The inn room was a nice reprieve from the bright lights of the training grounds. Shiina had enough new sensations to deal with. Apparently pain could linger, which was absolute bullshit in her mind. She didn't even HAVE the parts that Zanya had hit anymore but there was a general feeling of pain lingering no matter how much Delilah had healed.

  At least Zanya had needed healing too. Shinna had given the woman a few nice bruises with the practice knife. Sure the warrior had been going easy on her, but any success was good.

  Delilah seemed similarly sore from all the throwing. Shiina had a sneaking suspicion she'd have to learn that too. At least she could experiment with good ways to toss things. Following humanoid examples seemed like a losing game. Especially with their weird eyesight.

  That left Ife as the only person who wasn't hurting. And she was somehow being smug about it without actually acting smug. Shiina was starting to suspect she was a secret princess or something. She was too good at it.

  The fox woman waited until everyone else had found a place to start resting before pulling out a thick envelope from under the bed. "It seems our agents have delivered the information we need."

  Shiina forced herself to slide closer to take a look. The arbiter duo had explained that local agents usually did most of the spying, setup, and cleanup work for assassinations. They would only need to handle the killing. Of course that was the hard part, but having someone else do most of the legwork would help both groups avoid suspicion.

  Ife carefully pulled out the documents and spread them out. "Ah 'wonderful.' This is going to be another runic extraction mission." She showed the platinum orb to the group before handing it to Zanya. "I imagined it would be, but I had hoped otherwise."

  Shiina took a long look at the item as Ife handed it over. It looked kinda like a trap, except the runes were quite different, and there were no fake lines. "So that was made by an archmage?" She could tell it was intricate, but it didn't feel that powerful.

  "Level forty five minimum," Ife replied. "As soon as it hits the ground we all get teleported away, the arbiter symbol is burned into the ground, and that wizard will be the only person who shows up on any divination spells for the killing." She chuckled. "And since they're probably somewhere on the other side of the world that should be the end of matters."

  "It's amazing they'd be willing to spend the time to create magic items for something like this," Delilah said, her eyes flickering over every little spell rune.

  Ife's tail twitched. "They probably only do the enchanting. Have an apprentice spend a few weeks making it then spend two minutes to charge it up and ship it to the Arbiter's headquarters. It's their contribution to keep uncontrolled dungeons from bothering their research."

  "Where will we be targeting it?" Delilah asked quietly as she sat up.

  "Here," Zanya replied. "It'll be easier to clean up the mess, and we can just blame heavy drinking if Shiina's vomit eats through the floorboards."

  Shiina sniffed. "Throwing up is a problem for people who keep their stomachs around when they're not using them." She was not looking forward to the disorientation that apparently accompanied it, but she was pretty sure her biology wouldn't react that violently.

  "So that's our way out," Ife spread out a map of the castle. "And this is our target. The King's bedchambers." She tapped the room that had been circled. "Now to figure out how to approach."

  The map was honestly kinda confusing. There were different floors and then the outside areas, and so many doors and paths, all with names that were probably super important to humans. But Shiina was used to dungeons, where monster population was random.

  Delilah pointed at a section. "Is this a secret passage? If we can get through the traps that would be a good entrance point wouldn't it?"

  "Ooh." A secret passage sounded like a good idea to Shiina. It'd be nice and shadowy, and they'd be able to surprise people on the other side!

  Zanya shook her head. "A good idea, but it'll put us out on the bottom floor. Even if we get past all the alarms we'll need to kill guards along the way. No chance we will avoid being spotted."

  That was too bad. Shiina had hoped for some proper underground infiltration. Well if that was off the table they'd have to try something else.

  She peered at the map again, but the thing just wouldn't process properly in her brain. After a bit she decided to try retreating to novels. "How about the roof? It's closer to the King's chambers and I bet there aren't any guards up there."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Ife grinned. "An interesting idea. But how do you plan to get up there without being noticed? We can't climb up without drawing some attention."

  Shiina got the feeling this was a test or something, so she considered it. "Uh, I can quickly get up there if it's only around fifteen feet. And I can bring one of you. Maybe I can drop a rope down after?"

  "A rope would be too slow," Zanya said. "But that won't be needed. I can make a similar jump while carrying someone. That means we need to find a way to get up in fifteen foot sections. Or about one story each. Think you can pick one out?"

  A pang of despair hit Shiina as she focused again on the map. She tried sticking to the edges, but she had no idea which areas might be guarded. And what windows people might be looking out of. Eventually she gave up. "Um... Help?"

  "Maybe here?" Delilah rushed to her rescue. The half elf pointed at a lighthouse near the seaside wall. "We can use the lighthouse stairs to get up here, then move to the wall. After that we can get to this lower part of the roof and from there to the section that will lead to the King's balcony." Her finger traced the path over the map, the leaps making Shiina's brain spin, but the other two were nodding along.

  "Not a bad plan for a beginner," Zanya said. "Now tell me why it won't work."

  Shiina and Delilah looked at each other. There was nothing in the map that would explain that. Delilah started looking over the documents while Shiina turned to her limited experience. Hopping on the roof worked in all the stories. Most humanoids were bad at looking up, and they didn't want guards wandering around their roofs making noise at night just in case an assassin might one day show up.

  After a moment though the obvious answer hit her. "They've read all the stories too haven't they. There's a trap or alarm on the roof. Something magic."

  "Indeed. Almost certainly an alarm," Ife said with a nod. She tapped her ornate necklace. "I've enhanced my gear so that I can see those alarms from a distance. But if we're jumping up to the roof there's no way we can disarm it before triggering it. So the roof is no good."

  Shiina sighed and looked back at the increasingly annoying map. "So what should we do?"

  "It's a good starting point," Zanya said, patting her on the back. "We just need to change things here. Instead of going to the roof, we use the attic window. That gets us into an underused area of the castle close to our target."

  "That's good, but won't they also have alarms on the windows and balconies?" Shiina asked. It seemed like if you were worried about assassins that would be the best thing to do.

  "Some of the windows, yes," Ife replied as she leaned on her knee. "I'm sure the king has quite the array of defenses, all attuned to him and his family. But the common areas won't be as well warded. The attic for example needs to be cleaned out regularly, which means wards and alarms on the windows aren't worth the expense and maintenance."

  Zanya tapped on the balcony. "Meanwhile this part of the castle doesn't have many good lines of sight to it. Great for avoiding someone shooting your king with an arrow, bad for noticing skilled mimics disabling the magical defenses while being supported from the attic." The woman's slitted eyes turned to her. "You can do that, right Shiina?"

  "Uh, I've never actually disabled an alarm before, but all the materials say it's a lot easier than disabling a trap," Shiina replied. "So I guess I'll be okay?"

  "I'll see about giving you practice," Ife said, waving it off. "After that we cut a hole in the glass doors and shoot King Zyber the fifth until he's dead."

  Delilah looked between them all. "Will it be that easy?"

  "No," both the veterans replied. That was too bad in Shiina's mind. She was hoping for easy.

  Zanya picked up the scout reports. "There will be unforeseen issues, people out of place, and just general problems. We'll have to deal with them as we encounter them. Remember we won't have our luck helping out. Maybe if Shiina went solo she'd be able to get past most of that. But then she'd almost certainly run into something she couldn't get past alone."

  Delilah ran her hands through her hair. "So what's our backup plan?"

  "First we try to handle things quietly and non lethally," Ife replied. "Be civil and polite and pretend we belong. If that fails, kill everyone who tries to stop us and charge the target."

  Shiina gave a weak laugh. It was admittedly a very mimic-like plan. Stealth into overwhelming violence. But given her race's survival time was 'one dungeon run' it was a little worrying. Still she didn't have anything better.

  "But before that, let's do some money earning missions and get Delilah's new staff," Zanya said. "We'll scout the lighthouse after that."

  I imagine some people are wondering how healing magic works on both humanoids and mimics. The answer is simple! Healing magic isn't actually a thing. Standard "healing magic" is actually three different types of spells, depending on what needs to be done.

  Look, Mali made me read a whole book on this for the adventurer test and it wasn't even on the quiz. So you have to suffer too.

  The most basic healing is a spell to close wounds rapidly. Seal the damaged area so blood doesn't pour out. More advanced spells improve the wound closing, and do other useful things like 'remove foreign objects' and 'put bones back in place.' That's all kinda useless for me, but very important for humans.

  The followup spell is throwing magic into the body's natural recovery process in order to fix all the messed up stuff. The body's natural recovery goes into overdrive and finishes the repairs. That's what works on us mimics. We don't need the sealing, but the fixing spell does just fine. It's also why healing can't work after five to ten minutes after the heart stops. There's no natural recovery to help.

  Lastly are poison cures. Sending the body into overdrive can actually be bad against poisons. So instead the usual method is to find something that neutralizes the poison then use magic to target the toxins inside the person to stop the damage. After that you can give the body energy to recover.

  Obviously it gets more complex after that. I hear diseases are a real problem. But those are the basics of healing.

  Stuffman after learning of Shiina's fight with the local rules on women's attire :