On the rooftop.
"Hahahaha!"
"Finn, do you like the Blood-Red Christmas I prepared just for you?"
"Tell me, are you happy? Are you excited?"
"Huh?"
"Look me in the eyes!"
"Answer me!"
As the minutes passed, the gods had gradually been herded together beneath Babel at the center of the plaza.
Finn stood amid the falling snow, his face grim.
"A Blood-Red Christmas? So this is the Christmas gift you're giving me, Valletta."
"What's there to be happy about?"
"What's there to enjoy?"
"You... what do you even think human lives are worth!?"
Valletta felt the icy killing intent radiating off Finn, and her expression froze for a beat before her eyes turned wilder still.
"Yes, that's it!"
"That's the look!"
"I just love it so much!"
"Hehehehehe!"
"Come on, Finn! Take me head-on!"
Finn's fury curdled into a laugh.
"Fine, fine, fine! Today I'll give you exactly what you want!"
He turned his head toward Riveria and Ottar.
"I'm leaving the safety of the gods to you two."
Ottar didn't answer. His savage gaze was locked on a single spot in the plaza, every muscle drawn taut as a bowstring, his whole body ready to spring. Something terrifying seemed to be lurking there, and the goddess he'd followed his entire life stood right behind him.
...
...
The Demeter Familia festival booth.
A second mouthful of black blood gushed out, and Leon staggered two steps forward before crashing face-first to the ground. One arm strained forward, his index finger barely managing to point at the goddess a few steps away.
Demeter and everyone else fell silent. The space around them congealed, and even time itself seemed to stop flowing.
The second hand clicked forward.
A spine-chilling aura erupted from Persephone without warning!
"Hehe, that last assassination job against the Demeter Familia, the one that fell apart, this guy was the one screwing it up, wasn't he? Tsk tsk tsk... not bad at all. Cost our organization more than a few good hands. Even one of our top-five Lv.3 elites went down to him."
"Shame, really. I figured he'd be some serious heavyweight, but who'd have guessed... he'd let his guard down over a pretty face. Heh... history just keeps repeating itself. Even heroes can fall into a woman's embrace."
The assassin toyed idly with his dagger, every word dripping with contempt for Leon.
"Shut up!"
Persephone's coiled golden hair whipped loose in the surge of runaway magic, a violent aura pouring out of her. Dead, desolate magic swept outward from her in every direction like a storm!
"Hm?"
The assassin narrowed his eyes, sizing Persephone up, and cautiously took two steps back, putting his subordinates out in front of him.
"The Demeter Familia captain, the Priestess of Desolation, Lv.4..."
"Desolation and Withering... her magic's a bit of a headache."
As an adventurer who'd made her name long ago, and the captain of the Demeter Familia, her magic had been catalogued by every faction worth its salt. It was her wide-area weakening curse the assassin feared most of all.
He tensed his body into a combat stance, only a pair of dark violet eyes showing above his mask, locked dead on the Persephone standing barely an arm's length away.
But for all his talk of wariness, the easy fluidity of his movements gave away the disdain he truly felt.
A short distance off.
"Leon!!!!!!!"
"Captain!!!!!!!!!"
Demeter and the others watched, wide-eyed, as the man was run through the heart, stood blank for a moment, then let out a shrill scream.
But... that cry lasted only an instant before it cut off, abruptly and completely.
Jeanne, Iri, Margaret, and the rest traded glances, an unreadable glint flickering in their eyes.
Demeter seemed to catch on to something. She kept up the panicked, grief-stricken act, but compared to the genuine outpouring of a second ago, her performance now carried a faintly theatrical edge.
Picking up on the goddess's subtle shift, Persephone, the one who knew her best, felt her erupting magic stutter for the briefest moment before it surged out again with even greater force...
The assassin's gaze sank, and he cursed under his breath.
"This feels like the pressure of someone who just hit Lv.4? Those damn idiots in the intelligence department!"
His sinister eyes swept over the goddess behind Persephone, and Jeanne and the others standing battle-ready...
"A Lv.2 Holy Maiden, a Lv.2 Pure White Shield, plus a Lv.4 Priestess of Desolation..."
Sure, we took out a Lv.2 Shadow of Sorcery, but the difficulty of this job hasn't really dropped much.
Wait for backup, then? No good... If it were just the Priestess of Desolation, I could use the panicking crowd to stall for a while. But throw in the Holy Maiden and the Pure White Shield working together, and forget completing the mission, just getting out alive would be a stretch.
Looks like... the only option is to trigger Plan B.
The assassin's eyes locked dead on Demeter, and he raised a hand, flashing a few covert signals to his subordinates...
"Pft!"
The next second.
Cold, splitting agony tore through his chest. The assassin's eyes bulged in horror, full of disbelief and confusion.
"...???"
Blood soaked through his mask, his vision blurring and going black.
"This..."
"Hello there, Mr. Assassin. Thank you for the Christmas gift. How should I put it... it really made me happy."
The assassin's straining eyes drifted to the right. The sight of Leon's smiling face hit him like a hammer.
"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
"I destroyed your heart with my own hands, and you took a dose of our organization's lethal poison! You... you... how the hell are you still alive!"
Behind him, Leon stood impeccably dressed, not a speck of dust on him. The ice spike crystallized at the tip of his staff gleamed with frigid light as he returned the assassin's "heartfelt" gift in kind.
Leon gave the dying man's question no answer. His face stayed blank as he pulled the ice spike free and drove it down three more times.
Not a single wasted word, not a flicker of hesitation.
In his eyes, only an enemy who would never speak again was a proper enemy.
As someone who understood the art of survival inside and out, Leon knew the iron law that villains die from running their mouths better than anyone. A life-or-death fundamental like finishing off a downed foe was something he'd never let himself botch in the slightest.
"Ugh..."
The assassin's mouth opened, then closed, and under the dazed, scalp-prickling stares of his few remaining subordinates, he slumped limply to the ground. In moments his blood had pooled into a small lake beneath the corpse.
Assassin killed. Excelia +43.