Contract of Submission with the Enemy - Chapter 16
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How much time had passed?
Rité suddenly came to her senses and opened her bleary eyes. She had fallen asleep sprawled out on the bed as if she’d passed out, but now she found herself lying straight with the blanket neatly covering her up to her neck. Turning her head, she noticed something on the table and her eyes widened. There was a meal along with a note.
[Have your meal and come down to the shooting range. My subordinate will be waiting for you. Location: East Wing A-3]
Recognizing Aster’s elegant handwriting, Rité sprang up and checked the doorknob. It was still locked just as it had been. He had used a master key to sneak into the room and then quietly locked it again before leaving.
Rité narrowed her eyes. It was frustrating to realize she hadn’t noticed him entering the room, especially when she had been holding a fork for defense. To her annoyance, the fork was now gone.
After rummaging through the bed and pillows, she found the fork neatly placed beside the meal tray. It felt like he was mockingly suggesting she use it for eating.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being toyed with.
Suppressing her rising irritation, Rité quickly ate her meal. She wondered if it had been spiked with sleeping pills or some other unknown drug, but her hunger was too overwhelming to ignore. Regardless, she had no choice but to eat whatever he provided. The fact that she had to rely on him for food was deeply unsatisfying.
After finishing her meal, Rité took a deep breath while looking at her reflection in the small mirror on the locker door. Her face, pale and weary, stared back at her, but apart from the emotional toll, she didn’t seem to be physically unwell.
Gathering herself, she tied up her long teal hair and headed straight for the shooting range.
When she knocked and opened the door, a man, acting under Aster’s orders, was waiting for her. He had short brown hair and a rugged scar slashed across one eyebrow. He was the man who had handed her the towel the previous day, standing at the forefront of the Shadow Unit members.
He turned and asked, “You’re Rité Rainhills, right?”
“Yes.”
Seeing her respond casually, a slight smile appeared on his lips.
“My name is Benyak. You don’t need to know my last name; it’s just a codename anyway. Major Aster asked me to check your shooting skills. He mentioned that during your first meeting, you only had one bullet, so he couldn’t properly assess you. The Major likes to be thorough in everything. You were in a vigilante group, right? You must have used a gun before, right?”
Rité stared at him silently before picking up a pistol from the table and firing at the target without expression. Most of the bullets hit the center of the target.
Benyak laughed with admiration.
“You certainly have the skills to fight multiple Carta soldiers at once. You seem to have guts, too. Can you hit moving targets as well?”
“Of course.”
He folded his arms and asked with a grin, “Can we test that right now?”
“Why ask? Just tell me to do it.”
Rité responded flatly, already understanding that any suggestion or question was essentially an order.
“You’re an interesting one.”
He laughed even more.
“Sorry, but I’m not amused at all. I just want to get this over with and go back to resting.”
Benyak spoke cheerfully, “Alright. Assassins should talk less and act more. Put on your protective gear and get inside.”
Without further comment, Rité did as she was told. She realized that focusing on the immediate tasks was the best way to finish the training quickly and minimize her time spent with them.
As she entered the training area, numerous human-shaped targets began moving at various speeds along rails. Some targets popped up from the floor or emerged from behind walls.
In the chaotic, whirling world, Rité stood calmly, loading her bullets and scanning her surroundings.
The moment the timer started, she began hitting the targets with precision. With an intense look in her eyes, she fired at the human-shaped targets, rolling on the ground and moving quickly.
The commotion attracted other assassins who had come to the range for training. They all stopped to watch Rité’s performance.
One of the men muttered, “Is she crazy…?”
Benyak frowned slightly.
“Is she unable to distinguish between civilians and enemies?”
As they noted, Rité was firing at both the civilian dummies and the soldier dummies holding civilians by the neck. This made it appear as though she was indiscriminately killing everyone.
“Does she not understand the rules? What does she think she’s doing by killing everyone?”
Despite her high accuracy, Rité’s score on the scoreboard was dismal. For every +10 points she gained by killing an enemy, she immediately lost -10 points for killing a civilian, keeping her score at zero.
“We have a lot to teach her. At this rate, she’ll kill both enemies and allies alike.”
One of his colleagues muttered, and Benyak replied quietly, “Do you think she even distinguishes between enemies and allies?”
“What?”
Realizing something, his colleague fell silent. For Rité, who had been forcibly conscripted and faced the Carta army as an enemy, both sides were essentially the same. To her, all those involved in the war were just the same kind of people.
Was that the right decision? Without a moment’s hesitation, Rité shot at all the targets. In the ravages of war, it wasn’t the royal family or the republic that protected people. She had joined the vigilante group to protect herself and her village.
The score of zero on the scoreboard perfectly reflected Rité’s stance, neither aligning with the royalists nor the republicans.
Before she knew it, Aster appeared at the door, observing the training scene. The people gathered there noticed his presence belatedly and saluted in surprise. But Aster didn’t blink an eye, focusing intently on Rité’s training through the glass.