Red Storm

Bang.

In the end, he could not hold back his anger and hit the table really hard. Something completely unexplainable had happened.

“And then?”

“Master and the S-grade assassins were killed on the spot and they let me go according to the promise......”

“This... this unbelievable thing ......”

Shaone’s body started to shake.

It was a job that he expected his subordinate to easily complete and return. He had even prepared that official position that his subordinate had wanted for so long, but one of his best subordinates was killed without producing any results.

‘He was still someone who dedicated his life to me. Just that reason alone is enough to call it a loss.’

This subordinate had thrown away his pride as a master of a guild in order to keep the organization from falling apart for his benefit.

Thinking that to be the reason Master sent this man in front of him back even though he could no longer be an assassin, Shaone was full of emotions.

‘I want to get revenge for myself as well as for him. But isn’t this a really bad time for it right now?’

If Shaone took a bunch of troops and left the border, he would set Pareia’s first oasis on fire and release poison so that the oasis would not be usable for many years. That is what he wanted to do. However, this was not a good time to do that.

The neighboring Rojini Kingdom had stationed all of their available troops on the border to the Silence Empire. In addition, Rojini’s allies and its subservient kingdoms were sending reinforcements as well.

The Silence Empire was currently putting all of their troops in that direction as well. They were at a point where other than the minimum required to protect the city and the capital, the rest of the troops could not be moved.

Until now, there were really no good ideas other than using the assassin guild or mercenaries.

However, even with Master personally taking the S-grade assassins with him, he failed to assassinate a single person. So what else could he do?

Seeing Shaone contemplating, the man who reported the situation cautiously asked.

“I want to get revenge.”

Shaone lifted up his head and sharply asked.

“How? You are going to succeed where Master failed? How would you do that?”

“We infiltrated successfully. Our plan was perfect as well. We only failed because three of the mercenaries protecting him were skilled enough to fight against Master one on one. Even if I cannot manage to kill them, we can cause damage to their tribe.”

Shane started to lean in at the man’s answer.

“Tell me your plan.”

“Those bastards are building something right now. I can interrupt their construction.”

He had heard that Pareia had started to build a castle from a spy. For them, the Silence would be the people who killed their parents.

Shaone knew about that fact but had no way to do anything right now. Pareia had started to build this castle at the worst possible time for the Silence Empire.

‘They were smart for being barbarians of the desert.’

That was what Shaone was thinking internally as he gestured the man to continue.

“We will not aim for the warriors. Instead, we will assassinate the construction workers one by one.”

“The workers... it should have a large impact.”

Shaone quickly understood what the man was trying to do. If you instill fear in the hearts of the workers, it would be easy to cause havoc.

Since they would not be assassinating any specific person, even if there were ten master-class warriors and not three, they would not be able to stop all of the assassins and the number of workers will slowly decrease. So wouldn’t this be the most effective disruption plan? They didn’t even need S-grade assassins. Even general assassins would be able to leave enough destruction with this plan.

Shaone wondered why he did not come up with such a simple plan on his own as he started to speak.

“Can you move the guild in Master’s place?”

“That was the reason Master chose to send me back alive.”

“Mm.”

Shaone made a noise as he started to think about the man’s answer before starting to speak again.

“Alright. I will give you the strength to do it. You might be in danger if you go back like this, so I will give you some protection. Cause as much chaos as you want. Calm Master’s soul and make me happy.”

“I have received your command.”

“I am someone who believes in properly rewarding successes. Depending on how well you succeed, I will give you what I promised to give Master.”

The man’s eyes started to sparkle. He remembered what his teacher and Guild Master had discussed in front of himself as well as the other S-grade assassins.

- We will now be able to proudly stand in the sun. We do not have to live in fear anymore while taking individual contracts for assassinations. We will be assassins hired by the Empire. It is for that reason that I put the fate of the guild and myself on the line. I would like for all of you to join me.

Nobody opposed the decision. The hope of going out into the sun. That alone was enough. Furthermore, the person that was offering it was someone who really had enough influence to truly lift the entire guild into the sun. As Master had described, Shaone was cruel and cold, but his words carried significant weight.

“I will put my body and soul on the line to complete this task and show my loyalty to you.”

Shaone just sat there looking through the files on the table as he had finished what he had to say.

“I was worried. What took you so long?”

Yulian asked Haisha, as well as the rest of the Red Storm, lead warriors, and shamans who returned separately from the rest of the brigade that was sent to protect Edwin.

The Red Storm cherished their personal time a lot, but they were all warriors who would always put orders above their own desires. That was why Yulian knew that something must have gone wrong for them to unexpectedly return late like this.

Once Haisha reported everything to Yulian, Yulian quickly started to ask while turning pale.

“So is Shubeon safe?”

Haisha looked toward the cart behind him and answered.

“He has not recovered all of his strength yet. The shamans have made him some medicine to eat. They say that he will slowly recover his strength.”

Yulian did not say anything else as he ran over to the cart and opened the door. A shabby looking Shubeon turned his head to look at Yulian.

“G...low.”

Shubeon called out to Yulian and tried to sit up, but his body was shaking and he could not put any strength into his arm.

“Shubeon, stay down.”

Yulian lightly pressed down on both of Shubeon’s shoulders as he told him to lay down. This put a bitter taste in Shubeon’s mouth.

“This is so embarrassing... I did not want to show myself like this in front of the Glow......”

“I’m relieved knowing you have enough strength to joke around. Are your hurting anywhere?”

“No, I am fine. Other than this terrible feeling of having no strength in my body, I have no other problems. I don’t have any broken bones either.”

“I heard you were attacked while saving Edwin.”

“To be honest with you, he was not someone I could definitely beat in a 1 on 1 battle, Glow.”

As Shubeon honestly answered, Yulian started to smile as he responded.

“Either way, he is already dead. Just focus on getting better and do not push yourself for a while.”

Yulian patted Shubeon’s shoulder a couple of times before closing the cart door. He then quickly called Haisha and Thrint over to ask.

“Where is it?”

He was asking who was behind the attack. Yulian looked to be very angry.

As the Glow, the life of a Red Storm member should be worth the same as the life of any other warrior. However, since Yulian was also human, he was angered at the fact that he almost lost another Red Storm member who he had worked so hard to develop and cherished so much.

“We could not get them to share that until the end. Maybe it was because we put Shubeon’s life as the top priority and let them send someone back for telling us where the antidote was.”

Yulian nodded his head at Thrint’s response and started to speak.

“That was the obvious and smart decision. We can always catch the enemy later on, but a warrior only has one life. Good work.”

“Glow.”

Edwin called out to Yulian.

“I am truly sorry that you lost Pareia’s valiant warriors and that Shubeon-nim ended up in danger because of me and my caravan.”

“No need to apologize. Protection was something Pareia had promised a long time ago. It was for Pareia’s benefit as well. Do not worry about it too much. Something like that would actually hurt the pride of our warriors.”

Edwin could not help but be sorry even after Yulian’s words. If something had really gone wrong, he would not be able to even lift his head up.

Haisha started to speak at that moment.

“Based on the size and strength of the assassins this time, I do not think they will give up so easily.”

“Just who is it?”

As Yulian started to mumble, Runa answered from his side.

“Isn’t there only one?”

“Hmm?”

“Desert warriors would never do anything so cowardly. If you think about it that way, it must be someone from the continent. Isn’t there only one power in the continent that would get in our Pareia’s way right now?”

“Silence?”

As Yulian, Haisha, and Thrint all answered at the same time, Runa nodded his head.

“They are the only possible answer. I’m sure they have heard that our Pareia is starting to get stronger. They knew they needed to start meddling in our affairs. After all, they also know of our people’s way of life, don’t they?”

“Of course. They know very well that we are grinding our teeth. They know that we will definitely get our revenge.”