By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 7 - Chapter 2

Chapter 5 Episode 2: First Time Drinking at Home

“Boss, you’d be a good assassin yourself,” Fay told me after my slimes and I finished cleaning up the mess.

“What makes you say that?”

“You have plenty of the essential skills for assassination. It doesn’t hurt to be strong, but strength alone isn’t enough.”

“So you’re saying those skills are more important in assassination than strength is?”

“Yes. Back when our business was facing some obstruction, you left out some medicine that you made yourself. You know about both poison and medicine, don’t you? That’s important for an assassin. And you just had your slimes clean everything up. Disposing of corpses and cleaning the blood off clothes and weapons is also important. You also carried yourself well before the fight, and did an admirable job hiding.”

Then Fay seemed to realize something. “Never mind. I don’t know if you would be a good fit, but you could become a good assassin if you wanted. That’s all I wanted to say,” he concluded. It was just meant to be a compliment, apparently. “I’ve gotten quite familiar with this country’s language, but I don’t always put things in the best of ways.”

“Learning other languages is hard. I understand.”

I used to have to do business with foreign companies, and the language barrier was always a problem. Making small talk unrelated to work was especially difficult. And all this talk of language reminded me of something.

“Was that spell you used from the Gilmarese Empire?”

“Yan, you mean? It means smoke, and yes, it’s a poison spell.”

As I thought, it was the same as the Smoke spell from this country, only in another language. Fay told me that he could use a little poison and wind magic, and that putting up a smokescreen to blind the enemy and kill them from within it was his favorite tactic.

When I was cleaning away the corpses, I noticed that the four bandits in the smoke were stabbed in the back in vital spots through gaps in their armor. For the four magicians, he tossed poison needles from behind a tree, and the metal luster of the needles was obscured. He killed all eight of them with one blow each. It was pretty ruthless, but he wiped them out as quickly as some video game protagonist.

“I said the incantation to draw their attention, but normally I would stay silent,” Fay said.

“You don’t use incantations?”

I practiced casting spells without incantations in my free time, but it had a low chance of working. Plus, if it did work, the spells were much weaker than usual, so I had yet to try it in an actual fight. I wondered if Fay could give me some pointers.

“Oh, I don’t know if we need to stand around talking out here,” I said. My home was right nearby. I collapsed the cliffside with earth magic and opened the entrance to my old home.

“Interesting, so this is your old house?” Fay said, fascinated as I led him inside.

“This place brings back memories. Seems dusty, though.”

Uninhabited houses can normally deteriorate quickly, but I’d sealed off the entrance, so it wasn’t that different from when I left it. I felt a lot of nostalgia thanks to how unchanged it was, but a lot of dust had piled up and some spiders had gotten in somehow, having made webs on the ceiling. But my slimes could make quick work of all of that. I cleaned up one of the rooms so we could have a place to rest.

My sticky, poison, acid, healing, scavenger, and cleaner slimes—all the slimes who lived here with me—seemed to have memories of the place. They independently crawled around to the locations they frequented before. They looked ready to relax, but maybe that was also because of the fight from earlier. I brought enough food for all of them too, so they were probably full for the day.

Fay and I decided to take it easy as well. I prepared some drinks and snacks, then decided to ask him about silent incantations again.

“If you want to use magic without incantations, you should start by using the same spell repeatedly,” he said. “I first learned to conceal myself and wield a weapon, then learned how to handle poison and drugs. I have continued to practice these skills as I gained experience. I never used magic much for assassinations. Drugs and tools were a greater priority. I’m not a magic expert, so it’s hard for me to offer advice.”

“Can you tell me about poison and drugs, then? You used poison with those needles, and a truth serum back when we were dealing with hoodlums. Just where do you get these from?”

“I make them myself, for the most part. You pay me and give me time off, so I buy the materials from shops in town or go outside town to find them. We traveled many lands on our job, so we have knowledge of medicinal plants from all over. That includes this country to an extent.”

That made sense, but I was wondering one thing. “Fay, if you need these things for your job, I can pay for it,” I offered. I didn’t want my employees to have to spend their own money for their job.

“I don’t need them, but I keep making them just to make sure my skills stay sharp,” he said. I guess he considered it private training, or a hobby of sorts.

“It does help my business if my guards are keeping their skills up to snuff. I don’t think there’s any reason for me not to help with that. It’s fine if you and Lilyn want to keep this knowledge a secret, but if not, I’d like to talk to Carme about it when we get back.”

“That would benefit us too. As far as why we have these skills, you can say that we were trained as combat medics. Medicine is very expensive in my country after so many years of war. Common citizens can’t use it, and fake medicine is commonplace. But combat medics would possess this knowledge. It shouldn’t be any cause for suspicion.”

“Understood.”

Fay still wanted to keep his past life a secret, and understandably so. Japanese fiction has no shortage of ninjas who don’t really do ninja-type things, but I figured assassins actually do a lot of dirty work.

“Do you ever miss your old job?” I asked. “I’d love to keep you as an employee for as long as possible, personally.”

“I suppose I do, in a way. I was an assassin for a long time. I trained a lot and killed a lot of people. That’s something I can’t put behind me. But I have no intention of returning to my country to serve them. All because of the final order we received.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

“Sure. Our final instructions were to evacuate the people of our territory to a safe place. But our orders are written in code, and sometimes they shouldn’t be taken literally. The actual final order was for us to flee the country, rather than die in vain. The trajectory of the conflict was clear by that point, and there would have been no sense in getting ourselves killed for it. The Win family treated my organization well, and they told us to live on in the end. Their leader was a good person. So Lilyn and I fled the country while helping as many people as possible.”

“And that’s when you came to Rifall?”

“Yes, we managed to enter the country and came to Gimul in search of work. Then that guildmaster found out our secret at a glance.”

“Oh, Glissela.”

“We ultimately convinced her we weren’t acting as spies and got her to help us find work, but that was a shock. I thought I might have to stay on the run for life.”

“That woman is something else. Should I take this to mean you don’t plan to quit any time soon?”

“Yes, I’m happy to keep working for you.”

“And I’m happy to have you. Thank you for being so open to answering my questions, too. Now, it’s about time for dinner,” I said, opening my Item Box. “Would you like a drink?”

“Sounds good,” Fay answered eagerly. This was my first time drinking with an employee at my laundromat. If it didn’t conflict with anyone’s schedules, I thought drinking with everyone for New Year’s might be nice.