It was a Saturday night when Loki suddenly received a call from Harold. The very moment Loki answered the call he heard a shout. 

“Loki they hired an assassin to kill you!” Harold spoke in a panic. Loki’s ears hurt a bit as he placed the phone in his ear when Harold suddenly shouted. 

“Slow down Harold, once you calm yourself tell me what you want to tell me properly.” 

Loki waited patiently for Harold to calm down, he even started to think if he should just go to Harold’s place. It took a bit of time, but Harold was finally able to calm himself down. 

“Alright, have you calmed down?” 

“Yes,” Harold answered still sounding a bit rattled but overall better than before. 

“So what was it that you wanted to tell me.”

“While I was looking at the accounts of the remaining big bosses in the city, I noticed that all of them lost quite a sum of money and it happened at the same time. I was curious to see what happened so I checked to see what happened to the money. It took a bit of effort, but these bosses or those they hired weren’t really able to avoid my detection, once I successfully took a look where all the money went I was shocked. These bosses actually hired an assassin that is named in the dark rankings to kill you.” 

“Oh, is that so… Wait for me I’ll head to your place right now, so you can tell me more about this.” 

…

Harold waited for Loki to arrive in his room and as he waited he got a little bit worried. He was sure that there was no way that someone was able to notice his relationship with the assassin Fade, even the Eye of Truth wasn’t able to figure that out. 

‘It’s alright, as long as no one guesses who Fade truly is, then I’m safe…’ 

Harold then pulled out the gun hidden under his table. He bought this gun on the dark web a few weeks ago. It was a modified gun that could harm martial artists, holding the handle was able to calm Harold down. 

“Hey,” Harold was startled as he pointed the gun from where he heard the voice. As he was about to pull the trigger, he no longer felt the gun in his hand. He then saw Loki holding it and looking at him with a stern expression. 

“You do know this isn’t a toy?” Loki took out the gun’s magazine and tossed it back to Harold. 

“I know, I bought it to protect myself.” Harold caught the gun and placed it back in the hidden compartment under his table. 

“Well, I guess if it’s for self-defense… We’ll talk about that at a later date, for now, tell me more about that assassin from the Dark Rankings, actually before that tell me what is the Dark Rankings?” 

“The Dark Rankings is a ranking system for assassins. It was created years ago by the government of various countries, it was originally a list of the best assassins that these countries could not catch. Nowadays people use it to see which assassin is the best to hire. The ranking starts at the lowest which is ranked five hundred and the highest is technically ranked one, but there is an urban legend that there is a number zero.” 

“Hmm, how good are the assassins in these Dark Rankings?” 

“The people in the rankings are the best of the best, the weakest one could easily kill many rank five martial artists without being seen. The ones at the very top could kill peak Grandmasters.” 

“They’re that good… Wait, since there’s a ranking like this, is Fade in the rankings?” 

When Harold heard Loki’s question he awkwardly smiled as he scratched his head. After a short pause, he finally answered. 

“Umm… Truth be told, Fade isn’t in the rankings.” 

“Huh?” Seeing the weird expression on Loki’s face, Harold quickly shook his hands. 

“It’s not because you’re not a good assassin or anything. The only way to get into the rankings is if you have targetted Martial Artists Rank five and above, and not just once you must’ve done it numerous times. Since the only ones you’ve killed were mostly non-martial artists your skills aren’t really being appreciated and you won’t get into the rankings. The only other way to enter the rankings is if you kill an assassin in the Dark Rankings.” 

“Hoh is that so… Do you know who they hired and what rank that person is in the Dark Rankings?” 

“Don’t underestimate me, while waiting for you to arrive, I did some digging around. The Government has detailed files for every assassin in the Dark Rankings, and those assassins that were ranked three hundred and lower had their information practically out in the open. As for the higher-ranking assassins, it would take me quite some time before I can retrieve them.”

“Won’t the Government notice you accessing those files?” 

“They won’t… Now if it were the files from the assassins ranked above three hundred then I might’ve made a mistake and it could have been possible to trace me, but the file I took was easy enough to access that I didn’t make any mistakes.” 

“So I guess the ones those bosses hired was a low-ranked assassin in the Dark Rankings?” Loki frowned as he felt that he was being underestimated. 

“Not really, and don’t sound so disappointed. Hiring an assassin from the Dark Ranking requires an astronomical amount of money. I heard that those rank one hundred and higher require you to pay more than what a small country earns in a year. Then there are those in the top ten, you can’t hire them with money, they are said to need something else as payment. As for the one hired to kill you, it’s this guy.”

Harold pointed at one of his monitors. The picture on the monitor was that of a nicely dressed man wearing a tuxedo. The man was rather handsome with grey hair and blue eyes, he looked like a mature gentleman in the picture. 

“This man is John Ray, also known as ‘The Elegant Scorpion’. He’s ranked three hundred and two in the Dark Rankings. His total known kill count is one hundred ninety-nine. Surprisingly his weapon of choice isn’t poison-related, but his customized sniper rifle that he named the Scorpion.. His most famous kill was of a martial arts genius that was supposed to participate in the famous decade tournament.”