SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 103: The Assassin’s Preparation

The fairy tale she had just finished reading felt like a total mess. To her, it seemed like a pile of garbage, as if someone had taken a bunch of random, fancy words and shoved them together just to sound deep and philosophical.

It was unnecessarily complex, the kind of writing that tries way too hard to look "cool" but ends up being confusing.

However, despite how much the writing annoyed her, it made her skin crawl in a way she couldn’t ignore.

There was something about it that was more enchanting and magnetic than she wanted to admit.

She didn’t believe for a single second that the story was literally true.

In her new world, things had become so strange lately that almost anything seemed possible, but this book felt different.

It felt like the "truth" of the book was hidden behind a wall of riddles.

It was as if the author had intentionally written it in a confusing way so that the real purpose would stay secret, waiting to be discovered by only a few special people.

She also couldn’t help but think about how much luck, or maybe even fate, was involved in her finding this book.

She stopped to think about the odds.

First, she had ended up with a mysterious key that was supposed to open the tomb of an ancient sage or something like that.

Then, almost immediately after, she found this weird fairy tale that also happened to be about a sage. What were the chances of that happening by accident? It felt like the universe was dropping hints.

She eventually came to the conclusion that the key and the book had to be related.

They were two pieces of the same puzzle, and she was the one who had to figure out how they fit together.

There was so much other knowledge scattered around her in this place, important information that could help Hiroshi outside the dungeon in so many different ways.

But she knew she had to prioritize. Dealing with the strange mystery of the dungeon had to come first. The outside world and its problems would have to wait.

Determined to find the answers, she pushed everything else out of her mind.

She sat down on the floor, cleared her head, and opened the book to the very first page. She began to read the fairy tale again, and then again, over and over, hoping that the confusing words would finally start to make sense.

---

Far away from where Lena sat reading, a different kind of preparation was taking place.

Hidden deep inside a jagged mountain range that most people avoided, where the paths were too steep and the monsters too dangerous, a group had made their camp. They had been there for three days now.

Preparing for maybe the most important and the most dangerous mission of there life.

The cave they used as a base was wide and dry, with a low ceiling that forced the taller ones to hunch their shoulders. A few oil lamps hung from iron hooks hammered into the stone walls. The light they gave off was dim and orange, and it made the shadows in the corners look deeper than they were.

Inside, a group of roughly twenty people moved around in near silence.

These were not soldiers or explorers. They were people who made their living in the shadows.

There were members of the Hollow Seal.

They wore dark, simple gear that didn’t reflect light, and their faces were mostly hidden by hoods and masks. They didn’t talk much, and when they did, it was only in quick, quiet whispers that barely carried across the room.

At the center of the cave, a large wooden table was covered with maps and rough hand-drawn sketches of the surrounding land. One map in particular showed the long winding road that led toward the Borderland.

A tall figure stood at the head of the table, his gloved finger tracing the line of the road.

He wasn’t looking at the landscape. He was looking for the best places to hide.

He stopped his finger at a narrow pass where two cliffs squeezed close together.

"Here," he said. His voice was flat. There was no emotion behind his voice.

The man standing beside him leaned over the table and studied the spot. He had a wide jaw and a scar that ran from his left ear down to his chin. "That’s a tight squeeze. Maybe forty feet across at the narrowest point."

"That’s the point," the tall man said. "Once they’re in, there’s no turning back. The cliffs are too steep on both sides to climb fast. They’d have to push forward or retreat, and either way we’re waiting for them."

The scarred man nodded slowly. "What about his soldiers?"

"They will be taken care of by someone else. That’s all we need to know." The tall man pulled his finger off the map. "Caelum is the only one who matters. The soldiers are just noise."

No one in the room argued with that. They had worked with this man before, and they already knew how he thought. Efficiency above everything else. This guy doesn’t even want to work a second longer than necessary.

In the far corner, one of the younger members of the group was sharpening a long thin blade with a whetstone.

The scraping sound filled the silence in a steady rhythm, like a clock ticking down.

Another person sat near one of the lamps, checking a row of small glass vials filled with a thick green liquid. She held each one up to the light and turned it slowly, checking for cracks or air bubbles.

A man next to her glanced over. "How much do we have left?"

"Enough for the arrowheads and the blades," she said without looking up. "Maybe a little extra."

"Good." He went back to wrapping the grip of his crossbow in fresh leather.

They had been watching Caelum’s movements for weeks.

They used a network of paid informants scattered across several towns, people who knew how to blend in and ask the right questions without raising suspicion. Every few hours a new report would come in, and the pieces had slowly built into a clear picture.

Caelum was heading toward the Borderland.

It was the only logical direction for him to move in, and these people were experts at predicting where someone would go when they were running out of options. The Borderland was the last stretch of territory before things got truly complicated. It made sense that he would try to pass through it.

The leader of the group walked slowly around the table and looked at each person in the room. He didn’t give a long speech. There was nothing to inspire here. These were professionals, and they were being paid well enough that inspiration wasn’t necessary.

"Scouts are already in position," he said. "Tripwires are set at both ends of the pass. The archers have their nests on the upper ridges. The boulders on the north cliff are ready to drop on signal." He paused. "When Caelum enters the pass, we seal both ends first. Then everything else."

He looked around the room one more time. Nobody asked questions.

"Get some rest," he said.

The group broke apart quietly. Some rolled out sleeping mats on the stone floor. Others stayed awake sharpening weapons or checking their gear one more time, unable to sit still.

The man with the scarred jaw lingered at the table for a moment, staring at the map. He placed his finger on the narrow pass and held it there, as if he was trying to feel something through the paper.

"You think he knows?" he asked quietly.

The tall man, who had already started walking toward the back of the cave, stopped but didn’t turn around. "It doesn’t matter if he knows."

"It matters if he prepares."

"Then let him prepare." The tall man finally turned. His face was calm. Not confident in a boastful way, just settled, like a man who had already accepted the outcome. "A man can know a storm is coming and still get wet."

The scarred man said nothing to that.

He pulled his finger off the map and went to find a place to sleep.

The oil lamps stayed lit through the night, burning low and steady. The sharpening had stopped. The vials were packed away. The cave had gone quiet except for the breathing of the people inside it and the faint sound of wind pressing against the mountain outside.

Somewhere far below, the Borderland road sat empty under a dark sky, waiting.

---

Lena turned another page.

The words still didn’t make complete sense to her, but something had shifted. She wasn’t reading it the same way she had the first time. She wasn’t trying to understand every sentence on its own anymore. She was looking for the shape of it, the pattern underneath, the thing the author had hidden in plain sight.

She read a line near the bottom of a page and stopped.

She read it again.

Her finger rested on the sentence, pressing lightly into the paper as if to make sure it stayed there.

Then she noticed something.

She turned back to the beginning and started again.