The Reincarnated Assassin is a Genius Swordsman - Chapter 1

—————

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

—————

Chapter 1

I am going to die.

The crisp night wind, the moonlight peeking halfway above the horizon, the instincts honed through a lifetime as an assassin—all whisper the same truth.

I will die soon.

I surveyed my surroundings.

Countless narrow paths wound between the Garden’s trees, which appeared as soft as wool.

Yet there is no path to survival. Only roads reeking of death stretch before me.

“Raon.”

At the voice that pressed heavily upon my heart, I lifted my gaze. A middle-aged man with long silver hair, as if dusted by frost, came into view.

It was him.
Derus Robert.

Because of this single man, the master of the Robert Family, the entire vast Garden exhaled the thick stench of a swamp of death.

“Yes.”

I swallowed dryly and opened my mouth.

“You have demonstrated results befitting your position as the head of Shadow. Thanks to your movements in the darkness, the Family’s growth has accelerated even further.”
“I have merely done what was required of me.”

I neither feigned joy nor displeasure. Like a wooden doll devoid of emotion, I bowed my head.

“But Raon.”

He began his final words.

“Do you think Shadow needs freedom?”

Derus extended his hand. His shadow cast upon the floor mirrored the gesture with identical precision.

“A shadow need only follow its master. Thought, emotion, will—none of these are necessary.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why did you move of your own accord?”

Derus’s voice turned glacial, and it seized my heart like a vice.

“How did you break the brainwashing?”

A chill crawled down my spine. I bit my tongue to keep my shock from showing.

What is this?

I hadn’t deviated from my usual behavior in the slightest, yet somehow he’d detected that the brainwashing had been undone.

“Speak. When and how did you break free from the brainwashing?”

When he pressed this far, it meant he already knew everything.

“How did you discover it, sir?”

I bit my lip and lifted my gaze to meet his.

Brainwashing.
It was the method the Robert Family employed to operate Shadow, their assassination organization.

They abducted or purchased children, extinguished their emotions, implanted suggestions deep within their minds, and enslaved them as assassins for life.

I too had been shackled by their brainwashing, but by fortune’s grace, I’d obtained an opportunity to shatter those cruel chains.

“Because you were preparing to flee the Family.”

Derus continued with unsettling composure.

“I placed two leashes on all of Shadow’s assassins, including you. The first was brainwashing, and the second was….”
“Ugh!”

A searing agony tore through my lungs and heart as though sawed by a blade, and I cried out involuntarily.

“It’s a Lazy Worm. The parasite I planted in your body is devouring your heart at my command.”
“L-Lazy Worm….”

A Lazy Worm was the most insidious sorcery—it could even perceive the emotions of its enslaved host.

Derus Robert must have used the Lazy Worm to discover my attempt to flee the Family.

“So you pretended to be righteous and fair all by yourself, and when brainwashing wasn’t enough, you fed me a Lazy Worm too? You’re absolutely vile!”
“Vile? No—thorough. After all, you did manage to break free from the brainwashing, didn’t you?”

Derus Robert smiled with those gentle eyes he showed the world.

“They say everyone wears a mask in life. Mine is simply thicker and more refined than most.”
“Derus Robert….”

I clenched my teeth. Fighting through the agony of my heart being torn in half, I forced myself to stand.

I cannot die helpless and broken.

I was kidnapped at an age I can barely remember and raised in the shadows of the Robert Family—a hunting hound, an assassin.

I lived stripped of emotion and will until fortune granted me the chance to finally escape the brainwashing.

I thought I could finally live by my own will, but what returned was not the key to freedom—it was the shackles of death.

I cannot fathom what crime I committed to deserve such a wretched existence.

Damn it all.

Crimson waters rise in the parched well of my emotions. This was rage—true rage—felt for the first time.

“You’re standing up in that condition?”

A flicker of uncertainty bloomed in Derus Robert’s pupils.

“I won’t die shamefully, not until the very end.”

I grasped the sword at my waist.

The sensation of death I felt upon entering the Garden remained unchanged.

I would die here.

If death was inevitable, I would not go quietly. At the very least, I would carve my mark—an arm, a wound, anything—before I fell.

“Uuuaaaaaah!”

I unleashed the aura flooding my dantian in a violent explosion, driving my blade forward.

In that instant.
The extending blade shattered cleanly in half.

A sharp metallic clink.

The necklace around my neck tumbled to the earth with a hollow sound.

The world spun. Derus Robert’s cold eyes inverted, and the moon hung upside down in the sky.

Ah….

Only then did I understand. My throat had been severed by Derus Robert’s blade.

But an assassin’s blade is never merely what meets the eye.

Behind the fractured steel, a sinister aura I had concealed shot toward Derus Robert’s pallid face.

“How crude.”

Derus Robert waved his hand with utter indifference. In that casual gesture—as effortless as swatting a fly—my final strike extinguished like a candle flame.

As expected….

Derus Robert was the martial master hailed as the strongest on the Continent. It was only natural that I could not defeat him.

He was strong, and I was weak. There was nothing to be done about it. Yes, nothing could be done—or could there?

Rage that had been smoldering in the depths of my chest erupted like molten lava.

I had been manipulated by Derus my entire life, and it was maddening that I couldn’t complete the “Ring of Fire” I had obtained by chance.

I couldn’t die like this.
God or demon—it didn’t matter.

The moment fury consumed my entire being—a burning resolve to tear away Derus Robert’s mask and sever his neck by any means necessary—my world turned crimson and froze.

*

*

*

“Hmm….”

Derus Robert raised his right hand and furrowed his brow.

‘I clearly blocked it.’

Despite perfectly intercepting that trash’s final sword strike, a small wound had opened on the back of his hand.

A wound that actually bled—he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

‘How absurd.’

The creature had broken free from his brainwashing, endured the agony of the Rage Worm, and even inflicted an injury upon him.

It was bewildering that something he had raised as a disposable hunting dog could accomplish such things.

‘But then.’

Raon was already dead. He had been an anomaly, but there was no need to concern himself further.

“Clean it up.”

As Derus Robert turned away, warriors hidden in the shadows of the Garden emerged and approached Raon’s corpse.

Whoooosh.

Raon’s necklace, submerged in crimson blood, emitted a brilliant blue light—yet no one remained to witness it.

[You have been chosen by 【Wrath】.]
[【Wrath】 descends upon your flesh… the vessel has perished!]
[Error occurring….]

*

*

*

Rebirth.
A fantastical concept that people acknowledge in theory yet refuse to believe in practice.

I had never believed in rebirth either.

My entire life had been consumed by brainwashing, and once freed from it, I was too preoccupied with preparing my escape from the Robert Family to entertain such absurdities.

I believed that death was simply the end.

And yet
….

“Sunshine! Look here!”

A beautiful woman with crimson eyes and soft golden hair cascading over her shoulders shook a blue rattle.

“There’s a red one too!”

She extended the red rattle she held in her left hand forward as well.

Clack, clack, clack!

I frowned at the sound of the two rattles colliding, but the golden-haired woman did not stop.

“Sigh.”

I exhaled softly and reached my hand toward the rattles.

“Yes! Come this way!”

The blonde woman beamed with delight, shaking the rattle with even greater enthusiasm.

In my field of vision, there were only two things: plump arms like sausages, and the woman waving the rattle with unbridled joy.

‘I still can’t get used to this. Those arms are mine, and that woman is my mother….’

The woman’s name is Sylvia. Even now it’s hard to believe, but I’ve been reborn as her child while retaining all the memories of my past life as an assassin.

At first, I naturally thought it was a dream.
I believed that after one more sleep, it would all be over, but no matter how much I slept, this strange dream refused to end.

Day after day of doubt passed until a hundred days had gone by, and only then did Raon accept the reality of his rebirth.

“Sunshine! Over here!”
“Ow!”

As I crawled slowly toward the rattle, Sylvia gradually retreated backward.

“That’s it! Just a little more!”

Raon toddled after Sylvia, crawling toward the rattle and reaching out his hand.

“Ugh….”

But unable to overcome the weight of my heavy head, my body tilted to the right.

“Oh!”

Sylvia dropped the rattle and threw herself forward, catching my falling body in her embrace.

‘She’s fast.’

Her movements were swift. I couldn’t sense any aura, but it seemed she had learned decent martial arts.

“Scared you, didn’t I? It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Sylvia gently patted my back.

“Ow.”

I waved my hand, showing that I wasn’t startled in the slightest and that everything was fine, yet her gentle tapping continued without pause.

“Our little Sunbeam. Should we look at the flowers with Mommy?”

Sylvia carried me to the window and drew open the curtains. Warm sunlight cascaded down like soft cotton quilting.

‘Still being called Sunbeam, of all things….’

The name Sunbeam that Sylvia called me was naturally not a true name, but a birth name—a temporary endearment given before the formal naming ceremony.

The family head was supposed to come and bestow a proper name, but he was so dreadfully busy that his face hadn’t been seen once.

With no other choice, even now past my hundredth day, I was still being called by the temporary name Sunbeam.

‘Sigh….’

Cradled in Sylvia’s arms, I surveyed my surroundings.

The room was spacious enough to run around in, the walls were adorned with luxurious sea-blue wallpaper, and magical lamps hung from the ceiling, casting light even through the night.

Since this child’s body slept more than twenty hours a day, I couldn’t discern much, but one thing was abundantly clear.

This was a wealthy household. A family of considerable prestige, no less.

‘Not bad at all.’

Since I had been reborn, a family with wealth or power was far preferable to an ordinary one.

‘I have revenge to pursue.’

The chilling sensation of my neck being severed by Derus Robert remained vivid.

Though I believed my emotions had been completely worn away through my upbringing as an assassin, the memory of my death had been so intense that my rage and thirst for vengeance against that man remained crystalline and undiminished.

‘Yet I must not act in haste.’

I breathed steadily, calming my mind with deliberate composure.

I have lived only in this room until now, so I know nothing of where this place is or what my position might be.

There is no rush to prepare for revenge after assessing the situation first.

Among the virtues of an assassin, patience was the most crucial element, and I had been called the greatest assassin.

I could endure emotions and vengeance as much as necessary.

‘And there is that.’

Through the karmic fortune of my past life, I had obtained the sword technique ‘Ring of Fire’—the martial art of the swordmaster called the strongest on the Continent a thousand years ago.

If I mastered ‘Ring of Fire’ from now on, I might be able to kill Derus Robert not through assassination, but through direct confrontation.

I must endure and endure again for that day that would come someday.

‘But now I’m starting to feel drowsy again….’

Cradled in Sylvia’s arms and bathed in warm sunlight, sleep began to wash over me.

I hadn’t even thought much, yet I was already drowsy—the body of an infant was inconvenient in so many ways.

“The sunlight makes you sleepy? Then take a nap.”

Sylvia smiled gently and slowed the pace of her hand patting my back. I was on the verge of nodding off when it happened.

“Sylvia!”

The door burst open without a knock, and Sylvia’s personal maid rushed in.

“The, the head of the family is coming!”
“Father is?”

Hearing the maid’s words, Sylvia’s eyes widened in surprise.

‘Father?’

From the way she referred to him as father, it seemed the head of this household was not her father, but her grandfather.

“P-perhaps we could still prepare—”
“It’s already too late. He’s arrived at the very entrance!”
“Oh no!”

Sylvia and her attendants fidgeted nervously, their feet shuffling with anxiety.

Tap. Tap.

From beyond the half-open door came the crisp, measured footsteps—so sharp and deliberate that even my body instinctively tensed.

‘Who could the patriarch be?’

I opened my eyes slowly and turned my head toward the door.

An elderly man with brilliant golden hair swept back from his forehead and crimson eyes approached. His overwhelming presence made even Sylvia and the attendants tremble.

‘Ah…’

The moment our eyes met, time itself seemed to slow. The oppressive aura surrounding him was so intense that everything blurred at the edges of my perception.

“Ah, Father.”
“Is this the child?”

The golden-haired elder stopped before Sylvia, his gaze sharp and glacial as he gestured with his chin.

“Y-yes.”

Sylvia nodded heavily and presented me to the patriarch.

‘Ah…’

My eyes widened as I looked directly at the patriarch’s face. There was something achingly familiar about his features.

‘Golden hair, crimson eyes, and that expression of icy indifference like frozen ice itself… Wait!’

A bolt of lightning struck through my mind.

Glen Zigheart, the Northern Destruction King!

The master of a family called the pinnacle of the Continent was looking down at me.

A small gasp escaped my lips.

It seemed I had been reincarnated into the strongest family on the Continent.

—————

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

—————