"Night Crow" was one of many hidden organisations working inside the shadows of the Brightshine kingdom. There were quite a few organisations like this but even among them, the Night Crow was exceptional.
They only accepted jobs from wealthy individuals like nobles and large marchants. They also had a very good reputation in the market for their efficiency.
As for their scope of work, it was very varied. They did everything from assassination, regular spywork, kidnapping etc. to petty stealing, threatening and such.
Their approch to their task was also very varied. They not only have a single kind of assassin or thieves but had various kinds with many different expertises.
This allowed them to choose the perfect candidate for each jobs. One part of this organisationa also had very good honey trap users which was a very effective method for both spying and assassination.
With all these good points, even among the organisations of similar kind, the reputation of the Night Crow was specially good. The reason for that was their very high success rate and the incredible strength of the leaders of this organisation.
Most dark organisations like this did not have even a single official knight. Some that have one only had knights who were either injured or old.
But that was not the case for the Night Crow. The people working for them were all healthy and in their prime. Which made them one of the strongest hidden organisations of this kingdom.
Not only that but they also had not just one or two but a total of 9 offical knights working for them. This did not make them strong enough to become a large scale organisation that even the kingdom would be fearful of, but this at least made them to be top ranking amongst the smaller and medium scale ones.
From all this information, this organisation seemed to be at its prime but actually that was not the case. Currently this organisation was in a decline.
Their current strongest member was barely just a mid grade knight, while in the past the Night Crow even had a powerful half step grand knight.
...
In a dark room located under a liquor shop, a very important meeting was taking place. There were a total of six participants of this meeting and all of them were giving off the aura of a knight.
This was a hidden base of the Night Crow and the knights present here were the leaders of the organisation. This meeting was happening because they had suddenly gotten work from three of their most valuable customers all at once.
"Richard, even though Baron Tomha do not have much land under his control, he still have connection with several rich merchants from the capital city. That connection can be very beneficial for us. So I think giving his job a priority will be a wise decision."
"Shut up Ronan. Hmph. I know that you have a good relationship with that baron and he had even allowed his wife to sleep with you. That's why you're speaking so much on his behalf.
The merchants of the capital are all wolves and they would not think twice before throwing an insignificant baron like him to the fire. So prioritising his job in order to make good relationship with merchants is useless. It will be very a unstable and risky move."
As two of the participants were quarreling, the host of this meeting, Richard was just listening to them without saying anything. The remaining three participants were also silent.
As the quarrel was about become violent, Richard released a bit of his suppressed aura and that immediately made the two knights to freeze up.
Richard was a mid level official knight and the current head leader of the Night Crow. He was also well respected among most of the members.
After silencing the two knights Richard spoke up -
"We are not going to prioritise any of the jobs but are going to concentrate on all of them equally. The work has been a bit dry recently, so we can afford some extra manpower for these important tasks."
Hearing this, all the other knights nodded their heads. Richard had a very good head on his shoulder, much better than the other knights present here. So all of them respected the decision that he made as the leader and followed it.
After making his decision about this matter, he looked at one of the silent knight named Karl and gave him an order.
"Karl, you will be in charge of a new job that we have just gotten from count Falgur. This task should be an easy one, so I'm hoping that you will not take too much time with it and will also get good results. As soon as you're done with it, return immediately and help with the other tasks."
Hearing the order, Karl nodded his head and grinned. Then he asked Richard about more details regarding this task.
The Night Crow had a lot of members who were not even knights apprentices but just regular people. They were scattered throughout this whole nation in various places. This way, the Night Crow had access to a lot of information from many parts of this kingdom.
But still, this method was limited to only notable areas. There was no sane person who would sent their men to insignificant places with no importance. So there were a still quite few areas where the Night Crow had no reach.
The count had given then the task to scout and investigate one such area called the Souran Village and the noble ruling over it. It was the territory of a small baron which was located in quite a harsh and dangerous place.
With this being such a remote location, the Night Crow had no one even close to that area. So to investigate it, they needed to send people there. And Rechard was giving this task to Karl, a knight with specially high combat strength.
Hearing the details of the job, Karl's face twisted in displeasure. With his strength, he had thought that he would be given a task where he would need to fight and kill a lot of enemies. But actually his task turned out to be a boring scouting mission.
Seeing the displeasure on Karl's face, Richard continued speaking with a slight smile on his face. The next words that he said made Karl's displeasure to vanish and his face to lit up.
"Other than doing the investigation, you need to be in lookout for anyone dangerous in that village. Use your own judgement and kill any person like that."