I Became A Zompirewolf

"Haha, congratulations on your win!" Mazton laughed As soon as they returned from the training grounds, "I wouldn't have expected anything less from the current Fourth monarch of Euphoria."

The rest of the team had barely managed to make peace with Ashton's absurd strength when Mazton dropped another bomb on them.

"Wait wait wait... he's what?" Avvo was baffled and thought she heard wrong.

"The fourth seat holder of Euphoria," Mazton replied as if it was a well-known fact, "You must know about Euphoria, right?"

"Who doesn't? But still, it comes off as a surprise..." Laihud remarked before curtly bowing to Ashton, "No wonder Vimur wasn't a match for you, sir. I am a resident of the planet, when I heard from my family someone overthrew Lord Jacklin, I thought it had to be someone... a bit on the older side. My apologies for not recognising you earlier."

"Please drop the honorifics," Ashton coldly asked Laihud, "I'm just a mercenary like you. Also, since I left Euphoria, technically, I'm not the fourth monarch."

Ashton might have said that, but it still did not change the fact that he was the one who did something deemed to be impossible. It wasn't because Jacklin was extraordinarily strong, but because one would have to clear an impossible trial before even challenging a monarch.

There were a lot of other things the mercenaries wanted to ask Ashton. But they didn't because of his insistence. He did not want them to leak crucial information about him, and the best way to do so was to make them silent either by asking them or by... silencing them forever.

***

Once Vimur was defeated, no one else had any doubts about Ashton's capabilities. On paper, he might have been a D-grade mercenary, but his strength surpassed even that of Grade-Cs. Vimur was immediately carried to the infirmary and the team was instructed to make themselves comfortable inside the meeting room while Vimur recovered.

Vimur rejoined them after an hour or so, and all of them were given the official job request to accept. The details of the report were the same as that in the official job description. The only difference was that the name of their target was specified in the job description.

___

You have accepted a Mercenary Job request!

Mercenary Job Title: Protecting a celebrity.

Job type: Escorting, Guarding and Combat Oriented job. Might also require a bit of stealth to help the employer escape from dire situations.

Job Introduction: A hit has been issued by the terrorist organisation: Metal Sharks, on a famous celebrity known across the galaxy due to some of her comments against the terrorist organisation. Your Job is to accompany her from Kernel Tower to her family home on the planet, Pegasi B2, protect her for the duration of her stay and then return to the Kernel Tower with along with her.

Mission requirement: Defend the Ruler of Hearts, Eula.

Probable difficulty: Intermediate to Hard

Failing Condition: Failure to protect the target.

Punishment of Failed Mission: -200 Mercenary Reputation, -5 Fame, Permanent black spot on your resume.

,m Reward: 5000 Yenos + bonus based on performance (per participant), +600 Mercenary Reputation, +20 Fame and A weapon / gear / material of choice (Rare grade only)

Time until activation: 16 hours and 34 minutes.

___

'So her name is Eula...' Ashton thought, 'Now I know why those terrorists were acting so bloodthirsty. She might have hurt their egos somehow.'

[I don't understand one thing. If you are weak, then why the hell do you need to speak against someone much stronger than yourself? Is common sense not so common these days?]

'It's called freedom of speech, but you won't understand it. Considering how the Xyrans only silence the voices against them.'

[I can't refute that even if I wanted to.]

Everyone slowly finished reading the file and turned attention toward Mazton who wanted to share some more information. He began giving them classified information about the two remaining assassins that had not been included in the file they were provided with earlier.

However, Ashton had already read about the remaining two jokers, that too in detail. Otiga had given him the information he asked for and it barely took her an hour to do so. Now Ashton just wanted to confirm whether the information she gave him was correct or not.

'There can be thousands of assassins one could hire,' Ashton thought, 'That's why I can't be sure whether Otiga's hunch about them was on point or not.'

Once Mazton pulled out the information, to Ashton's surprise, Otiga's intel proved to be correct. The first one of the two assassins was an alien known as Grezur. From a physical point of view, he looked like a gorillan more than anything. Except he did not have additional arms and was roughly about 6'9" tall.

His face was littered with scars, some were caused while combat, while the rest were carved onto his body by himself. As for his portfolio, so far he had completed 98 known assassinations. The most prominent one was an assassination he did while he was working as a mercenary... and it happened inside the Kernel tower.

Grezur was the only one who ever managed to kill a high-value target under Kernel Tower's protection and manage to leave alive. The tower's reputation took quite a hit because of that incident. Even now a few people had their concerns when it came to seeking protection from the tower.

So much so, that the Lord of the tower had to publically issue an apology for the mistakes of the mercenary association. It was the single most humiliating memory Mazton had. That was the reason why he was dead set on making sure the same thing doesn't happen this time.

"I'm giving you people a personal mission as well," Mazton informed them, "If Grezur appears in your sight, bring me his head. But don't forget that your primary goal is to protect Eula from the attacks. So focus on her safety first. As for the last suspect..."

The slide changed once again and this time Otiga's report had an error. The person in front of Ashton's eyes was no alien, but a human. A human whom he knew pretty well... pretty much his entire life, in fact.

"What kind of sick joke is this?" Ashton slammed his fists on the table, immediately shattering it, "Why are you showing the image of my dead father in place of the assassin!?"