Chapter 503: Those Who Live And Die In The Shadows [Part 2]

"That carriage is suspicious," the Captain of the Shadow Guards muttered while gazing into the distance with a telescope.

He was high in the sky, mounted on the back of a Gryphon. Half an hour had passed since they left the Frontera Residence and followed the road that headed southward.

The reason he had singled out the suspicious carriage he had found was because carriages usually didn’t travel past midnight.

Most travelers would camp out during the night since the roads had no light, and traversing them blind was dangerous.

He didn’t see any family emblem on the carriage. Frankly, it looked too plain to be used by a noble family.

But the Captain instinctively felt that this carriage must’ve belonged to the targets they were pursuing.

"First Killing Formation," the Captain ordered.

As soon as the order was given, their team of ten Gryphons split into three.

Two teams would flank the carriage on its left and right sides, while the Captain would attack it from the rear.

This would ensure that anyone who might be secretly escorting the carriage from the shadows would be detected by their group.

The Shadow Guards drew closer to their target.

Six hundred meters...

Four hundred meters...

Two hundred meters...

It was then that the Shadow Guard Captain noticed a faint glint from the roof of the carriage, prompting him to move his Gryphon to the right.

"Argh!" One of the Shadow Guards who was riding right beside the Captain cried out after a dagger pierced through his chest.

But the scary part was that the dagger had actually pierced through the Shadow Guard’s body, leaving a bloody hole that made the Shadow Guard fall off his mount.

"Enemy attack!" the Shadow Guard Captain shouted, immediately activating the special artifact that informed his people that they were currently under attack. "Fall back!"

Upon giving the order, he immediately urged his Gryphon to back off and fly higher in the sky.

To his surprise, only four of his men had managed to regroup with him.

Five of them fell in that short exchange, which meant that the carriage was being protected by an elite group of people.

But what made it scarier was that they couldn’t see them.

Meanwhile, the three teams, who had split from the main group earlier, received the signal to rejoin the first group and hurriedly flew southwards.

The Shadow Guard Captain followed the carriage from the sky while waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

He used his telescope to observe the surroundings. Finally, he saw a man wearing a black robe and a mask standing on top of the carriage.

The captain didn’t see him earlier.

He didn’t even sense him.

However, he was certain that the dagger that killed one of his men earlier belonged to this person.

’Is he the one who killed my men in that short period of time?’ The Shadow Guard Captain gritted his teeth. ’Damn you!’

Killing his Shadow Guards within that time proved that they were up against an expert. With that in mind, he decided to revise his plan to keep themselves safe.

Another half an hour had passed, and thirty Gryphons caught up with them.

Now that all the Shadow Guards were accounted for, the Captain finally gave his order.

"Shadow Bolt Killing Array!"

The Gryphons descended from the sky as all the Shadow Guards carried crossbows in their hands.

Their target was not the man standing on top of the carriage, but the carriage itself, as well as the horses that pulled it.

Each Shadow Guard had a role to play, and their targets were fixed from the beginning.

King Augustus had ordered them to capture the Frontera Family alive. But there was an unwritten rule between their organization and the King. If their target proved to be too difficult to capture, killing them was also an option.

The crossbows had enough penetrating power to pierce the carriage and were laced with poison that caused paralysis.

When they finally came within striking range, the Captain finally gave an order.

"Fire!"

Dozens of bolts flew into the air. The Captain of the Shadow Guards believed that no matter how good the person protecting the carriage was, it was impossible for him to block all the bolts that they had unleashed.

Unfortunately, he was in for a surprise.

Zero unsheathed his sword oozing with white mist and swung it upward.

A moment later, a towering wall of ice appeared behind the carriage, blocking the bolts completely.

The Shadow Guards continued their pursuit, loading their crossbows for a second barrage. This time, their Captain ordered them to split into three teams once more, attacking the carriage from different angles.

This was a sound plan, but it had one major flaw.

"Arghhh!"

"Hrgghhh!"

"E-Enemy attack!"

Their attention was so focused on the man standing on top of the carriage that they didn’t notice that an ambush was waiting for them.

Earlier, when the Shadow Guard Captain had lost his men, he thought that they were killed by the masked person protecting the carriage.

He didn’t even consider that there might be more bodyguards hiding in the shadows, a rookie mistake that made him regret his order.

In the span of a few minutes, more than twenty of his men died after they split into three groups.

But just as the Captain was about to order all of them to regroup, he felt a presence standing behind his back.

"Those who live in the shadows die in the shadows," a person wearing a black robe and a silver mask, which had the number 1 embedded on its cheek, said softly.

"W-Who are you?" The Shadow Guard Captain didn’t dare to turn his head to look behind him. One wrong move, and the cold tip of a blade chilling his neck would take his life.

"We have no names," the assassin, who went by the name Uno, replied. "But among our circle, we are called The Nameless."

The Shadow Guard Captain’s eyes widened in shock, recognizing The Nameless.

They were a top assassin organization that operated within the Radiant Empire, and all of them had a hundred percent mission success rate.

The moment he realized that he was up against the Empire’s strongest assassination squad, the sword pierced through his neck, going past his throat.

All around him, the other members of the Shadow Guards were also dead or dying.

If they only knew that the Nameless, who numbered exactly a hundred, were escorting a single carriage, they might have aborted their mission without hesitation.

But even then, the moment they flew past the ice wall that Zero had created, their fates had already been sealed.

The Shadow Guards weren’t aware that the ice wall wasn’t just a barrier that simply protected the carriage of the Frontera Family.

It was also a message. Going past it meant their lives were already forfeited.

That night, the Shadow Guards, who struck terror into the hearts of criminals and high-ranking nobles of the Kingdom of Britannia, were wiped out of the world.

Even Helen didn’t know that her grandfather had mobilized The Nameless when he invaded the Kingdom of Britannia.

Using the invasion as a distraction, the prided assassination squad of the Helion Family headed towards the Frontera Viscounty and hid to protect the Frontera Family.

Zero only became aware of their existence a few days ago.

However, Lugh ordered him to keep their presence a secret from Helen so that she wouldn’t need to depend on their strength more than necessary.

With the major threat to their lives gone, the carriage continued its journey southward.

They were not aware that the fortress they planned to attack had already fallen into the hands of the barbarian tribes, who had been mobilized to save a single family from the cruelty of the King of Britannia.