I Can Contract Beauties-Chapter 249: Crimson Mercenary

The leader of the Crimson Mercenary squad was called Valen. He has long red hair with a single long scar on his cheek that extends all the way to his neck.

Holding a knife between his hands, Valen led his squad and entered the Ashen Ember with cruelty in their eyes.

Their goal for today was pretty simple.

Kill at least three members of the Ironclad Mercenary and then retreat.

He did not care about the beast that Cedric had commissioned. A measly 2000 Gold Coin reward was not worth the whole squad’s effort.

The irreconcilable grudge he had toward the Ironclad Mercenary was deep rooted and originated back when he was still a member of the famous squad.

Back then, he was still young and full of ambitions. Due to some conflict, he was forced to leave the Ironclad and started his own squad, making it into one of the famous squads in Blazing Expanse just like the Ironclad.

Due to the nature of their work, the Ironclad and the Crimson have a lot of skirmishes, big and small. Still, they had never gone into an all out war, as both squads knew that they could not best the other without paying a price.

However, all hell broke loose when the two squads met once more during a commission almost a month ago.

...

"Slow down and check the surroundings. Do not let your guard down," seething with rage, Valen ordered with a commanding tone as they entered Ashen Ember.

As a leader of a well-known mercenary group, Valen was not only fierce, he was also smart.

For example, he knew that this could have been an elaborate trap to kill him and his members. However, he also knew that this was their only chance to catch the Ironclad Mercenary off-guard.

Behind him, almost forty Crimson Mercenary members began to spread out. Most of them were recently recruited, and most of them, the Ironclad Members did not know about yet.

With such a line-up, will the twenty-member Ironclad Mercenary even stand a chance.

Who cares if this was a trap or not? With enough man power and strength, all traps were meaningless.

Ahhhhh!!

Valen stopped on his tracks as he heard a shrill cry echoing in the silent Ashen Ember. His head turned toward the direction of the scream. A scowl appeared on his face realizing that the direction came from one of the Crimson Mercenary that had just started to spread out.

"Check it out," he said toward another member.

Ahhh-

And yet before that member could take two steps, another shrill scream resounded, this time, from another location.

The scream of utter terror resounded and abruptly stopped at the next moment as if it had never happened in the first place.

A thud echoed and the Ashem Ember grew silent once more.

All of them froze as the bizarre situation ensued around them.

Gripping the knife tightly, Valen summoned his grimoire after a few seconds of channeling. The pages flipped on its own and his hand landed on the second page. The grimoire glowed for a brief moment before a humongous beast materialized in front of him.

Not only him, the other members of his group also took one summoning crystal after the other, summoning their beasts as they responded to the unknown horror that plagued their mind.

Those martial artists who don’t have a summoning crystal gripped their weapons tightly in their hand as they looked in a certain direction in utter horror.

Due to the lights produced by the summoning, the Ashen Ember was briefly illuminated.

The smog was still thick as it can be, but a dozen meters away, a vague silhouette of a thin man could be seen standing with confidence.

All of their gaze focused on that silhouette, horror gripped their mind as they realized that they could not sense the other party, even though they could perfectly see the silhouette ahead of them.

It was as if it was there, and at the same time, it was not. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"Who are you?" Valen asked warily, his voice echoed in the silent surroundings.

He was extremely familiar with the Ironclad Mercenary and their abilities, and he sure damn hell knew that this vague and bizarre silhouette did belong to any of them.

Instead of answering, the silhouette only chuckled before it dissipated like smoke.

"My Rapier Snake can’t sense him," one of the crystal summoners hissed in horror as he said out loud.

His Rapier Snake was a master of detection. Even Bran, the famous assassin of Ironclad Mercenary would be detected easily by his snake. As long as the target has body-heat, then his snake could detect all creatures without fail. From the moment he obtained this snake, this was the first time that something like this has occurred.

Hearing that, Valen also frowned. He had already been here in Ashen Ember countless times, but this was the first time that he encountered such a bizarre situation.

"Stay calm and be wary of your surroundings. Report immediately if you notice something suspi-"

His words were cut short by another shrill scream that echoed in the distance.

This time, Valen and a lot of others saw with their own eyes how everything happened.

The vague silhouette appeared once again, this time, right beside one of the Crimson Mercenary members. Before that person could react, the silhouette stabbed that person’s throat with its own hands.

That member was only able to scream for a brief moment before his words were cut short, followed by the splattering of blood. His body then swayed as it began to limp and dropped to the ground with a thud.

Everyone widened their eyes in horror.

"Attack!"

Valen’s voice rang through their ears, waking them up from their stupor. His beast, a massive hound with the color of crimson howled and pounced forward.

The mysterious silhouette was indeed horrifying and bizarre. However, the mercenary squad had faced their fair share of troubles and dangers as well.

Something like this, would only be able to stump them for a moment.

After they recovered their demeanor, everyone immediately attacked the silhouette with rage burning through their eyes.

The silhouette chuckled, in a hysterical manner, before it disappeared right in front of their eyes, once more.