On My First Day Undercover, the Organization Collapsed - Chapter 371

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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First Day of Infiltration, The Organization Was Destroyed — Episode 371
The Crow in Darkness (2)
Crows typically move under the cover of darkness.
Crows are black, which makes them stand out in daylight.
But these Crows had been granted an exception this time — a daytime operation. It was because they were eliminating a Grade 1 Danger Factor.
Rustle.
One of the Crows reconfirmed the mission orders. It was written clearly.
Certain elimination of the disposal target and prevention of recurrence.
That target was scheduled for disposal, and remained one now — the tracking and elimination of the Crow named Erso!
Erso had learned something he should never have known. Whether it was mere curiosity or an unfortunate coincidence hardly mattered.
Erso had to disappear.
For the organization.
‘Finally, he shows himself.’
It had been a week since they obtained information that he was hiding here in disguise and staked out the location.
At last, the Crows had found the disposal target, Erso.
But attacking the moment they spotted him would be foolish.
They had to be cautious.
Because it had been confirmed that he was under Ziel Steelheart, currently the Empire’s most watched figure.
‘I hear they call him the Boss.’
He might enter a new organization and attempt resurrection and revenge.
So Erso had to be eliminated before that could happen.
If left as is, he might turn the tables and destroy the Red Raven itself.
That was the leadership’s judgment.
So their purpose was to dispose of Erso without anyone knowing and thoroughly pulverize the corpse.
Naturally, caution was essential.
Ziel Steelheart.
If they fell into his hands, they would all die.
They might even incur the Imperial Palace’s wrath.
With Black Sky destroyed, all the organizations operating in the shadows were currently holding their breath.
But they couldn’t leave things as they were, so the Red Raven had formulated a perfect plan immediately after obtaining the intelligence and finally begun to move.
“Remember this. The elimination must not catch anyone’s eye. Do it certainly and cleanly.”
Blon, codename for the operation’s commander, followed swiftly with the Crows under his control.
The surveillance was flawless.
Erso hadn’t noticed, and was wandering about carelessly, sightseeing without a clue.
Once he entered a place with fewer people, that’s when they would act.
In truth, subduing or killing him wasn’t particularly difficult.
At most, he was somewhere between early Expert and mid-level.
All the Crows gathered here were mid-level Expert or higher.
There were no Master-grade among them, but at this level, they could still make a Master-grade nervous.
‘He’s heading toward District 20.’
Blon followed cautiously.
A place with few people.
And preferably the Lower Districts.
When both conditions were met, they would strike Erso down in one blow.
Slip.
The poisoned hidden blade was already drawn in advance.
The moment it hit, his body would stiffen completely.
To the eyes of passersby, it would look as though he had simply stopped walking.
The preparation was flawless.
Erso had stopped at various places asking about something, and then suddenly purchased arms full of snacks.
“Fried bread? All of it?”
“Yes!”
“All of this?”
“That’s what I said?”
“My goodness… First time since that handsome teacher…”
“What about me?”
“You’re handsome too!”
“Right!”
After the fried bread came his next purchase — chicken skewers!
“I’ll take all of these!”
“Is that what you want? This?”
“Yes!”
“Oh my, blessings upon you.”
I had no idea what he was doing.
Come to think of it, the intelligence report had mentioned something like this.
That Teacher Ziel Steelheart ate an absurdly large amount of food.
In any case, Gilbert returned with both hands full of fried bread and chicken skewers, beaming.
Imagining how delighted Kelvin and the Boss would be, I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Now.’
But the moment Erso turned into the alley, Blon’s hand holding the dagger moved.
Whistle!
And in an instant the dagger flew—
Clang!
It was blocked.
Thud.
The bag containing the fried bread and chicken skewers rolled across the ground.
Wretchedly.
“…….”
Gilbert stared at it for a moment, fury flashing across his face, but then he began to run.
“Damn.”
He retraced his steps and sprinted back toward where the crowds were.
His speed exceeded what the Crows had anticipated.
“Pursue him swiftly.”
It was a mistake.
Rather than throwing the dagger to induce paralysis first, they should have surrounded him naturally.
But this too had been prepared for.
“Attack Team 2, initiate.”
There were personnel already on the ground, having shadowed Erso from behind before the operation began.
Three of them.
Two would seal off the front and rear, while the third would strike from ambush.
‘Has he grown stronger?’
According to the intelligence confirmed before the operation started, Erso had remained stalled at the early Expert stage for quite some time.
The force assembled was actually excessive for dealing with an opponent of that caliber.
It was merely caution, aiming for a flawless conclusion—in truth, one person would have been sufficient for an enemy of that level.
But perhaps the assessment had been wrong.
Not only did he evade the dagger—
Smack!
He also parried the ambush strike from Attack Team 2 and launched a counterattack.
“What—what is this!”
“Is that a fight?”
When one of the Crows fell to Erso’s fist, the people around them startled and retreated.
He had drawn attention.
It had been a flawless ambush.
Cutting off the front and escape route, then striking from surprise.
The disguise was perfect too—but how?
‘If this had been before, I would certainly be dead.’
Meanwhile, Erso—or rather, Gilbert—was breaking into a cold sweat internally.
He had let his guard down far too much.
Wearing the Human Skin Mask and living quietly for a while, he’d thought it would be fine.
Who would have expected the Organization to come after him like this.
‘Was it my swordsmanship that gave me away? Or a habit? Or my voice?’
The Red Raven was one of the Empire’s premier intelligence networks.
He hadn’t gone off to some remote backwater—he was right here in the Capital—so he should have been more careful.
But now was not the time for regrets.
‘I have to get back to the Academy.’
Yet this ambush seemed thoroughly prepared.
Stay calm.
I can’t afford to panic here.
If I die here, I’ll have no face to show the Boss.
‘But escape is impossible.’
There were limits to blending in among civilians.
If things went wrong, they would eventually throw caution aside and attack.
He held the Red Raven’s weakness in his grasp.
‘There’s no other way.’
Gilbert decided to trust in himself—far stronger than before.
‘At least ten of them. I’ll handle them one by one.’
There was only one way out.
Eliminate them all.
And settle a debt while I’m at it.
Gilbert threw himself toward the interior of the building.
The Boss had said so.
Unless the opponent wielded powerful weapons or magic, fighting in a confined space was most effective.
Gilbert chose an empty house—one devoid of any presence.
“He went inside. Blue roof. Confirm it.”
The Crows came pouring in.
But the instant the first one stepped through—
Whoosh!
A thrust faster than anyone could have predicted pierced straight through his neck.
“Gack—ughh.”
“That’s for the Fried Bread.”
The first Crow crumpled.
In that same breath, Gilbert turned toward the second—
Thud!
“Ugh!”
He hurled the dagger the Boss had granted him.
“And that’s for the Chicken Skewer. This one’s been a long time coming—it was the Boss’s.”
The enemies fell easily.
From this, he grasped one thing.
They were misjudging his current strength.
They were measuring him by the standard of his former self—Erso.
But Gilbert had grown stronger.
Strong enough to feel it himself.
What he didn’t yet fully understand was how close he’d come to Master-grade.
Clang!
Against the third Crow, his blade struck twice.
That was all.
‘Incredibly slow.’
Gilbert’s body, tempered through Hell Training, moved far faster still—and his blade pierced the Crow’s chest in an instant, embedding itself deep in the wall beyond.
“Cough—”
He felt no remorse whatsoever.
What was a Crow?
There was little reason to grow close to those barely worth calling ‘colleagues.’
A few might turn up now and then, but even they lived with the constant knowledge that they could vanish or die at any moment.
Besides, he wasn’t soft-hearted enough to feel guilt over killing those who’d come to slaughter him.
‘Boss, thank you. I’ll return alive, strengthened by the training you gave me.’
There was no dying here.
A new organization!
The brilliance he would find within it!
To die before tasting that—he’d go mad with the injustice.
‘Should I have brought Kelvin along?’
With a faint twinge of regret, the fourth Crow burst inside.
This one looked stronger.
Not the second wave he’d been told about—this was from the first.
Clash!
Another threw himself through a window in the commotion.
Gilbert instinctively withdrew, seizing the higher ground.
And he focused.
Just as the Boss had taught him.
Clang!
Deflecting as he’d been trained.
Clang!
He pushed forward as he’d been taught.
Thud!
Counterattacking the way he’d learned, one of them crumpled.
‘It’s working. This is working.’
It had been an age since he’d fought a battle where the stakes were life and death.
He’d grown uneasy facing only weak opponents all this time, but the results of Hell Training were indeed more effective than any live engagement could have been.
“How many of you are left?”
He even allowed himself a moment of confidence.
Of course, there was no answer.
Unless the situation demanded it, the Crows never opened their mouths during a mission.
“You’ve miscalculated me today. You were all meant to die here.”
……
Gilbert understood the habits of the Crows better than anyone.
And so he was well aware that a different form of attack would soon follow.
Whisper.
Thud!
But he didn’t simply stand and watch.
The moment a hand reached into a pocket, he drove off the ground in a charge, the way the Boss had taught him, and pierced straight through.
“Hack.”
“There it is. The Poison Smoke Bomb.”
Gilbert had experienced every tactic before.
Not as methodical or flawless as the way assassins operated, but in the process of killing an enemy, means and methods were hardly a concern at all.
‘What now?’
With the Poison Smoke Bomb blocked, something worse would come next.
And so Gilbert made his decision.
‘That side is open.’
Crash!
He would escape.
Thud, snap!
The moment he shattered the window and dove out, instinct made him roll to the side just as several daggers embedded themselves in the frame where he’d been.
Now he was outside again.
‘First, I need to vanish.’
If he held his ground inside any longer, there was no telling what might come flying at him.
That would only be possible if he hadn’t shown his true strength.
Now that he’d realized a direct confrontation was impossible, they would maintain distance and attempt something else.
Tap-tap!
Just like now.
The Crows’ Pursuit Tactics had unfolded.
They formed a wide circle, maintained distance, and blocked every avenue of retreat—forward, back, left, and right—while moving in synchronized motion.
Gilbert knew this tactic well.
If left unchecked, it would reach a point where fleeing in any direction wouldn’t take him anywhere of his choosing—he’d be funneled along the path they intended.
The problem was that Gilbert himself was born of the Crows.
And—
Crack, snap!
“Ack!”
He had grown far stronger than he had been then.
Another Crow fell limp, breathing no more.
The sensation of the old days flooding back through him!
‘I don’t think I ever enjoyed combat this much, even back then……’
But he didn’t shy away from it.
If anything, even less so now.
He could not lose. He must not lose.
‘Could this be a trial sent down by the Boss?!’
Lost in that sudden misunderstanding, Gilbert moved swiftly.
A glance at the sky above showed the sunset beginning to bloom.
‘I’ll buy time until nightfall.’
He was stronger than before.
But not strong enough for a direct confrontation against their numbers.
And he had to account for reinforcements as well.
Perhaps they’ve already been summoned and are on their way here.
‘One at a time, I’ll draw them into the darkness and eliminate them.’
Exactly the method the Boss had shown him!
The very tactic Ziel had employed in his assassin days — something Gilbert knew nothing about.
Shing.
Gilbert drew the dagger he’d been granted by the Boss.
Night was closing in.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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