91: Chapter 91, Rule 1 of Performance Appraisal

These words, cold and devoid of any human emotion, acted like a signal, a switch.

Shadow Warrior Zero collapsed at Levi's feet, his brain buzzing from the tearing sensation of spatial teleportation and the impact of being forced to reveal himself.

But he was, after all, the continent's top assassin; his combat instincts were ingrained in his very marrow.

After a brief moment of shock, he immediately made the most correct judgment—to abandon the assassination of the young man standing on the high platform, controlling everything like a deity.

The target was already exposed and well-prepared.

Continuing the mission would be suicide.

Now, the only way out was to create chaos and find leverage.

His gaze swept across the hall like a venomous snake.

Nobles, delicate and weak, yet worth a fortune.

A hostage of sufficient weight might allow him to tear a gap in this steel cage.

Closest to him was Baron Dracu, a mine owner with a fleshy face turned pale with terror.

He's the one!

Inside Zero's body, thirty years of cultivated Battle Qi erupted in an instant.

His muscles, like taut steel cables, suddenly snapped him off the ground; the entire movement was smooth and fluid, without the slightest delay.

The black figure turned into a blurry afterimage, moving so fast that most guests' retinas couldn't capture it.

He lunged at Baron Dracu, his fingers forming a claw, aiming straight for the other's throat.

He could even imagine the warmth of his cold fingertips touching that greasy neck, and the inevitable panic—however fleeting—that would appear on the young man's face on the platform once the hostage was taken.

However, nothing he anticipated happened.

Just as his left foot stepped onto the second marble tile below the platform, a lethal sense of crisis surged from the sole of his foot straight to his skull.

On that mirror-polished tile, a complex rune that had never appeared before instantly lit up, emitting an eerie, ghostly blue light.

Zzzzt—!

Giving him no time to react, a surge of mana current—far more condensed and violent than his protective Battle Qi—sprang from the ground like a living thunder snake.

The force accurately locked onto his Battle Qi nodes, instantly piercing the protective aura he took pride in, which was strong enough to withstand a charge from heavy armored knights.

"Argh—!"

A shrill scream was squeezed from the depths of Zero's throat, only to be instantly choked off by the powerful current.

His body seemed to be gripped by an invisible giant hand, twitching violently; every muscle spasmed involuntarily, and his bones let out overburdened "clacking" sounds.

Pale blue electric arcs danced wildly over his black night-suit, and the pungent smell of charred protein filled the air.

The world before him spun and finally turned into total darkness.

White foam mixed with fragments of internal organs gushed from his mouth; his body fell straight backward, slamming heavily onto the floor with a dull thud.

Though not yet dead, his limbs continued to tremble unconsciously in small spasms, like a fish thrown onto the shore, completely stripped of any ability to resist.

The entire hall fell into a deathly silence once more.

If the first incident was a shock, then this time, it was a fear that seeped into the very marrow of their bones.

The guests' terrified gazes slowly moved from the top-tier assassin twitching on the floor amidst wisps of smoke back to the face of the young man on the high platform.

Levi's expression hadn't changed in the slightest from beginning to end.

He didn't even lower his head to spare another glance at the assassin who was less than three steps away.

His gaze calmly swept over every face below the platform, twisted by fear, like a patient teacher explaining classroom discipline to a group of unruly students.

"Now, I shall announce the first rule of the assessment." His voice remained gentle, yet it was like a cold chisel, carving every word clearly into the minds of everyone present. "Unauthorized acts of violence, or any attempt to disrupt the order of the assessment, will be recorded by the system as a serious warning and result in immediate placement on the elimination watch list."

He paused slightly, as if giving everyone time to digest the information.

"Please, everyone, be sure to maintain order. After all, we are all decent people, are we not?"

Humiliation.

This was blatant, undisguised humiliation!

Among the nobles present, which one of them wasn't a local tyrant whose word was law in their own territory?

They were used to using bloodline, status, and powerful force to solve all problems.

But now, they were like a herd of penned livestock, being toyed with at will by a green boy using cold rules.

"Bullshit!"

A thunderous roar broke the suffocating silence.

The Third Elder of the Byron Family, Otto Byron, suddenly stood up from his seat.

He was a burly old man with a beard like steel needles and eyes bloodshot with rage.

As the most valiant member of the family's side branches, he possessed powerful Battle Qi at the Great Knight level, capable of taking on a hundred men on the battlefield.

He could not accept this fate of being caged and slaughtered at will, nor could he endure a junior he viewed as "trash" trampling on the glory of the Byron Family in such a manner.

"You little bastard! Do you think you can scare me with these despicable magical contraptions?" A surging, almost tangible crimson Battle Qi erupted from Otto's body, the powerful air currents making the dining table beside him hum.

He did not choose to attack Levi, nor did he try to take a hostage like that foolish assassin.

His target was the wall!

He would use the fists he took pride in, using the purest violence, to smash this ridiculous cage to pieces!

He wanted everyone to see how fragile these opportunistic tricks were in the face of absolute power!

"The glory of Byron shall not be defiled by the likes of you!"

He roared like an infuriated lion, lunging toward the nearest wall in a single stride.

The wall, covered in exquisite mythological reliefs, seemed as fragile as paper in his eyes.

He condensed all the Battle Qi in his body into his right fist; a blinding red glow lit up on his knuckles, and the air compressed by the wind of his punch let out a sharp sonic boom.

He slammed his fist into it with all his might!

There was no world-shaking boom as expected, nor was there a scene of flying debris.

At the very moment his fist, imbued with all his strength, was about to touch the relief on the wall, the decorative panel carved with the "Ancestors Slaying the Dragon" scene slid inward silently, like a living thing.

What appeared before him was not a solid wall, but a deep, dark aperture.

Inside the aperture, dozens of pitch-black crossbow bolts with tips shimmering with ghostly blue magical light were arranged tightly like a honeycomb, coldly aimed at his face.

Magic-guided Armor-piercing Crossbows! And military-grade at that!

Otto's pupils contracted sharply, a chill of death rushing from his tailbone to the top of his head.

He wanted to pull back his fist, he wanted to retreat, he wanted to activate his strongest protective combat technique.

But it was all too late.

The design of this slaughterhouse simply left him no time to react.

Swish, swish, swish, swish—!

There was no sound of bowstrings vibrating, only a faint, almost inaudible soft click from the magical activation.

Dozens of armor-piercing bolts gushed out from that black hole in an instant, like an infuriated swarm of bees.

The moment the arrows left the crossbow mechanism, the acceleration runes at their tails were activated; their speed broke the sound barrier within 0.1 seconds, leaving visible white airwaves in the air.

Such a close distance, such a dense saturation attack.

Otto's proud Great Knight-level protective Battle Qi, which was enough to withstand a battering ram, was like a thin sheet of window paper before these "monsters" specifically designed to pierce dragon scales and golem armor; it was easily torn apart with a "pfft" sound.

Immediately following was the terrifying sound of countless blades piercing muscle and bone.

His roar stopped abruptly, and his body seemed to be violently pushed backward by an invisible force.

Blood spurted wildly from dozens of holes in his body, staining the wall behind him a shocking dark red.

He looked down in disbelief at his chest, which was completely riddled like a sieve, the last light in his eyes fading rapidly.

"Thud."

The corpse slid limply to the ground with a dull thud, marking an irrefutable end to this bloody lesson in "classroom discipline."

The entire banquet hall was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop.

Everyone's breath hitched.

Looking at the corpse with its eyes still open in death and the ink-blot-like bloodstains, a chill originating from the deepest part of their lives rose from the soles of their feet, freezing every nerve.

Inside the private box on the second floor, Caroline remained seated, motionless, like a perfect statue.

Her eyes, which always carried a hint of laziness and charm, were now as sharp as knives, staring unblinkingly at everything happening below.

From the moment the assassin named Zero was forced to reveal himself to the instant the fool named Otto was shot dead, the entire process took no more than ten seconds.

Efficient, precise, ruthless.

This wasn't a banquet at all, nor was it a demonstration.

It was an execution, precisely calculated and pre-set in every step.

Levi Byron, the young lord described by intelligence as "skilled in business operations but with a combat value of nearly zero," had used a method she had never seen before to show everyone what true "power" meant.

It wasn't the individual heroic courage of a common man, but a kind of... systemic power, the power of rules.

A cold, unquestionable, absolute control that crushed all individual resistance.

Caroline's right hand, which had been resting lightly on her lap, had been quietly withdrawn at some point.

Her hand's original posture was so that she could draw the poisoned dagger from the hidden thigh strap under her skirt within 0.3 seconds.

But now, her fingers curled up involuntarily, her fingertips even feeling a bit cold.

She subconsciously lowered her head, her gaze sweeping over the exquisitely woven Persian Carpet beneath her feet.

By the moonlight filtering through the window and the reflection of the crystal chandeliers below, she could vaguely see that beneath the pattern of the carpet, there seemed to be a faint blue light, identical to the runes on the floor of the hall below.

The frequency of that light's flickering was very low, almost imperceptible, but Caroline's sharp perception caught a detail that made her hair stand on end.

The rhythm of that rune's flickering seemed... to be slightly and synchronously pulsating with the frequency of her own heartbeat.