With every Skill he had acquired naturally, Rudeus didn't gain any new knowledge. It was just that his previous experience was condensed and the proper way to perform what he intended was solidified.

However, the Skill he acquired from consuming the Skill Crystal had come with a flood of new information and experience.

Unfamiliar thought zapped across his brain, blurry and indistinct memories were being implanted into his mind, sending jolts down his nerves.

Concealment. A Skill that was Job locked to Assassin.

He instinctively knew what it could do, more deeply than he had merely read about, and exactly how to use it.

By focusing within his body, he became aware of every one of his minute, unconscious, actions and movements.

He could feel his blood pumping through his veins, his muscles twitching beneath his skin, and his bones and joints shifting with his center of balance.

He could feel the air circulating in his lungs, his eardrums beating as they received vibrations, and the way each strand of his hair was being moved by the air.

He could feel the pressure of sound and light, from the crackling torch, as they brushed against his skin and were reflected or absorbed. He could feel the difference in the internal temperature of his organs.

He could feel the Mana drifting in and out of his body.

And everything he could feel, he could slow down to an unbelievable level. If he did so, he would become completely invisible to the naked senses.

His presence would just melt away as if he wasn't there.

Of course, he also knew that he would have to expel all his unprocessed oxygen, he wouldn't even be able to move a single muscle, or use any of his senses.

It would be like being paralyzed in a sense deprivation chamber without being able to breathe.

That was how to use the Skill in his physical body anyway, it was a bit different with his magical information.

There were no detrimental downsides to concealing his Mana, aside from a slight hitch in spell casting as it would need to pass through a thin barrier.

If he didn't care about maintaining the Skill over his Mana, then he could just shoot straight through it and the forming spell would cancel out the Skill.

Finally, the last use of the Skill was pretty simple. It could conceal information on his Status Card.

This one use was a lot more hazy in his head, but what he was sure about was that when the Card scanned his body to display his current self, the Skill could hide some stuff from being detected.

Rudeus did get a small migraine as he unraveled the new information in his mind, and even after confirming that he wasn't delusional, he still didn't understand how he had acquired this Skill.

'Was it a bug? Is that possible? The books claim that a group of Great Gods created this System, and I doubt glitch would only be discovered now after 200,000 years. Unless it was breaking down over time? That's unlikely.'

The Concealment Skill was still displayed on his Status Card, he could hide and unhide it with just a bit of Mana.

'So it probably wasn't a random bug, but what could have caused this? It's a Job locked Skill, is it because I'm Jobless? I can see that being in the title or summary of an Isekai: I'm Jobless and a bug lets me learn the Skills from all the Jobs!'

Rudeus sighed at his own thoughts.

'I wish that was the case, but I highly doubt it. There has to be a few rich nobles out there feeding their children Skill Crystals, if it was a bug, it'd be widely known. So, that leaves only one explanation: n%I=WX.'

When he had died back on Earth, and was stuck in a black void, he had suddenly heard a voice.

It wasn't identifiable to him at the time, but when his lack of cheats in this life became clear, the words he had heard would become clear in his mind a cold feminine voice, and he remembered them as mockery now.

The voice had first declared a start to a scan, and then it detected the Skill: n%I=WX, and halted a 'Soul Cleanse', then it failed to detect 'Prior Skills'.

At first, he didn't understand it, but it became clear to him what that meant.

In his memories, the Skill: n%I=W had come from an isekai series he had read, unfortunately he couldn't recall which one, regardless of that, he did remember its purpose.

It was given to the reincarnators so that they could be integrated into the native System of the new world, and it enabled them to keep their talents, memories and their souls intact after being reborn.

He kept his memories of his old life, and most likely his soul too, and yet he didn't have any talents to keep in the first place.

He didn't have any abilities in his old life that would assist him in this new life. The constant reminder of how worthless he had previously been ate away at him when he had nothing else to do.

Rudeus filled his time with training and training, ignoring every inconsequential event in favor of training. If he was strong, if he had power, if he could do something, if he could accomplish something, then he would have worth.

He would be needed, he would be wanted.

Rudeus grabbed his head, a wave of dizziness almost caused him to stumble forward. The influx of knowledge had been tainted with lingering emotions, and a drive that was similar to his own.

The Assassin, Polly, had a singular motivation attached to the Skill, and if he focused he could decipher what that was. To not be abandoned. To not be left behind.

The one Skill he had before being reborn, n%I=WX, allowed him to transfer his mind and soul into a new body without issue.

A Skill Crystal was dropped from a departing soul, it had previously been a part of a person's soul.

'Whatever n%I=WX, it probably helped transfer that sliver of a soul into my own. That was the only thing that made sense. And it's probably responsible for these lingering feelings that are confusing me.'

Rudeus' mind was swimming with the thoughts he normally kept to his bed right before he fell asleep, even though he had no goal, a refusal to end up like his past self was pushing him forward.

He tried not to think about that, mostly because it only served to make him depressed, and he shouldn't be feeling that way since it had previously ruined his life.

Whenever he felt saddened or lifeless, he would force himself to ignore those thoughts and to do something else to distract him. So he trained.

He trained his magic, his mind, his body.

He trained until he vomited, until he passed out, until he bled and couldn't heal himself any more.

For years he trained mechanically and suppressed his depression, and then that endless cycle was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of an energetic boy.

Rudeus didn't have to spar with him, and he didn't need to do so until they reached their limits, but he had fun.

Swords clashed, he won, he lost, he kept going at it until his opponent was out of energy, and then he waited for the next day to clash again.

The sparring wasn't meant to take up a few hours, he was supposed to be training his magic, but he would rather train with a sword. He wasn't going to be a melee fighter, so advancing any further than the basics should be worthless to him.

But the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, they all melted away when he was sparring.

His sparring partner was dead.

Rudeus almost vomited as the stench of a burning corpse was mixing in with the metallic scent of blood wafting through the dark cave he was in. The air around had become filthy.

The nearby sewage tunnels should've smelled worse, but for some reason it wasn't even a competition, the fresh corpses smelled worse by magnitudes.

"We have to l-leave."

His words sounded distant, his hearing was muffled and the air was making him sick. Even after casting Healing and Detoxification, he still felt sick.

Daisy, the sister of his sparring partner, had suddenly appeared and killed somebody. And as a byproduct, had saved his life.

"Daisy, we have to go."

His life had been saved by her, he couldn't just leave her behind. And it wasn't just gratitude that was leading his thoughts, but rather he didn't feel safe to walk away from her.

Even though she was a young girl, she had surprised and killed an adult and then started to cradle her brother's decapitated head. There was an air about her that promised death to anyone who approached her.

Rudeus felt his heart stop as pitch black eyes glared at him, seemingly asking him why he was still alive. Her body hunched over slightly.

The head of a young boy rolled on the stone ground, a sudden gust of wind caused the flames of the torch to flicker.

A portion of the light from the torch was eclipsed by a speeding shadow, and that was his only warning.

He didn't have even a second, there wasn't enough time to spread out his Mana for a calculated miscast.

Death was almost upon him, but she wasn't a professional or even trained, not to his knowledge anyway, so that could only mean that she was a natural born predator, an instinctual killer.

That meant she didn't have a style, there was no art to her moves, she simply attacked where she would kill her target.

Fortunately, for him, humans had pretty symmetrical vital points, and two major locations that meant a near-instantaneous death if they took enough damage.

For an instinctual killer, Daisy would aim for a sure-hit kill without giving him any room to dodge or evade. So that meant her target would probably be his heart. It was only protected by a layer of cloth and some pretty thin bones.

It was also the easiest to reach with her height.

If she had educated on major blood vessels, then things might have been different.

Rudeus opened his mouth to say something, and he swung his staff up as the shadow of death descended upon him.

The glint of a dagger had reached the elbow of his extended arm.

The steel tipped end collided with a small girl's chin.

He thanked the fact that he possessed a longer weapon and that he had longer arms.

Daisy was just a year younger than him, at eight, but she was pretty small for her size. He had previously seen her claiming to be full as she gave half of her meals to her brother.

She only ever ate enough to survive, and Luke had unknowingly been eating enough to grow as he burned through calories day after day..

The sound of cracking bones and the crunch of broken teeth echoed with the cave.

The small killer's eyes had gone wide as she spat out blood while falling, but then her eyes narrowed as he steadied herself with her lower jaw hanging loose.

"Daisy, we have to leave before the friends of these people come by."

His words caused a visible change in her. Her black eyes, bottomless voids that threatened to consume the world, burned a vibrant red. A crimson glow that promised a massacre.

Rudeus had known he couldn't dissuade her from killing him or persuade her to leave, but he did know that compared to a directly involved cause or her brother's death, he was of a lower importance.

"I'm sorry. I… couldn't protect him. I understand that, even though it wasn't official, he was technically my party member, and his death is my responsibility. And I can't let you die too."

Her eyes burned brighter and she focused on him as he spoke.

"But… I can tell that this wasn't enough, that you won't stop until you murder the people that had your brother killed for stepping foot here. And if that's really the case, then I owe it to Luke to make sure you don't die, so I'll back you up."

He really hoped that by giving her another target, a nebulous group that was pulling the strings, that she would eventually forget about her desire to kill him.

"Who? Who's responsible for this?"

'Why are you asking me that!? I don't know! I barely got here. Breath, think. This is a Dungeon connected to the town, and guarded by Assassins, who were probably level boosted too, so maybe there's a monster farm here. Regardless, it probably has connections to the criminal elements here.'

"Answer me."

'I haven't heard of any crime families or gangs. I think bandit camps are pretty common around here, but those are mostly ten people at most. That's not enough meat shields for me, so I'll just pull something out my ass.'

"It's… probably the Demon King's Cult."

In this isekai world, he had noticed something relatively unusual, the existence of multiple beings classified as 'Demon Lords', and only one being classified as the 'Demon King'.

Guduranis, a being who suddenly invaded here from another world 800,000 years ago and caused untold destruction, and then in response the Great Gods created the Hero System to help the natives fight back.

The Demon King was defeated, his soul was said to be destroyed, and his body was reduced to mere fragments before being sealed away.

Thousands of years passed, and the Heroes descendants inherited the System and caused it to evolve into something that even artisans could use.

And as time went by the seals placed on the body fragments degraded and broke down, the freed body parts had mutated over time and cried out for their soul.

The Demon King's Fragments infected other beings and drove them to collect more Fragments, in the hope that regaining a body would cause his soul to return.

That was how the Job: Demon Lord was first created, but as time passed and the Fragments were dealt with, the Job was then synonymous with great power, brutal massacres, and unending desires.

Soon, even beings without Fragments were becoming Demon Lords.

And in response to someone acquiring the Job: Demon Lord appearing, someone else, their natural enemy, would also acquire the Job: Hero.

Heroes were capable of destroying the souls of Demon Lords, and they possessed Legendary, and sometimes even Mythical, Skills from birth.

An example of a Legendary Skill, was Sword Summoning.

"I know that Luke had the Sword Summoning Skill, and that meant he was probably a Hero, if someone else had discovered and told the wrong person. Then it's likely the Cult of the Demon King had heard about him and waited until he was vulnerable away from any witnesses."

Luke had just casually showed off his Skill during their first spar, but since he didn't have a Status Card, he didn't know the name of it.

So, Rudeus had eventually allowed him to use his, and they saw the name of the Skill together. He had done some research into it, which had led him down the path of studying Heroes and Demon Lords.

Which was why he hadn't claimed it was the work of a Demon Lord's Cult, but rather the Demon King's Cult, all the current Demon Lord were identified and being tracked. If they had influence nearby, people would know.

So he had to make up an invisible enemy, but with a reasonable explanation.

"They plan on reviving the Demon King by collecting enough Fragments, and they fear Heroes more than anyone else. They don't operate out in the open, and have hid themselves for since his death and have been waiting. I have only heard rumors about them from passing Adventurers who don't believe they exist."

He tried to cover as many bases as he could without making it sound like he was lying.

"I see…"

Daisy went silent as her eyes continued to burn.

'Is she buying it? Damn, I can't tell. And I can't put my guard up or else she'll be less likely to believe me.'

The sound of footsteps approaching broke the tension in the air.

A man with messy hair cut short and dressed in leather and patchwork iron walked into the cave from the opposite side holding a lantern and lugging a large gray sack.

"Whu?"

The man appeared as an almost stereotypical bandit.

"Daisy, don't be fooled! I can tell from his Mana that he's not a regular bandit! There's something dark mixed in, he's probably a cultist scout in disguise!"

Rudeus lacked the ability to sense a person's Mana from across a room, he hadn't really trained that Skill beyond sensing his own.

Still, he aimed his staff at the man.

Cultist or not, bandit or not, he had to die for Daisy to not find any holes in his lie.

"O' great fae of the wind, I ask thee to take aim and shatter all sounds with your screams! Sonic Blast!"

Rudeus shouted extremely loud, hoping to drown out any utterance form the man that would create doubt in Daisy. Which was also the reason he had selected this spell.

A violent wind converged on the tip of his staff, and then a condensed shockwave shot forward towards the man. It only had enough concussive force to send the man back a few feet, but the sound of it being fired caused a storm of sonic screams to echo with this small cave.

Every other sound was drowned out and the man was disoriented, by the time he came back to his senses, there was a dagger in his throat.

"Every last one of you Demon King's Cultist scum will die by my blade."

Daisy's voice carried an unwavering conviction

'She believed it!'

Rudeus sighed in relief. He tried to deal with the ringing in his ear, and as he was doing that, he heard a bloody cough.

He realized a second after that Daisy hadn't immediately killed the man, and instead stood over his dying body and listened to his final words.

Red eyes turned back to look at him.

It would probably take two seconds for her to cross the distance and attack.

But if he put his guard up she would consider him an enemy, if she already didn't.

"Let's go." She pulled her dagger out of the man's neck and his body fell limply by her feet. She then took a step over the corpse and deeper into the Dungeon.

'That's a relief, but also, that dagger… I haven't seen it before today, and it's an unusual black color and design, it's not a normal weapon. Didn't she have two? But she didn't have any when she was holding her brother's head, then she had one when she attacked me, could it be…?'

"Wait, Daisy, let's think this through, deeper inside is probably their base here, and they probably planted more bandits to disguise their actions. We're still kids, our only chance of victory comes from sneak attacks."

Rudeus grabbed the unharmed cloak off a burned corpse and put it on.

"Daisy, there is probably someone who will run, and we can't let them know our faces or else we will be hunted down by the Cult. If we want to kill them all, we need to conceal our identities."

'Well, this is mostly so other bandits don't see our faces, if they escape they could spread word and then the more people will get involved. I'm not lying, just replacing bandits with a cult.'

"I see…"

Daisy walked over to the other corpse, the one she first killed, and ripped off their cloak. A small card bounced off the corpse.

He walked over and picked it up.

[Last Recorded Entry]

[Name: Neddy - Race: Human - Job: Assassin LV80]

[HP: 0/310 - SP: 0/290 - MP: 0/60]

[STR: 94 - AGI: 99 - CON: 30 - MGI: 55 - LUK: 80]

[Skills: Assassinate LV4 - Concealment LV4 - Dagger Proficiency LV7 - Kinslayer LV5 - Lock Picking LV2 - Stealth LV6 - Trap Detection LV5]

'A LV80 Assassin, and the Skills are a bit better, and the attributes are a lot better except for CON. A glass cannon assassin makes sense. This one was probably the leader… —They're together in death now.'

A migraine made him flinch, and he got the sudden inexplicable feeling that the person he had killed didn't mind dying.

'More importantly, I have to get the bandit's card before Daisy checks it.'

Rudeus quickly searched the bandit, but he didn't find a Status Card.

'Well, they can't use it at any legal locations, so maybe they don't carry it with them.'

While searching, he also checked the gray sack, and he found packages of powder folded inside paper. Nothing of immediate value, so he burned it along with the corpse.

Any magic he used to hide the corpses would be discovered by a mage or scout, so he would rather use them to send an obvious message.

"Let's go."

A black cloaked figure with glowing red eyes suddenly appeared next to him.

"Yeah, let's go."

Rudeus managed to suppress his surprise and followed Daisy deeper into the Dungeon.

He took one final glance around the cave, four corpses were there. Three unfamiliar people, and Luke.

Luke, his sparring partner, an energetic young boy who would probably have become a renowned Hero and slayed a Demon Lord in a better world.

But his story ends here, killed in an unknown Dungeon by an unknown assailant.

'I hope your next life is better. I'll watch out for your sister for a while, but I'm not promising any miracles.'

This was all he could do.

AN: Everything mentioned has a point, it's all intentional and building up to something later.

Trust me man, I get burned out of this genre a lot, especially with all the newer slop being pumped out. It's the entire reason I even wanted to write this story.

I wanted a reprieve from all the overpowered/betrayed/hidden skill/denser than steel, MCs.

Unfortunately, when you're burned out, even the little tropes in great stories are hard to stomach.

There's nothing good that comes from forcing yourself to enjoy something when you don't feel like it, just take a while and let it go.