Barristan reacted the fastest and immediately realized something.
"She told us the brothel's madam sent her to bring the wine, Your Grace. Is there a problem with her?"
Hearing this, Kal instantly understood that the girl named Scarlett definitely had a problem.
Not bothering with how Barristan and the others had let her in, Kal quickly said, "She poisoned the wine she poured for me. I suspect she is a Faceless Man — here to assassinate me. Which way did she go?!"
Barristan focused entirely on that information and immediately turned to look at the men he had brought along.
One of the Kingsguard recruits hurriedly pointed in a direction.
"She went downstairs. I noticed her heading toward that alley. I paid more attention because she suddenly had extra gold coins in her hand…"
Hearing this, Kal leaned out over the corridor to look down, and sure enough, a small alley stretched outward from there.
"Arrest Oberyn Martell and his lover in the room. Lock them in the Red Keep and keep watch on them. Everything waits until I return!"
Once he confirmed the direction, Kal wasted no time and issued the order.
After speaking, he did not care that the drop below was more than ten meters. He simply vaulted over the railing and landed like a stone statue hitting the ground.
Meanwhile, Oberyn — who had just come out of the room — heard Kal's final words before leaving, and his face turned bitter.
Seeing the Kingsguard and Goldcloaks drawing their blades toward him, he could only choose to surrender.
Whether Kal had truly misunderstood him or not no longer mattered — after something like this happened, even if it were a misunderstanding, he could not escape implication.
Given Kal's current status as King, the fact that Kal drank wine in his brothel, was poisoned there, and that the poisoner had been his employee — and worst of all, that he himself was unharmed…
Regardless of whether that girl called Scarlett was still really Scarlett, this alone meant he was already in a situation where he could never clear his name.
Fortunately, he could also see that Kal had remained calm enough to make decisions even in this situation, which meant there was room to talk.
If he failed to read the room now, then he truly would deserve whatever happened.
"All right, everyone. I hope I can at least have a comfortable bed. And also, Ser — could you show me the potion your king tossed you earlier? Even if only the empty bottle remains—"
...
Kal had no mind to care about whatever was happening behind him.
Facing an assassination attempt—facing a killer suspected of being one of the Faceless Men, and apparently even connected to Robert's death—there was only one thing Kal intended to do now: catch her… or rather, catch him.
Leaping down from the third-floor corridor, the towering Kal descended like a stone statue. The instant he landed, his feet sank two dents into the cobblestones of the alley below.
Yet Kal, who had just jumped down from more than ten meters high, did not let out a single sound, as if it were nothing at all, allowing his ankles and knees to take the full shock.
And that was not all. In the very instant he landed, Kal was already prepared. He pulled off the cumbersome robe on his body, crouched, and darted into the narrow alleyway.
That faint, lingering scent had not yet dispersed—the scent that belonged to that girl called Scarlett.
There was also a trace of the light Summer Red fragrance clinging to her hands.
This clue alone was enough for Kal to track her down. His speed was astonishing; flaring his nostrils, he sniffed the air and swiftly distinguished Scarlett's scent within it. After cutting through several small alleys in just moments, Kal arrived before a wooden door.
Here—the scent clearly halted, and it had become much stronger.
And mixed into it was a faint yet heavy smell of blood.
Standing before the door and sensing the strange odor he picked up, Kal raised an eyebrow.
But his hesitation lasted only for a heartbeat. Without the slightest delay, he lifted his foot and kicked straight at the black wooden door that looked quite sturdy.
A sharp crack sounded immediately. The thick, solid black door burst into a pile of splinters under his inhuman strength.
The room inside was revealed—pitch-dark, lit only by a single fish-oil lamp no larger than a jujube.
And Kal's sudden, completely unannounced kick startled the people inside.
But in just an instant, the small-looking figure in the room reacted at once.
Before Kal could continue with his next move—right after that explosive sound—this person rolled toward the corner of the wall.
A black shadow flickered—then an iron bell the size of a walnut flew toward Kal's face.
Instinctively, Kal tilted his head aside, dodging the sudden strike.
But in the instant after he avoided the iron bell—whose crisp ringing cut through the air—Kal noticed that a rope was tied to its end, leading back to the hand of the crouching shadow.
Seeing Kal evade the attack, the shadow's fingers twitched slightly. With a whoosh, the iron bell that had flown past Kal's face halted behind his head—
—and in the next heartbeat, it snapped forward again, striking toward the back of his skull with even greater speed.
Sensing the chill of the blow closing in behind him, Kal had no time to speak, nor to see clearly what the figure in that pitch-dark room actually looked like. He could only bend down to dodge the attack from behind.
And in that split second, the figure who had taken the initiative to strike at Kal also seemed to see clearly who had come to cause him trouble.
His pupils shrank sharply, and in the very next moment, he made his decision.
Without a shred of hesitation, he withdrew his weapon. The moment after, he rolled again, reached out, and lifted a floorboard from the ground.
But courtesy demanded retaliation—seeing the other about to escape, Kal had no time for any further action. Light flickered in his hand, and a dagger left his fingers, flying toward the shadow.
The shadow, still occupied with prying up the floorboard, had no way to avoid Kal's attack. Even twisting his body to the side, he was still pierced through the shoulder by the dagger Kal hurled.
But he did not make a sound. Curling his body into a ball, he dropped down and rolled into the opening, disappearing from sight.
Having just ducked an attack and immediately countered, Kal could only stare as the shadow vanished beneath the floorboards.
Looking at the board, Kal hesitated for a second but did not choose to chase further.
And at that moment, for some unknown reason, the lamp in the room had gone out. Darkness completely swallowed the space.
Seeing this, Kal instantly held his breath. Remaining alert, he swept his gaze around the room.
The darkness before him posed no trouble at all for someone with dark-vision. To Kal's eyes, everything was still as bright as daylight.
However, as Kal held his breath and quickly scanned the surroundings, keeping alert for any further attacks, his pupils suddenly tightened.
Because only now did he notice that beside a water vat in the room, there was a figure leaning over its rim, as if burying its head to look into the water inside.
But that figure did not move at all, utterly silent—like a corpse.
Kal quickly patted a Stone-Skin Potion and an Antidote onto himself, guarding against any remaining poisons or mechanisms hidden in the room, and only then carefully approached to investigate.
When he reached the edge of the water vat, he discovered that the figure leaning over it was indeed a corpse—and a headless one at that.
The small-framed corpse lay sprawled over the rim, resting against it at a slant, as if using the reflection in the water as a mirror to admire its own appearance.
But her head was long gone, no longer present.
Where the head should have been, only a severed neck remained, blood flowing freely.
And the vat that should have been used to hold water was instead half-filled with the blood that had gushed from her broken neck.
This must have been the source of the blood scent strong enough to be smelled even through the door earlier, Kal thought as he witnessed the scene.
Frowning, he forced down the discomfort and anger rising in his chest, lifted the corpse—still faintly warm to the touch—from the rim of the vat, and placed it on the bed.
Her small frame, her clothing—even without a head, Kal recognized that this should be the real Scarlett.
As for her head, Kal glanced around. He found it on a wooden table in the corner.
Walking over to look, he saw a severed head stripped of its face.
Seeing the faceless head before him, how could Kal fail to understand what had happened?
It was nothing more than this Faceless Man seizing an opportunity to assassinate him after he had left the Red Keep.
And the innocent girl who worked as a serving girl in the Red Viper brothel—this girl who had only struggled to support herself—had been turned into both his weapon and his sacrifice.
"I will not forgive you— and you will not escape!"
Gritting his teeth as he spoke, Kal picked up the real Scarlett's head from the wooden table and set it back onto her neck.
"I will avenge you. Trust me."
Saying that, Kal pulled a tattered bedsheet from the side and covered the poor girl's body.
Then, with cold killing intent in his eyes, he turned around. A crystalline egg flickered across his hand.
In the instant that crystalline egg appeared and vanished, Kal's entire body melted and shrank, like glass scorched by intense heat.
When that squirming mass—dark and glass-like—solidified again, Kal's figure had disappeared.
Standing in his place was a wolf roughly the size of an ordinary stray dog, its fur gray-black, its claws and fangs sharp, and its eyes blood-red.
This was a shapeshifting magic taught to him by the mistress of the Tower of Terror in the game world—the Dark Elf witch.
Its name was [Summon].
It was also one of the new skills he had engraved onto his skill panel when replaying this new version of the storyline.
[Summon]: A spell designed specifically to summon living creatures or objects, though it can be adapted for other purposes.
Using this spell requires ten mana points, and it also requires an unfertilized Banshee crystalline egg as material.
Because of certain factors—perhaps incomplete code or some other missing components—the spell's shapeshifting effect is unstable.
Not only does it last for only a very short time, but accidents may occur during the transformation, making the shift incomplete.
Of course, this only happens when the spell consumes mana alone.
Kal discovered that as long as he used a Banshee crystalline egg as the material when casting it, such problems would not occur.
This was a very reliable discovery.
It was also the first magic skill he had truly used in the outside world after the game's version update—and the reason he had managed to return to King's Landing within a single day.
After using [Summon] to transform himself into the wolf from the game world, Kal's blood-red eyes flickered faintly in the darkness of the room, and his nostrils began to flare wildly.
Staring at the floorboard the suspected Faceless Man had just lifted before slipping inside, Kal had no intention of opening it.
When pursuing an enemy like this, he would never be foolish enough to follow their escape route. Doing so would accomplish nothing except walking straight into the enemy's trap.
Now transformed into a wolf with traces of magical bloodline, he sniffed at the lingering scent left behind by the suspected Faceless Man. Before his eyes, it was as if invisible blood-red clusters drifted through the air.
Chaotic, yet orderly—strip them layer by layer, and an unseen trail would emerge.
"Looking at" the clusters before him, Kal found a trail.
Then the gray wolf slipped silently out of the dark room. Avoiding the crowd that had gathered after hearing the sudden explosion, Kal moved like an ordinary stray dog wandering the alleys of King's Landing, nose down, pursuing his clues.
As for that dark little room—both the setup inside and the escape tunnel—Kal could tell at a glance that it was the safe house the suspected Faceless Man assassin had kept in King's Landing.
Otherwise, he would never have left Scarlett's corpse inside so confidently—calmly peeling her face and recreating her form.
And with a tunnel that was clearly prepared beforehand, this was exactly why Kal had chosen not to pursue through it.
If he dared to chase through that tunnel, what awaited him would likely be collapses, poison, traps, and all manner of mechanisms.
Kal was also certain that the tunnel was only a temporary escape route, and would absolutely not extend far.
Sure enough—after he searched the surrounding hundred or two hundred meters—he found a clue near a foul-smelling sewer.
Those invisible blood-red clusters that only he could see drifted out from here and gradually faded into the distance.
Seeing this, a ruthless glint flashed in Kal's blood-red eyes, and his sharp fangs curled at the corners of his mouth.
Following the clue and the nearly fading scent, Kal hurried after it.
Avoiding buildings, crowds, and the vendors lining both sides of the street, Kal eventually stopped behind a man ahead of him—dressed in plain linen clothes, carrying a dead fish in his hand, looking every bit like an ordinary sailor.
The thick blood-scent clusters in the air were now gathered on this man.
At the same time, he carried a faint hint of Summer Red and fresh blood.
The sailor looked completely ordinary. He held a dead fish, walked forward while occasionally glancing at the vendor stalls around him, bargaining a bit, and finally buying two loaves of bread to hold against his chest.
If Kal had not been able to see him through that particular kind of vision, he would never have been able to distinguish anything unusual about this man hidden within the crowd by sight alone.
But now Kal didn't care about proof.
He had intended to play with him slowly—but the other had forced his hand.
Staring at the figure ahead, rage surged through Kal.
Reaching a shaded corner, the gray wolf shifted back into Kal's human shape.
But before the molten glass of his form had even fully taken shape, the crystalline egg flashed again in Kal's hand, and he immediately turned into a coachman just passing by the alley.
Stepping out of the alley, Kal and the coachman shape he had just taken walked past each other, and Kal closed in toward the sailor carrying the bread and the dead fish.
In only a few steps, Kal squeezed to his side. Smelling the faint Summer Red and blood coming from him, and noticing the unnatural way he held the dead fish, Kal was certain—this was the one he was looking for.
In the crowded throng, a flash of light appeared in Kal's right hand, and a dagger with a dragon-bone hilt materialized, pressing against the sailor's waist.
"Stop walking, Faceless Man."
The sailor holding bread and a dead fish felt the change at his waist. His body jerked sharply, and he stopped.
Hearing the name Faceless Man, his pupils shrank—
—but he reacted quickly. At once he feigned the behavior expected of the identity he currently wore, mustered his courage, and whispered, "My lord, I am a sailor of the Pickman. If you intend anything toward me, our captain will not let you go."
"And perhaps you don't know that King's Landing now has a public-order law issued by Lord Kal El. Robbing someone on the street in broad daylight will earn you ten lashes, a week in custody, and a fine of ten silver stags."
One really had to admit—the Faceless Man's acting was excellent. He truly treated himself as a sailor.
Or perhaps this identity was truly his current one.
And it was also clear that his investigation of King's Landing had indeed been very thorough.
But unfortunately, the flaws on his body were far too many.
So his reaction was met only with the cold sneer behind him from Kal.
"Your acting is impressive, Faceless Man. But as far as I know, no sailor buys a dead fish during his free time to eat. They'd rather spend all the coin they have on ale and on a whore's belly."
"So your disguise for escape is hardly convincing. What are you panicking about?!"
Hearing Kal say this, the sailor instinctively glanced at the dead fish in his hand—he had bought it casually earlier when passing a fish vendor's stall.
As for this identity, of course it was one he had kept in the tunnel as a spare.
And now he also understood that it seemed he had indeed revealed his movement and exposed his identity.
But who was the one behind him who had found him?
The Faceless Man, disguised as a sailor, chuckled at Kal's words. Feeling the sharp dagger pressing against his waist, he asked.
"Heh… how interesting. Who are you?"
Yet just as the last syllable left his mouth, Kal felt the dagger pressed at the man's waist get flicked by something.
And the sailor before him twisted his waist like a dancer—sliding off the tip of Kal's blade like a streak of water gliding over a branch.
In the very instant he sprang away, he even flung everything in his hands at Kal, blocking Kal's vision in the span of a heartbeat.
Seeing himself escape Kal's immediate reach, he took a quick glance at Kal's current appearance, then performed two or three consecutive backward rolls, clearly intending to vanish again from Kal's sight and continue fleeing.
But after finally catching him—how could Kal possibly allow this fish to slip away right before his eyes?
All the more so because this Faceless Man had already completely enraged him.
The fact that he had escaped earlier in the dark room had been nothing more than an accident.
Now that Kal had found him again—if he still let him slip from his hands, then he might as well stop calling himself a man of any worth.
Lifting the sharp Valyrian-steel dagger with the dragon-bone hilt, Kal's blade flashed—within two or three cuts, the dead fish and the bread that had been tossed at him were sliced into pieces.
Then, in the instant the Faceless Man was about to disappear from sight again, Kal raised his free left hand, aiming at the assassin who was preparing to crouch and slip into the crowd.
"Do not try my patience!"
"Wither!"
A faint flash of light rippled in the air, and an invisible wave struck the Faceless Man's body.
The agile figure that had been rolling and darting through the crowd suddenly went limp, collapsing to the ground.
Several passersby even stepped on him by accident, then jumped away in shock, terrified of being accused of extortion and punished under King's Landing's public-order law.
"Magic!?"
Feeling his strength vanish, the Faceless Man lay limp on the ground, eyes wide. With great effort, he turned his face to look at the coachman behind him.
Hearing his words, Kal grinned—a cruel, vicious smile.
"Yes. Magic."
"Now take another one—Lightning!"
Poisoned by the assassination attempt, forced into a chase, forced to see an innocent girl die because of him—Kal's fury had long since boiled over. He had no intention of holding back.
A blue spark flashed in the air, a sharp crack sounded, and a bolt of conjured lightning tore through the space, striking the Faceless Man whose limbs were already weak and useless.
And in the instant the lightning hit him—where a moment ago his muscles had felt numb and disconnected, as if he were separated from his body by a wooden crate—his entire frame suddenly stiffened again.
Even the hairs on his body stood on end—and thin wisps of smoke began rising off him.
After hitting him with two consecutive spells and confirming that this Faceless Man could no longer resist, Kal finally stepped up to him.
"You call yourself a Faceless Man?"
Kal looked down at the assassin, a cold sneer curling across his face.
One had to admit: Faceless Men truly did have qualities worthy of praise. Even though Kal had held back his strength as much as he could, the man before him had indeed taken the punishment well.
Hearing Kal's mocking laugh, the assassin—his consciousness already fading—still instinctively turned his head to look at Kal.
Seeing that the man still dared roll his eyes at him—
Kal let out a cold snort. He pinched his fingers together, and with a sharp snap, another invisible wave burst from his fingertip.
The sailor-disguised Faceless Man rolled his eyes—and lost consciousness completely.
Daze—a divine technique for capturing prisoners.
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