The Final Desperation

Genji picked up the blade and examined it. It's a good blade. He is sure that if he held it against his neck, it would go through without any difficulties. Heck, it might even be able to go through steel without much trouble.

"Quite a predicament you've put me in," Genji replied to the lord's offer.

"So what's your choice?"

"You only gave me one choice."

The lord laughed.

"Yes. Join me. You will become a sharp sword under me."

"That being said, what do I get for joining you?"

"What do you want? Power? Money? Women? As long as you are useful, then you can have your share."

"Oh? That sounds pretty tempting."

Genji started approaching the lord. "But what makes you so sure that I would join you?"

"Isn't it obvious? Between the winning side and a sinking ship, even an idiot knows how to choose."

Genji nodded. "That's true. However, what is stopping me from killing you right now? If I do, I'm sure the rebel army will reward me generously."

When the guards heard this statement, they quickly drew their swords and surrounded Genji.

The lord scoffed. "Like hell they will. It's more likely they get rid of you. And on the off chance they don't, then what rewards can you get? It's not like they are rich. Quite the opposite."

"Yeah, you make sense. But what if I just want to kill you?"

"Then you would be a fool. My guards would never let you leave this place alive."

"Mutually assured destruction."

"Correct."

Genji then smiled. He raised the short sword to his eye level, looking at the design formed from forging this blade. It's a nice wave pattern.

"But you know what?"

"What?" The lord wasn't sure where Genji was going with this.

"I don't think your guards can keep me here."

As Genji finished this sentence, he swung the blade and decapitated the lord. As the lord's head was falling, Genji noticed his eyes widen.

*Thud*

As the head fell on the floor, Genji smirked. Serves him right. Since he had the opportunity, why wouldn't he kill him? Why would he make his life more difficult when he could prevent it? He's not a masochist. No, a masochist doesn't seek trouble. That would be the behavior of a naive moron. Yes, a naive moron. Genji concluded that was a better description.

"Y-Y-YOU'RE CRAZY!"

The attendant screamed as he processed everything. This scream woke the guards up from their stupor and sent them charging at Genji.

"I know," Genji replied as he charged at the guards, "I killed my rational side before I came here."

As the first guard swung his blade, Genji sidestepped it and swung his sword at the neck, resulting in another decapitation. Then he quickly grabbed the body by the clothes and used it as a shield against the attacks coming from his left.

He parried an attack coming from his right, pushing it down to make room for him to duck beneath another attack. As he was doing that, he grabbed the katana from the dead body with his other hand, changing into a duel-wielding style.

As soon as his hand touched the blade, he rolled back to get some distance from the group. When he got on his feet, he stabbed his katana through an approaching guard, while shifting his weight to his right to slice the throat of another guard. After finishing these two kills, he wiggled his torso to dodge a piercing attack. As the blade passed by him, he spun around counterclockwise, slicing the abdomen of another guard.

As he was finishing the spin, Genji decapitated the guard that was trying to stab him. This pattern continued until only one guard remained. Genji stared at the last person. Genji could tell his knees were shaking in fear. The guard took a step back. His sword was unsteady. Apprehension showed in his eyes.

"Please. Let me go. I won't go against you anymore. Please. I have a family."

Genji ignored him and swung his blood-soaked blade, ending his life.

"Why would I care?"

Then Genji turned to the attendant.

"Monster," he muttered. Then he fell on his knees. The attendant had lost all hope of survival. There was no way. Not when Genji didn't get a single scratch from that skirmish. The only thing he could do now was watch in fear as Genji approached him and swiftly ended his life.

"See? That wasn't hard," Genji said. But no one responded. Genji was the only person in the room. Well, the only living person.

Genji walked past the blood-stained floor and opened the door. As he was walking towards the front gate, he heard a soft gasp. He turned around to see a terrified maid. Can't blame her. He was covered in blood and carrying two swords that were leaving a blood trail.

"Don't mind me. I'm just leaving."

The maid weakly nodded.

As he approached the gate, the other guards realized something was wrong. Seeing Genji's appearance, they also drew their swords and attacked him. Let's just say the person who had to clean the wooden floors would not be happy.

 

---

 

On this day, the lord of Fu received shocking news about his neighbor.

"Is everything true? Did the Lord of Koho really get killed?" He asked the spy that was planted in the lord's manor.

"Yes. I personally witnessed the bodies. Although many were decapitated, I can definitely recognize the head of Koho."

Fu burst out in excitement as prospects of glory overtook his mind.

"This is a chance. If I can conquer this land, we can become stronger than the surrounding forces. Men, prepare for an invasion! I want to set off as soon as possible!"

 

---

 

Two days later, Tenjiro stormed into the restaurant Genji was eating at. Walking over, he slammed his palms on the table.

"Do you know what you did!?!?!" Tenjiro yelled at him.

This outburst caused the entire place to turn to them.

Genji waved at them before gesturing to Tenjiro to take a seat. Then Genji started eating again. As for the other customers, they returned to their meals after seeing nothing was going to happen. After Genji finished, they walked outside town to Tenjiro's cottage home.

"Why the reaction? It's not a big deal."

"Not a big deal!! You killed the lord!"

"So? Isn't that what you were working towards?"

Tenjiro rubbed his forehead. He could feel a headache forming.

"Yes, but after some preparations. Did you really think we couldn't have overthrown him with our numbers? Those guards would be nothing if a good portion of the townsfolk wanted to storm the mansion."

"Hmmm. That makes sense. So what seems to be the problem?"

"It's the way you did it. Initially, I planned to turn the lord into a puppet ruler. When everything stabilized, we could get rid of him silently."

"Stabilized?"

"Yes. But now that the lord has been murdered, the neighboring lords will invade. This will cause a lot of unnecessary deaths to the citizens. Deaths I wanted to avoid."

Genji looked at him in surprise.

"I didn't think you planned that far ahead, but you should still take over. Since you are going to be invaded, you might as well prepare."

"You don't get it, do you?" Tenjiro was starting to get frustrated. "There will be two lords that will bring their army to plunder this land soon. No matter what I do, many will die!"

Genji shrugged and walked away.

Right now, he was thinking about something else. His mission to be exact.

"Why did the mission not end? Is it not enough? Just what difficulty did EverRealm give me?" An ugly expression formed on his face.

"Do I really have to do something bigger? Or is it because no one knew about it? It is reputation, right? It's a good thing I killed the lord early then. Otherwise, I would find myself in a sticky situation if I had gone along with my initial plans. Dammit!"

Genji clenched his fist. The pressure of everything was starting to get to him.

"I only have 10 days left. I need to fully prepare myself. Two lords? Let them come. I want to see if the heads of 3 lords are enough to complete the mission. I refuse to believe the difficulty is so high." A crazed glint had appeared in his eyes. The same glint he had when he was dying 5 days ago.

Genji then started to plan for the assassination of the two invading lords. The first order of business was to retrieve the weapons that he left hidden under a tree. He couldn't exactly go around holding such an item. The bloody clothes already caused a mini panic to everyone that saw him.

The next priority was to get a map. That way, he could study the terrain of the region so that he could ambush the two armies. With enough preparations, Genji could find a way to kill the lords and escape under the cover of night. By then, he could finish the mission and see what EverRealm had for him.

What Genji, though, didn't expect, was that he would encounter one of the armies the next day. It was far earlier than he expected so much that he didn't have much time to prepare. At this point, Genji only had a rough understanding of this terrain. It was during one of his scouting trips that he came across a cluster of footprints. Human footprints.

Genji decided to track them to see which group entered the area. What he came across was a camp that was set up for the night. A rather large camp. And in the middle of everything was a large tent with a big kanji character on the front. Although Genji never learned Japanese, he could understand the character represented the lord of Fu, one of the invading lords.

As for why he could understand everything despite not knowing the language, Genji had to thank the realm for that. It turned out that when he entered the world, he was given a language pack. This pack was temporary, but it would allow him to understand everything he needed to communicate. Quite a considerate feature. Imagine every time you enter a world, you can't communicate with the natives. What a nightmare that would be.

As Genji found one of the armies, he suspected the second lord would be invading soon. Genji wondered how he could kill both lords without any preparations. Although he could assassinate one of them at night, he had no guarantee that would work for the second lord.

They must have spies planted in each other's armies. That was the only explanation Genji could come up with to explain why they reacted so fast. Someone must have sent the news the day he killed the lord.

After getting the map, Genji realized that the domains of the lords were not that big. A day of traveling by horse should be enough to get out of the region and into another region. As for why the foot soldiers arrived so fast, that was because the lord overdrafted their physical strength to get here. Quite a stupid move in Genji's opinion, but that only gave him better chances.

As for why he couldn't kill the second lord so easily, it was because he would become more cautious after getting news that another lord had been killed. With his current equipment, Genji had no confidence to kill someone like that.

The only tools he had right now were his two swords. His dagger was still being made so his assassination abilities were restricted. Also, there were no bombs he could conveniently use and he didn't specialize in making poisons so that was off the list.

Under these conditions, trying to kill someone and get out alive was impossible, even for the best of assassins. As he considered these points, Genji decided to follow them to await an opportunity. In addition, he decided to not pick off any stragglers as that might alert the enemy.

Genji doubted killing foot soldiers would help him finish his mission. Not unless he killed enough of them to get a reputation. The only problem with that was that it required too many kills. Way more than Genji had the stamina for.

And if he opted for the stealthy approach, then it would take too long. So long that he would be out of time.

Right now, Genji considered himself to be living on borrowed time. If he couldn't overcome this ordeal, then he would be dead. But Genji refused to die like that. He was given a second chance at life and he was going to do everything he could to grasp it.

He still had revenge he wanted to enact. If he could get out of this alive, then he would have the element of surprise. The league didn't know that he was alive so he could choose when to attack.

He would be in the dark while they were in the light. Just like this current situation. Genji decided to hunt down all the animals he could find in the area. The idea was that it would make the army rely more on their rations than fresh hunts.

Not only would this lower morale of everyone, but it might also cause them to be malnourished. In the short term, this might not affect the army, but Genji was in for the long term. After a few days, this should be enough to make a difference.

Genji dragged the boar he hunted to a river and made a cut to drain the blood. After washing the wound, Genji peeled off the fur and discarded it. Right now, Genji didn't have time to care about materials. Not unless it could help with assassinations. He cut the meat into thin strips and gave them another dunk into the river. Then he started a fire with some flint and dry twigs he found.

Now one might ask, wouldn't the fire alert them? And yes it would, if they were in the area. But they weren't. Genji had gone ahead since he already reduced the population of wildlife in the previous area. Genji then skewered a bunch of slices on a dull sword and held it over the fire, moving it occasionally to prevent it from burning. After a few minutes, the fire started to make crackling sounds as the fat melted and dripped below.

The meat also started turning golden as the glistening fat reflected the setting sun in the distance. This would have been a beautiful scene if Genji had the mind to appreciate it. But his mind was somewhere else right now, trying to conceive of a method to kill both lords.

Eventually, he came up with a scuffed method. Although the plan was highly unlikely to succeed, it didn't hurt to try. And should it fail, then he would just kill one of the lords and stalk a lord that was unrelated to this mess.

If he went down this route, then time would be tight. As for why Genji was bent on killing three lords, it was because there was no guarantee that a second kill would allow him to finish the mission. Should he put all his eggs in one basket and fail, then it would be very tough to do something that would give him enough achievements to pass the trial.

Since that was the case, he might as well prepare for the worst-case scenario where the mission difficulty was ramped up to an unbelievable degree. Now to make sure that result never happened, Genji gave it his all to perfect the details of his plan - patching the flaws here, minimizing the risks there, and making backup plans for unexpected situations. Right now, he had 2.5 contingency plans, two for the times when things went wrong and half a plan still in the making.

Genji then took his sword and cut the meat. After he finished, he put out the fire with some dirt and went to sleep. If he wanted to achieve his plan, he was going to need all the rest he could get. The next morning, Genji stopped hunting any more wildlife and started dashing back to town. Half an hour of running later, he entered a shop for breakfast, slightly out of breath. Then he went and restocked some supplies and packed everything into a bag.

"Do you know where the two armies are?" Genji asked Tenjiro after they met up.

Tenjiro rolled out a big, detailed map and started putting some objects in positions.

"This pebble represents the lord of Fu's position."

Genji looked at it. From his memory, the army should be around there. It had been a few days since he last saw them, but it should be accurate. Then Genji looked at the other pebble.

"I assume this represents the other army?"

Tenjiro nodded.

"It's a lot further away than the other one."

"Yes. From rumors, the lord of Fu is more aggressive and tends to charge into things without thinking, while the lord of Su tends to be more strategic."

Hearing these characteristics, Genji had a faint outline of how he would pull off his plan, but he would need to see the army of Su to iron out the details.

"Can you prepare me a horse? I want to see if I can slow down the armies. That way, you have more time to prepare."

Tenjiro considered this. The proposition seemed only beneficial for him. Too beneficial.

"Why are you doing this? You have nothing to gain out of it."

Genji thought about how to answer this question. He couldn't exactly tell him that he was desperate, right? That would open up a whole new can of worms that he didn't want to deal with. He was a newcomer to the EverRealm. Who knows if there was some punishment mechanism for revealing the existence of the realm? It was better to not risk it.

"My daggers are still being forged," Genji gave a semi-believable answer.

Tenjiro looked at him in doubt.

"I am not worried about getting caught, so I might as well do you a favor. In return, can get my daggers a little faster?"

Tenjiro looked at him for a few more seconds before deciding to not ask any further.

"Then I will leave this to you."