belt, but most of them were on a leather vest in an X-pattern right at the front. Each one of them held something essential, she needed all of them to succeed in her job.

WOOOF! WOOOF!

The growling barks got closer by every second passing, the hounds chasing their prey were covered with an evil energy, so did the two men sitting atop their heads.

“FIND HER!!” one of the riders roared, his voice booming through the fog-choked forest like a war horn.

The hellhounds howled in response—deep, guttural, bone-rattling. Their glowing eyes lit the woods in an eerie crimson hue, slobbering black foam as they thundered across the underbrush with unnatural speed. The ground itself trembled beneath their paws.

The masked woman darted through the trees like a ghost, weaving between thick trunks and gnarled roots, her breath ragged, her vision blurring at the edges. The healing potion kept her going, barely, but her body was deteriorating fast. The claw wound still pulsed, oozing blood and venom with every heartbeat.

“Shit, shit, shit…” she hissed, gripping a low branch and flinging herself into a wild arc, flipping midair to land on a thick bough above. She crouched low for a heartbeat, pressed against the bark, listening.

The riders were close—too close.

“The little rat thinks she could come to our house and assassinate our lord” One of them let out a mocking laugh, high and cruel.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. Her hand darted to a pocket on her thigh and pulled out a small, glass orb no larger than a grape. She rubbed the orb against the wound covering it in her blood before throwing it in the opposite direction.

“This will buy me some time”

With that she jumped down and started to sprint away, ignoring the burning in her lungs and the pain of the wound. She kept going for more than fifteen minutes, but sadly, the venom was catching up to her. And for some reason, every single antidote she carried didn’t work.

Her limbs began to feel heavier, and slower with every step. Her breath came in ragged gasps now, like broken glass in her throat. The forest twisted around her, the towering trees leaning in, their gnarled branches clawing at her cloak as if trying to drag her down.

Drip. Drip.

Blood still seeped from her side despite the healing potion, now darker, and more sluggish. The green taint was spreading in thick veins beneath the leather suit, her flesh turning an ugly shade beneath it.

She stumbled.

Just once.

But it was enough to remind her—she wouldn’t get out of this if she didn’t change the plan.

“I won’t die here,” she muttered, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the ground, her brown eyes burning with defiance under the hood. “Not now….cough… Not when I’m so close to my freedom”

She reached for the pouch behind her belt, one she hadn’t touched until now. It had a crimson thread tied around it—her emergency kit. Inside were three items: a one-use teleportation stone, a smoke bomb, and a charm engraved with a forbidden sigil—a summoning charm for something even she didn’t fully understand.

She grabbed the stone first, trying to activate it, but sadly the result was…well… the same as the antidotes.

“Fucking useless”

And even if the teleportation stone worked, she’d teleport back to the castle and to that mage who fucked up her plan for the night. A powerful eighth-circle mage that the noble she was supposed to assassinate kept hidden as a trump card in his hands. A living fucking mass weapon of destruction in a small county.

WOOOF! WOOOF!

“!!!” Then she heard it—the hounds again. Closer.

Too close.

“Shit,” she hissed, eyes darting toward the east. She was almost at the drop point—where the forest thinned and the ruins of the old altar lay just beyond the ridge. If she could just reach it…

CRACK!

“!!!” A branch snapped behind her.

She whirled just in time to see one of the hellhounds crash through the trees, drool spraying from its mouth, eyes burning like molten coal.

It lunged.

She didn’t think. Her body moved, acting on instinct.

BOOM!

She threw the smoke bomb down, vanishing in a burst of gray mist as the hound snapped its jaws where her neck had been moments before. She was extremely lucky that this hellhound had no rider or this was the end for her.

‘This is my chance’

Before coming out from the smoke she made a quick choice, using the last bit of her—always low—mana to use a simple wind magic to direct her scent away from her actual body as well as causing loud noise by hitting the trees with wind.

It wasn’t much, and the cost was all of her mana pool, but the smoke gave her the opening to activate that suicidal plan B of hers. The charm.

Grabbing the small square golden charm from her pocket she did the same as the orb earlier, dripping her blood over the forbidden sigil. However, the woman didn’t activate the charm, instead, she held it in hand and kept going toward the old altar.

And by pure luck and outstanding determination, despite the burning pain and the searing venom coursing through her blood, the girl made it.

She collapsed to her knees in the center of the old altar, the cracked stone slick with her sweat and blood. Her vision was doubling, her head swimming like she was submerged in tar, but she held on—clutching the charm like it was her only tether to the world.

“WHAT!” she exclaimed, momentarily forgetting about the hunt and her pursuers, eyes going wide with shock when she found no trace of the magical circle that was supposed to be here.

“They betrayed me”

All made sense now. Why the antidotes as well as most of her consumables didn’t work, why the guards and the mage were there waiting for her like they knew she was going to come and attack the noble. And more importantly.

“Fuck!”

The organization’s escape magical circle should have been right here, behind the altar. But all she could see right now was—

Nothing.

No runes. No faint glow. No residual magic.

Just dust, moss, and ancient cracks in a pile of crumbled rocks.

“…” The woman opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, wanting to shout at someone or something.

Her entire mission. Everything she did for. Gone. Vanished. Failed. Her very last mission. The organization betrayed her. That’s the only explanation. They sent her here knowing the truth. Killing her off.

But that didn’t make sense either. She had proved herself. Again and again, in countless missions. She was their top assassin.

“All of this because I wanted to retire!”

Suffering from her current injuries and the ever-growing toxin, the woman could hear and feel the hellhounds closing in and in the midst of trying to stay alive by any means, she decided to finish her final words before joining the rest of the comrades.

“If I survive… I’ll fucking murder them all… especially the boss… FUCK!!…”

“I must survive… No… I WILL!!!” she cried out to the stars, with all her pain and anger she prayed to the gods for the first time in her life “If you could hear me please… give me strength, help me survive… and in turn I swear I shall serve you eternally…any god just please!!”

She coughed hard, tasting fresh iron in the back of her throat. The skin around the wound was taut, oozing dark fluid with each beat of her heart, and her limbs trembled like a marionette with its strings about to snap. She could feel her consciousness slipping, falling into some cold, infinite abyss.

‘Gods, give me strength… H-Help me’ She was about to fall, giving up to the black abyss trying to claim her life when all of a sudden.

Clink!

A strange sound rang out in the dead night, something metal hitting the solid rock.

“!!!” The woman’s brown eyes jerked open, instantly searching the place, trying to find the source of that sound, however she didn’t have to look.

It was right there, on the broken old altar.

“Huh?” She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head sideways, looking at the strange item. “Seriously!”

There on top of the altar was a small perverted-looking golden key.

“You gotta be shitting me.”

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