How to Become a Hunter (2)
“Nanny, why are you suddenly acting like that?”
The bathwater overflowed as I shot up from my seat in the grand bathhouse.
Catherine looked utterly bewildered, holding Emilia tightly in her arms.
“Catherine.”
I stepped out of the water and slipped into a fresh set of nightclothes. Then I twisted two towels together and gripped them in one hand.
“I’ll head out first.”
“What? But Her Highness the Princess’s bath is almost finished. Why not leave together?”
“I need the restroom urgently, so I must go ahead.”
I offered a hasty excuse and slipped out of the grand bathhouse.
The moment I left the annex housing the baths, the killing intent grew even thicker.
Two of them?
I could sense two presences right away. They seemed to be well-trained assassins.
This might actually be perfect timing.
At first I was irritated that my leisurely bath had been interrupted, but on second thought, this could work in my favor.
Shall I test it out?
In a way, it was an opportunity. I wanted to see what results I could produce using Rachel Brown’s body instead of Kyla Angel’s after all my training.
I launched myself toward the presence of the uninvited night visitors who had dared enter the Third Prince’s Palace without permission. I needed to finish this before the head maid or the prince and princess noticed anything.
“The target was the Third Prince, right?”
“Yeah. Some twelve-year-old kid.”
The masked men were armed from head to toe in pitch-black clothing.
They were the infamous “human hunters, the Gilbert brothers.” The older brother Gil and the younger Bert always operated as a pair, which had made them rather well-known in assassin circles.
“This is easy. Let’s finish up and get out of here.”
“Right.”
The two glanced around.
“Still, for an imperial palace, the security is ridiculously lax.”
“No kidding. One of us would’ve been more than enough.”
They surveyed the desolate grounds of the Third Prince’s Palace, then scaled the wall and quietly slipped through a window. Not a single footstep could be heard as they crept inside.
The pair exchanged glances and nodded silently. The younger brother, Bert, went up the stairs first to scout ahead.
Crack.
A gruesome sound shattered the silent hallway.
The next instant, Bert—who had gone up first—collapsed limply to the side like a doll with its neck snapped.
“Wh-what…!”
Gil’s eyes shook as he watched his younger brother fall right in front of him.
A guard knight? They definitely said there weren’t any.
His panic lasted only a moment. Without hesitation, Gil drew his dagger.
Hmph! Knight or not, we hold the advantage in the dark. Now that our presence has been detected, that bastard is—
But something was wrong.
The presence he had felt beyond the corner of the hallway had vanished in an instant.
“Huh—ugh!”
While Gil was still half-stunned by the unexpected turn, a long white towel wrapped around his nose and mouth, tightening with crushing force. He felt a lukewarm breath against the back of his neck.
“Sending two rats. Your master must have money to burn.”
The voice was icy, like a snake slithering up one’s limbs.
Gil froze where he stood.
The person who had revealed themselves was no mere knight.
One of our own kind!
Moreover, the skill level was clearly superior to his own. He hadn’t even noticed until his back was completely exposed.
They were definitely beyond that wall.
When had they gotten behind him?
Cold sweat trickled down Gil’s back as his eyes darted around. The stranger let out a soft, mocking laugh.
“Speak. Who sent you?”
Gil thrashed violently, mouth still covered.
“Not feeling talkative, I see.”
“Grrrrr—!”
The voice dripped with such casual confidence that rage surged through Gil.
He strained with all his might, and the opponent clicked their tongue and pulled back.
“Tsk.”
“You bastard!”
The hallway was too dark to make out the opponent’s face.
“How dare you do that to my brother…!”
Gil scowled. The silhouette faintly visible in the darkness was far more slender than he had expected.
“Brother?”
“You’ll regret laying a hand on us…!”
“Don’t tell me you two are the human hunter brothers?”
Insane. They even figured out who we are.
Gil hid his alarm and growled.
“Ha, if you know us, then you must be fairly well-known yourse—”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like it’s ‘us’ anymore.”
Veins bulged on Gil’s forehead at the words.
“Die!”
He swung his dagger with ferocious momentum.
But the opponent dodged with effortless grace. It felt as though the blade was slicing through nothing but empty air.
“Damn it! Damn it all!”
He had never imagined ending up in a situation like this. The mission was supposed to be low-risk—how had it gone so wrong?
Where the hell did this guy come from? Who hired him?
Gil’s face grew paler with every swing.
“How annoying. These idiots aren’t even worth warming up against.”
“What did you just say?”
The opponent, who had been dodging every attack, suddenly stopped in place.
“Hey. Do you know the most basic quality a hunter needs?”
A low, mocking laugh drifted from the darkness.
“Completely erasing your presence so the prey never notices.”
The moment the words ended, the opponent’s presence dissolved into the air as if it had never existed.
“Son of a—”
Gil had lived as an assassin in the shadows for twenty years. Yet never had the darkness felt so terrifying as it did in this moment.
Terrified, he gathered all his strength to hurl himself out the window—
“The moment I sensed your presence, you two were already finished.”
Crack.
There wasn’t even time to scream.
Gil met the same fate as his brother, slamming into the floor.
The unidentified figure silently bent down and retrieved the towel. Moonlight illuminated the stranger’s profile.
“Tsk.”
It was the Third Prince’s nanny, Rachel Brown. Her emerald eyes gleamed with a murky light.
“They had quite the reputation, so I had higher expectations.”
The human hunter brothers were assassins Rachel knew well. They had once belonged to Angel’s Breath but left to work independently. They were notorious for their poor relationship with the organization.
“Hmm, let’s see here.”
Rachel searched the dead assassins’ pockets. Along with various daggers and weapons, she found five gold coins.
“Well, at least they were idiots worth their keep.”
It was an unexpectedly tidy profit. Rachel tossed the coins into the air, caught them, and slipped them deep into her pajama pocket.
“Right, then.”
She shook her still-damp hair and tilted her head.
“How should I handle the cleanup?”
It was a peaceful morning like any other.
Edwin frowned when he realized Rachel was absent.
“Catherine, where’s Rachel?”
“Oh, the nanny?”
Catherine answered while spooning food into Emilia’s bowl.
“She went to help the gardener with his vegetable patch at the crack of dawn.”
“The vegetable patch?”
“Yes. She said she was going to spread some fertilizer?”
Edwin thought of the garden behind his master’s cabin. It was a chaotic patch where medicinal herbs and poisonous plants grew tangled together. And now they were suddenly adding fertilizer?
He frowned.
“Why Rachel? That’s something Master normally does himself.”
“The gardener is getting on in years, so strenuous work must be difficult for him. And since he refuses to let any other maids near the place, there’s no one else to help.”
“Hmm.”
It had been Rachel’s suggestion to restrict the maids’ access. She had done it to prevent anyone from discovering that Sage was actually a great sage.
Even so, fertilizer out of nowhere?
Why was Master dragging someone else’s nanny into doing such chores?
Edwin pouted and stabbed at the meat with his fork.
“By the way, Your Highness, how did they like the snacks this time?”
“Ah.”
Catherine still visited the Gloria Knights every few days to deliver snacks. Thanks to that, she seemed to have earned the title of the order’s saintess among the knights of the 3rd Division.
“Everyone loved them.”
“Oh my, really?”
“Yes. They said your food tastes heavenly—probably because you seem like an angel, Catherine.”
“Goodness, those shameless men! At least they have decent taste!”
Catherine burst into delighted laughter.
“Uung? Is Catherin an angel?”
Emilia, who had been busily working her spoon, tilted her head with soup smeared on her chin.
“Isn’t Catherin human?”
“Oh, Your Highness. I am human, of course. Though I suppose people could mistake me for an angel?”
Catherine wiped the princess’s chin with a playful grin.
“It’s a shame, though. I already have someone I’ve set my sights on, so I can’t accept everyone else’s feelings.”
Edwin’s eyes widened.
“What? Someone you’ve set your sights on?”
“Your Highness, did you really think I was hauling snacks to the knight order every other day for no reason?”
“…Weren’t you coming to cheer for me?”
“Of course it started that way!”
Catherine clutched her flushed cheeks.
“But later it turned into killing two birds with one stone—seeing the forest and picking the mulberries, that sort of thing.”
Edwin stared at her with a slightly sour expression.
“So you’re saying you like someone in the knight order?”
“Yes! I knew it the moment we met. That man is mine.”
Edwin wondered who on earth granted such intuition. He chewed on a slice of meat and asked, “Who is it?”
Catherine covered her mouth and smiled slyly.
“Hehe, who it is…”
She leaned in and whispered a name into Edwin’s ear.
“Whaaaaat?!”
Edwin recoiled in shock. The name that left her lips belonged to someone the prince knew very well.