Chapter 332: The Assassin and the Maid

Three days had passed since Luke had been staying in Bastion. Most people in his position would have felt like prisoners, kept under polite surveillance by a political alliance between two noble houses. But Luke? He felt like he’d died and gone to paradise.

No cooking. No heating water for baths. No checking corners for assassins. No schedules, no missions, no stress. The progress of the tutorial? Not his problem. A new gang of criminals forming outside? Not his concern. Food supplies running low? Someone else’s headache.

Guarding treasure chests, drawing maps, sleeping on cold stone floors, worrying about ambushes or betrayal, none of it mattered anymore. Luke was free. The maids handled everything. And as a bonus, he had his own personal attendant: beautiful, silent, efficient, and terrifyingly strong.

The doll who looked like Erza’s twin never left his side. She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t tire. Always ready, always precise.

In his endless free time, which frankly was twenty-four hours a day, Luke had fallen back into one of his old habits: archery practice.

“Very good… hit… again…” said the soft, almost musical voice of Erza’s twin sister.

Luke stood in one of the fortress’s training rooms, lowering his bow after another perfect shot.

“Thanks, Anne. You’re the best audience I’ve ever had.”

That was her name, Anne, the doll sister of Erza Grimhart.

Luke stored his bow away in his inventory.

“Would you… like… water?” she asked, already pouring him a cup.

“Yes, thanks,” he said, accepting it.

As he drank, his focus drifted elsewhere, not to the room around him, but to another nearby. In his mind, he could see a meeting taking place: Allison, Erza, and one of the maids were gathered around a table, discussing the final mission and its six-hour countdown.

He was using his Rank skill on the maid.

[Soul Infiltration (Rank F)]: Your dense, assassin nature has given rise to this power. You can infiltrate a fragment of your soul into a target’s body. While infiltrated, you can see and hear everything they see and hear. Perfect for espionage, lethal for assassinations. However, the link breaks if your body moves too far from the target. Use with care… and purpose.

The training room was close enough to the council chamber that the connection stayed stable.

“I think we should hold a vote,” said Allison. “Everyone in the Safe Zone deserves a choice, to go or not to go on the final mission.”

Erza’s laughter was sharp, cold. “My responsibilities as priestess have changed, Allison. I must return to Earth. I’m not here to enforce democracy. I am the regent. I need fifty-one percent of the population to trigger the final event. If I have to kill everyone who refuses to go just to reach that fifty-one percent, I will.”

Luke ended the skill. Things were clearly spiraling toward chaos, but honestly, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was on vacation. That was someone else’s problem now.

“I was used as a bargaining chip, Anne,” he said, reclining in the chair. “So I might as well be a good one. I’ll sit here quietly and enjoy my rest.”

The maid collected his empty cup.

“I will… be here… for… whatever… you need,” she murmured, returning to her usual place by the wall.

“You’re a great employee. Got a résumé? If I ever make it back home, maybe I’ll hire you for my shop.”

Anne tilted her head, visibly confused.

“Don’t worry about it. Just me talking nonsense again.”

Luke reopened his skill. A faint sound echoed in his mind, meow. His spectral cat materialized, translucent and faint, padding toward the wall. It walked straight into it with a soft thud. Over the past few days, Luke had been experimenting with his Rank Skill, pushing its limits. He was beginning to understand how it worked. The spirit cat couldn’t travel far and was still limited by physical barriers, even though it was invisible and undetectable by soul perception.

He’d tested it himself: when he used the Predator’s Mark on a maid, it deactivated instantly. But the soul cat, no one could sense it. Not even him, once it slipped too far away.

That, at least, made it the perfect spy. By studying his skill more carefully, Luke began to understand how it actually worked. A marking skill left its trace on the outer layer of the soul, like someone taping a “kick me” sign to your back. With the right understanding of mana, that mark could be peeled away from the surface.

But the soul cat from his Rank skill didn’t touch the outer layer. It slipped inside. That was why it was invisible, undetectable to any normal perception. He suspected, though, that it wouldn’t work on beings too powerful, those with souls fortified by their vast comprehension of mana. The more someone understood, the thicker the armor around their essence. It might fail entirely against such targets… or maybe, as Luke grew stronger, the skill would evolve to match them.

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Either way, he kept testing its limits, using it to quietly scout around the fortress. As a cat, he couldn’t see much, just darkness, and the glowing shapes of souls drifting through it. The range wasn’t great, but when the cat jumped into someone’s soul, the reach extended. That meant he could safely infiltrate others from a distance.

He’d used it while eating, training, even during breakfast, slipping in and out of a few maids at a time, purely for observation, of course. The skill drained mana steadily, and Luke had drawn a clear moral line: if the maid entered the bath or bathroom, he shut the skill off immediately. He wasn’t about to use his gift to peep on someone in private.

“Lord Luke,” said the doll softly. “Healing… session.”

“Oh, right.”

He rose from the chair. Somehow, she always knew the exact time. Every day, Luke visited the infirmary for a quick round of healing. One of the healer maids would restore exactly 500 HP and stop. He’d found it odd, but he wasn’t complaining.

As they walked down the marble corridor, a few maids paused to bow.

“Good afternoon, Lord Luke,” they said before continuing their duties.

At first, the gesture had made him uncomfortable. Now, he’d gotten used to it.

“It’s funny how fast we get used to nice things, huh, Anne?”