Contractbound 55 More Criminals To Teach A Lesson To

Valentine arrived at Oosteindestraat in less than thirty minutes because of his fast walking pace. His concealment had worn off because he moved outside of the fifty-meter radius from the spot where he cast it, but it didn't matter to him. He could always recast it. He had worn the facemask that he had prepared before and walked down the pretty busy street since it was already two-thirty and all the shady characters were out and about.

Oosteindestraat was quite long, so he wouldn't recast his Concealment, which was the name he gave to the new branch of Secret Restriction ability before he got close to the building where the band of criminals was hiding. The building he was looking for was an empty house with the number 57.

Valentine strutted leisurely down the street while observing his surroundings. It was also a good chance for him to test his lie detector. However, it was very noisy for someone like him with improved hearing, so he had to concentrate hard to filter out the unnecessary noises. There were various different characters standing by the street side, in front of the diverse establishments. The dim streetlight made them look especially questionable, standing around like that. He overheard a conversation between two rugged men in front of a karaoke bar.

"You hid the change, didn't you?" asked one of the men who was wearing a s.h.i.+rt that didn't match his face. His tone was full of accusations.

"No. I swear they didn't give me any change at all!" said the other man with a beard and mustache. His tone was defensive.

"But I gave you three stuivers! It said it was only twenty duits on the receipt, so there should be four duit change!" the s.h.i.+rt-wearing man's voice got higher.

"Then the cas.h.i.+er must have forgotten to give it to me!" said the bearded man in self-defense.

Valentine was listening to their conversation from afar while rapidly walking closer. The whole time the bearded man was speaking, he felt like listening to the sound of a metal fork scratching a ceramic plate, which made him very irritated. It was his lie detector in action. He needed to have good self-control not to jump on the bearded man and start beating him to a pulp just out of spite. When he got close enough to the two men arguing, he opened his mouth.

"He is lying. I saw him hiding the money," said Valentine in a very convincing way without breaking eye-contact with the man in a s.h.i.+rt.

He made up the part about him seeing the bearded man hide the money, just to sound more convincing. The whole time he was telling the lie, his own voice also sounded like broken gla.s.s shards stabbing his eardrums. He needed to get used to himself lying without losing control.

"You wh.o.r.eson!" shouted the man with the s.h.i.+rt angrily.

Hearing the stranger's compelling remarks, the s.h.i.+rt man punched the bearded man in the face, which caused the bearded man to retaliate. A fight ensued between the two of them. They kept throwing punches and kicks at each other, pus.h.i.+ng their bodies around. The fight quickly dragged other people in because they were victims of stray impacts. The situation became rather chaotic quickly, but Valentine had long moved away from the scene. He kept walking as if he hadn't had any part in the chaos.

Valentine ignored the loud noises coming from the fight behind him and also from the chattering around him. He only focused on the more subtle sounds like the sounds of footsteps or the sounds of whispering; however, nothing was relevant to him. He increased his pace and arrived near the empty house with the number 57 on the wall.

While he was still a short distance away from the house, he wanted to place the Concealment on himself. He had the option of concealing his face, which would make it almost impossible for anyone to see it, or to conceal his presence, which would make him stealthier, but people could still see his face if they concentrated enough. Since he was already wearing a facemask, his face being seen was not a big deal, so he decided to conceal his whole presence. He had tried to conceal his whole body, but it didn't work.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of my presence a secret!"

A thin yellow mist then enveloped his own body. He moved swiftly towards the house, but still trying to avoid being seen. His presence had been erased, but it didn't make him invisible. He skipped the front door and just went to the side of the house, looking for a window where he could enter from. The medium-sized house only had one floor, so entering through the balcony, like his usual style, was out of the question.

The empty house was still in good condition, so there was no missing part of the wall where he could sneak in from. The windows were also still intact, and breaking the gla.s.s would create too much noise. He didn't have Graham's power either, where he could just order the windows to open themselves. Valentine tried to find his way to the back of the house from the side. There was a fence that he had to climb over, but he did it with ease thanks to his good agility.

Just as he had thought, there was a back door, which most likely led to the kitchen. Valentine stood in front of the door while perking up his ears. He was listening to the activity inside the house to make sure it was safe to open the door. He could hear the voices of several people from somewhere inside.

"Clemens hasn't come back yet. You think he's in trouble?" asked a man whose voice sounded annoying because he dragged the ends of his words.

"He probably dead or somethin'. Just wait a lil longer and if he don't show up, we go," said a woman with a thick accent.

"Shut up you two! I'm trying to meditate here," said another man whose voice was calm but showed irritation at the same time.

"Why don't ya go meditate in the grave? It's more quieter there," said the accented woman again, sarcastically.

Then there was no more reply. Judging from the sound of their voices, the people were not near the back door, so it should be safe for Valentine to pick the lock. He took out his lock picking set and let his fingers do their magic.

Click!

A short moment later, the door had been unlocked. It wasn't terribly hard for him with his mastery, especially since the lock was a standard model. It would be a different story if it had been a cutting-edge lock or an extremely ancient one. He put back his lock picking set and waited for a while before opening the door. He listened to the sound from inside the house and the footsteps didn't seem to be approaching the back door.

He grabbed the door handle decisively and twisted. He then carefully opened the door, avoiding making a lot of noise. Even though his presence was concealed, the noise the door could make wasn't. He entered through the gap and walked with very light steps to avoid the floor creaking for the same reason. The wooden floorboards in the house seemed pretty st.u.r.dy, however, so no creaking sounds were made while he was walking on them.

In the dark house, Valentine sneaked around with his enhanced night vision activated, trying to find the band of burglars hiding in that house. Since it was not a large house, he found them not long after. They were sitting leisurely on the sofas in the living room as if it was their own houses. They must be thinking that they were completely safe in their little hideout. In the dark house, their only source of lighting was a lantern that they had placed on the table, which was enough to somewhat illuminate their immediate surroundings.

He observed them and noticed that there were four of them, instead of just three. One of them was just not moving nor talking at all. Also, they might be hiding weapons, judging from the unnatural bulge in their clothes. Although the scout, who was apparently called Clemens, claimed that they had never killed, that didn't mean they wouldn't. They just had been lucky no one had put up any resistance up to now.

At that point, he remembered the book-entry that Graham had seen during his divination which showed a lot of information about Contractbounds. One of them was about Denuders and It said there that Denuders would get the power to strip their opponents off their weapons, but he didn't get such ability. He felt cheated, and then realized that it would probably be given once he had pleased the Deity.

"I guess I'll have to do it the old fas.h.i.+oned way," he muttered regretfully.

With his presence still concealed, Valentine sneaked closer to the living room and looked at one of the burglars, who had been sitting calmly without doing anything. With his target within line of sight, he chanted in a low voice.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Uncovering, hereby put you under interrogation!"

The target's eyes then looked blank. He had fallen under Valentine's control, but he wouldn't do anything to his target. His goal was to knock the others unconscious first.

"What was that?!" asked the man with an annoying voice in surprise.

"Someone is here. Find them!" said the calm voiced man.

The sound of Valentine's chanting was audible to the burglars, and they started frantically looking around for the source of it. However, with Valentine's concealed presence, and his hiding ability, it was very difficult for them to find him.

Valentine moved very fast to one of the burglars. He was like a black shadow moving in that badly lit house, hunting for prey. He put enough force into his right fist and punched the man with the annoying voice right in his chin, which sent him flying backward and knocked him unconscious.

Bam!

The sound of the man's body hitting the floor alerted the others of Valentine's location, but he had quickly moved away from the spot. He was crouching behind the wall, hiding from the other two's eyes, and with his Concealment, the burglars wouldn't be able to feel or hear his presence.

"Someone knocked Jopp out! Be careful!" said the meditating man.

"I didn't see no one!"

"They must be hiding behind something. Let's go check together. Don't separate!" said the man cautiously. He took out a pocket knife that he was hiding inside the pocket of his black jacket.

"Why Tino just standin' stupidly there?" asked the woman with an accent in confusion. She also took out a pocket knife from under her sock. "Yo! Norm!" she shouted at the man under Valentine's control but got no response.

"I don't know. We should let him be for now. He cannot fight anyway. If we try to wake him up the enemy will get us by surprise."

Valentine was listening intently to their conversation and also the sound of their footsteps to determine their distance from his hiding spot. The two burglars walked very carefully towards a sofa where the enemy might be hiding. When they were close enough, Valentine chanted in quick succession quietly.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of my presence no longer a secret!"

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of the man with the black jacket's FACE a secret!"

He emphasized the word face so it would be heard clearly enough by the two goons, who should be familiar with spell chanting to some extent. When they heard the word, they instinctively looked at each other's faces to make sure they were alright.

"Ah!" screamed the woman when she looked closely at the man's face.

"What's wrong?! Why is it foggy??" asked the man in confusion.

"Your face is GONE!!" yelled the woman. The face of her partner was now completely covered with a thick yellowish fog.

Within that split-second moment of distraction, Valentine very quickly got out of his hiding spot and leaped at the two burglars. He punched the man right in his chin and sent him flying backward, and then chopped the woman's neck from behind, making her fall unconscious to the ground.

Thud!

Wham!

The sounds of bodies. .h.i.tting the floor broke the silence in that house. However, it didn't seem to have any effect on the man who was staring blankly at the s.p.a.ce in front of him. Everything happened so quickly that the duration of the control hadn't run out yet. Valentine approached the man who looked to be in his mid-twenties and started interrogating him.

"Tell me, which one of you has the power to put people to sleep?"

"It's me..." answered the man who was called Tino by the female burglar.

"Jackpot!" Valentine muttered, then added, "Tell me your full name and your address."

"My name is Constantino Granucci. I live on Tuinstraat South, Tyone Apartment number 44," he answered monotonously.

"Hmm... So he is Favaran," muttered Valentine.

The name of the person in front of him didn't sound native to the Republic of Tulp, but rather, to Favara, a country south of Rodin, in the Western Continent. A lot of people from the Western Continent had moved to Tulp, which was located in the Central Continent, a long time ago, making it a culturally diverse country. That was why finding someone with a foreign name wasn't something new there. Their parents must have migrated here and although they retained the name from their origin countries, they were still a legitimate citizen of the Republic.

"What time will you usually be home?" he asked another question.

"Usually after five until midnight,"

"Okay. I'll pay you a visit soon," said Valentine, but since it wasn't a question, the target didn't respond.

He had asked everything he wanted to know, so now it was time to leave the scene. He wasn't planning on killing anyone tonight; he just wanted to get the information about the Slumberer and see if he could recruit him for a future mission. But for that, he had to pay the man a personal visit first, where he wouldn't be disturbed by his burglar friends.

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of the man with the black jacket's face no longer a secret!"

"I, in the name of the Deity of Secrets, hereby declare the existence of my presence a secret!"

A thin yellowish mist enveloped his body, concealing his presence. The duration of his Interrogation should run out soon, so he had to move out before it happened. Valentine left the house through the back door and closed it behind him politely.

Once Valentine had moved too far away, his control over Tino got canceled, and he regained his consciousness. He looked in confusion at his partners who were lying unconscious on the floor.