There was a rumor that a few villages had been destroyed.

It wasn’t something unusual.

Villages appeared and disappeared all the time, so it wouldn’t grab any attention
whatsoever.

But this time it was different.

There was also a rumor that it was due to a vampiric calamity.

Vampiric calamities referred to disasters caused by vampires.

A vampire appearing in a village, converting a few people into its slaves, then those lesser
undead would attack others, and after continuing that bloody cycle, all the humans
would be replaced with undead.

It would result in a horde of undead that the nation couldn’t ignore, so even though it
was a rumor, the government launched an investigation in case such a situation would
happen.

“I don’t think they would find a horde of undead anywhere, though.”

Looking at Lapis, who chimed like it was none of her business, sitting in front of him,
Loren tilted the cup of liquor in his hand and swirled it slowly.

As Lapis had said, there was zero chance that a horde of undead would be found.

It wasn’t that Lapis had received a revelation from the Knowledge god.

A little while before, Loren and Lapis had received a job straight from the client,
instead of through the Adventurer’s Guild.
It was during that job, that the villages were turned into undead, resulting in an undead
horde, that was used to attack them.

But the horde, along with the True that caused the vampiric calamity, were completely
wiped out.

Loren hadn’t reported this to the guild.

It was because he thought that if they wanted to know, they should ask the Elder that
caused all of it.

Apparently, the Adventurer’s Guild was a powerful organization, and had connections
to monsters that could converse with humans.

If not, there was no way the guild could get their hands on some of the information
they possessed.

In any case, the job was a direct contract from their client, so he and Lapis had no
responsibility to give the guild any information on what had happened during it.

If they didn’t report and the Elders didn’t say anything either, there was nothing the
guild could do about it.

Even if they knew something had happened, they couldn’t carelessly aggravate the
Elders, and if they tried to do something to Loren and Lapis and they found out about
it, it could offend them as well, so there was nothing they could do.

That was why Loren thought that the guild was letting them move around freely.

“I feel sorry for the people investigating.”

No matter how hard they investigated, they wouldn’t find anything.

The Elders had all left, and the undead horde, which was the main point of the
investigation, most of them were defeated by Loren and the sunlight and were back to
being immobile corpses.

Loren thought it was harsh to send people on an investigation which nothing would
turn up, but since it was still a job they would be paid according to the number of days,
so Loren hoped that the adventurers that he didn’t know the names or faces of
wouldn’t think of it as wasted time.

“Well, that’s the least of their worries.”

Loren said quietly as he looked down at the notice from the guild that was spread on
the table.

It was a form that the guild used to spread important information far and wide
throughout the adventurer community.

The contents were so shocking that it almost made Loren forget a lot of things that
were on his mind.

“They’re skirmishes, but still an official war between nations.”

Unlike Loren, Lapis wasn’t interested in it at all.

On the paper that Loren was looking down on told him that the Kingdom of Wagenburg,
the nation that Kauffa resided in, was warring with the nation of Schoenbryn, which
was located to the northeast, and the battle was going on in an unnamed plain on the
border.

The reason for the war wasn’t specified.

Loren thought it was a pathetic reason anyway.

Wars never started with a good reason, and many were started over the smallest of
things, but rather than that, because of them, the circulation of goods got slower,
people were drafted from cities and villages, and because of that, there would be less
soldiers policing areas, leading to increase in crime.

“The guild always remains neutral, though.”

Even though they were neutral, they still had to receive jobs from both nations.

In fact, most of the jobs on the board were straight from Wagenburg.

They spanned from recon missions to guarding important people to guarding bases
and fortresses.
It was probably similar in Schoenbryn, and because of the influx in jobs, the guild was
quite packed.

“As a mercenary, does it make you tingle with excitement?”

When Lapis asked him, he asked it again to himself.

“Not interested. No intention of participating. Also, I’m a former mercenary, alright?”

“But it seems like you would make quite a bit, don’t you? This might be your chance.”

Until a short while ago, he had been thinking that if a war broke out, he could pay his
debt in no time.

But currently, when he asked himself Lapis’ question, he realized that he wasn’t
interested at all, and he raised the glass he was swirling and gulped the rest of the
contents down.

“No interest at all. I’m content with how I’m living right now.”

It was his true feelings.

In any case, it was a lot lighthearted and safer than on the battlefield, constantly on
alert and the air prickling around him, missing meals and sleep all the time.

Although, he had been exposed to dangers far worse than anything on the battlefield
the past few jobs, but he had made it out alive every time, so he thought that complaining
was too much of a luxury.

“Hearing that makes me a bit happy.:

Seeing Lapis’ gaze on him as she smiled happily, Loren averted his own, feeling slightly
embarrassed.

A complaining look appeared on Lapis’ face for a moment when he did so, but she
immediately stood up and changed the subject.

“Then that means avoiding jobs related to the war… which there aren’t many of.”

The guild wasn’t an organization to pass on jobs from the nation that paid well.
Not just because the guild was a mutual aid organization to adventurers, but because
the guild itself was a profit organization.

With so many good paying jobs, there was no reason for them to pick up ones that
didn’t look promising.

“Loren, do you have enough money saved up to last you until the war ends?”

Loren scowled at Lapis’ sudden question.

It was a topic he didn’t want to hear about, but it didn’t seem like he could get away
without answering, so he managed to spit out a reply.

“You’re asking even though you already know that I don’t, aren’t you?”

With all the debt he had, there was no way he had anything saved up.

In fact, all his debt was from Lapis, and even with no interest nor deadlines, Loren
wasn’t the type of person to keep any money when he owed some.

“Of course. Then I guess we can’t go without taking any jobs at all. You won’t survive
until the end of the war.”

“I’m ashamed to say so, but yeah.”

Loren did have a bit of coins in his wallet.

But since they didn’t know when the war would end, whether it be a few days or a few
weeks or even longer, if one was to ask if he had enough to last without working at all,
Loren would have to shake his head.

If he used all his coins with no income.

He would be slowly going dry.

“Then I guess we need to find work.”

Loren couldn’t deny Lapis’ words.

As if she had seen through all of this, she pulled out a piece of paper from an inner
pocket and spread it out on the table.

“There’s really nothing much other than jobs related to the war.”

It wasn’t that there weren’t other jobs, but the guild didn’t recommend jobs that
weren’t related to the war, so naturally, those were the ones that would catch one’s
eye.

“I tried to find one that’s as unrelated as possible.”

“You already investigated…?”

Usually, having the needed information already investigated and gathered beforehand
would be something to be praised, but it was Lapis he was looking at.

He couldn’t just praise for what she did because he couldn’t put aside the possibility
that she could have secretly induced many factors to engineer the current situation,
so all he could do was look at her bitterly.

“This is the one I recommend we should do… what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

Whether it be that she predicted correctly, or everything went according to her planning,
it wouldn’t change what came next, so Loren gave up and told Lapis to go on.

Lapis cocked her head as she looked at Loren, but she soon pulled herself together and
started explaining the job to him.
Three pieces of paper were spread out in front of Loren.

They were copies of the job descriptions that Lapis had taken from the quest board
next to the counter.

Since Lapis wanted him to choose one, he was about to take one and start reading
through it, but when he thought about it for a second, it could be seen as Lapis making
him choose between the said three, but when he looked at her, wondering if she was
planning something again, she smiled at him, wondering if something was wrong, so
Loren just stopped thinking about it.

He was moving with Lapis, who had been kicked out of her home amongst the demon
kin to explore the world.

Deciding that there was no use being concerned about it after all their time together,
he looked through the three papers and saw that although they weren’t about
participating in the war, they were related to it.

“Reconnaissance in unknown territory? This is going through one of the possible

battlefields. I’ve done some of these as a mercenary, but if you meet with an enemy
squad, it’s immediately going to become a full-on battle.”

It was a job to scout out the terrain and condition of the battlefield before the actual
battle started.

Going in without knowing anything about the battlefield was a great disadvantage,
and it was normal to use a large amount of time and manpower to know everything
you could about it, but it would mean thinking and doing the same thing as your
enemy, so skirmishes were a common occurrence.

In the worst case, the main forces would be deployed, and the battle would start right
then and there, which was what Loren was wary of.
If they made the wrong predictions, it meant the two of them would be mixed into the
midst of the war.

“Guarding the supply squad to the main forces is a no as well. It’s common sense to hit
the enemy’s supplies, so unless the defenses are rock solid, it’s more unlikely that
there won’t be an attack. There would be a lot of mercenaries that are quick on their
feet… and even though it’s a job in the back lines, the rewards are too cheap.”

It was because it was thought to be quite safe since it was in the back lines, but there
was no way adventurers could fend of even a small group of trained mercenaries, and
the chances of being attacked was quite high as well.

Another factor was that attacking the supply squad was a popular job since whatever
was recovered during the attack would belong to the attackers.

Goods and money, and in the worst case, even people.

The morale of the attackers would be very high, and so was the danger.

“If it was within the boundaries of your country it would be easy… but that’s not the
case with the current war, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t. It seems that the war is in the east border for this nation and south border
for the opposing one. No idea why it’s in such an obscure place.”

“What’s that?”

Loren thought it was obvious that the nations were fighting over something.

If it was something simple, such as land, the war would be within the boundaries of
either of them.

But the location that Lapis had told him belong to neither of them, so Loren couldn’t
think of a reason why they would be fighting in such a place.

“It’s the plains in the southern central part of the continent. There are tribes of beast
kin living there, although they are not their own country.”

Which meant they were fighting over unclaimed territory.

Since there were beast kin living there, Loren thought that it belonged to them, but
their social standing on the continent was very low, so there was no way it would be
theirs.

“Beast kin? They’re the race who look like humans but have some characteristics of
animals, right?”

“It’s hypothesized that the people of the Ancient Kingdom created them.”

In other words, animal-human hybrids, or chimeras.

It was thought so because the Ancient Kingdom was known for such research, but no
one knew if it was true.

Since they had the characteristics of different animals, many of them were stronger
than humans, but their lifespan was shorter.

“Must be a nuisance for the people already living there.”

“There isn’t a single war that isn’t a nuisance to someone.”

As Lapis gave him a very dry answer, Loren shrugged and looked at the last piece of
paper.

It was about guarding a caravan full of supplies to a village near the battlefield.

“This is another one with a not-so-low possibility of being attacked.”

A village that was a distance away from the battlefield.

The client, the village chief, wanted bodyguards to guard the caravan filled with supplies
the village needed.

Even if it wasn’t directly related to the war, there were usually no merchants who
would willing go near the battlefield.

But because of that, there would be no supplies going to the villages in the area and
affect the people living there.

Loren guessed that the village chief, who posted the job, managed to find a merchant
and needed people to keep him and the goods safe until it reached the village.

Although Loren was willing to take it even though the rewards were poor, since
people’s lives were on the line, he looked at the paper again and frowned.

“Four days to reach the village. Eight for a round trip, with eight silver coins per person.”

“Everyone seems to be ignoring this because you need to pay for your own necessities
as well.”

It was a joke.

Even though it was away from the battlefield, considering the high possibility of being
attacked, there was nothing to gain from it.

He could understand that after paying the merchants for the goods and his service
they won’t have much left for the rewards, but knowing why the other adventurers
skipped over it, Loren flicked his finger on the paper.

“This one isn’t any good Lapis. It’s ridiculous.”

Even if a person needed to work to survive, no idiot would take on a job that would
leave him worse off than before.

There was the option of cutting costs to try to make a profit, but Loren knew from
experience that people who tried that tended to have a dreadful time.

“A dangerous job that doesn’t pay enough and doesn’t make any sense from start to
finish. I’d rather stay and starve.”

“Don’t say that Loren. There’s a job I want you to take.”

Loren slowly turned and glared in the direction the voice came from, while obvious
disgust appeared on Lapis’ face.

Although it wasn’t hard to know that he wasn’t welcomed, the young man with red
hair named Klaus took no notice and placed his hands on the table the two of them
were sitting at.

He was a capable and well-known adventurer within the guild, backed up by some
country, and usually traveled with three beautiful girls, but currently none of them
were to be seen.

“What do you want? What are you plotting?”

When they first met, he was so insufferable even Loren hated him, but with a few
experiences together, he seemed to acknowledge Loren’s skill and abilities, with
improvements to his attitude, and although he was still bothersome, Loren didn’t
really hate him anymore.

With his special ability Gift, Klaus was someone who could be considered a hero, but
with a drawback for being very sloppy with his relationship with women, and since
he didn’t try to fix it even though he was aware of it, Lapis treated him like scum.

“What do you mean, plot? Especially against you Loren.”

“That’s the right way of thinking. Then with what intentions did you interrupt our
conversation?”

“I told you already. There’s a job I want you to take.”

“One of these?”

When Lapis pointed to the three pieces of paper on the table without changing her
look of disgust, Klaus nodded deeply.

“Which one?”

“Of course, it’s…”

“Ahh, wait, let me guess. It’s the one about the village, right?”

Klaus froze when Loren said that.

Lapis guessed that Loren was correct, while Klaus looked at him in wonder.

“Why did you think so?”

“The other two are related to the nation. The client is some army official. Most of the
time they’re snotty old men or unlikable bastards.”
Loren’s explanation seemed very biased, but Lapis knew that for some reason, most
of them were as Loren had said.

In any case, when it came to the nation or the army, there were rarely likable young
men or cute women.

“But the last one, the client is the village chief.”

“I’m sorry Loren, but my first image of a village chief is an old man.”

Whether it be due to wisdom from years of experience or some other reason.

In any case, the image of a village chief to Lapis was what she had just said.

It was the same for Loren, but he also knew that there was more to it.

“If the village has been there for a long time, the chief is indeed usually an old man,
but for a newer one, the chief could be a young man or woman.”

“That’s…”

“And even if it were an old person, there’s usually a daughter or granddaughter.”

“Ahh, I see.”

Village chiefs were usually slightly better off than the other villagers.

Of course, they had big responsibilities, but putting that aside, because they were
wealthier, their daughters or granddaughters were good looking most of the time.

Of course, that wasn’t always so, but even in that case, there was always that one good
looking girl in the village, and the villagers usually couldn’t go against the chief’s orders.

“So, it’s related to women.”

When Lapis said with a glare so cold that it could freeze one’s soul, Klaus, who had a
disturbed smile on his face as he still stood with his hands on the table, suddenly
looked at Loren with a distraught face.

On top of that, he grabbed Loren’s hand and started begging in a pitiful voice.
“Please Loren! I’ll even pay you extra! So please listen to what I have to say!”

“I don’t want to… I already have a bad feeling about this…”

“I don’t have anyone else to turn to!”

Loren tried to shake Klaus off, but he couldn’t, with Klaus gripping it with unexpected
strength, so he used his free hand to push Klaus’ face away as he tried to get closer.

“You bastard… You’re using <<Boost>>, aren’t you!? I’m not into another man holding
my hand! Let go!”

“I won’t let it go until you listen to what I have to say!”

“Don’t say it in a way that could be misunderstood!!”

Loren roared and started using his feet to peel Klaus off, but Klaus held on fast,
determined to cling on.
Lapis, who was watching the whole thing unfold, wondered if she should help peel
Klaus off to resolve the situation, or see where it would end up, just out of curiosity.
“If you take the job, I’ll pay five silver coins beforehand. Five more after the job is done.”

That was the first thing Klaus said after Loren finally managed to peel him off.

“Is that per person?”

“Ugh… Y-yeah. Twenty silver coins in total. It isn’t bad, isn’t it? Then…”

“No way.”

Klaus brightened up for a second at Lapis’ response, but Loren cut her off.

Lapis ignored Klaus, who was at a loss for words, and looked at Loren, wondering why
he said so.

“Jobs that start by talking about money can never be trusted. Those who jump at jobs
like these can never live for long.”

“I see. I’ll go throw this thing out then.”

When Lapis said so in a cold voice and pointed at Klaus, Loren’s stern face crumbled
slightly.

“I mean… we can at least listen to what he has to say.”

“Make up your mind.”

Lapis’ voice hardened slightly at Loren’s indecisiveness, saying that Klaus’ offer couldn’t
be trusted, but then wanting to hear him out.

Loren responded in an unsure manner, very unlike his usual self.

“Yeah well… I mean, if the conditions are solid, I don’t think there’s a reason to be so
hard on him, you know…”

“Loren, are you getting soft on Klaus, by any chance?”

“I don’t think I’m being soft on him in any way, but… anyways.”

Loren forced the conversation in another direction, knowing that he was at a

disadvantage.

Lapis already knew so due to the air around him, but instead of pushing it, she calmly
went with the change in topic.

“If you want our help, tell us everything, no secrets. After that, I’ll tell you the minimum
conditions we’ll help you for.”

“If we find out you’re lying, I’ll snap you in half. What part of you would be how I’d be
feeling at the time.”

Intimidated by Loren, who told him to tell them everything, and Lapis, who completely
threatened him, the words started spilling out of Klaus’ mouth.

“As you could see by the amount of rewards, the girls and I were talking about how we
shouldn’t take this.”

“The girls? So Ange and the other girls are on board with this?”

Klaus was currently in a party with three girls.

Since Loren thought that the whole thing had something to do with women, he thought
that Ange and the other girls wouldn’t want to take part in it.

From the few times he had met them before, all of them had feelings for Klaus, but
they were also annoyed and tired of Klaus’ and his sloppy habits with women.

He guessed that they would be fed up with him soon, and thought that maybe today
was that day, but from what he just heard, it didn’t seem to be so.

“They agreed to lend a helping hand to the village in distress.”

“That was easy. So, what’s the actual reason?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would keep it between us…”

“Why would I give two damns about the love affairs in your group?”

Although he said that, Loren wasn’t someone to spread the word about such things.

He didn’t care if the girls found out about it, he just wanted to know what Klaus’
intention was.

“Well, actually, the village chief…”

“Young?”

“Not that much. But she has an outstanding charm, in a sense… She was a housewife
until her husband passed away last year…”

“Did you start feeling sorry for her when she started crying?”

“Yeah, and some other intentions as well…”

“You know that’s going to be the death of you? Don’t expect to die peacefully in a bed.”

Although Loren had said that, Klaus’ life was his own, so no matter how it ended, it
wasn’t something for him to be concerned about.

“Well… hahahaha…”

When Klaus laughed without even a hint of remorse, Loren snorted, and Lapis sighed
deeply.

“So how about it? Will you help?”

“Since you came over to us and begging, I’m guessing that means no one else other
than your group wanted to do this?”

“Pretty much. I wouldn’t have accepted it if it weren’t for the chief.”

Klaus said so very clearly.

As he wondered where he got that gut of his, Loren started to think.

He understood that the correct thing to do was push the whole thing away, saying that
it wasn’t their problem.

But other thoughts swirled in his mind as he glared at Klaus, who was looking at him
with eyes full of expectation.

This young man named Klaus could be summed up as human trash, as he had been
showing them, but there was a small part of him that couldn’t leave anyone in need.

He also had a rare Gift called <<Boost>>, so if personality was taken out of the equation,
he was quite the skilled swordsman.

On top of that, although it was unknown how long they would stay with him, the girls
in his party were all very skilled as well, so they were quite capable as a party as well.

They weren’t bad people to gain favors with.

There was the possibility that Klaus would forget it, but Loren knew that he wasn’t
that much of a scum.

“It’s not like we don’t know each other. I’d be willing to do it depending on the payment.”

When he told his opinion to Lapis, although the disgust didn’t drop from her face, she
nodded, as if she wasn’t rejecting Klaus completely.

“I’ll join depending on the payment as well.”

“Is twenty silver coins not enough?”

Klaus suggested the original amount he presented, but Loren shook his head.

“No, it’s not worth the trouble.”

“We’ve become iron rank adventurers as well. If you want our help, it should be enough
for our services.”

When Lapis said that, Klaus’ face brightened for some reason.

“You ranked up? Congratulations.”

“Oh right, you were my opponent on the exam. Did you not hear the results?”

“They didn’t tell me anything after it ended vaguely.”

There had been a rank up exam, but Loren’s opponent during that exam was Klaus.

As Klaus had said, it ended weirdly since there had been an interruption, but for some
reason Loren had passed and was now a proper iron rank adventurer.

“And so, we decided to increase our payments.”

“That’s not that welcoming.”

“Give it up. So, our conditions are ten…”

“Fifteen silver coins upfront, another fifteen after the job, so a total of thirty per person.
If you cover the necessary expenditure, we’ll accept the job.”

Lapis interrupted Loren and told Klaus a specific amount.

Klaus looked surprised, but Loren knew why.

The condition that Lapis presented was over three times the amount that Klaus had
suggested.

If he wasn’t surprised, it meant that he had suggested a low payment to try to rip them
off.

“Isn’t that a bit too much?”

Klaus managed to squeeze the words out of his mouth, which was agape with shock,
and Loren agreed.

Loren’s suggestion was going to be ten silver coins upfront and ten after per person,
for a total of forty silver coins.

Even that was double Klaus’ suggestion, and Loren thought that was a bit much as well,
but not only did Lapis ask for more than that, she asked him to cover their expenditures
as well, showing how she never refrained herself.
“I won’t force you. If you don’t like it, you can go ask others.”

Klaus looked to Loren for help at Lapis’ cold and unapproachable attitude.

But Loren had no intention of giving him a helping hand at this point.

It was because Lapis had gone as far as to interrupt him to propose her conditions.

Lapis had more experience as an adventurer than Loren.

Which made him believe that Lapis’ proposal would be suitable payment for iron rank
adventurers than what he was thinking of.

But he also believed that Klaus couldn’t pay it.

The original payment was eight silver coins.

Making him pay sixty to help him on the job, even though it was because of a woman,
made Loren pity him slightly.

“We’re acquaintances, right? Can’t you lower it a bit?”

“I would believe it’s still cheaper than market price.”

“That might be true, but I don’t have enough to pay that.”

“That’s not my problem.”

Although her voice was still cold, Lapis quickly glanced at Loren.

He didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but he had a good guess of what it was, so
instead of calling out to Klaus, who was hanging his head at Lapis’ words, he called out
to her.

“Keep it at that Lapis. It’s not like we’re strangers. Can’t we lower it a bit?”

“Loren’s the leader, so I’ll follow what you say.”

“Klaus, I can’t lower it that much. Fifty silver coins upfront for the two of us as well as
the expenses. How about that?”
Loren felt that he didn’t lower it enough.

But he also felt that if he did, it wouldn’t do any good for Klaus either.

He was someone who would end up losing his life if he didn’t learn his lesson with
women sooner or later.

‘I think it’s going to be a meaningless effort, Onii-san.’

The one who jabbed in as cold as Lapis, was the girl named Shayna, who had been
turned into a No Life King, being reduced to just her astral form after losing her
physical body and was residing within Loren’s spirit.

Watching Klaus rejoice at the discount and bowing his head over and over, thanking
him, he wondered if it was as Shayna had said.
Since Klaus was the one covering their expenses, Lapis went all out.

After creating a contract and making Klaus sign it, not trusting him, she took over a
dozen silver coins and decided to use it to buy what they needed.

“Should I go accept this job?”

“No. Come shopping with me. We’re joining Klaus on this so we’re going to have him
register us as part of his party.

If they went without saying anything to the guild, they wouldn’t receive the payment.

Loren thought that he would have to go register for the job, knowing that people
would look at him funny for going on such as job, but since Lapis said that it was Klaus’
job, he glared at him as he sighed with relief that Loren and Lapis had accepted his
request.

“In that case, I’ll be the party leader, so you would have to listen to my orders.”

Loren thought so too, but the temperature of Lapis’ glare dropped steeply, so Klaus
immediately waved his hands in front of him.

“I’m joking, okay? I’ll register you as party members, but you can move on your own.”

“Make sure it’s temporary, okay? If you registered us as a legitimate party, I’ll pluck it
off.”

As Loren thought that he shouldn’t ask what, Klaus paled as he covered his crotch and
nodded repeatedly.

After that little exchange, letting Klaus deal with all the troublesome things, Loren and
Lapis went out into the city to prepare for the upcoming job.
“We have an ample funds this time. We shouldn’t hold back and buy everything we
need.”

“Go easy, alright? There might be a time when we have to go crying to him for help.”

Loren thought that even though they should take advantage of it, there was a line they
shouldn’t cross.

Even when he was a mercenary, when a member would ask for help to the others,
although there were some hardships that came with it, he would still be able to
recover from it.

It was because the ones helping him made sure to adjust it so that it wouldn’t go too
far.

And when they were the ones who needed assistance, they would be treated the same,
so it was sort of an unspoken agreement.

Because Loren knew that, although he thought that Klaus reaped what he sowed, they
shouldn’t push him into a corner.

“Us crying to Klaus?”

When Lapis cocked her head, wondering if there would ever be such a scenario, Loren
neither nodded nor shook his head, but instead pat her on the shoulder.

“The chances aren’t zero, aren’t they?”

“Hm, that might be so. I guess I’ll have to give up on the best quality sleeping bags and
comfort pillows.”

“What the hell were you thinking of buying?”

What she mentioned was indeed something they needed, but it was something they
already had and needed to buy, much less best quality ones, so Loren couldn’t help but
say so as Lapis looked disappointed.

The next day, after using up all of Klaus’ money to buy what they needed, the two of
them arrived at the place where Klaus told them to meet him.
It was at the east gate of the city, where Klaus and his party were ready to go, along
with a few carriages carrying the supplies.

The village chief, their client, was there as well.

“Thank you so much for accepting this kind of job.”

The woman, wearing good quality clothes and wearing her brown hair up, bowed and
thanked them.

She had a full-figured body that stretched the fabric on her clothes, with her chest
seeming to bounce every time she moved, and seeing Klaus look at them with a sloppy
gaze in the corner of his eye, Loren thought no wonder Klaus fell so easily.

“Loren…”

The sharp sensation of getting pinched on his thigh along with a grumpy tone from
Lapis made him avert his gaze from the chief’s chest to her face.
“I hope not you out of all people Loren. But depending on the circumstances, I’ll rip it
off.”

“That’s a scary thought…”

Loren’s equipment consisted of the leather jacket, gloves, and boots he had received
from his previous client, along with his usual great sword strapped to his back.

His pants were made of tough material, but they were bought from a store, so if Lapis
wanted to, she could rip his flesh off his bones, and with no sign of her letting go of his
thigh, Loren felt cold sweat running down his back.

“I’m the village chief Rose. We’ll be in your care on the road.”

When Rose bowed her head again after introducing herself, Klaus let out a loose smile
as he stared at her chests, and at this point, Ange and the other girls finally found out
what it was all about, and kicked him, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Looking away from the chief, who looked surprised at what was going on, Loren turned
to the people around the carriages, who seemed to be people from Rose’s village, and
felt that something was off.

“Loren? I’ll really rip it.”

“Please don’t you’re going to make me wet myself. Well, don’t you think something is
off?”

The reason why lapis said “rip off” again was due to the villagers near the carriage.

It was what Loren thought was weird as well.

“Why are there only women in this whole group?”

The ones who were tying up the goods on top of the carriages.

The ones who were loading sacks in there.

All the villagers who were doing them were women, with no men to be found.

Although it wasn’t wrong that men weren’t doing the hard lifting, it was still strange.
There was the slight possibility it was because the village chief was a woman, but even
so, no men at all was still not normal.

“Were they all taken to fight the war?”

Lapis seemed to have noticed the slightly unusual sight, let go of Loren’s thigh, and
looked around.

No matter where they looked, there were no men anywhere.

“They took all the male villagers? There wouldn’t be many of them in the first place,
and they wouldn’t even be much of help anyway. It would instead leave the village
without a work force and anger them. I wouldn’t do it.”

“Then maybe they were too busy to come?”

“There’s something more important than getting supplies that’s the lifeline of the
village? I don’t know what that could be.”

“That might be true.”

There must’ve been a reason for it, but since Loren was an adventurer hired for a job,
he didn’t feel like poking around too deep, so once he chased the thoughts out of his
head, the carriages were ready, as Rose called out to everyone.

“We’re going back to the village. We’ll be in your care.”

With that as the signal, the donkeys started pulling the carriages, and the whole group
started moving.

Loren and the others put their belongings wherever in the carriage was open and
walked next to the slow-moving carriage to guard it.

“I’m surprised you accepted a job like this.”

The one who came near Loren and talked to him was Ange.

Instead of responding, he looked at Klaus, whose body was shrunk up with an apologetic
expression on his face, and saw that the other two girls, a knight and a magician, were
scolding him.
“You didn’t hear anything from Klaus?”

Although they were temporary members, Loren thought that Klaus would’ve have
explained things to his main party members, but also thought that it could’ve been
awkward to try talking about it.

“No, we haven’t heard anything. If we knew it was going to be something like this, we
would’ve let him do this on his own.”

“Complaining during the job isn’t very impressive.”

“…I’m sorry.”

No matter what the job is, once you’ve taken it, you should complete it.

As Loren noted that that didn’t change whether you were a mercenary or an adventurer,
Ange nodded.

Of course, he knew how much she and the other girls would want to complain, so he
didn’t blame them.

“He asked us to help. I don’t know about anything else. I know there’s a lot of things
you want to say, but even though his motives might’ve been impure, he still wants to
help those in need.”

Loren knew that those who were smart would never take this job.

Those who were idiots could’ve taken it to help those in trouble.

Although taking a job with impure motives, but at the same time trying to help a troubled
village wasn’t something to praise, it could be having a delicate balancing sense.

But Loren wasn’t sure if Klaus was aiming for that at all.

To be honest, he thought that it was more likely that Klaus took the job blinded by lust,
but if he told that to Ange, it would put Klaus in a more awkward place, and there
wouldn’t be any good coming out of it.

“Well, just try to keep him in check so he doesn’t go off too hard.”
“With our fists and feet, swords and magic?”

“Wouldn’t there be a more peaceful way…?”

Loren wondered why they thought of using force as their first option, but he concluded
that it must be because of their anger towards Klaus had accumulated that much.

As Loren thought maybe he should warn Klaus to be more considerate to his part
members, Lapis presented a question.

“You could just let him do things his way, can you not?”

“That could be so, but it’s better to avoid a tragedy if you could, isn’t it?”

“Is that so? I can’t shake the feeling he would go and ruin himself headfirst no matter
what you tell him.”

Lapis’ impression of Klaus was almost at the bottom line.

As Loren wondered if women saw things and felt that differently than men did, he
patted Ange, who had been listening to him and Lapis with interest, on the back lightly,
ending the topic, and redirected his attention to keeping watch around them.
Everything was peaceful for a while after they left Kauffa.

They would eventually have to get off the road to get to Rose’s village, but while they
were on the road, with soldiers patrolling around it, there was no danger to them.

It was so peaceful that Loren thought that out of the four days it took to get to the
village, they probably didn’t need guarding for the first two.

Loren felt that the spending the night was quite comfortable as well.

Among Rose and her villagers as well as Loren and Klaus’ party, the two of them were
the only men, so Loren thought it would be quite uncomfortable, but when it came to
work, as well as when keeping watch, which the two parties took turns doing, Lapis
was the only one he was with, so things were as usual.

“Can we do something about tying up Klaus at night?”

“Loren, are you saying we should let a wolf loose inside a pack of sheep?”

It was very so, since all the people other than Loren and Klaus were women, and Loren
sighed as he watched Klaus be tied up from shoulder to knees and thrown into a one-
person tent.

The food was like none other than he had seen before.

They had agreed to eat what they had brought instead of sharing what Rose had brought,
but it was because Klaus had their expenses, and Lapis didn’t hold back.

Of course, since they needed the food to last the whole job, there wasn’t anything over
the head, but what came out was still way better than the provisions that they were
used to, and that caused the girls to treat Klaus even harsher, but Lapis paid no attention
and enjoyed the luxurious meal.
“With enough money, even dried meat tastes different.”

“How much did this cost…”

“That’s a secret. It’s free, anyway. Loren, do you want a drink? Believe it or not, it’s
wine that isn’t thinned in water. I had it poured into a vintage wineskin as well.”

“What are you doing? I mean, I’ll take it though.”

He knew it wasn’t something he should drink during the middle of a job, but he wasn’t
someone to make something that tastes good into something that doesn’t taste as good.

Wine thinned with water was something that was drank by adventurers instead of
water, and Loren had drunk it before as well, but of course, it wasn’t something that
tasted that good.

“The bread is pure flour as well, and the cheese is good quality as well, so if you put it
on top of the bread and sear it… it tastes so good. It goes so well with the wine.”

“You’re enjoying yourself to the fullest, aren’t you…?”

“Maybe put some pieces of dried meat on it as well. Too bad we don’t have any
vegetables. They don’t last a few days.”

“Didn’t you throw potatoes in the campfire earlier?”

“I’m going to retrieve them later and put butter on them. It tastes good you know.
You’re going to have some, right?”

“…Yeah.”

Rose and the villagers had pots they used to stew their ingredients so they were doing
okay, but Klaus and his party were eating hard brown bread and dried meat that
looked like the soles of a boot, and were drinking either wine thinned in water or just
water.

With Lapis eating her delicious meal next to them, of course their morale would be
low.

Loren would’ve suggested sharing if he could, but there wasn’t enough for everyone,
and he didn’t want to give them his share of the food either, so he just sat there and
ate the great meal with Lapis.

That was how the first two days went, but things changed from the third day.

It was because they went off the main road and went onto the path that led to Rose’s
village.

Although it was a path that led to a village, it wasn’t one that many people used.

It was only used when the villagers transported supplies or merchants went from
village to village, so it wasn’t maintained too well.

The carriages shook as they rolled on the uneven ground, slowing their progress, and
with no soldiers on patrol, there was more risk for danger, so as bodyguards, all their
senses were on alert.

“This is a harder job than I thought it would be.”

As Lapis looked around, Loren was pulling one of the wheels of a carriage out of a hole
in the path.

With only women, it would’ve been possible if the carriage was empty, but since it was
full of supplies and the weight was near its limit, it was quite the feat to get it out of
the hole, which Loren managed to do.

“That should do it.”

He put his hands on the carriage, and without even grunting, he lifted it up slightly.

At the same time, one of the villagers lightly whipped the donkeys, which caused them
to move forward, and the carriage finally slipped out of the hole.

Loren brushed the dust off his hands, watched the company move once more, and
followed, looking around them as Lapis was doing.

Their surroundings were a simple plain with nothing but grass, so their outlook was
good, but it was the same for anyone looking at them, so with nowhere to hide, Loren
couldn’t help but feel danger.
“It won’t be hard to see something coming, but there’s nowhere to hide.”

“That’s why we hired adventurers like you to protect us.”

Rose was the one who responded to his words.

Seeing Klaus’ face starting to loosen up at her glossy voice, but immediately tightening
back up as he felt Ange and the other girls’ glares on him, Loren said something that
could be taken as a warning as well as a complaint.

“Then you should put more thought in the payment. No one would take your job with
the current one.”

“But there’s people like you who took it.”

As Rose replied with a smile, Loren just snorted, not giving her a reply.

It seems that Rose had put bodyguard jobs up with similar conditions as the current
one.

As Loren was impressed that she managed to find people to take the job every time,
Rose leaned forward slightly and said in a whispery voice.

“There might be a next time. In that case, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again.”

Seeing her movements and voice, Loren had a good guess of what it was.

It seemed that every time, she had been depending on adventurers like Klaus to bite
the hook.

He had no idea how far her “service” went, and how long she had been doing this, but
sensing that she was quite good at what she did, he backed off as naturally as he could
as she stepped closer to him.

“This time was by chance, so there’s no next time. For us, anyway.”

“Hm, you’re a hard person.”

Seeing Klaus mesmerized at Rose, who had bent over slightly, emphasizing her chest,
Loren waved his hand as if he was batting a bug away, signaling for her to go away.
“If only our leader had half that self-control…”

“It’s useless to hope that.”

“This must be a trial from god.”

Hearing the girls around Klaus muttering, Lapis had a smug look on her face for some
reason, but after making sure that Rose had left, Loren returned his attention to his
surroundings.

He then suddenly smelled something in the air that shouldn’t be there and looked
upwind.

When attacking coming from upwind was quite naïve, even when put into soft words,
but if being found out wasn’t a hindrance, it wasn’t a bad place to attack from, with the
tailwind helping them.

“Something’s there!”

The whole company tensed at Loren’s warning.

The smell that drifted on the wind was unpleasant body odor and the smell of leather.

They were smells that warned Loren of danger, as he was familiar with them during
his life on the battlefield.

“Bandits.”

When Klaus drew his sword, nasty looking men suddenly stood up from the middle of
the field, as they had been lying in wait for victims to show up.

They were wearing dirty leather armor, which was what made Loren aware of them,
and they had different weapons as well.

The bandits would’ve preferred their victims closer to them, but with Loren realizing
they were there, they had no choice.

Loren immediately assessed that they couldn’t run.

If they left all the supplies, there was a chance they could do so, but it was hard to
believe that the villagers would want to leave their lifeline behind.

It wouldn’t matter if they died, but if the bandits took the supplies, they were going to
go down the same path anyway.

But Loren still asked Rose.

“Are you willing to abandon the supplies?”

“W-we can’t! Without it, we’ll…”

As her response was the expected one, Loren scratched his head.

If they couldn’t run, the only option they had was to fight.

When he squinted his eyes, he saw around twenty armed men, and unthinkingly said
to Lapis next to him.

“You could handle them by yourself, right?”

Lapis immediately elbowed him in the gut.

When seen from others’ perspectives, it might’ve looked like Lapis was annoyed that
Loren said something a bit stupid.

But knowing that Lapis was a demon, and with the amount of force behind the jab,
Loren felt a chill go down his spine for a moment.

“What are you saying Loren? I’m just a priestess. I know a bit of self-defense, but
there’s no way I could deal with all those bandits.”

Her blow didn’t deal that much damage to Loren.

Although there was a dull sound when her elbow made contact, to him it felt like he
was poked very hard, so he looked at Lapis, thinking that she had held back, but for
some reason she had a vexing look on her face, so he realized that it was because of
the quality of his armor.

At the same time, he reminded himself that they were with Klaus and his party as well
as Rose and her villagers, so they couldn’t depend on Lapis’ abilities.
“Sorry. That was a bit mean.”

“It’s fine as long as you understand.”

After apologizing and letting the people around them know that it was a joke, Lapis’
face loosened up and she nodded.

“Then leave this one to me. That number is no match for me.”

“I don’t feel like it, but I guess it can’t be helped. Protecting the weak is our job too.”

While Loren and Lapis were doing their thing, Klaus and one of his party members,
the knight named Layla, both readied their swords and stepped forward.

Ange moved behind them with her staff in hand for support, and Roll the priestess
stood even farther back, watching the whole situation.

“I guess we’ll watch for separate detachments and protect the goods.”

“That’ll be fun… I mean, the villagers will need protection.”

Letting Klaus deal with the situation, Loren walked over to the villagers and carriages,
his hand still on his great sword.

Lapis covered her mouth with her hand as she followed him, warning herself to watch
what she said.
Just because weapons were drawn didn’t mean a fight was going to break out right
away.

It was since just because some bad looking men were in wait for them, didn’t mean
they were bandits.

To Loren, it seemed fine to just attack them, but Klaus, weapon drawn, shouted to the
men who appeared.

“Who are you people?”

There was no answer.

The men, who were probably bandits, readied their weapons and all charged at Loren
and the company, as if not wanting to give them a chance to run away.

Loren scanned the area and saw that there were around twenty bandits, and with the
only ones defending being Klaus and Layla, he didn’t think just the two would be able
to intercept all of them.

“Are we going to have to step in to help?”

“I’m not sure.”

As Loren and Lapis were having a stale conversation, Klaus started running.

Loren had seen Klaus fight before and remembered his fighting style.

Of course, he remembered his speed and strength as well, but the speed that Klaus
moved in was nothing like the speed he remembered.

“He’s faster than before.”

It was impossible to stop around twenty people with just two.

It was impossible even for Loren, and if he tried to fight near the villagers or the goods,
there would be some sort of harm that could be done.

If he wanted to prevent that, he had to fight at a distance.

Which meant he had to fight up front.

“A few would still get past.”

After he muttered, Layla ran in a moment after Klaus ran off, her blonde hair rippling
in the wind.

“Kill the men! Immobilize the women! It’s time to make bank! Let’s get them!”

Listening to the leader of the men, Loren was about to draw his great sword, but
stopped.

Lapis cocked her head, confused, but Loren had his reasons.

“If I were running in, yeah, but if I start swinging this here the blood and flesh would
splatter the goods.”

With the amount of force behind Loren’s blows, any human would easily be cut in half.

Loren didn’t think that was a bad thing, but with the goods containing ingredients and
clothes, he knew it would be quite the problem if blood and body parts would be
splattered on them.

“Hopefully Klaus and his party take care of all of them.”

Lapis nodded as she said so, which was what Loren wished as well, but as he thought
that it would be impossible, Klaus reached the first enemy.

The bandit swung his thick axe with all his strength.

Against the blow that would’ve broken his sword if he blocked it, Klaus met it straight
on with his sword.
The axe and sword met slammed into each other with a loud clang of steel meeting
steel.

Usually the axe would come out on top, but Klaus’ blade deflected the axe.

Although it wasn’t enough to rip the axe from the bandit’s hand, it threw him off balance,
and although he mustered his strength again for another blow, Klaus was a few times
faster than he was.

A swift blow to the neck.

Instead of a slash, it was a straight pierce, and as soon as the blade went through the
bandit’s neck, Klaus immediately pulled it out and dashed towards his next target.

Slipping through the swords swung at him, Klaus’ blade flashed left and right.

Almost immediately, blood spurted from the deep cuts that the sword made in the
bandits’ necks.

The bandits stopped in their tracks as they saw Klaus take down their comrades with
a single swing, so fast that the flying blood didn’t even hit him.

“They got scared. Idiots.”

The bandits’ response was so bad, the words slipped from Loren’s mouth.

It was because the only options they had was ignore their comrades facing Klaus and
attack Rose and the villagers directly.

If they did so, they could’ve done some damage while Klaus dealt with one or two of
them, and possibly distract him by attacking the people he was trying to protect and
try to find an opening to defeat him.

But they flinched at the sight of their comrades dying and froze, so they couldn’t do
that anymore either.

“Well, that makes it easier for us.”

Loren was supposed to do something about the bandits that got through Klaus, but
with them freezing, the chances of that were reduced significantly.
If none of them got close to the supplies, Loren didn’t have to attack them and just
leave it to Klaus and Layla, which made it easier for him.

Even while he was thinking, Klaus killed two more, and Layla, who had just met her
first opponent, and killed him.

Although she wasn’t as fast as Klaus, Layla was quite skilled with the sword.

She seemed to have learned an orthodox swordsmanship, but she also had an air about
her that she had honed her skills and techniques in actual battle, not just training.

Seeing another one of their comrades fall to Layla, as he had underestimated her since
she was a girl, the bandits finally realized that the adventurers they were facing were
no ordinary adventurers.

“Why are there veteran swordsmen in this group?”

The leader of the bandits shouted, but Loren felt a bit sorry for him.

Usually you wouldn’t expect a swordsman with a Gift and a knight.

It was very possible to overpower a few capable adventurers with sheer numbers.

“You’re out of your league, so just give up.”

“Don’t think we’ll just let you escape. If we let people like you go, you’d just attack
someone else, so we’ll have to take care of you here and now.”

“Give me a break, damn it! Run!”

Unlike the army, it was difficult to manage bandits and expect high morale.

Klaus and Layla had already killed around half of them, and each bandit was scared
that he would be next.

Once they lost the will to fight, it was as one would expect, with the bandits throwing
their weapons away and running.

Klaus and Layla froze when they suddenly showed their backs.
It was because they wondered if they should attack someone from behind.

Klaus’ personality kept him from following, while Layla’s knowledge as a knight
stopped her, but Loren could only think that their decision was naïve.

Since bandits weren’t worth anything even if they were kept alive, so although they
were retreating, not attacking them was unthinkable, and Loren was itching to run out
and attack them.

But he knew there was other reasons for not doing so, and that was because their jobs
were to protect the supplies, but there was someone who moved as the bandits were
fleeing.

“Scatter the sand, bring upon slumber! <<Sleep>>”

Ange raised her staff and chanted.

The spell took effect and the leader of the bandits fell, followed by the rest of them.

The other bandits who saw this froze again, which gave Klaus and Layla enough time
to make up their minds and catch up, and they were either killed or tied up with rope.

“That was pretty anticlimactic.”

“I guess there was nothing for us to help with.”

The villagers cheered as Klaus and Layla returned, sheathing their weapons.

The cheers became even louder when Rose ran into Klaus’ arms and he caught her,
while his party members didn’t look amused.

“As expected of you, Klaus.”

“No, it was just because our opponents were weak. And it wasn’t all me.”

“That may be true. So, let me thank you first. I was worried what would happen, but
thanks to you we’re all safe.”

From her position, she wrapped her arms around Klaus’ waist, and when she squeezed,
of course her chest pressed against his body, and he could feel the soft sensation over
his leather armor.

Ange and the other girls glared at him, but the only thing Klaus could think of was the
sensation of Rose in his arms and didn’t notice the threatening looks.

Impressed that they were still managed to function as a party, Loren walked over to
the sleeping bandits.

“Are you looking for something?”

Lapis tagged along and asked him as he squatted next to one of the bandits and
searched their armor and weapons.

“There’s a war going on near here, right? I was wondering if they were deserters or
something.”

“Weren’t they a bit too weak to be soldiers?”

It may have seemed like that to Lapis, but from what Loren saw, it seemed more
correct to say that Klaus was too strong for them.

Since Klaus was that strong, it made sense that he stopped the bandits in their tracks,
and as a result, no harm came to Rose and her villagers.

“I guess they’re not. Kind of strange to say unfortunately, but they’re just bandits.”

Loren knew they weren’t mercenaries either.

If they had any measure of battle experience, they wouldn’t have stopped when they
saw Klaus’ fight.

“Hey you! How long are you going to hug Klaus!”

“I-it’s indecent!”

“You too Klaus! Do something about your loose face!”

“Umm Loren? What should we do with the bandits that are still alive?”

“It’ll be troublesome if there’s more of them somewhere and they come to save them.
I’ve no intention of taking them, so I guess I’ll just take care of them right here.”

Ange peeled Rose off Klaus, Roll pummeled him, and Layla’s fist cracked across his
cheek.
As Rose’s eyes widened in shock, Layla grabbed the knocked down Klaus by the collar
and dragged him off, while Ange and Roll stopped Rose from going after him with
threatening looks, Loren took out the knife he used to carve materials, and kneeled
down next to the sleeping bandits, unaware of their fates.
“Hey Loren. What happened to the bandits?”

“Just leave them. They’ll survive if they’re lucky, if not someone will probably finish
them off.”

Although he had been beat up by the girls, Klaus seemed to be completely fine.

Ange used to do him quite a bit, but he must have gotten tougher as it didn’t seem to
have done anything.

But Loren wondered how he was fine after taking a beating from Layla.

He was even more confused how he survived the priestess Roll’s attacks, when he
thought about it, he realized that there was no way a priestess could deliver blows that
could knock a swordsman unconscious, and cocked his head, wondering where that
image came from.

“Anyways, it looks like you’ve gotten stronger than before.”

“Of course. I’m backed by a nation and they expect great things from me.”

Klaus told Loren something that he wasn’t sure if he should’ve heard.

But he guessed that since Klaus talked about it, it wasn’t a problem, so he asked him
something.

“By nation, you mean…”

“Wagenburg, of course. Where else?”

Loren sighed in relief since he wasn’t sure what he was going to do if Klaus named
somewhere else.
If an adventurer backed by another nation was acting in Wagenburg, it would’ve been
a serious problem.

Loren knew those kinds of adventurers existed.

It was difficult for a nation to send soldiers or knights to others, but it wasn’t so for
adventurers.

He also knew that among mercenary groups, there were groups that gathered
information on other nations.

Of course, they weren’t talked about openly, but there were rumors that went around.

If they played it correctly, they could be backed and act on behalf of a nation, but if
they were found out, the nation would ignore them, and the nation that found out
about them would stop at nothing to destroy them, so it was a risky position to be in.

He had suspected his own group to be something of the sort, but when he asked his
leader, he laughed it off, and since then, although he knew it had nothing to do with
him, he kept his ears open.

It must’ve been the same for adventurers, where some might be working as spies, but
it seemed like Klaus and his party were not.

“I don’t think Layla would mind since I feel like we’ll be seeing you two a lot.”

“I think you should make sure to get confirmation first on these types of things.”

Exasperated that Klaus had told him this, without getting permission from Layla, who
seemed to have been sent by the nation, made a mental note to not tell Klaus anything
that he didn’t want others to know about.

After traveling further and camping for another night, the company reached Rose’s
village right before noon on the fourth day.

Other than the bandits that attacked them, there was nothing that bothered them, and
Loren started to have slight hopes that this job would be a simple one.

But his hopes were immediately shattered when he saw the people from the village
come out to greet them.
“Loren, there’s definitely something wrong with this village.”

The villagers had come out and greeted them and started unloading the goods and
carrying them back to the village, but the scene was very weird to Loren as well.

It was because there wasn’t a single male villager who came out.

On top of that, most of them were old or children, with only two young women.

“This village. Not only are there no men, there aren’t many women either.”

“As much as I’d like to say such a village doesn’t exist, I’m seeing it with my own eyes…”

Rose’s village was a farming village.

There were gardens and fields around the village, and the villagers raised crops to
make a living.

Not having any men to do the work was already abnormal, but there weren’t many
young women as well, and with only the elderly and children, it would be impossible
for the village to function.

Klaus and his party seemed to have picked up on the abnormality as well, as Klaus
walked over to Loren with a tense expression.

“Loren, have you noticed?”

“Well, at this point, who wouldn’t?”

“Is this heaven?”

Loren stared straight into Klaus’ serious face, not sure what he had heard for a second.

He couldn’t see any playfulness in it, so when he realized that Klaus was being dead
serious, Loren clenched his fist slowly.

“Wait a second! If you punch me my neck will break!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll hold back so it’ll just make a large dent in your face.”
“That’s bad as well!”

“You…”

Although it could barely be called an excuse, Loren gave up on hitting Klaus and
lowered his fist, then grabbed his shoulder and turned him towards the villagers
around the carriages.

“Do you see anything strange?”

“There are a bunch of women. What a wonderful village.”

“…Is there anything else…?”

Keeping his frustration back, Loren asked in a low tone, strengthening his grip on
Klaus’ shoulder, and as Klaus grimaced at the pain in his shoulder, he wondered what
kind or response Loren was expecting, and eventually found an answer.

“There are a lot of young girls and elderly women? But Loren, discriminating women
based on age or looks isn’t a very good… Ow! It’ll break!”

“Do you try to get with any girl you see?”

“Of course not! I just don’t judge women based on those characteristics!”

Loren let go of Klaus’ shoulder, as his straight answer gave him a sort of a refreshing
feeling.

Freed from Loren’s tight grip, Klaus cocked his head as he massaged his shoulder, as
if finally realizing what Loren was talking about.

“But it’s strange that there aren’t any men.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

Rose suddenly interrupted their conversation.

Loren hadn’t noticed her walk up to them, as all his attention was on Klaus, so he
stepped back a few steps in surprise, but Klaus didn’t even blink, as a sloppy grin
appeared on his face.
“What kind of reason would that be, chief? Can you tell us?”

“Master Klaus… But what would you do if I told you?”

“Not a doubt. If there’s a woman in need, there’s no way I could ignore her. If there’s
anything I could do to help, I’d do it gladly.”

“Ahh… Master Klaus.”

Rose said emotionally.

Klaus didn’t let his smile fall, but Loren was trying to get away from there as quietly as
he could.

Of course, Loren wasn’t someone who would immediately try to help a village even if
he heard about a village’s plight.

The only ones who would do that were the hero of a fairy tale and wouldn’t be something
that adventurers or mercenaries would do, but apparently it wasn’t so for Klaus.

It might’ve been because of that personality of his, the nation thought that if they took
care of him, he would use his gifts for them, but it didn’t concern Loren, but Klaus, with
his head still turned to Rose with a smile, grabbed his belt.

“Where are you going Loren? You should listen to what she has to say with me.”

“No. I’m not interested.”

“You’ll listen even though you’re not interested. I’m the party leader.”

Loren was about to ask what the hell he was talking about, but when he thought about
it, even though he was a temporary member, he was currently still part of Klaus’ party,
and Klaus was indeed the leader.

It seemed harmless to ignore him, but the fact that Loren thought that it seemed
childish to go against his word that he would listen to the leader just because he didn’t
want to listen to the chief, showed the upright side of him.

“Just saying, if you decide to take it, it means extra payment. And I can’t guarantee that
Lapis would agree to help either, so keep that in mind.”

Loren said to Klaus, not wanting to take an extra job without extra payment, Klaus
whispered back, still not taking his eyes off Rose.

“I know. No matter what happens, I won’t ask you to help for free.”

“I mean, you could just stick to the original job…”

Loren couldn’t understand sticking your head further into trouble, but seeing Klaus
go back to talking with Rose, with Rose continuing to thank him, he already knew the
reason.
“Actually, there’s another village to the north of this one…”

“What about that village? Was there a conflict?”

“No, we are very friendly with each other. People came and went between the villages,
but a few days ago, people stopped coming.”

Since the people who came almost everyday suddenly stopped coming, Rose became
worried and sent a few young men to check on them, but they never returned.

“We knew something was wrong, so this time we sent more men and asked the
soldiers that protect our village to go with them…”

“They didn’t return either?”

Rose nodded at Klaus’ response.

Suddenly losing communications with another village wasn’t uncommon.

Villages could disappear anytime, whether it be attacked by monsters, raided by bandits,

or get caught up in a battle.

It was more likely so if the village was still in the middle of building up.

“Seeing that both groups didn’t come back, I warned everyone to forget about the
village and not to go close.”

Rose’s decision was a bit late.

But it was still better than not trying anything, so she planned to write a petition to
the nation to do something about the situation, but even as she went through the
process, for some reason, there were continuous cases of people walking over in the
direction of the neighboring village.

“And because of that, all the men went off somewhere?”

“At first it was just the men, but then women started disappearing too, as if being
attracted to something…”

If it were just men, Loren thought that maybe it was a succubus, but when she mentioned
that it was both the men and the women, Loren wasn’t sure anymore.

It was apparent that the reason lied at the neighboring village, but with the investigation
groups not coming back, there was no information at all.

“Master Klaus, if you are willing to help us, could you please go to the neighboring
village and investigate what the problem is, and save the people who disappeared?”

“Well, I can’t say anything for now, but I’m not someone to leave a woman in distress.
Please don’t worry.”

“Ahh… Thank you so much Master Klaus…”

Rose jumped into Klaus’ arms as he showed a reassuring smile.

Seeing him hug her back. Loren started wondering when Ange and the other girls
would stab him to death and remove the problem.
“If they are that troubled, we should help.”

Unexpectedly to Loren, the one who said that was Layla.

Unloading the carriages wasn’t part of the job description, so after borrowing a room
in Rose’s house, the party had a meeting, centered around Klaus.

The proceedings were of course, about the situation he and Loren had heard from
Rose and whether they should help or not.

Loren expected everyone except Klaus to cast negative votes, but the one who suddenly
betrayed him was Layla.

“I may be an adventurer, but I’m a former knight. I can’t leave the weak asking for help.”

“I knew I could count on you Layla.”

“Although, the sequence of events our leader went through to obtain this information
makes pisses me off…”

Layla clenched her fist so hard it was shaking, but Klaus didn’t mind it.

She even started grinding her teeth as Klaus started applauding with a big smile, but
Loren thought that unless something physical occurred, it was impossible to let him
become aware.

“As a priestess… I also cannot ignore people in trouble…”

Roll followed up with her own opinion nervously.

This was within Loren’s expectations.

Although there was the difference of payment or free charge, priests in general had
the mentality of having to help those in need, and if a priest ignored them, it would be
a problem.

“As a priestess of the Knowledge god, I don’t think we should leave people in trouble.”

Although she said so with dead eyes and a flat voice, this was within Loren’s expectations
as well.

If it were only Loren, she immediately would’ve told him she didn’t want to stick her
head into any unnecessary trouble, but on the surface, she was a priestess, so she had
to say that.

Loren and Ange were the ones left, but Loren thought that there was a very low chance
that she would disagree.

In this circumstance, if she did disagree, he would be impressed at her straight

personality, but there was no way she could’ve stuck with Klaus this long with one like
that.

“I guess… there’s no use for me to be against it. In that case I’ll agree, but you owe me
one, alright Klaus?”

“Thanks Ange.”

As Loren expected, Ange calculated that disagreeing with the two girls that agreed
already wasn’t the best thing to do, and when she poked Klaus with her finger, Klaus
smiled and took her hand.

Looking at them with cold eyes, as Ange’s face reddened and a small smile appearing
on her face, Loren tried to resist.

“I won’t do it for free. That’s something I can’t take back.”

Since he couldn’t avoid it, he had to make it as worth his time as possible.

He had to at least secure extra payment, but in the back of his mind, he knew that it
would be a difficult matter.

After all, Rose was thinking that she had managed to snag Klaus using her charms as
a woman, so it didn’t seem like she would pay anything extra.
Even if she were to pay something, it could be that she spends a night with Klaus
instead of payment.

It seemed difficult to squeeze it out of Klaus as well.

He had already paid them fifteen silver coins, and he was tight on money as well.

Although he was backed by the nation, he didn’t get all the money he wanted or with
no conditions, and there was a limit to what he and his party could spend.

“For that, let’s see. I understand that since you’re only a temporary member, I
shouldn’t force you on jobs you don’t want to take.”

Layla said so and nodded.

The reason why her words pointed only towards Loren, was because Lapis had already
agreed with helping, and since she couldn’t go back and say she wanted extra payment
as well, a weak laugh escaped her lips, which stretched across her face into a forced
smile.

“How about this. Klaus and the four of us who agreed pay you two silver coins each,
for a total of ten. Would that be enough?”

When Layla presented the idea, the air around Lapis became even heavier.

Klaus and the girls didn’t seem to notice, but Loren could see that Lapis didn’t like it,
but it would be strange if he suddenly refused the payment, and with her position,
there was no way Lapis could say that she didn’t want to pay.

“That’ll do. I guess.”

Loren decided to immediately jump on the suggestion.

He might’ve been able to raise the amount if he tried.

It was because Klaus and the girls had no idea if the job was something they could
accomplish on their own, and needed all the help they could get, and it would be
troublesome if they lost Loren.

But at the same time, it would mean taking money from Lapis, who had no choice but
to agree with them, and to Loren, that meant there was nothing good for her.

“Thanks for cooperating Loren.”

Waving his hand to stop Layla from bowing, Loren said in a grumble.

“I already came this far. I can’t go back to Kauffa alone.”

“Since we all agree, let’s start heading towards the village Rose spoke of.”

When Klaus said with a big smile on his face, Layla and Ange pummeled him to the
ground.

As Roll looked on with a sigh as she stepped on him, Loren drew close to Lapis, who
still had the smile stuck on her face.

“I’ll give the coins back later.”

“It’s something I already paid. Please keep it…”

When Lapis said without even batting an eyelash, Loren frowned and whispered
again.

“You don’t have to act so stubborn you know?”

“Then please buy me something worth two silver coins after the job… that’ll do.”

Loren nodded when he finally saw her expression change into a tired one.

If that would be enough to cheer her up and stable her mental, it wasn’t a bad deal.

“S-so… the neighboring village…”

“We should start by going to that hag and asking her the distance and other pieces of
information, as well as supplies.”

“It would be much easier if she would pay extra… but since Klaus accepted it, I doubt
she would do such a thing… unfortunately…”

“Why does he get caught so easily, I wonder.”

“I believe we can only take it as a trial from god…”

“Then your god must be a mean one. But as someone who got tangled up in all this,
who am I to say about others?”

Ignoring Klaus, who had recovered from being stomped on by Roll, trying to take the
lead again, Loren and the girls went to Rose to try to receive any kind of supplies they
could get.

“Our village doesn’t have much to offer… If the nation did something, I wouldn’t have
to ask you to do it…”

Rose’s response was pretty much what they had expected.

She also kept glancing at Layla, who was dressed like a knight, making it worse.

Although she had only prepared and hadn’t reported the incident yet, Loren knew that
there was almost no chance of the nation doing anything.

The nation was at war, after all.

There was no way they would send anyone to deal with a small village’s problem.

Layla hung her head because she knew that as well.

“But Master Klaus has accepted.”

When Rose said so with a smile, Klaus blushed and smiled back.

While Ange and Roll immediately started punching him in the gut, Loren sighed in
exasperation and said to Rose.

“I get what you want to say. But aren’t you being a bit too dirty about this?”

“Don’t make it sound like that. I’m just someone who doesn’t have the means to fight
that’s appealing to you for mercy.”

“It’s not like I don’t understand why you want to do this. But just handing everything
over without cutting yourself even a little bit isn’t the most praiseworthy thing to do,
no?”
Loren understood weak or helpless people asking stronger people for help.

But Loren believed that even so, the ones asking for help should of course, carry a part
of the burden as well.

But even when he said that, instead of responding, all Rose did was smile.

After thinking for a moment, Loren lowered his voice slightly.

“So that means you can’t give us anything to help?”

“I believe ‘we can’t give you anything even if we wanted’ is the correct response.”

“I see. I guess it can’t be helped. By the way, since there’s no payment, it means there’s
no problem if we fail and we don’t need to report back, right?”

Rose looked at Loren with a wondering face, not understanding what he was saying
for a moment, but her expression changed as she heard Loren’s next words.

“If you paid us, we would carry the risk of failing, and report back to you, whether the
situation is wrapped up or not. But since there isn’t, it means you don’t need those
either, don’t you?”

“That’s…”

“What I mean is, it’s alright if we made it so that we failed immediately after we leave,
and just go back to Kauffa.”

If there was no payment, there was no risk or penalty if they failed.

Then all they had to do was silence Klaus somehow immediately after they left the
village, consider the job a failure, and head back to Kauffa.

Since Layla, as a knight, wanted to help them, things wouldn’t go that smoothly, but
Rose had no way of knowing that.

“Please, you can’t!”

“Then at least try to help, dammit. Don’t think that just because you’re weak, getting
help is natural. Well, the biggest problem is that our leader is sloppy when it comes to
women.”

“B-but…”

“I’m not saying that you need to pay us money. There’re things like food, water, or
alcohol that you could supply us with, right? Maybe lend us a donkey to carry our
things. What I’m saying is, at least try to show a cooperative attitude.”

Loren knew the village was in a tight spot.

On top of that, without any men, they didn’t have enough working hands either, so he
understood that Rose wanted to save as much as she could for them.

But trying to solve the problem without carrying any of the burden wasn’t a good
thing, and hearing Loren’s demands to give them what they could, Rose started
calculating in her head, while cold sweat ran down her brow.
In the end, Loren was able to borrow a donkey to carry the food and medicine Rose
provided to them.

It had resulted in him telling her that they could fail the job on purpose, but since it
was a personal job from Rose herself, not the guild itself, it wouldn’t leave any bad
marks on his career, so it was quite lighthearted.

Rose did have a sullen look on her face, but Loren felt that she wasn’t even being that
serious.

After all, if one were to hire six iron adventurers it would take a few dozen silver coins,
but the supplies they had received wasn’t even close to that amount.

“Wouldn’t you have been able to increase our payment if you tried?”

“Since they’re in a tight spot, they could think of countermeasures. It’s better to play
it safe for these types of things.”

Lapis seemed dissatisfied, but publicly she was on the side that agreed with Klaus, so
she couldn’t express her dissatisfaction loudly, so all she could do was whisper to
Loren, but Loren shook his head.

Loren knew that greed would only bring more trouble.

He thought that they should be satisfied that they got something out of nothing.

From Rose’s description, the neighboring village was only a few hours away, so since
they didn’t have anything to do while the villagers unloaded the carriages, they
decided to head there.

“I don’t really want to go though.”

“I understand how you feel, but could you give in already?”

Layla said in response to Loren’s complaint with a troubled laugh, but what was on his
mind differed from what she was thinking, so Loren shook his head, wanting to clear
the misunderstanding.

“It’s not about the extra job. I made the village give us supplies, and I got extra
payment. I still have complaints, but I’m convinced.”

“Then what are you thinking about?”

“About the neighboring village.”

According to Rose, the closest village to hers was to the north.

The size was almost the same, but farther north, past the village, was a slightly large
forest, and when Loren looked at the map, he saw that the battlefield that the two
nations were fighting at was past that forest.

“Nearing the battlefield means more danger. You’d understand why I don’t feel like
doing this, don’t you?”

To a former mercenary like Loren, the battlefield was like an old home to him, but it
wasn’t someplace he wanted to step close to either.

His words of not wanting to get close if he could, came from knowing the dangers of
that place.

“Well, there’s a forest between, and it’s quite large, so wouldn’t it be fine?”

Roll said, looking upwards in a diagonal direction as if recalling the map in her head,
so Loren replied as he scratched his head.

“Only if they were fighting head on with each other. But if they were to go around and
attack from the side, the cavalry could go around a forest very quickly.”

Loren knew how scary cavalries were.

Their mobility and penetrating abilities were way more powerful than normal soldiers
and weren’t opponents you would want to meet in battle.

“You’re so worrisome.”
When Ange remarked so, surprised at his attitude, Loren shrugged.

“You won’t be able to survive the battlefield if you aren’t.”

“I don’t really want to get near one then.”

“If you keep adventuring with that, wouldn’t you have to one way or another?”

When he nodded towards Klaus, who was in the front holding the reins of the donkey,
Ange thought for a moment.

“Klaus is supported by the nation, so he would have to be in battle one day.”

“We’ll try to help him so that wouldn’t happen, but we don’t know for sure.”

A nation supporting distinguished adventurers or adventurers with potential did

mean they considered them to help in battle, but more than that, they were also expected
to find and explore ruins, as well as hunt down monsters to keep the nation safer.

Anyone could understand how foolish it would be to send someone who could do all
these things to a battlefield, where only battles are waged, but there could still be
times where they would have to face the enemy in war.

“I’ve started wondering if I should start thinking of switching parties.”

“That’s not my problem but… actually, I’m more confused why you haven’t left him
yet.”

Loren thought that Klaus wasn’t a bad person.

He showed a bit of hubris every now and then, but he was a good person in general.

Being sloppy with women was a big fault in his personality, but the fact that if it was a
woman, age or looks didn’t matter, he could be considered a philanthropist as well.

“So, he has a fairy tale protagonist kind of aura?”

The girls agreed to what Lapis had said.

Klaus, who was still leading the donkey, as well as the only one not participating in the
conversation, turned back towards the other members who were talking about him
with an ashamed face.

“Could you stop judging me like that behind me?”

“Think of it as a rare chance to find out what the girls think of you.”

With Loren cutting him of so directly, Klaus looked forward again, with the look still
on his face.

Loren snorted as he looked at Klaus’ back, but Ange’s next words almost made him
choke.

“By the way, how do you think of Loren, Lapis?”

“What would that mean?”

When Lapis calmly responded to Ange’s sudden question, Ange pulled on her sleeve
with sparkling eyes filled with curiosity.

“You heard what we thought of Klaus, so this time you could tell us how you feel about
Loren.”

“I’m not sure how it’s related.”

“I’m interested too. It’s nothing anything difficult. Just think of it as small talk until we
reach our destination.”

Layla had joined in, and Roll nodded deeply next to her.
When Loren covered his face with his palm, wondering how the conversation took
such a weird turn, Lapis calmly placed her finger on her chin and thought for a moment,
and then replied with a smile.

“I’d like to invite him to my home sometime soon.”

“I see. You like him so much you want to introduce him to your parents.”

Lapis smiled at a surprised Layla and an Ange and Roll who were blushing and smiling
happily for some reason.

“But I’m a priestess, so it’s also difficult to take that step. That’s what I currently think.”

It wasn’t that priests were forbidden to marry.

But since they served a deity, getting together with someone and breaking up repeatedly
wasn’t good for their image, so they had to be very careful when choosing someone.

That was what Lapis was talking about, and although she felt that she liked Loren
enough to introduce him to her parents, but wasn’t sure of him as a husband, which
was a very humble way to express affection.

“Good to see that you two are getting intimate Loren.”

“Shut up and keep walking.”

As Klaus looked back at him again, smiling, Loren kicked him in the butt, making sure
to hold back.

He thought he had held back quite a bit, but seeing that Klaus floated up in the air very
slightly, he realized that he failed to do so, Klaus rubbed the part where he got kicked,
putting a note in the back of his mind to make sure to use <<Boost>> when teasing
Loren or he would really be hurt.

“That’s one of the troubles being a priestess.”

When Ange muttered so, watching Loren and Klaus with a glare, Roll said timidly.

“Umm Ange, I’m a priestess as well…”

“If you like Klaus you better be prepared. That’s not someone who could be content
with loving one person.”

“That’s, umm…”

“He’s definitely going to make lovers and mistresses. I’m already determined to deal
with it.”

As Layla said so proudly, everyone other than Klaus wondered what she was so proud
of, but she herself didn’t notice.

“You should really fix that personality of yours. Isn’t Ange the one you love?”

Before, when Loren had seen Ange at the brink of death, he couldn’t believe that the
worry Klaus showed towards was a lie.

But he couldn’t understand him hooking up with other women, and as that irritated
him and made him want to kick him again, Klaus put some distance away from Loren
and nodded with confidence.

“Of course, the one I love the most in this world is Ange. That’s a fact.”

“Then…”

“But loving Layla and Roll, and all the countless women that I haven’t met yet equally
is the main duty of myself.”

“…Oh, okay.”

Loren was impressed at the courage Klaus had, to say something like loving all women
equally, even though he didn’t want to feel it.

You couldn’t walk the battlefield without courage, and Loren was quite confident in
his own as well.

But while Loren felt that he was no match for Klaus and felt a weird sense of defeat
with a lack of frustration, he watched Ange and the girls all attack Klaus from behind
him.
After walking for a while, having conversations as they did so.

A few members had suffered light injuries before they even reached their destination,
but other than that, nothing stood in their way, and they arrived at the village that
Rose told them about just as the sun was starting to set.

Its size was like Rose’s village and looked like any other village as well.

But although there were signs that it was inhabited until recently, when they scanned
the area, it was nothing but a ghost town.

“Naturally thinking, something’s going on in there.”

After going around once and standing in the center of the village, Loren’s gaze was
directed at the dense forest to the north of them.

The forest was creepy, since he couldn’t see inside at all in the dying sunlight, but at
the same time it just looked like a normal forest.

“Isn’t that a bit simple? It’s possible that the village got attacked by monsters or
something, isn’t it?”

In Lapis’ arms were vegetables and salted meats she got from who knows where, and
Loren couldn’t help but look at her sharply.

“I found them in the food storage, but it’s about to rot, and that would be a waste. We
should use it for our own good instead of wasting it, don’t you think?”

“If we find villagers, you’d better pay them back.”

Loren was hesitant to take the village’s food, which could be considered a part of their
fortune.
But as Lapis had said, he knew that it was better for them to eat it than let it all rot.

So, it was Loren’s opinion that although they should use what they could, but make
sure to pay the villagers in case they were found and made sure to express that firmly
to Lapis.

“Alright then. I’ll do that.”

Lapis agreed to do so quite easily.

Loren continued staring at Lapis, thinking that she somehow knew that she wouldn’t
have to pay anyone anything, but Lapis started laying out the ingredients she brought,
not paying any attention to him.

“They aren’t fresh, but good thing there are vegetables. It looks like we’ll have a good
dinner tonight.”

“That’s nice. By the way, where are the others…”

Right as Loren started, he saw Ange and the girls bring sausages as well as some
barrels out of the houses, and sighed, but then he saw Klaus bring a cow out of the cow
shed and gulped.

“What are you guys doing?”

Wondering what his voice sounded like as he called out to them, all of them started
stuttering excuses like Lapis, and so Loren put his hand against his forehead and sighed.

He thought that what they were doing was theft, but since it seemed that using what
was available was part of an adventurer’s creed, he didn’t feel like saying anything more.

“You guys pay the villagers too if we find them, alright?”

“You’re pretty strict when it comes to these things, huh.”

Klaus said, impressed, but the cow that he had brought was quite thin and weak since
it had been tied up for a while.

Although it hadn’t starved to death yet, it proved that the people who took care of it
had been gone for a while, but it still didn’t tell where they went.
“What’re you going to do with that cow?”

“I thought maybe we could get some milk.”

“Not with how thin and weak it is. Take it back.”

“Alright. But these animals are lucky. There isn’t anyone to take care of them, but they
haven’t been attacked by beasts or monsters.”

Loren thought for a moment at Klaus’ casual words.

Livestock in these kinds of villages were often attacked by beasts or monsters regardless
of villagers being there or not.

On top of that, the fact that they weren’t attacked even though there was no one to
take care of them was strange.

“Ill tie it back, but I could give it food, right? I don’t want it to starve.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll help.”

He wasn’t sure what happened to the villagers, but the animals were still alive.

There was no need to make them starve, so Loren decided to go with Klaus to tie to
cow back up and feed them.

While they did all that, the sun had started to set and their surroundings started to get
dark, so the company decided to camp in the middle of the village.

They had considered borrowing some of the villagers’ houses and sleep there but
sleeping in houses which the owners had vanished mysteriously wasn’t the most
pleasant, and everyone except Loren declined.

“All of you definitely can’t come to the battlefield. Sleeping next to corpses happen all
the time.”

“But you will get attacked if they turn undead.”

“Every now and then, yeah. Things like that happen.”

As Loren had said, there were times where soldiers died because bodies that hadn’t
been treated properly turned undead and attacked them.

To prevent that, most of the time the bodies in good shape were tied up and stuffed
into bags.

“Just for reference, what were bodies in bad shapes like?”

Ange asked, and Loren replied like it was nothing.

“Bodies with no heads or missing limbs won’t turn undead, but even if they did, they
can’t move.”

“I shouldn’t have asked…”

Ange said with a sullen face, but to Loren it was nothing out of the ordinary, and it was
something he had gotten used to.

Of course, there was a small bit of unpleasantness that didn’t disappear, but Loren
thought that such things could become bearable with experience.

“Anyways, lets get ready for dinner. Tonight’s is going to be good, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We got the ingredients and the water from the well is good to use so we have a
lot of that as well.”

While they were looking through the village, they found that the village’s well was still
okay.

For the water, Loren some up and rubbed it on his arm, and after waiting for a while,
this time he put a little bit in his mouth, tasting it then spitting it out, and seeing that
nothing happened, he then drank some and waited for a bit again, making sure it was
safe.

“It’s probably fine. But boil it just in case.”

“Got it. Should I use <<Purify>>?”

“Feels like a waste, but if you’re just going to sleep after go ahead. But if you were going
to do that, did I really have to go through the trouble of checking it?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you. But there’s the possibility of something we might be
hesitant to put in our mouths even though it doesn’t hurt us.”

Loren guessed that could be so, but Klaus and the other girls started looking at the
water like something scary was in it.

“There’s a limit to how much I can clean with <<Purify>>, so let’s use it on the water
we brought to lower the chances of getting upset stomachs.”

There were two priestesses in the party.

They had many uses of Divine Arts, but they still couldn’t waste a charge just for
cleaning water.

“<<Purify>> is a simple Divine Art, so I’ll use mine. Roll should save hers.”

Lapis said and proceeded to use <<Purify>> on the water.

From Lapis’ point, it seemed that Roll was more skilled as a priestess than she was,
and skilled healers should save their strength in case something happens, so Lapis
decided that a common Art such as <<Purify>> could be done by herself.

“So that means Roll is a better priestess than you are?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Only as a priestess, though.”

Lapis seemed to imply something, and Loren knew what she meant.

Since Lapis was a demon, all her abilities combined, Roll was no match for her, but
there was no way she could mention that in front of everyone.

It seemed that Roll had more charges of Divine Arts as well.

“Difference in amount of faith?”

“Something like that.”

Lapis sadly agreed, and Loren patted her on her head to make her feel better.

As they had such conversations, Lapis continued to prepare the food.

Although, it wasn’t much in the first place.

She just cut the ingredients they gathered from the houses into pieces and threw them
into a pot they had found in one of the houses as well, poured water in it, and added
salt they had found and herbs they had picked in the area and prepared to stew
everything, but it was still better and warmer than eating rations, and dinner with
soup was nice as well.

The only downside was that they had to eat the bread they had brought.

There was bread left in the village, but they were all rotten and weren’t in a shape to
be eaten.

“Women who can cook are nice.”

When Klaus said such carefree words so nonchalantly, while in a village where the
villagers had mysteriously disappeared, Loren replied in a cold voice, as he thought
that Klaus might be something on a whole different level.

“If you try to hit on her, I’m going to make you go cold.”

“You see. I’m not really into sleeping with other another man’s woman.”

“I haven’t slept with her. And she’s not mine, either…”

“Oh? Then there could be an opportunity…”

As Klaus started to say so, the blade of the great sword that Loren had drawn from his
back plunged into the ground less than an inch away from his foot, making the smile
on his face freeze as he saw a black wall suddenly appear in front of his eyes.

“You say something?”

“I can’t wait for dinner to be done.”

As Loren asked Klaus in a cool voice that didn’t make it seem like he had just plunged
his sword into the ground, almost stabbing someone in the foot, Klaus immediately
replied in a bland voice.

Everyone was at a loss of words at his quick-wittedness and guts.

The sun rose and soon morning came.

The group took turns keeping watch, but when the eastern sky was slowly turning
white, Loren and Lapis were on watch, and both let out sighs of relief as they squinted
at the sun coming up.

Although spending the night at a village where all the villagers disappeared was
necessary, it wasn’t the nicest feeling.

Since nothing happened, they couldn’t help but feel some relief.

“No one came.”

There was no one who entered nor came out of the forest.

“What should we do today then?”

“We could start with investigating the village again and think about whether or not to
check out the forest. If there’s something going on, it’s either the village or the forest.”

There was nothing out of the ordinary that they could see.

Lapis nodded at Loren’s opinion that those two were the only leads they had, and
looked towards the tent that Klaus and the girls were sleeping in.

“I guess they aren’t like Sarfe.”

Loren wondered where he had heard that name and treaded through his memories to
place it, and after a while, he remembered that he was the leader of the group that
Lapis had been in, and had been the one to invite him to join them.

He remembered what he had done during their first job as well and understood that
Lapis was worried that Klaus would do something similar.
“Well, he’s not iron rank for nothing. He must be considerate of place and time.”

“Or he learned how to be so.”

“Either way, as long as it doesn’t hurt us.”

There was a lot of firewood, possibly because the forest was so close.

They took some of it and Loren started a fire.

“I guess we could start boiling water and start breakfast. Could you go wake up Klaus
and the girls?”

“Alright.”

Seeing Lapis nod, Loren put a pot on top of the fire and poured water in it.

Since he thought it wasn’t good to eat heavily, he decided to do something simple, taking
thin slices of bread, grilling them lightly, and putting cheese that were also lightly
grilled on top of them.

Drinking alcohol first thing wasn’t good either, so he took a few tea leaves from his bag
and dumped them into the boiling water, making a thin tea.

As Loren was thinking that this should suffice as breakfast, Klaus and the girls started
crawling out of their tents.

“You’re pretty adept Loren.”

Klaus said, impressed as he saw what Loren had prepared, but Loren didn’t respond
and just told him to get changed.

With his life on the battlefield, Loren was used to sleeping with all his armor on, but
Klaus and the girls seemed to have chosen to take off all their equipment and sleep
lightly, so they had to put everything on again.

But probably since they had been adventurers for a while, it didn’t take them long to
suit up and come back out.

“Eat then we work. We’ll investigate the village again.”

“Alright. Hopefully we find something that would tell us what happened.”

Loren said as he handed Klaus a cup full of tea, and Klaus took it and shook his head,
chasing away the rest of his drowsiness as he took a sip.

“You used good leaves. It has a good scent.”

“We had a funder this time around.”

“…If it’s from my own pocket, I guess I’ll make the most of it.”

As Klaus said with a nervous laugh, Loren handed him fresh bread with cheese on it
as well.

As he took it, Klaus realized that all the girls were staring at him, and he tilted his head
as he bit into the bread.

“Did you finally realize my charms or something?”

“You’re pretty lively first thing in the morning.”

Loren stared at Klaus with half opened eyes as he combed through his hair, but his brow
furrowed as he noticed a wondering gaze from Lapis and grumpy looks from Ange and
the other girls.

“What’s up?”

“Loren, are you getting friendlier with Klaus, by any chance?”

Lapis asked him, as if speaking for all the girls.

Feeling uncomfortable being stared at by everyone, Loren replied.

“He hasn’t done anything, so there’s no reason to treat him badly either, no?”

“That’s true, but…”

“Don’t worry. As long as his womanizing habits aren’t fixed, we can’t be friends.”

“That’s relieving.”
Lapis put her hand on her chest and let out a sigh of relief.

Seeing the other girls finally look away, satisfied, Loren looked back towards Klaus,
wondering if it was a good thing if they were satisfied with such a response, but Klaus
just looked back, still chewing the bread, asking him if he needed anything.

Loren decided to stop thinking about it and start breakfast as well.

As he went back to slicing the bread, putting them on the fire and putting cheese on
top of them, Shayna’s voice rang out in the back of his head.

‘Onii-san, something’s coming. A great number of them.’

When he asked which direction, she told him west.

Putting down the knife and bread he was holding, Loren looked to the west.

A field spread out past the houses of the villages, but he couldn’t see anything like
what Shayna had just warned him about.

But it was a warning from a no life king, so he couldn’t let his guard down just because
he couldn’t see anything, so Loren tied his great sword that was next to him on his
back.

“Loren? What’s wrong?”

As Lapis picked up the bread he had put down and took a bite, Loren wondered how
he should word it.

He didn’t think they would believe him if he said something was coming even though
they couldn’t see anything.

Of course, he could tell Lapis that it was Shayna if it were just her, but he couldn’t say
that when Klaus and the others were there as well.

If he couldn’t mention Shayna, there was no credibility to his words.

“I think I saw something.”

Loren said so, knowing that there was no credibility whatsoever, yet not able to think
of anything else to say, but Lapis’ face grew grim.

She threw the bread away and tapped Ange, who was reaching for a slice of bread.

“Lapis?”

“Ange, could you use the spell, <<Distant View>>?”

“O-of course. It’s an elementary level spell…”

The spell was a simple one that allowed the user to see off into the distance, and as
Ange had mentioned, it was an elementary level spell.

It was a spell any magician could use, and it wasn’t something you would ask if they
could use, but every now and then, there would be magicians who specialized in
attacking spells, so it was common practice to ask.

“Then please use it.”

“That direction? Got it.”

Ange didn’t question Lapis’ request and started chanting.

“What’s happening? I can’t see anything…”

“Dunno, but I felt something bad.”

Loren didn’t like how what he was saying was so vague, but there was nothing he could
do about it.

He even considered telling them about Shayna but comparing whatever was coming
towards them and a no life king, it was obvious which one was more dangerous.

“Mercenary’s intuition? Sounds legitimate.”

“You doubt me?”

Loren asked Klaus, but he threw the rest of the bread in his mouth and shook his head.

“It’s the intuition of a battle-hardened mercenary. What else would you do except
believe it?”

Nodding at Klaus’ words, Layla and Roll immediately started taking down the tents.

Loren felt kind of bad since they couldn’t even eat properly, but as Loren was trying to
think of how to apologize, Ange’s warning reached his ears.

“I see a cavalry! Their numbers… I don’t know, but a lot!”

“Judging from the direction, it looks like they’re from the side of Wagenburg. I feel like
there wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t want to meet them either.”

“I’m not sure, but it only smells like trouble.”

The possibilities that Loren could think of was the war going on farther north, past the
forest.

He guessed that it was probably some sort of unit that was participating in it.

There wasn’t enough information to know why they were coming towards the village,
but adventurers making food with ingredients they found in an abandoned village
wouldn’t be a good first impression.

“Nothing good’s going to come out of them finding us. Ange, are they coming this way?”

Loren stomped the fire out.

He had used dry wood so there wasn’t a lot of smoke that went up, but to keen eyes
even a light smoke trail could be visible.

“It looks like they’re coming straight for the village.”

“There’s nowhere to run. We’ll have to hide in a house or storage.”

Loren considered running into the forest, but he wanted to avoid heading into it when
they weren’t sure if something was wrong with it, so he took it out of their options.

“Let’s go with that then.”

“You’re supposed to be the leader of this party, right…?”

Klaus immediately started moving, but Loren glared at his back with half opened eyes.

Since Loren had received the information from Shayna, there was no way Klaus
could’ve known anything about the situation they were in, but since they now knew,
it should’ve been Klaus to think and make the decisions.

“Yeah, but you seem like you’re more experienced, you know?”

“I won’t deny it.”

Although he said that, he wasn’t sure what to think of Klaus not saying even a single
word.

Not even knowing his thoughts, everyone started taking down their camp quickly and
covering their tracks.
Before long, just as Loren had sensed and Ange had confirmed with her <Distant View>,
a group of riders arrived in the village. But by then, Loren’s group had already cleared
their camp and left the plaza.

At first, they had thought about hiding in a warehouse or some cattle pen; however,
after some careful consideration, they concluded that once the riders arrived and
found no one in the villages, they would search those places next. So, they chose a
suitable home in the village and hid there.

Dealing with the donkey that carried their luggage was another problem. But in order
to be able to apologize and explain things in case the villagers came back, they also led
it into the house.

“They have nice equipment.”

Loren muttered. He closed the window’s shutter so that it wouldn’t look out of place,
and was peeking outside through the slits to check out the riders.

He believed them to be Vargenburg’s soldiers. There was still the possibility that they
were robbers though. Still, Loren didn’t think that there was a robber gang powerful
enough to mobilize dozens of riders like this.

“Vargenburg’s regular soldiers. I’m sure of it.”

Layla, who was also peeking outside the window, confirmed their identities. Loren
considered that if she, a former knight of Vargenburg, had said so, then it couldn’t be
wrong.

“What do Vargenburg’s soldiers do at a place like this?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure it has something to do with the war.”

As Layla answered Ange’s question, the troopers rode deeper into the village, and
some of them spread out. Judging by their behavior Loren assumed that they were
likely scouting and checking out the state of affairs here. That didn’t say anything
about their intentions though.

“Would be fun if we could snatch one.”

To understand the situation, asking the person himself would be easiest. But if they
did that, they would definitely be branded as criminals. Working in such a large
number, it was certain that these Vargenburg soldiers were acting on someone’s
orders. If they hindered their job, things would be neither pretty nor fun.

“Should I secretly capture one of them?”

Lapis proposed in response to Loren’s words, but he shook his head.

“If you do, you’ll turn the whole empire into your enemy.”

“Miss Layla, would your connection manage somehow?”

Layla had looked startled at the word ‘capture’, but her expression stiffened immediately,
and she pondered for a short while. She tilted her head in contemplation while
groaning quietly.

“It’ll be difficult. I’m not sure if I can get through to them or not. These soldiers are
following some secret order; if this is handled poorly, it’s very likely that we’ll be
arrested here.”

“Even that will be fine, I think.”

Loren grumbled. He had been unwilling to take on this job from the beginning;
bumping into the kingdom’s soldiers and getting arrested halfway through would be
a splendid reason to give it up, wouldn’t it?

However, being tied up, even for a short a time, wasn’t a pleasant experience. Loren
himself couldn’t bear the thought of it, letting Lapis and the others have such an
experience, was not an option.

“It’ll be easier to talk if there’s someone I know… No, wait, that person is probably…”

Layla, who was looking outside with bated breath, seemed to have discovered a
familiar face among the troopers that had stopped at the plaza; she inched her face
close to the window slits.

“I’ve probably found someone who I can talk to. I’ll go out first. I’ll call you out if things
go well; if not, I’ll shout, and you guys run. It won’t be a big deal if only I get caught.”

Said Layla, after looking closely at the troopers for a while, as if to verify her memory.
She then moved away from the window and before the group could ask any questions,
she leapt out of the house.

There was no time to stop her; Klaus and the others couldn’t do anything but watched
her leave in shock. Loren and Lapis took up the reins of the donkey, ready to run away
at any moment and listened closely for any sounds from outside.

The troopers immediately noticed Layla and surrounded her, but it seemed like she
had introduced herself as a Knight of Vargenburg immediately: they didn’t arrest her,
but took her to the square where troopers were gathering instead.

“Will Layla be alright?”

Ange asked worriedly. As if to reassure her, Klaus hugged her shoulders and pulled
her towards him. Roll seemed to be jealous of it and quietly leaned on Klaus; he put
his hand on her waist and also pulled her to him.

“What are you guys doing?…”

Loren questioned bluntly; he was feeling doubtful about whether they really understood
the situation. When he noticed Lapis, who was beside him, looking up at him with
expectant eyes, he scratched his head.

“No, I won’t do that?”

“You’ve lost to Klaus here, I think.”

“It’s not about winning or losing, not that I want to win, in the first place. Rather than
that, focus on the current situation. If Layla gives a warning, we have to run right away.”

Loren said as if chiding. Smiling wryly, Klaus took his hands off the girls, and they
hurriedly distanced themselves from him while blushing. Lapis looked dissatisfied,
but she seemed unwilling to pursue the matter further and just quietly watched for
any progress with bated breath.

Finally, they heard Layla calling from outside:

“Talk is done! It’s alright to come out now!”

Klaus and the other two girls were relieved that Layla had seemed to handle things
well. But Lapis still looked tense, and Loren once again put his hand on his great sword
in alert.

“Loren? What’s wrong? Layla said it’s alright…”

“That’s not something to accept without questioning. I’ll go first.”

He and Lapis believed they shouldn’t let their guards down until they could be absolutely
certain that everything was alright. But it was probably no use telling Klaus about that,
so Loren decided to go out by himself first. It was so that he could buy some time for
the others to escape if anything happened, but they didn’t seem to understand. Klaus
still nodded with a puzzled face though.

As Loren pushed the door at the entrance open, a number of soldiers were waiting for
him. They looked surprised that his hand was still on his great sword. Layla stepped
out a bit quickly from behind them and spoke to him:

“Of course, you’ll come out first. It’s alright, really. There’s no problem at all.”

“Won’t they tell us to disarm or something?”

“They won’t. But don’t go berserk. If you do, I don’t know what kind of damage you’ll
cause. I, knight Layla, will guarantee your safety myself.”

Having the knight using her own name to assure it, Loren accepted that everything
was alright and finally moved his hand away from his weapon. He felt relief flooded
the atmosphere as he did so. Turning around, he met Lapis’ eyes; she was peeking out
through the slits. He beckoned them over, indicating that all was good.

“Could you please come this way? The captain wants to talk to you about something.”

A soldier told Loren once everyone had come out and led him away. Following him,
Loren was taken into the center of the group of troopers gathering in the plaza, and
came face to face with one of them.

“Excuse me for staying on horseback. I am Karl Belnadotte, a Knight of Vergenburg. I

am currently the Captain of this group.”

The one who introduced himself was a middle-age man, who dressed in nicer armor
than the surrounding soldiers. He had an impressive beard, and the gaze he gave Loren
from his horseback was not that unpleasant despite the hint of caution it held. Loren
bowed slightly in return.

“Loren, adventurer. I am here due to some circumstances.”

It was good manners to introduce your name after being introduced; even Loren
understood that much.

In this kingdom, knights were also a part of the aristocracy, and Loren had thought
that they wouldn’t have bothered about things like the name of an adventurer. But the
reaction of this knight didn’t make him feel any distaste.

“Thank you for letting me know your name. I have heard a bit about your circumstances
from Knight Layla. As I understand, you were entrusted by the neighboring village to
investigate the unusual happening here; is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s about it.”

Loren felt a little reluctant about the term ‘entrusted’. To be correct, he was temporarily
instated as the leader of the party, but he had no intention to explain that to the knight
in front of him. Even though it couldn’t be helped, having others known that someone
like him had taken the role of the temporary leader was embarrassing to him.

And, by all rights, Klaus should have been the one to stand here and talk to this knight
as the leader. In a manner of speaking, Loren felt like he had been cajoled into this
somehow. Even though he had been the one to step up first, he wanted to complain
about how wrong the role assignment was.

“Is that… Sir Klaus? There’ve been rumors about him for some time now. I’ve heard
he’s a brilliant adventurer.”

Glancing behind Loren, Karl saw Klaus and bowed ever so slightly. Klaus also bowed
to him in return. Admiring the difference in treatment, Loren tried throwing a question
once Karl’s eyes had returned to him:

“What are you doing here, Sir Knight of Vargenburg?”

“It’s a classified military mission, so I can’t talk about it. But we plan to enter the forest
and head for the northern exit.”

Was it proper to say that, Loren wondered. With the war going on, he couldn’t think of
any other reason why they would come out of the forest from the northern exit except
to strike the enemies from the flank or the rear.

Riding through a forest didn’t seem like a very good idea, but the forest wasn’t that
dense to make passing it on horsebacks impossible. They probably could make it if
they slowed their speed.

“However, there’s something that bothers me a little. That concern has gotten stronger
once we arrived at this village.”

“Would it be alright for me to ask what it is?”

Lapis asked Karl before Loren could open his mouth.

Karl looked alert for a moment, but once he noticed that the one who had asked the
question was a girl in priest clothing, he softened just a little. When Loren was thinking
how convenient it was to have clothes that could announce to everyone that one was
a priest, Karl spoke.

“You have known that there is a war going on in this vicinity, I believe.”

“Yes, we’ve heard of that.”

“The truth is, desertion has been happening one after another in both armies.”

That was not anything unusual, Loren thought.

In the first place, there were very few people going to wars because they liked it. Most
people did because they had no other choice, and as they could die at any time, he
could understand why some wanted to run away.

It was a bit concerning if desertion was happening in both sides, but the chance of
dying wasn’t that different for front line soldiers whether their side was winning or
losing. So, it was not like people would run away only when they were losing.

“It seems like the deserters have taken refuge in this forest.”

Karl turned his stern eyes to the forest and scowled.

“I thought that they would hide in this village before passing through the forest, but if
this place has become vacant, then where did they go?”

“Are you thinking that they’re staying in the forest?”

“I don’t know. But we don’t have the time to ponder or investigate it.”

Having said that much, Karl made a proposal to Loren as if he had just come up with
it:

“If it’s alright, what do you think about travelling together with us? Since the village
has been in this state, I believe you have also thought about investigating the forest.”

“I don’t want to take part in wars.”

“Don’t worry about that. If you come with us, you’ll be able to grasp the state of affairs
in the forest to some extent, and it’ll be safer than you going through it alone, don’t
you think? I also believe that it’ll be safer for us to cross the forest with some
adventurers than by ourselves. What do you think?”

It could be said that the ability to detect danger of adventurers was superior to that of
knights or soldiers, whose main purpose was to fight. In exchange, they could borrow
the knights’ and soldiers’ combat ability to pass the forest – that was what Karl was
proposing.

It was not such a bad bargain, but was there a catch in it somewhere? Loren wondered.
He looked at Karl, who was waiting for his answer while considering what to do about
it.
In the end, Loren decided to accept Karl’s proposal.

As he had said beforehand that he didn’t want to participate in the war, he decided
that he would just feign ignorance till the end no matter what he was told. Should
anything happen in the forest, it would be a merit to have more people – that was the
reason why he accepted the proposal.

He had been supposed to confirm with Klaus first, but since Klaus himself just approved
it readily, the other girls also had no complaints. And things just went along like that.

“Will only us walk?”

“I apologize for it, but we don’t have horses to lend you. Since we’ll move slowly in the
forest, you walking probably wouldn’t be a problem.”

Talking about borrowing horses, Loren actually had no experience riding a horse. He
had never ridden a horse during his mercenary days, and horses were extremely
expensive to be of practical use to begin with. Moreover, horses that had been trained
for battles were also rare; one wouldn’t be able to ride them unless one belonged to
the army.

It was the same for Klaus and the others. The only ones who had ever ridden a
warhorse were Layla, a knight and for some reason, Lapis.

“How did you ever ride a horse?”

“That is, well, a secret of the maiden.”

Lapis laughed mysteriously. He could have pressed her for an answer, yet since they
wouldn’t be lent horses anyway, Loren just stopped the conversation there. Without
horses there was no difference whether she could or couldn’t ride a horse.

Karl decided to leave some troopers in the village in case any villagers return. At the
same time, he let the two return to the main force to report about the unusual
happening here.

Loren thought that the kingdom’s involvement might improve the situation.
Nevertheless, there was no way back anymore, unless the state of affairs changed.

“So, let’s go.”

At Karl’s command, the cavalry slowly advanced into the forest. Loren’s group was at
the front, walking near Karl.

The forest was quite gloomy inside, but the trees didn’t grow too thick to hinder riders’
pass. There were also paths formed by villagers coming and going, so there seemed to
be no issue for the slowly-moving cavalry. The biggest problem was their width. Human
footpaths weren’t wide enough for horses to line up side by side. Thus, Karl instructed
the troop to advance in two columns.

“How long does it take to pass through this forest?”

“About two hours on foot.”

Military personnel were generally the ones who knew most about topography details.
There were maps on the market, but the information they recorded were very vague;
in many cases, the country concealed the exact distance and location.

“For some reason, the atmosphere here is a bit strange.”

As they went forth on the forest paths, Karl looked around and muttered.

“Have you noticed? There are no signs of birds, animals or even insects in the forest.
It’s too quiet.”

Loren had also noticed without Karl pointing it out. A forest was a place where various
creatures lived. It wouldn’t be strange to see the signs of their presence, to hear their
sounds or to catch a glimpse of their shapes. Yet there were no birds and not a single
animal he could find when he looked around; it wasn’t normal.

“If there are deserters or villagers here, it wouldn’t be strange to have signs of them.”

“On the other hand, having no signs of them so far is rather eerie.”
Lapis, who was walking next to Loren, voiced her feelings. Not just Loren group, the
soldiers were also having the same thoughts. Some of the troopers looked around with
anxious faces, representing the uneasiness they felt.

“I’ll want to investigate this if we have time, but I can’t say that.”

“It’s not a good tendency for soldiers to be anxious.”

“It’ll end once we leave the forest.”

Karl said, but the whole group had to stop just a short while later.

“Messenger here! There’s people ahead!”

When the news came from the group that had gone ahead of them, it had been about
one hour since they had stepped into the forest.

Karl immediately ordered the whole troop to stop and rode ahead himself to check
what the messenger had reported. Loren’s group also followed him.

When they arrived at the vanguard, a bewildered-looking soldier pointed to a human

figure standing alone on the path ahead and reported to Karl, who was approaching
him.

“Captain, there’s a person.”

“A villager?”

The human figure looked to be female; she didn’t show any reaction even after seeing
a cavalry. She wore the common clothes of villagers, and didn’t appear to be armed.
They couldn’t see her face due to the distance and the gloom of the forest, but her just
standing straight without even swaying was quite unsettling.

“Is it human?”

As Loren muttered, Shayna’s voice spoke up in his mind.

[‘Doesn’t seem to be an undead, onii-san.’]

[‘Any signs from the surroundings?’]

[‘That… I don’t know for sure. There seems to be some, but at the same time doesn’t… ’]

Loren heightened his alertness at Shayna’s vague words. If even the King of the Dead
couldn’t be sure of the situation, then it couldn’t be normal.

[‘It feels like something is hindering me. Please be careful, onii-san.’]

Loren didn’t need Shayna to tell him that. Seeing Loren laid his hand on his greatsword,
Klaus group and Lapis also became tense.

And of course, Karl also began to give orders seeing them like that.

“Be alert! We don’t know what will happen!”

The change happened right at that moment.

The first thing Loren could sense was a sweet aroma tickling the back of his nose; it
felt just like a flower’s nectar was mixed into the air. Loren reflexively covered his
mouth with a hand, but he couldn’t stop breathing.

“Wh-what is this?”

Noticing that Karl’s confused voice seemed to be strangely faraway, Loren beat at his
chest. Every time he breathed in the heartburn-inducing air, a haze shrouding his
consciousness. Loren fell to his knees.

It also appeared to affect the cavalry; some began to fall from their horses with a
confused expression on their faces.

“Loren-san, are you alright?”

He couldn’t help breathing but every time he did, his consciousness became hazy.
Loren could feel an alarm bell ringing somewhere in his head, telling him to run away
from this place immediately. But his arms and legs just wouldn’t do what they were
told.

Just when he thought how ugly it was to be like this, Lapis, who was standing beside
him, put her hands under his arms and helped him up. The tone of her voice was
unexpectedly calm.
“Things seem to have become strange again.”

Even though she was talking right next to him, her voice also seemed to come from a
distance. It was just like getting drunk on some strong wine. Loren desperately shook
his head to maintain his consciousness, but the drunkenness became stronger every
time he breathed; so that just standing by himself became a difficult thing.

“Lapis… Are you alright?”

“Yeah, of course I am. Won’t you praise me?”

Lapis said with a grin. As Loren staggered on his feet, she kept a hand on his waist and
lent him a shoulder to help him stand. But he couldn’t even reply to that; his
consciousness had begun to dim.

“What about Klaus and the others?”

“Seems like the ladies are no good. They have all gone down. Klaus-san is… amazingly,
he seems fine.”

“The cavalry…”

“All are no good. Most have fallen from their horses and just lied there.”

“Is that… so…”

He couldn’t collect his thoughts at all; just breathing had become a rough thing to do.

Loren suddenly became very aware of Lapis’ body pushing against him. As he grasped
her free hand for a moment without really knowing what he was thinking, he got a
punch to his face. The pain radiating from his cheek and the taste of blood inside his
mouth woke his mind for just a moment, and his awareness immediately turned hazy
again.

“Just what is this, really…?”

“Well? This… seems to have become a critical situation.”

Lapis’ tone changed, which signaled Loren once more that they were in a really bad
situation. But even as he thought about options, the sweet scent pouring into his mouth
and nose scattered all thoughts away.

“A poison…?”

“I don’t think so. To be able to penetrate Loren’s protection that easily, the culprit
seems to be quite brutal.”

Lapis answered. She looked around and quietly clucked her tongue.

“And, we’re surrounded.”

Numerous human figures began to emerge from the shades of the trees. Where had
that many people hidden up until now? They looked like villagers and soldiers, and
their appearances and genders varied. They slowly walked up, grabbed the immobile
soldiers that had fallen from their horses and dragged them into the depth of the
forest.

Would the horses panic and go on a rampage? Strange, wondered Lapis, while casually
waved her arm at an approaching human figure. The head of the figure that had been
trying to grab her was shredded just by that action, with the pieces flying up and
disappearing into the trees. Blood squirted up from the headless body.

The scent of blood woke Loren’s mind a little.

“Run…”

“It’s difficult to. Klaus!”

Lapis called and Klaus, who was keeping the girls up, turned around. His face was
painted with surprise: at the unfamiliar expressions on Lapis’ face or at the change of
the situation, no one knew.

“Can you run?”

“I-I’m not sure. I can’t leave the rest behind.”

“You’re right. Let’s see if we can use the horses for transportation.”

“What about the soldiers?!”

“Let’s abandon them. It’s impossible to save everyone anyway.”

Lapis hurriedly gave Klaus instruction, and he immediately began to load the
unconscious girls on the back of a horse that wasn’t shifting around.

Lapis kicked down one approaching figure and grabbed the collar of another and
shoved it into a tree. Then she lightly lifted Loren, who was still leaning on her shoulder,
to a horse’s back and nimbly sat astride it herself.

“It’ll be nice if we can escape by running away, but that must be impossible.”

“Where can we run to?!”

With three people on a horse, there was no more space for a rider. Klaus had no choice
but to take the reins and pulled the horse along. Lapis shrugged at him.

“Well, where to, I wonder? Away from here at least. Let’s go.”

“Understood. I’ll leave the destination to you!”

Lapis wondered what to do if the horse wouldn’t run, but it obediently broke into a
run with a light kick to the stomach. In order to keep up with the horses, Klaus activated
a <Strength Boost> on himself and followed her with enhanced speed and vigor.
The horse did run, but not that fast.

Even though the way it ran was unsure somehow, they should be thankful that it did
run at all, Lapis thought.

She didn’t know if Loren, who she was holding on the back of the horse, was aware or
not. Sometimes he clenched his teeth or knocked at his own head in an attempt to
clear up his mind, but it didn’t seem to work.

“It’s useless. You should sleep, if you like to.”

“Lapis…”

Loren muttered and looked at her over his shoulder. For a brief moment, Lapis was
thoroughly surprised at the gaze he directed towards her. The molten eyes on his
flushed face carried such interest for the opposite sex that she had to wonder if it was
too blatant. Needing to confirm it, Lapis cautiously spoke to him even as she blushed
involuntarily:

“Loren, could it be that you’re thinking about…”

“Quiet… ‘s nothing…”

Loren replied in a somewhat ashamed voice. He let himself fall face down on the
horse’s neck and made a ragged sound while thrusting a fist into his own head. Lapis
knew she should make him stop, but she could somehow guess what kind of state
Loren was in right now from his gaze and expression earlier; if she stopped him, things
would become impossible to stop.

Klaus’ shriek-like voice came from behind her then, making the horse stop.

“Wait! Now is… tch, uwah?!”

Lapis turned the horse around to look. The girls had reached out and grasped Klau’s
hand, who was pulling the reins of the horse carrying them. He was right in the middle
of shaking them loose.

Ange slipped down from the horse with intoxicated eyes and a smile on her face, and
clung to Klaus’ neck. Before one realized, Layla had also dismounted and was hugging
him from behind, while Roll clung tightly to his leg with both arms.

Normally, Lapis would have yelled at them, but she couldn’t after seeing the state
Loren was in. It was clear that something was causing these usually-cannot-happen
things to happen.

“Well, what should I do?”

Strangely, the idea of helping Klaus didn’t cross Lapis’ mind at all. The problem was
Loren.

She could somehow guess what was happening to him. If this continued, Loren would
probably endure it with his will, but it wouldn’t be good for his body, not to mention
especially hard on his mind.

For a moment, Lapis considered just coming at him, but she immediately shook her
head to chase that thought away. She didn’t want to be rejected, and if it turned out
that Loren didn’t desire her, there would be problems with their relationship from
now on. And above all, doing it on horseback in a forest was no way to her taste.

“I don’t mean that the first time must be on a canopy bed, but well.”

She joked while patting Loren, who was lying on the horse’s neck.

“Shayna, can you hear me? If yes, take control of Loren’s body for a while. As you are
the No Life King, you can do that much, right? I will apologize later if there’s any
problems.”

As Lapis made her appeal, Loren’s body, which had been lying face down, twitched. A
short while later, it rose up and turned around with an emotionless face. Even though
she felt slightly uncomfortable as the empty eyes turned towards her, Lapis still spoke
to Loren’s body, which was staring at her without moving.

“Did you succeed?”

“…Yes, onee-san…”

The words came from Loren’s mouth, in Loren’s voice, but didn’t belong to him. The
flatness of the tone, as well as the words that he normally wouldn’t use caused
something like a chill running down her spine. Still, Lapis spoke.

“So you succeeded.”

“Because onii-san voluntarily gave me the control.”

Loren replied, but Lapis could sense that regardless of the appearance, the person
inside was different. Of course, it went without saying that this other person was No
Life King Shayna, who normally reside quietly inside Loren.

By all rights, it was not an easy thing to take control of someone else’s body while
dwelling inside it, even to a No Life King. For it to go smoothly, Loren must have been
giving the control of his body to Shayna by his own will after noticing his own unusual
condition.

“Do you have any difficulty moving the body?”

Even though both Loren and Shayna were from the same race, there was a clear
difference in their physiques. Movements were basically the same, but if the different
sensation coming from the difference in physiques became a hindrance, it would need
some getting used to.

“I don’t. But I think fighting is impossible, onee-san.”

Shayna answered. She had looked at her arms and body as if they were something
strange, and began to raise the arms and turned the neck and such. Even though
Loren’s physical strength could be used as is and she could easily lift the greatsword,
Shayna herself didn’t have the knowledge or skills to fight with it. It would be just like
swinging a big sword around, and even though that was kind of a threat of its own, it
would be impossible for Shayna to fight like Loren.

“And, I don’t recommend maintaining this state for a long time.”

By nature, being forcibly moved by someone else that wasn’t its owner like this wasn’t
a good thing for Loren’s body, Shayna said. Moreover, some adverse effects might
happen to his mind due to the separation from his body, no matter how temporary it
was. Such an unnatural state should be corrected as soon as possible.

“It’s either one of these two: Just abandon everything and run away if the worst
happens, or give the control back to Loren, assuming that he’ll accept me.”

“Onee-san, you are such an adult…”

Shayna bashfully blushed just a little, but the appearance was that of Loren. The gap
between the action and the appearance was so big that Lapis felt dizzy.

“A-aside from that, is there any inconvenience?”

“That’s right. That… is a bit uncomfortable…”

Shayna hesitantly looked down at her own crotch. Lapis understood what she wanted
to say with that action; she looked up at the sky and sighed, unable to say anything.

The difference in physique between Loren and Shayna was definitely a problem, but
something even more problematic was their difference in gender: Loren was a man,
and Shayna was a girl. In short, Loren had something that Shayna originally didn’t
have, and the feeling of a non-existing organ brought confusion and discomfort to her.

“I have decided that this is a very serious situation.”

“O-onee-san…”

“I’ll need to tell him to give me some detailed data later…”

“Please stop, onee-san. Onii-san will die mentally.”

Shayna flapped her hands in a panic. The action would be cute had it been done by a
girl, but it was a deadly weapon being performed by a well-trained swordsman like
Loren.

The horse whinnied in annoyance at all the fuss being done on its back. Lapis soothed
it while smiling wryly and apologizing to Shayna, who was still waving her arms around.
“Sorry sorry. It was a rather bad joke.”

“Please stop, really. Onii-san can hear this.”

Lapis’ face twitched slightly at those words. While residing inside Loren, Shayna was
able to see and hear the state of the outside world by synchronizing with his sensations.
Conversely, now that she was in control of the body, she seemed to be able to transmit
what she saw and heard to Loren.

“As I have become the No Life King, I’m alright with the total darkness I reside in,
where I can’t hear anything. But Onii-san is human, and spending a long time in a state
where there’s no sound or no light can cause abnormalities to his mentality.”

“I feel like there is a kind of torture just like that.”

“Therefore, I’m still maintaining my synchronization with onii-san’s sense of sight and
hearing. Please act while bearing that in mind, onee-san.”

“I will keep it in mind.”

Wondering what kind of retaliation would await her once this was all over, Lapis
shuddered slightly and turned her eyes towards Klaus and the girls, who were still
entangling with each other on the ground.

Seemed like Klaus was trying desperately to fend off the girls, but even though he had
an advantage in terms of individual power, he was overwhelmingly disadvantageous
in terms of number. The situation was slowly becoming one where it was impossible
to say that his defense wouldn’t break.

“So unexpected. I thought you’d just go with the flow and do it.”

“There are occasions when I care about the timing and situation too!”

Klaus was trying to peel the girls off him somehow, but he couldn’t be too rough with
his companions. The girls were in no state to care about places or situations though;
they just thrust their hands into any gaps of his armor and clothes and trailed their
tongue along his nape. Klaus was overwhelmingly disadvantaged.

“Also, doing it with them while they’re being dosed with such a horrible drug is no fun
at all!”
“I’m having troubles reacting to that even if you press me.”

“Please! Do something-!”

Klaus asking for help while being approached by women was an extremely rare sight
that might never ever happen again if one missed it, Lapis thought. But this was not
the time to happily watch.

“It’ll be a little rough, so forgive me, OK?”

Lapis waved her hands without waiting for a reply, and Klaus and the three girls who
were coiling themselves around him were all blown away and crashed into the trees.

Klaus, who still had his senses, was able to immediately get up as the girls had acted
as his cushions and lessened the impact. But the three girls hadn’t landed well and had
taken some damages; they were writhing in pain and unable to stand up.

“What… Or rather, wasn’t it too much for ‘a little rough’?”

“I was trying to blow you all away in one go with <<Force>>… Was it too rough? I don’t
have time to peel them off one by one.”

<<Force>> was one of the few offensive spells in the list of spells deemed legal to
practice by law, which was dominated by protective and healing spells. Being hit by it
was just like being punched by an invisible fist; it was not a spell with the power to
blow away four people including Klaus.

“It’s already too late by now, but can I ask who you are?”

“Just a priestess serving the God of Knowledge. Let’s keep it at that.”

Her words did not allow for any arguments. Klaus immediately understood that it was
not something for him to delve into; he nodded to show his acknowledgement while
enduring the pain running through his body.
“Anyway, we have to find the culprit of this incident and deal with them.”

Lapis went deeper into the forest with Loren accompanying her.

She actually also wanted to bring Klaus along to increase fighting power, as he was still
able to behave normally under this circumstance. But if she did, the three girls who
were affected by this phenomenon would become a problem. Of course, they couldn’t
leave them and carrying three unconscious people would seriously affect their mobility.
If something were to happen, it would become troublesome. As a last resort, Lapis had
ordered Klaus to watch over the girls and gone into the forest with Loren, or rather
Shayna.

As Loren’s physical strength and stamina were pretty much retained, Shayna was able
to move fast enough to keep up with Lapis, who was leading the way.

“Onee-san, I’m sorry but-“

“Would you stop with that ‘onee-san’?”

Interrupting Shayna’s attempt to talk to her, Lapis stopped and turned around. The
expression on her face somehow looked like both anger and perplexity.

“Onee-san, I can’t call you that?”

“Ah no, it’s alright if Shayna-chan calls me that, but your appearance is now Loren-
san’s, isn’t it? To be called ‘onee-san’ by a well-trained swordsman bigger than me is
in no way comfortable…”

The tone of her voice had returned to normal. Lapis told Shayna in an embarrassing
voice, as she didn’t seem to notice it.

“But onee-san, I can’t speak like onii-san.”

“I won’t tell you to imitate him, but… Can you manage somehow?”

Not sure if it was discouraging or motivation-dampening but to Lapis, Shayna’s way of

speaking was a more serious problem than the strange phenomenon happening in the
forest right now. Unless she managed to do something about it, she didn’t think she
would be able to muster up the energy to face the culprit of all this.

“I-I’ll try?”

“Please do. It directly affects my spirit.”

“So, uhm, Lapis-sa… san? There’s something I think we have to do before we deal with
the culprit.”

Even though she still stuttered, Shayna seemed to have really considered her words.
Lapis could accept it more or less, and prompted her to continue.

To be honest, Lapis didn’t really enjoy being called ‘san’ by something with Loren’s
face, but when she thought about it, she didn’t really want Shayna to address her
without any honorifics either, so she couldn’t say anything.

“The villages and soldiers, if we don’t find them first then with their number, they will
be a hindrance later when we face the culprit, won’t they?”

“I don’t think so.”

Lapis immediately rejected Shayna’s suggestion. It was so decisive and immediate that
Shayna tilted her head and wondered if there was any reason behind. Lapis explained
to her:

“This strange phenomenon doesn’t seem to be caused by people being manipulated. I

think we won’t be able to make the villagers and soldiers move at will under the current
circumstances.”

“This is like a hive mind behavior. So they’re not being controlled?”

Shayna examined the current happening in her own way. After all, this was something
that could easily incapacitate her host Loren. For her own safety as well as for her host
to be able to return, she had to figure out what exactly had attacked the villagers and
soldiers by affecting their minds. She was wondering if those affected were being
controlled, but Lapis seemed to disagree.

“This is not a systematic mind control, I think.”

Lapis had started walking again; she told Shayna, who was walking behind her, in a
preaching tone.

“When controlling others, if the ones under control are not in a stable state by
themselves, it’ll become a laughable situation even if the control is good.”

It was impossible to control someone who was acting wildly. If one could be controlled,
they wouldn’t act wildly, and it would be strange if they didn’t move in some sort of
order. From Lapis’ point of view, Loren had seemed to be trying to endure something
out of control before switching with Shayna; it was difficult to imagine controlling him
in such a state.

“So it’s some factor that makes everyone act wildly?”

“That information doesn’t remain inside Loren-san, does it?”

Lapis tried asking with some anticipation, and Shayna shook her head.

“I rarely synchronize with onii-san’s senses. I could feel that onii-san was very
flustered before we switched, but I don’t know anything about his state of mind.”

“I see. I’ve anticipated this… It’s just like my guess.”

“So you guessed it.”

Hearing that, Lapis puffed up with just a tiny bit of pride. Loren would have said
something about this, but unfortunately it was Shayna in Loren’s body now, and
Shayna just intently waited for her next words. After keeping her proud expression for
a while, Lapis just gave up and quietly sighed.

“This is so difficult…”

“Eh? Eh? Did I make a wrong reaction just now?”

“If I make such an expression, Loren-san would interrupt and say something like ‘I
know’, or ‘don’t do useless things’.”
“I’m sorry, Lapis-sa… san… I-I will try harder.”

Shayna clenched her fists in a motivational pose; but as it was Loren’s body, it looked
somehow eerie.

“Well, it’s alright. Talking about guessing, judging from the girls’ reaction, I guess this
is something related to libido getting out of control.”

“Libido?”

“Think of it like a man pushing a pretty woman down and keeping at it all night, or a
woman being pushed down by a handsome man and pushed back, and they grappled
with each other in a mess.”

Lapis just wanted to give a super simple explanation to Shayna, who looked like she
didn’t really understand. But the question Shayna threw back at her made her face
froze:

“Lapis-sa… san also wants to do that?”

“This is not the time to talk about what someone wants to do or not.”

Lapis couldn’t answer that frank and pure question, so she changed the subject. She
was furious at herself for being unable to answer it immediately and decently, but her
cheeks also became hot due to the feeling of being made fun of by that question of
Shayna, who was certainly younger than her in age, not to mention in race.

“W-well, this somehow seems to be more about lust than libido. And with the idleness
and gluttony, I can kind of guess the culprit of this incident.”

“Lapis-san, are you alright? Your face is a bit red.”

“A-Anyway! I don’t expect the villagers and soldiers to be manipulated to attack us, so
let’s leave this for now.”

With that decisive declaration and a glare from Lapis, Shayna lost the will to delve
deeper into that subject and just nodded.

“So, let’s make finding the culprit our top priority.”

“Haa… But Lapis-san, this is so difficult to say…”

“What is it? Even if it’s difficult to say, it might be something important. Please just
speak clearly!”

As Lapis said it would be a problem if she didn’t tell her something because it was
difficult to, Shayna pointed to the trees and said:

“I think we’re surrounded.”

“Eh? You don’t say…”

Lapis looked around in panic. She had thought that she didn’t see or hear anyone, but
now she realized for the first time that the gaps between the trees were full of human
figures who looked to have completely lost their senses. They were surrounding her
and Shayna.

“I, of all people…”

“Sis… no, Lapis-san, please hold on! Everyone makes mistakes once or twice.”

“That tone, with that face makes me feel so exhausted… No, it’s alright now. Let’s vent
my anger on them.”

Lapis said, half desperate, and raised her left hand.

Thinking that it was becoming more an annihilation before going forward rather than
a retreat, Shayna reached for the greatsword on her back and lifted it up. Regardless
of who was inside the body, Loren’s well-trained arm easily raised the sword; even
though she knew nothing about the techniques, Shayna thought she would be able to
at least swing the sword around to defend herself against anyone coming near.

“Until onii-san comes back, I won’t let anyone touch Lapis-san, even just a finger!”

With a slashing sound, Shayna unsheathed the sword in one take. She was in a ready-
to-fight stance when she saw the figures coming out from the trees and involuntarily
gulped. Lapis was also in a fighting stance with fists clenched, and she could also sense
her gulping.

Human figures were coming out from the trees’ shadows. There were only twenty of
them, but the problem was how they dressed.

“Wh-what…”

Lapis couldn’t continue after the interrogative word.

That was not unreasonable: Of all things, the ones who came out were all men and
looked to be a mixed group of soldiers and villagers based on their attire, and while
there were no problems about their upper bodies, they didn’t wear even just a single
piece of clothes on their lower bodies. In short, the things that shouldn’t be seen were
swinging and danging in plain sight.

Even Lapis was at a loss for words due to the surprise of it, and Shayna switched to
holding the greatsword with one hand while covering her eyes with the other.

“Lapis-san?! What on earth is happening?!”

“Even if you ask me… As they’re under the influence of lust, maybe to be able to go at
it right away? Or maybe they come here right after doing it and don’t have time to put
anything on?”

“Wha-wha-wha-what should we do?! I can’t fight while looking at those things!”

Aside from being very young, Shayna had originally come from a good family; asking
her to fight while seeing men’s bare lower bodies was impossible.

As for Lapis, her mind had already been not-calm due to the thing with Loren; now
that she was suddenly presented with such a sight, she had absolutely no confidence
that she could keep her composure.

“Let’s draw back! Let’s go refresh our mind and body somewhere.”

“Roger. We’ll do a strategic withdrawal!”

It was more running away than withdrawing, but once a plan had been made, Lapis
was quick to execute it. She immediately used <<Force>> to clear a corner, then
grabbed Shayna’s hand and ran off through that opening.
Lapis was running in the gloomy forest, her face faintly colored with fear.

She looked over her shoulders; Loren, with a greatsword on his shoulder, was running
after her, but his face was distorted with fear. It was not an expression usually seen on
his face, and Lapis wondered if that was what he looked like when he felt scared. She
had no references though, so she turned around again and shrugged lightly.

Inside Loren’s body was a girl called Shayna, and it was her who formed the body’s
expression. Even though it was the same body, the two of them must have felt fear in
different ways; it was not certain that Loren would make the same expression Shayna
had just now.

“Are they chasing us?”

“They are!”

Being chased by demons was what adventurers do; that was one of the things Lapis
had signed to. Being chased by soldiers and adventurers couldn’t be helped as she was
from the Daemon race; she had also used to that. But Lapis hadn’t even expected to be
chased in a forest by countless crazy, naked-from-the-waist-down men. Surely enough
she didn’t feel prepared at all.

“Why do I have to go through such a thing like this?!”

“As a daily activity?”

“Isn’t that bad?! I strongly protest!”

Shayna thought that shouting while running would mess up one’s breathing and cause
excessive tiredness but Lapis’s body, with support from her demon abilities, didn’t
seem to be exhausted by that.

Just then, a man suddenly reached out from the shade of the trees ahead and tried to
block them. Lapis threw a punch at his face, coloring trunks of trees in red.

“It’s strange that we can’t shake them off, but how did they get ahead of us?!”

“Are we in a normal space now?”

The man fell backwards. Lapis thought about adding a kick just to make sure but just
gave up.

No matter how high her ability was, it was still impossible to deliver a high kick
towards the guy’s temple while running. If she were to make a more natural kick, it
would have to be a front kick, and the place such a kick hit would be his lower half
body. But this man was, just like the ones who were chasing them, naked from the
waist down for some reason. A front kick might hit that vital, difficult-to-mention part
of him. It would be alright if he had been wearing clothes, but Lapis just couldn’t
imagine having her own feet come into direct contact with that thing.

Anyways, Lapis asked Shayna about her grumbling:

“What do you mean?”

“I think we have already been under the influence of the culprit of this strange
happening, just like how onii-san has. If that’s the case, maybe we’ve already been
trapped in some area and won’t be able to get out.”

“In short?”

“Even though we’ve tried our hardest to run away, it’s possible that we’re actually just
running in a circle.”

“In that case, isn’t it strange that we don’t see the backs of our pursuers?”

“Maybe they separated and are hiding in the shades of the trees and will come out
when we pass by, again and again.”

Lapis didn’t remember the faces of each pursuer. She agreed with Shayna’s idea that a
fixed number of the men pretended to chase them while the others hid and came out
to block them repeatedly. But if that was the case, there would arise a new problem.
Lapis scratched her head in annoyance.
“In that case, it’ll be meaningless no matter how much we run, isn’t it?”

“We’ll run out of strength before long, and will be captured.”

It was easy to guess whose stamina would deplete first – theirs, who just kept running
single-mindedly or of those men, who hid between the trees after running for a bit.
Even though Lapis had quite high stamina due to her demon heritage, it was still
impossible to run away from pursuers who could take breaks while chasing her.

“Well then, we have no choices but to intercept them somewhere, don’t we?”

“Or breaking free from the area we’re trapped in.”

Neither of it was easy. One had no choice but to do what needed to be done though –
Lapis made up her mind.

“First of all, let’s deal with our pursuers.”

“I have no confidence about it, but I’ll try… Ah.”

Shayna stopped in the middle of the sentence. Thinking there was some problem, Lapis
looked over her shoulders and saw Shayna pressing at her temples. Her expression
changed from innocent and childlike to stern and bloodthirsty.

“If it’s that kind of work… I’ll take charge of it!”

Instead of Shayna’s unfamiliar tone, the tone of voice that reached Lapis’ ears was
familiar.

“Loren-san?!”

He had stopped as his expression changed. Lapis saw their pursuers approaching him
from behind and raised her voice in warning. But Loren had already raised his
greatsword with both hands and swung it around with a roar. The blade cut deeply
into the trees around them and slightly into the torso of the approaching man without
stopping. The body was slashed into two, blood and flesh spread around.
Seeing the clothed upper half body being cut off from the naked lower half body, the
pursuers didn’t even flinch. They started leaping at Loren with the momentum of their
run. But trying to grab at Loren, who was wielding a sword, while they were
barehanded, was just a mad attempt.

“Come on!”

Loren slashed the sword upwards and cut one of the men into two from crotch to head
in a straight line. He pulled the sword back and split another man into two again, from
head to crotch this time. The two severed parts of the corpse slowly fell to left and
right while Loren emerged in the middle, leaning forward with a violent shake while
being showered in blood.

Thinking that Loren’s losing his stance was a good opportunity, the other men rushed
in with increased vigor. But despite the unstable stance, he still swung the greatsword
with his right hand; those on the path of his blade have their upper body torn off,
making the cross-section of their bodies visible. The bodies were cut into halves and
fell away.

New fountains of blood spayed in the air and Loren, having lost his balance, fell to his
knees. Lapis rushed up to him, but he raised a hand to stop her.

“Loren! You’re still under its effect… This is not good, please change places with Shayna!”

It seemed like Loren’s mind was still being influenced by some force hiding in this forest.
Lapis immediately realized that in order to fight, he had forcibly used the battle’s
tension to trick himself. If this continued, his mind would be deeply affected by this
phenomenon.

But he ignored Lapis’ advice and didn’t switch places with Shayna.

“I can’t let someone who’s not used to killing, kill. Unlike magic and such, the feeling
stays on your hands.”

No matter how inhuman an existence she had now become, Shayna had originally
been a very young girl. No matter how desperate the situation was, making such a
young girl feel the blade cutting through flesh and bones and smell the stench of blood
was… And Loren could still remember the repulsion he had felt when taking away
another person’s life with his own hands.
“Leave it to me. I will try to keep my sanity until it all ends.”

“And after it all ends…”

“If I become mad, run. Or…”

Loren took a quick glance at Lapis’ face, then immediately returned his eyes to the
enemies in front of them and fixed his grip on the sword.

“Deal with me in any way suitable then. I won’t hold any grudges, I think.”

“Such things…”

Lapis wanted to say that she wouldn’t be able to do that, but before the words came
out, Loren had stepped forward.

He swung the sword that had been resting on his shoulder downwards, and the head
that received its direct hit was crushed into pieces and scatter in all directions.

Loren cluck his tongue at that.

He had been able to cut one man into half with a single stroke of his sword before, but
now he could only smash them. This meant he wasn’t in good shape, and couldn’t
control his mind or body as he wanted. Loren had realized that he had just used brute
force to smash the head rather than slicing it.

The headless body was still standing and swaying on the same spot as if it couldn’t be
stopped. Loren gave it a kick and turned his eyes to another prey. But he could feel his
vision flickered for a moment, and grinned his teeth.

Breathing in the air thick with the stench of blood and mixed with that sickeningly
sweet scent made Loren’s consciousness turn hazy.

[‘Onii-san! Don’t overdo it and just switch with me, please!’]

Shayna spoke to him, but he didn’t pay it attention. He asked her for a favor instead:
Using Energy Drain, the ability of a King of the Death, to supply him with power.

Shayna didn’t question what he planned to do; she just immediately sucked up magic
power and life force from the pursuers and the trees and poured it into Loren.
Feeling the power flowing into himself, Loren tried to drag out the sensation caused
by the phenomenon, something he hadn’t been able to do by himself.

“It doesn’t even sway at this level… It just coats over the fight in my head.”

As if to give himself a hint, Loren only focused on the enemies swarming before his
eyes and the greatsword he was holding. Right now, only these two things were
important; nothing else was. He drove all other thoughts out of his mind and only
focused on fighting.

“I won’t… let you do it!”

In a corner of Loren’s roaring mind, the feeling resurrected. Something clicked and
Loren, feeling the clinking sound of it, lifted the corners of his mouth to form a
ferocious smile.
With a roar, Loren crushed to pieces several trees as thick as adults’ necks with a single
slash of the sword. While wood blocks danced in the air, their pursuers’ bodies became
chunks of meat and red droplets that fell to the ground.

Loren dashed through them with a terrifying smile etched on his face. He was not that
fast, but the brute strength of it made even Lapis shudder.

It would be understandable had he only cut through them; his sword was sturdy and
sharp enough. It would still require unconventional strength, but it was still under
comprehensible category. But instead Loren had just smashed several trees to bits. It
showed how exceptional the weight of the weapon as well as the strength of its
wielder was. It was beyond Lapis’ understanding.

“This is…”

Lapis had witnessed Loren being like this multiple times so far. It was a kind of
rampage where he went berserk as if his shackles had suddenly been removed, then
lost consciousness like a suddenly-snapped thread. The more immense the power was,
the bigger impact Loren’s body received. He usually ended up in the hospital afterwards.

For a moment, Lapis wondered if this was a poor choice. No matter how powerful the
attack was, it was a useless ability if he couldn’t fight continuously and had to pull
back.

But at the same time, Lapis could think of another possibility, and it might have been
the best; she immediately changed her mind.

It could be said that the situation was getting worse and worse. The soldiers that had
gone with them into the forest had been wiped out almost completely, and the ones
who had brought this to them, Klaus’ party, had been incapacitated. Moreover, the
missing villagers and soldiers had lost their minds and were chasing them in a
disgusting-beyond-words state. She couldn’t think of any good outcome if things went
on like this.
But if Loren had to pull back, they could use it as an excuse to run away from this place.

Of course, there was still the problem of dealing with their pursuers in order to be able
to run away, but the rampaging Loren had almost finished with that. As for the
problem about being trapped in some weird space as Shayna had feared, once they
didn’t have to worry about the pursuers anymore, Lapis was confident that she could
manage it somehow.

So, letting Loren continue to run wild, then carrying him and quickly escaping once he
had lost consciousness was not bad. In the current situation, Loren going berserk was
not as bad as the worst scenario.

Lapis watched Loren’s back with some concerns. He had leapt right into the midst of
the enemies, and was smashing them down together with the trees. She was worried
that Loren would use up his strength before the enemies’ number decreased, but Lapis
had prepared herself for the worst. She would deal with the remaining pursuers then,
and give those half-naked men some flying kicks right at their lower bodies.

If Loren knew of her resolution, he would just scoff ‘It’s your prosthetic legs!’. But from
Lapis’ point of view, whether prosthetic or not, it was still connected to her body and
was still her own legs that she used.

To touch something, one didn’t want to touch, some resolution was needed after all.
While Lapis was gathering her determination, Loren was turning their pursuers into
meat chunks one by one. His greatsword smashed down trees and bodies alike just
like a storm. Loren moved in the center of that storm, wrecking destruction on his
surroundings. Lapis watched him, and noticed something a bit strange after a while.

Loren’s rampage normally didn’t last this long.

This kind of rampage continuously and viciously consumed a lot of Loren’s various
strengths, from physical strength to magic and mental strength. The price for such
power was immense, but this rampage Loren was displaying seemed to last longer
than usual.

“Maybe that’s why.”

The reason for it suddenly struck Lapis. It was the existence of Shayna inside Loren.

Shayna, who possessed the abilities of the No Life King, was making free use of
<<Energy Drain>>, a spell peculiar to the undead. It enabled her to steal power from
living creatures in her surroundings and poured it into someone else.

Lapis had taught Loren self-boosting spells before, but he had never been able to use
them for an extended period because the amount of magic power his body had, was
too little. To make up for this shortcoming, Loren had thought of a solution: asking
Shayna to use <<Energy Drain>> to prolong the spells. This helped Loren be able to
use strength boost for quite a long time by continuously consuming magic. Lapis
realized that it could also be used for rampages.

With this, Loren’s rampage would not stop as long as there were still living things
around him. No matter how much power he used, he would not lose consciousness.
He would eventually stop when the power consumed exceeded the power supplied,
but as things were now, no one knew when that would happen.

“If that’s the case, then this is problematic.”

Lapis sounded impatient.

Loren’s rampage was a phenomenon that brought about great backlash to Loren
himself. It hadn’t become too bad because his power would run out before anything
too serious could happen, and he would lose consciousness. But now, because of
Shayna’s <<Energy Drain>>, his power would not run out that easily. His rampage
would continue on, and he would continue to fight for a long time.

Until now, he had always ended up in the hospitals after shorter rampages. How much
worse would the backlash to his body be after a longer one? Lapis couldn’t predict it,
but there was no doubt that Loren would sustain more damages than ever. She feared
that if he was unlucky, he might even receive some fatal damage that he would have to
deal with for the rest of his life.

She had to stop him – Lapis didn’t take much time to make that decision. If she let him
continue to fight like this, his body would definitely fail.

“Loren! Don’t do it! Please stop fighting!”

If it could be stopped by words, it wouldn’t be a rampage. Lapis knew it was impossible,

but she still tried with words first. Loren’s movements didn’t falter at all.

In that case, violence would be the only way to stop him. That led to another problem
though: if she wanted to, she had the confidence and power to kill Loren.

Only her arms had been returned, but compared to when all of her limbs had been
prosthetics, she was now able to use considerably powerful magic again. Despite
Loren being a capable mercenary, despite the armor being a gift from an Elder, despite
his weapon being something Lapis had brought her from her hometown, she still
believed she could overpower him.

But she couldn’t afford to kill Loren here. In the first place, the purpose of her fighting
him was to stop him before his body failed; if he died because of their fight, then
everything would be meaningless.

On the other hand, she also knew very well that he was not an opponent she could go
easy on or just try to immobilize. Normally, he was below her level, but he could still
retaliate. Now, in the midst of a rampage, his combat ability had increased.

The only saving grace was, Loren was not in the condition where he could fight with a
perfectly clear mind. If he had been, with his experiences in combat, Lapis might suffer
an embarrassing defeat at some unexpected point.

“Let’s prepare to give each other some injuries, shall we?”

She wouldn’t be able to restrain Loren without hurting him, but she didn’t think she
would be unscathed either. Lapis wrapped both arms in magic and used spells to
enhance her strength.

Lapis had wondered if she should use some weapons against Loren, who was still
swinging his greatsword and mass-producing corpses, but she felt that using subpar
weapons would give her disadvantage instead, so she decided to face him bare-handed.

And it was probably unlike that Loren had a lot of experience fighting with bare-
handed opponents. After all, it was not strange to associate standing barehanded
before a greatsword-wielding Loren with death. There was no experience to gain from
fighting someone that got killed immediately, so she believed that he was not used to
fighting bare-handed enemies.

Also, an unrestrained Lapis could still easily kill a man even barehanded.

“Loren! That’s enough already. Please stop!”

The number of their pursuers had dropped to near zero at that time. Smashed wood
blocks and human remains had covered the ground and around them, trees had been
cleared from an area as large as a public square.

In such a setting, Lapis rushed straight towards Loren while raising her voice. The
gross state of the ground under her feet didn’t slow her down at all. She stepped on
chunks of wood and lumps of meat alike, scattering them around.

The Loren she confronted wasn’t in a normal state.

Lapis spread her arms, kicking at the various things under her feet while running;
magic could be seen like a shimmering heat haze around them. Right in front of her
was Loren, who held his sword high above his head and swung downwards with great
force, as if he didn’t care about defense at all.

Lapis felt a little worried about being attacked by Loren.

A sane Loren would probably never, ever do such a thing. But in addition to him going
berserk, Lapis had now directed hostility towards Loren to attract his attention; it
couldn’t be helped that he now considered her an enemy.

She told herself to be patient until she could stop the fight while crossing both arms
over her head to receive the sword’s blow and stop it. As the blade crashed against her
protective magic and sparks of fire rose up, Lapis felt the strength of the blow she had
somehow stopped, and involuntarily gulped.

In her current condition, she could probably stop a blow from a sliver rank adventurer
with just one arm. But Loren’s attack, which she had stopped with both her arms, had
not only stopped her track but had even pushed her back two or three steps while
scraping off her magical protection.

Lapis had expected this, but she was still surprised.

Of course, she was not in top condition herself, and she had to go somewhat easier so
that she didn’t kill him. Still, she was a demon, and it was unexpected for a human to
be able to make her switch to defense. But Loren’s blow wasn’t something that can be
blocked with just one arm, and she had to use both instead.

“How unexpected, Loren.”

Lapis said with admiration. She was still good: no matter how powerful Loren’s blow
was, she still had managed to catch it. It would be a simple strength contest from now
on, she thought. If she pushed using her strength, she could easily incapacitate him.

That was why when Loren began putting even more strength into the sword, surprise
was clearly shown on Lapis’ face.

“No way… I can’t push him away?”

They were in a strange state where Lapis’ arms and Loren’s sword were crashing against
each other. Lapis tried to push the sword away, but she could feel the blade pressing
at her instead.

She planted her feet on the ground and braced herself, but she was being pushed back
little by little. She once again looked at the swordsman called Loren before her with
surprise.

“Loren… You really…”

On the other side of her arms and the greatsword was Loren’s face; he probably had
no self-awareness. If she lost focus even just a little, she would easily be blown away,
or fell to her knees due to the pressure. She stared at that face and muttered with fear.
Lapis knew that Loren’s black greatsword had been granted some special abilities. She
didn’t know all of them, but she knew that one was the offensive power against magic.
In short, Loren could defend against and intercept magic attacks with that sword.
Lapis had never thought that there would come a day when she found that ability so
reproachful.

“This is quite dangerous.”

The blade of that greatsword was currently right above Lapis’ head. Her magic-coated
arms were protecting her against it, but the sword was cutting into the protective
magic layer by layer. In addition to the weight of the sword and the strength put into
it, the pressure of the blade pushed down on Lapis and made her unable to move.

She tried to push back but couldn’t at all, as the strength of a berserk Loren surpassed
that of Lapis, who was trying to keep her power in check. If she didn’t handle this well
and let herself continue to be pushed like this, it was not unlikely that the blade would
split her head. Lapis had to give Loren’s true strength an upward revision.

Of course, Lapis had no plans to just obediently let her head be split, so she switched
to a more powerful spell and loaded a large amount of magic into her arms. This
stopped the blade from cutting into the magic layer and began to push it back.

Loren didn’t seem surprised at that. During a rampage, his mind only thought about
fighting; there was no room for surprise. Instead, he pulled the sword back and struck
down on Lapis’ head again in a second, even more powerful blow.

If Lapis received it directly, she didn’t know if she would be pushed back this time. So,
she gave up defending and used her magic-clad right arm to fend the blade off. She
could still feel the weight of the blow, but was able to dodge the sword as planned.
Making use of the opportunity, she stepped into Loren’s space.

“It’ll hurt somewhat, but please bear with me!”

A dull pain coursed through the right arm she had used to ward off the blade earlier.
It probably couldn’t be used properly in this state – Lapis gave up and extended her
left hand to hit Loren’s torso.

At the same time, she forcefully stomped her right foot and let the impact run through
her body while twisting to amplify it. She let the force pass from her shoulder to her
left arm, then struck Loren.

Lapis’ palm strike was loaded with enough power to break a normal man’s ribs and if
it was taken directly, to make him writhe in pain. Loren didn’t put up any defense, so
that was what she had expected.

“This…”

But after that decisive blow, Lapis immediately jumped backwards to gain some
distance and cautiously stood in a fighting stance while scowling at Loren.

Her strike had contained enough power to make an ordinary man faint, but the sensation
from her palm had told her that the force hadn’t struck Loren at all.

“I know that an armor gifted by the Elder, the highest ranking vampire, must have its
own defensive power, but I didn’t think that it’ll be this strong.”

Lapis’ blow had hit the leather jacket Loren was wearing. This jacket was a reward
from a being called Elder, the highest ranking vampire in their previous mission. It was
made from three layers of Pegasus hide, with ultrafine chain mail and shock absorbent
materials inserted in between. It had nullified Lapis’ moderated blow.

“Isn’t it too effective?!”

Lapis complained in a scream. But the berserk Loren didn’t understand her
circumstances at all, and didn’t take a break from his attacking frenzy.

He hadn’t received any damages from Lapis’ blow and immediately went for a
counterattack. His blade came in at a wind-cutting speed, and Lapis twisted her body
to dodge it.

“No, really, I’ve come to not wanting to become your enemy, Loren. In a lot of ways.”

Lapis muttered while looking at Loren, who immediately pulled the sword back after
that strike and returned to his assured stance. Be it emotion-wise or ability-wise,
Loren had become someone Lapis didn’t want to make an enemy of. That didn’t mean
this battle could end here though.

“Really, what should I do now? What a pain.”

A pursuer whom Loren had missed killing earlier crept up on Lapis from behind
without notice. But his head suddenly shot up into the air, and it was Lapis who had
hurled it away. Thanks to the spells, she now had the stamina and attack power to kill
normal humans with ease, yet it didn’t work with Loren.

As his ally, she would think that his armor being able to nullify her attack was a good
thing. But in the case where she had to stop his rampage like this, Lapis just wanted to
spew venom at the so-called Elder that had given Loren the armor. But there was only
Loren in front of her now, so there was no one to direct the venom at.

“If things go wrong, do I need to be ready to kill you…?”

Lapis wasn’t willing to. But if she wasn’t prepared to do it, she herself might be in
danger; the rampaging Loren did have the power to endanger her.

“There is… no other choice! If you die, please don’t blame me!”

An unprecedented amount of magic surged up from Lapis’ arms. Unlike the heat haze
from before, it burst into a flaming white light while her ponytail and priest robe
fluttered. The earth and wood blocks under her feet were blown away. Her eyes shone
with violet light as if they were artificial. Her face, which usually emitted a calm aura,
now carried a stern and razor-sharp look.

Loren didn’t seem faltered at her changes at all; he just rested his greatsword on one
shoulder. Lapis expected the blow he would strike next to be stronger than ever. She
clenched both of her fists, ready to catch it directly and crush the blade.

“I can’t believe that Loren will be the first opponent I fight in earnest with!”

It was not that bad, Lapis thought and laughed.

In contrast, Loren just kept silent. Even the part of his mind that had originally been
reserved for conversation now only focused on the fight. He charged forward without
so much as a battle cry.
Lapis had raised her fists, ready to rush in to meet Loren’s strike when something so
golden that it was almost white suddenly blocked her vision.

“What?”

Lapis reflexively stopped, but Loren didn’t.

He charged on without losing momentum, but when he was still a distance away from
Lapis, he suddenly stopped and flopped down to the ground.

Lapis didn’t think that he had used up his strength. From his state, she could see that
he was still able to go on for quite a while.

He would have exhausted his strength much earlier had Shayna stopped supplying
him with power. Basically, it seemed like Shayna didn’t try to look at the outside world
while she synced with Loren’s senses. She had answered Lapis’ call earlier because
Lapis had touched Loren’s body and directly addressed her. If one spoke normally, it
almost never reached Shayna.

Whatever it was, Lapis turned her eyes to the being that had interrupted her vision
for a moment.

Appearing right between Lapis and Loren was a woman with almost-white blond hair,
which she let flow freely down her back. A bright red tube top hugged her voluptuous
chest, and the hotpants she was wearing fully exposed her belly while barely reaching
her thighs.

She was quite tall, and her line of sight was somewhat higher than Lapis’. She looked
down on Lapis and immediately grinned.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Do you remember me?”

Strange quirky tone, frank aura. And above all, the purple eyes that were looking at
her. Lapis did remember.

“You…”

“Eh? Why is your aura different from last time? Are you getting serious? Being two-
faced is so cool! Or something like that?”
“I-it’s not like that!”

As Lapis unintentionally blushed and raised her voice in protest, her tone returned to
normal.

“Oh, you changed back? It was you being serious, right? Well, whatever is fine, I guess?”

The woman facing her totally suited the word “grinning”. Lapis muttered her name
with a weary and confused tone.

“Gula Gluttony, the Evil God of Gluttony…”

“Why don’t you call me Gula-chan?”

“There’s no way I will address you so intimately.”

Seeing Lapis being so guarded, Gula looked a bit sad. It was not the kind of sadness
that came from the bottom of one’s heart; Lapis knew it was just for show.

“I’m sad. I’ve gone through the trouble to help you, and yet…”

“Help?”

“That boyfriend of yours. Loren, isn’t it? He seems strange, so I help a bit.”

Lapis’ eyes widened slightly at Gula’s words. She had even had to make up her mind
to face the berserk Loren, but this evil God had quietly and easily neutralized him.
Lapis couldn’t help but feel surprised.

“How the hell did you…?”

“It’s a s-e-c-r-e-t. If you are friendlier to me, I’ll tell you, but… You, what’s your name?”

“…It’s Lapis. I’m a priest.”

“Priest?! Are you lying? Huh, what a strange child.”

Gula said, a hand on her forehead as if she was recalling something. Lapis relaxed her
stance and asked while still keeping an alert eye on Gula.
“What did you come here for?”

The woman called Gula standing before Lapis looked like a normal human but bore
the same eye color of demons. She was a being called an evil god, and had even been
sealed.

Lapis had asked, thinking that such beings would never come for nothing. But Gula
kept silent for a while, then turned her eyes towards Lapis and clapped.

“You see, I said before that I wouldn’t forget Loren’s favor, didn’t I? If you get into any
trouble, I’ll help.”

“So that’s the reason you’re standing here? That’s the reason you came?”

Gula claimed that she had somehow known that Loren was in a dilemma after seeing
him going berserk, and had come to intervene. There was nothing wrong with that;
whether it was trustworthy or not was a different story though.

But it didn’t explain why Gula had come to this forest.

“A too-smart child is not very charming, you know?”

“I won’t be discouraged that easily, so please stop.”

Lapis’ shoulders drooped miserably. Gula seemed to find it amusing and laughed
loudly. She stopped after a while and wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes.

“Actually, I sensed the presence of an old acquaintance around here. So I wondered if

I should come to collect them.”

“That is…”

“I didn’t expect much, but it seems like I’ve succeeded in attracting their attention
somehow.”

Gula licked her lips and turned her eyes to their surroundings.

Noticing her glance, Lapis once again got back into a fighting stance.

From the shade of the trees outside the area Loren had wrecked destruction upon, a
fresh group of human figures began to appear one by one as if they had been lying in
wait.
“Hah, unsavory things are swarming out.”

Gula grinned and said it in an easy tone. But Lapis, who had come to crouch down
besides Loren, stiffened once she saw the newly-appeared figures.

The ones who had attacked them earlier had looked and acted strangely, but they had
still appeared to be normal villagers and soldiers. But the ones surrounding them now
looked abnormal right from their appearances.

“Why are they all stark naked?!”

It was not unreasonable at all for Lapis to scream. The ones coming out from behind
the trees were all muscular men. As Lapis screamed out, they all undressed, as if they
agreed upon this beforehand. They had bloodshot eyes, which were all locked on Gula
and Lapis, and their breathing got heavier.

“I hate this… Loren, do something about this please…”

Lapis began smacking the unconscious Loren’s head, but of course, he didn’t respond
at this.

“Now wait, he doesn’t wake up. Is that alright?”

“Hm? Uhm? Is that so?”

Gula’s laid-back expression didn’t change at all despite being surrounded by naked
men. She looked as if she didn’t notice them. After humming for a while, Gula seemed
to be unable to come to a conclusion about whatever she was thinking and simply
turned around, walked to Loren’s side, and lightly poked at him with her toes.

“Hey!”

“Ah, he’s fine. He’s still alive.”

Being poked by Gula’s toes, Loren’s body moved slightly. As Gula had said, it was proof
that he was still alive, and Lapis felt relieved for the time being.

“Now wait, this is not the time to feel relieved!”

“Right, why do they leave it dangling like that?”

“Don’t say dangling and such, please!”

Lapis had tried to not pay attention, but once it had been described like that, she
couldn’t help but be conscious of the men and their dangling things.

Wouldn’t it be much more refreshing if she just burned down the whole forest? But
before Lapis could be swayed by that dangerous thought, Gula stopped poking Loren
and walked towards the men in a nothing-worth-being-so-cautious-about gait.

“Gula?!”

“You take some rest. I’ll be a proper partner to these…”

One of the men grabbed Gula’s shoulder while she was speaking. Before she could do
anything, he pushed her to the ground with all his strength.

At the sight of blond hair suddenly spreading on the earth, Lapis half rose up to come
and help, but Gula waved a hand to stop her.

“It’s alright it’s alright. I’m doing quite well, aren’t I?”

Gula said, but the man was still keeping a hand on her shoulder. A smile that Lapis
didn’t want to see at all appeared on his face, and he lifted his leg to straddle Gula.

“How dirty… I might even lose my appetite.”

Gula looked at the naked man straddling her and said; she didn’t even try to get up.
The words didn’t reach the man’s ears, of course. However, in the next moment, the
upper half of the man’s body suddenly vanished.

“What the hell just…?”

Even Lapis could only see his upper half body disappearing.
The remaining lower half body kept the leg-raised posture for a short while. But before
long, blood poured out from the cross-section, and it also vanished while falling to the
ground.

“I wanted to try eating that. Tasted bad though.”

Gula sat up. The naked men were still surrounding them. They leapt at Gula as if they
hadn’t seen the other man vanishing at all.

“So it’s fine if I keep you company?”

Not even bothered to be on guard, Gula stood up. At the same time, the upper half
bodies of the numerous men leaping at her vanished without any warning just like the
man earlier. Their lower half bodies also vanished after that, but the remaining men
didn’t falter whatsoever.

“I’m not picky, but it’ll be nicer if what I eat tastes good.”

A man was coming at Gula with his arms wide open as if to embrace her. Both arms
vanished starting from the shoulders, displaying two neat cross-sections. The force of
blood shooting out combined with the loss of balance due to losing his arms made him
fall to the ground. Then his head vanished, then his upper body vanished, and finally
his lower half body vanished.

The men rushing at Lapis also had body parts vanishing here and there, as if they had
been gouged out. In the end, they all disappeared without leaving a trace in the world.

“What is… happening?”

“Hhm? Even you can’t see?”

Gula waved her right hand in the empty space. Lapis strained her eyes, but she couldn’t
see what had erased those macho men from this world.

“What… is this…”

“Loren?!”

Hearing the voice beside her, Lapis reflexively touched Loren’s arm. Since he had fallen
face down, he still lied on the ground. He slightly opened his eyes and let out a groan.
“Are you alright?! Can you move?!”

“I can’t… What happened…?”

Loren lifted his head. He placed his hands on the ground to lift himself up but couldn’t,
as if there was no strength in his arms.

Noticing that, Lapis turned him to a face-up position and helped him sit up.

“You suddenly collapsed. Did something happen?”

“I don’t know. I suddenly lost all my strength… When I came to, I was on the ground…”

“Sorry, I took a bite at you.”

Gula made a praying gesture with her left hand while waving her right hand. Just that,
and the upper half body of the naked man rushing at Lapis from behind vanished
without a sound or any piece of scattered meat. Before blood could even spurt out
from his lower half body, it also disappeared abruptly at a wave of Gula’s hand.

“Loren, can you see anything?”

“This… is it Shayna’s vision? I can kind of see… a lot of huge mouths.”

Loren, who still couldn’t move and was being held sitting up by Lapis, could see things
that look like gigantic transparent mouths flying about Gula. They leapt into the air at
Gula’s signals and bit the attacking men.

As for where in the world the eaten bodies disappeared to, he had no clue. This
information was hard to get from his vision. However, as Gula was controlling the
mouths, it was natural to think that the bodies were being digested somewhere
connected to her.

“How can you see it? Ah, the one inside helped you, right? That’s quite a being, to be
able to see my <<Predators>>.”

Gula signalled for the flying transparent mouths to come back. They gathered around
her at her command and snapped their teeth while Loren stared at them.

“I used this mouth to eat delicious things, but it’s hard to fill my stomach with it.”
Gula pointed at her own lips with an index finger. She licked it with a loud slurp, then
turned her clouded gaze to the remaining naked men. They didn’t falter even after
receiving gaze, but Lapis shuddered. She had noticed that Gula was looking at them
not as on humans but as on something close to livestock, something to eat.

“Well, I have lots of mouths, but when I don’t want to use my own mouth, I’ll use these
Predators. The taste won’t bother me as much, and I can still fill my stomach.”

“Uhm… From what you said, those mouths that I can’t see are linked to your stomach?”

Lapis asked somewhat hesitantly, and Gula nodded easily.

“That’s right.”

“Do you… eat humans?”

Hearing that question from Lapis, Gula folded her arms and tilted her head in
puzzlement. Around them, attacked by invisible mouths, the men’s bodies were being
gouging out bit by bit until they disappeared.

“But Lapis-chan, you do it too? You also eat animals’ meat, don’t you?”
“That, well…”

“For me, I don’t see any difference between animals’ meat and these guys’ meat, aside
from the taste.”

Gula said and caught the remaining arm of a man, who had vanished while rushing at
her, before it could fall to the ground. She held it by the wrist and took a bite at the
shoulder part.

With blood smeared around her mouth, Gula chewed a couple of times, then
immediately spit out the mix of blood and gnawed meat.

“Doesn’t taste nice. Good enough to fill the stomach though.”

“You’re the Evil God of Gluttony…”

Lapis muttered with tension. Gula threw the severed arm away and wiped her blood-
stained mouth.

“That name is a bit too much now, isn’t it?”

Probably because they had gone crazy, the slaughtered men didn’t scream at all. And
even when they had been killed, their bodies were immediately consumed by Gula’s
Predators, leaving nothing behind. It was almost one-sided. And on the face of Gula,
the one who was devouring them, was quite a happy, if not unpleasant smile.
The atmosphere changed right after that.

Lapis was holding Loren up and watching Gula’s massacre unfold when she noticed
the change and reflexively tightened her hold on Loren.

“…Do you want to strangle me to death?”

“S-sorry. But…”

“Seems like something is coming. That smell is… getting stronger.”

The smell Loren mentioned was the sweet scent that was making him lose his mind,
and probably was what had stolen the soldiers’ and villagers’ awareness. It had
suddenly become stronger.

“Isn’t it better to make me unconscious now before it’s too late?”

Feeling that his senses were going hazy again, Loren prompted Lapis. Lethargy attacked
his whole body, his awareness flickered, and he lost the ability to move. But if he did
something strange or blurted out something weird while being held by Lapis, he
would mentally die later.

Hearing Loren’s proposal, Lapis looked down at him with a troubled expression. He
was in a quite battered state now. Even though it hadn’t come to anything fatal due to
Gula stopping in the mid of his rampage, the backlash had definitely caused damage
to his body.

“But in this state, just a single blow might kill you, won’t it?”

“How come the first thing you think of is knocking me out?”

If it was only to make him unconscious, a <<Sleep>> spell would be sufficient; there
was no need for a blow. Even though Loren’s magic resistance was high, if he himself
didn’t wish to resist it, magic could work on him with no problem.

“You want me to use a sleeping spell?”

“Can I ask you to? I feel like it’ll become dangerous if I continue like this.”

Loren just wanted to quickly fall unconscious before he could do anything strange. But
Gula came and placed her palm on his forehead before anyone could notice.

“Hey?!”

“I’m giving back what I bit off before, plus a bit of interest.”

Gula’s hand clutched at Loren’s forehead lightly. From that hand, Loren felt something
he couldn’t comprehend pour into his body. He immediately tried to shake her hand
off, but Gula didn’t let go and held on tight with a strength that made Loren unable to
move even his neck.

“What are you doing?!”

“Heh, all done. Don’t you feel more comfortable?”

Gula smiled cheerfully and quickly let go of Loren, who was still trying to rise up even
though his strength was no match for hers. He wanted to complain, but immediately
noticed the changes in his body and swallowed the words down. The fatigue he had
been feeling since Gula showing up had disappeared, and he didn’t feel the haze in his
mind whenever he inhaled that sweet scent anymore.

“I munched on you a bit when you were going berserk to make you behave. I’ve just
returned it, and I’ve also enhanced your resistance to the phenomenon happening in
this place.”

Still keeping his eyes on Gula’s smiling face, Loren got up from Lapis’ arms. The pain
has receded completely and his mind cleared up. The feeling of sickness and fatigue
vanished from his body.

“Are you alright, Loren?”

Lapis asked, as she followed Loren and stood back up. He silently nodded.
He didn’t really understand what Gula meant by munching on him, but he guessed it
was about his stamina and life force. She had taken away some of them to stop his
rampage.

Her returning that force back to him was conceivable, but he couldn’t understand her
intention of enhancing his resistance.

“What the hell are you thinking about?”

“Right, I wonder how will things progress from here? Well, in the worst case, I have
returned enough stamina for you to run away. The aftertaste will be bad though.”

“Aftertaste?”

Lapis wanted to clarify Gula’s remark, but she didn’t elaborate any further. Her gaze
turned away from them to somewhere beyond the remaining naked men.

“Since the scent has become this heavy, you must be over there.”

“Gula-chan… I feel so sad.”

Hearing the voice, Loren frowned in confusion. Lapis’ eyes widened, and she looked
around restlessly, as if she had become suspicious of something.

“I’ve just woken up and spread my love around here, you know. Seeing my lovely
captives being gobbled down like that makes me really sad.”

[What love?]

Loren wondered while his sixth sense, cultivated through countless battles, rang a
spectacular alarm bell in a corner of his mind.

The speaking manner was similar to one of an aged woman, who could be found in a
tavern or brothel. Yet no matter how much his brain refused to accept it, the deep voice
seemed to belong a man.

“Hey Lapis, is there something wrong with my hearing? Somehow I hear a man’s voice…”

“Loren, your hearing is probably alright. Because I also heard a man’s voice.”
Gula’s gaze didn’t shift.

Seeing the figure slowly come out from behind the naked man, Loren unthinkingly
fixed his grip on his greatsword, and Lapis clung to his arm as if she was hugging it.

“Love… It’s beautiful yet ugly, fleeting yet powerful, fragile yet strong… And, without a
doubt, has faults.”

The naked men made Loren feel extremely unpleasant, but if he were to be asked who
was more unpleasant, them or the newly-appeared figure, he wouldn’t be able to
answer right away. The newcomer was that kind of existence.

First of all, the height was taller than that of the naked men by two heads. The hair
gleamed glossily as if it was combed through with some kind of oil. And the face was,
unmistakably, the chiseled face of a man, with a small mustache and a cleft chin.

Shifting his gaze downward, Loren saw a neck as thick as the waist of a woman.
Further below was a brawny torso packed with muscles that was, for some reason,
straining in a black mesh shirt.

“Ugh… Blergh…”

Perhaps because the sight was so shocking, Lapis began to get sick while still clinging
to Loren’s arm. He rubbed her back and shifted his gaze further down.

His eyes met a pair of tight leather pants hanging so low that they could barely be
called low-rise. The muscles squeezed into those pants made the legs’ outline clearly
visible. Moreover, he could clearly see a very noticeable bulge in the middle. Unwilling
to believe what he had seen so far, Loren turned his gaze back to the face.

“Really?…”

“Oh, I can feel a very hot gaze on me. Have I charmed you, dear boy?”

If this was a mental attack, then the sweet scent from earlier was no match for it; Loren
thought with a shudder. He began to think that he probably would have gone crazy
right here if he hadn’t received that resistance power from Gula.

“It’s understandable. Everybody yearns for this attractive body of mine after all.”
“No, I think you’re so gross that he’s become immobile due to the mental damage. Look
at the priestess next to him. She’s trying so hard to not vomit, isn’t she?”

“Ah, forgive my rudeness. It’s alright, cute priestess. I… swing both ways, you know.”

Lapis screamed and hid behind Loren.

Loren, despite being used as a shield, was also filled with the desire to run away from
this place as soon as possible, but he couldn’t. In addition to the revolting feeling for
the being in front of him, Loren could also feel the heavy pressure of facing another
entity similar to Gula, a so-called Evil God. If he didn’t play well here, an easy escape
wouldn’t be a choice at all.

“Stop making heart eyes, you idiot. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ve decided to build a love nest.”

“What love nest? You just call people here with no discrimination at all. It’s started to
become a big mess, you know?”

“It’s alright, I’ll welcome anyone who gathers here. I’m a philanthropist.”

Loren desperately tried to control the nausea brought about by all the wriggling
muscles and asked Gula:

“H-hey, what the hell is that…?”

“You’ve understood somewhat, haven’t you? I don’t really want to admit it, but he and
I are the same kind.”

“Now, excuse me, but what do you mean by ‘don’t really want to admit’? Being jealous
of my beauty, are you Envy?”

“Have you gone senile while sleeping? I’m Gluttony. And you are Lust.”

Hearing that the muscle head who used feminine speech in front of them was an Evil
God, and of Lust no less, both Loren and Lapis stiffened up.

Paying no mind to their reaction, Gula continued her explanation:

“Luxuria Lusterity, Evil God of Lust. He’s a queen who calls himself a philanthropist
just because he’s fine with both genders. And there’s no age limit for him. Upper limit
is dying grandpas and grandmas, and the lower limit is… I can’t really say it out loud,
but his range is extensive.”

“There’s no limit for love. Nice to meet you.”

Lapis, who was hiding behind Loren, pressed her forehead into his back and desperately
tried to suppress her nausea and scream. That was quite painful for Loren, but he
couldn’t move even an inch. All he could do was looking-back and-forth between a
grinning Gula and a winking Luxuria.
“And what did you come here for? It can’t be to stuff my lovely children into your
bottomless stomach, right?”

Luxuria asked Gula.

Gula clicked her tongue sharply and made a truly contemptuous face at his question.

“Don’t say stupid things. Even if you beg me, I’ll never come just to eat your kids or
whatever.”

“Why did you come then?”

Luxuria talked while wiggling his body from side to side, and it just increased Loren’s
discomfort.

[Couldn’t he stay still?]

Loren wondered. He wasn’t able to cut into their conversation though.

Just when he had decided that he had no choice but to endure it, Gula spoke as if on
his behalf:

“Stand still. You’re scaring these two pitiful kids, you know.”

“What are they scared for? Did I do something?”

“Even while doing nothing, you’re still a lump of revolt.”

[That is absolutely correct]

Although these were Loren’s thoughts, he couldn’t say it out loud – in fact he couldn’t
even nod in agreement. He could only applaud Gula’s choice of words in his mind.
“Let’s talk business. Just quietly come with me, will you?”

Gula went straight to the business.

Luxuria’s answer was short.

“I refuse.”

“State your reason.”

“I’ve gone through the trouble to build a nest and gather all these cute children of love
here. Why should I abandon all and let you take me somewhere?”

To be clear, Loren believed they should burn down this whole forest instead of
evacuating everyone. There was still some uncertainty about it, but he had a hunch
that releasing those still under the influence of this Evil God of Lust into the world
wouldn’t bring about anything good.

Gula showed Luxuria, who had turned away in a huff, a dangerous smile.

“I can use brute force, you know.”

“Try then. I’ll teach you how helpless gluttony is before the power of love.”
Undeniable tension rose between the two Evil Gods. Something very bad would happen
for sure. Following his senses Loren began to try gaining some distancing from that
place while still shielding Lapis. But before he could, Gula clasped her hands together
in front of her chest and cracked her knuckles.

“What can a sex-obsessed idiot like you teach me?”

“Your body is the only nice thing about you. How about I push you down and personally
teach you the splendor of love?”

“I’ll eat you, muscle-head daruma!”

(TL: Daruma is a round shaped doll)

The cleft chin macho made a gesture of fondling something with his hands, and Gula
suddenly charged.

The force of her fist was almost undetectable, and as befitting the differences in their
physiques, Luxuria received and stopped it with the palm of one hand.

The collision gave out a thunderous sound totally unlike flesh meeting flesh, but it was
Luxuria who fell backwards.

The naked men stepped forward and formed a wall of nude bodies in front of Gula.
Wet with their own sweats, their bodies gleamed brightly under the sun. Unconcerned,
Gula slammed her fist into the row of men.

Being under an Evil God’s influence didn’t mean having an Evil God’s strength, and the
bodies of those struck by Gula’s fist burst as if they had exploded.

Before the blood spray could fall to the ground, Luxuria threw a fist at Gula as a return
gift. But his fist couldn’t reach her: it stopped midway with a deafening noise as if it
had collided with something invisible.

Loren could see a semi-transparent gigantic mouth literally bite into Luxuria’s fist. The
fangs of Gula’s <<Predators>> could easily bite off the naked men’s bodies, and they
did manage to stop Luxuria’s blow, but they could only make faint impressions on his
skin.

“Is my hand delicious?”

“It tastes gross, idiot!”

Gula started ordering more mouths to attack Luxuria. Meanwhile, Luxuria thrust his
other hand into the mouth biting him and tore it off with all his strength. With both
hands free, he began to intercept Gula’s mouths.

Whenever fist and mouth clashed, a sound blast and shock wave would spread,
disturbing the earth and sand and blowing the naked men away. But Luxuria only had
two hands while Gula’s Predators were numerous; even though the mouths broke
once hit, it seemed to Loren that Gula had the upper hand to some extent.

“I’m pushing you back just like this!”

“Do you think I’ll let you? Take this <<Lust Dance>>.”

Loren thought it would be something similar to Gula’s <<Predator>>, but the scene
unfolding before his eyes was disgusting beyond that.

As Luxuria clenched his fists, countless clones of himself emerged from his body and
proceeded to hug the mouths with their thick arms.

Just one Luxuria was causing enough mental damage to Loren, multiple of them made
Loren’s very soul scream. Unable to run away and with Lapis clinging to his back, he
desperately endured it.

One by one, and with looks of ecstasy on their faces, the cloned Luxurias disappeared
together with the mouths they were hugging.

“You still use that disgusting technique!”

Gula said through gritted teeth.

“Even though it was through my clones, they did ascend to heaven while being in my
embrace. Calling it disgusting is a bit exaggerated, isn’t it?”

Luxuria replied while continuing to wiggle his body.

Even though Loren desperately wanted to run away, he couldn’t speed out of there as
he would like to. If he made a wrong move, he would attract their attention and bring
danger to himself.
And, in a forest influenced by an Evil God, would he be able to escape from his hands
just by running? That was a problem in itself.

Even though it was already too late by now, Loren began to regret not bringing Klaus
along. Despite his interest being towards women only, Klaus did have the same mind-
set as Luxuria, and Loren wondered if he would be able to somehow stop the Evil God
because of that.

“Not good, I’ve reached my limit.”

Watching <<Predator>> being offset by <<Lust Dance>> and disappeared, Gula said
with regret.

“We’re basically on the same level.”

“Idiot. Shouldn’t you have realized that before doing all this?”

Luxuria didn’t try to attack Gula further. Was it because he knew Gula would just offset
his attacks, or because he actually hadn’t really wanted to fight from the beginning?
Whatever it was, the Evil Gods’ quarrel seemed to stop here, and Loren breathed a sigh
of relief.

He was immediately shocked by the words Gula spoke next though.

“Well, can’t be helped then. Let that swordsman onii-chan and his girl over there be
my agents.”

“Hey, wait a minute!”

“Gula, they surely are cute kids, but I don’t understand how they can beat me when
even you can’t?”

“You tone down a bit, and I give them some help. And you can’t use Evil God’s power.
How does it sound? The match ends when they give up, or when you take a blow from
them.”

“Even if they go numb after hitting me, I’ll still lose? I’m ok with this though.”

‘Don’t drag me into this!’, Loren wanted to scream. But it was an Evil God who had
dragged him into this, thus he didn’t know what the hell she would do if he offended
her. Denying her statement in front of Luxuria might not be a wise course of action.

“How’s this: If I win, you have to obediently go with me. If you win, turn this place into
a love nest or a garden of pleasure as you like. Then never come out again until this
world ends.”

Declared Gula while glaring and jabbing a finger at Luxuria, who was still wiggling his
body as he always did. She then returned to Loren’s side.

[It wouldn’t be a problem if I spoke to her now, would it?]

After short contemplation, Loren feeling a bit cold feet, decided to object.

“Don’t drag me into this.”

“Do you want to see us keep on fighting then? I don’t care about the damages to this
area if we do, but do you?”

“If you two fight in earnest, then… Give me some examples.”

“Well, the forest will be gone, and the terrain here will be altered.”

Loren immediately understood that the battle would be on such a level that it couldn’t
be allowed to happen. And the thought of it being on the verge of happening gave him
shudders.

But even with that fact in mind, Loren still had something to say.

“I don’t think there’s any benefit for me to get involved in this though.”

So what if a forest in a place that had no relation to him disappeared, or the terrain in
that place changed a bit? It still didn’t answer the question of why he had to fight that
Evil God of Lust. If he couldn’t escape this, then at least he should get something out
of this. In that case, even if things later came to a point of no return, he wouldn’t regret
it that much, or so Loren believed.

“Benefit… benefit huh. Well, it’s surely a bit unfair to have to fight that without anything
on offer.”

“Do I even have a chance to win to begin with?”

“I have a feeling that you’ll be able to manage to win somehow, but… You said ‘I’. Can
it be that you want to fight him by yourself?”

“I don’t think I should let Lapis fight him in this state.”

Pointing at Lapis, who was still shaking and clinging to his back, Loren said.

Gula pondered for a bit with a troubled expression, then clapped Loren on the shoulder.

“I’m pleased that you don’t want to let priestess-chan fight. Alright, I’ll offer you one
benefit.”

“Will you really offer me a proper benefit?”

Loren glared from the corner of his eyes at Gula to emphasize his doubt.

“Of course. I’m called an Evil God, but I’m a woman who keeps her words. Just trust
me.”

Full of confidence, Gula beat her chest and answered.

Gula gave no details about the benefit she was offering. Loren had tried to get her
talking, but she had said nothing other than it would be something good.

Even though Loren had every intention to pursue the matter, he was worried that Gula
would tell him ‘I’ll just fight Luxuria myself then’ if he complained. So, for the time
being, he had no choice but to trust her words.

As Loren readied his sword and stepped forward to face Luxuria, the Evil God looked
at him with a strangely hot gaze. It gave Loren chills, not only in his spine and guts but
all over his body. He still managed to glare at him though, and the Evil God muttered
following before letting out a passionate sigh:

“It’ll be wonderful if you continue to glare at me like this.”

From the bottom of his heart, Loren wanted to run away and cry, but he couldn’t. He
wondered what sin he had committed to be cornered into a predicament like this, but
there was no answer.

“First of all, how long can you make it in your current condition?”

Lapis, who was standing next to a happy-looking Gula, asked him worriedly. She was
still looking pale, and was holding her fists close to her chest. Loren raised his sword,
thinking the only good thing in this whole situation was that Lapis wasn’t involved
and.

“I’m going…”

“You’re welcome at any time, and any place.”

Luxuria fluttered his hand to beckon Loren, and Loren kicked at the ground and thrust
his sword forward.

Since Loren tried as hard as possible to not get close, his first attack was a thrust that
made use of the greatsword’s length. The movement would be minimum, and he could
attack from a two arm’s length distance.

That was what Loren had expected, but his eyes widened in surprise when Luxuria
easily knocked his sword down to the ground with just one hand.

Loren still kept his grip on the hilt but with both arms thrust out, his balance was lost.
He forcibly lifted up the blade and slash upwards at Luxuria. But his sword was easily
pushed off track by a swat from Luxuria, and Loren himself leapt to the side as if he
had been hit by the rebounded sword.

Luxuria’s fist appeared where Loren’s head had been just a moment ago. Right after
swatting Loren’s sword away, Luxuria had stepped in and struck him with such
incredible speed that his eyes hadn’t been able to catch it. Loren had somehow
managed to dodge the blow and Luxuria, who was still in his fist-out stance, looked at
him with a broad grin on his face.

“Nice reflex. You’ll surely cry out nicely.”

Loren fixed his grip on the sword while wondering if this was what a predator being
hunted by another predator felt like. In that sense, it was similar to dealing with Gula,
but this guy brought fatal mental damage while Gula brought physical danger.

Loren wondered which was the lesser of two evils while commencing his next attack.

This time, it was a close range slash from the side, where the sword point would only
graze Luxuria. There was no need for a proper blow in this battle, as Luxuria would
admit defeat as long as he took one hit. Luxuria himself would decide if the blow was
half-assed or not, but Loren believed it was important to strike him once anyway.

However, the blade’s trajectory was once again changed with just a tap from the Evil
God.

Loren was able to maintain his almost-lost posture but deep down, he was astonished.
The greatsword’s weight and his strength had been incorporated into the slash. The
force was enough to dent a shield, and if his opponent was to receive it with a sword,
it could cut both sword and wielder into halves. And yet, Luxuria had brushed off the
blade with just one single movement as if it had been a twig. His expression hadn’t
even changed, and he had been bare-handed.
Loren wondered what he should do with such an exceptional being of an opponent
while making another attack. But it was also brushed off by Luxuria, properly and
easily.

Loren was thinking there was no way he could win this when Gula told him:

“Use self-boost!”

He tried to remember the sensation Lapis had taught him.

Recalling the feeling of something that was probably magic spreading to every nook
and corners of his body, Loren raised his greatsword and moved with a speed completely
different from before.

Luxuria didn’t seem particularly surprised; he simply repelled Loren’s strike with one
palm, and the sword was once again swatted away without leaving so much as a cut
on the Evil God’s skin. But unlike before, Luxuria’s own hand was also knocked away
with force.

Even so, the Evil God only looked surprised for a very short while. He immediately
pulled his hand back and warded off Loren’s second, then third attack with ease.

“Your muscles are very nice, but you don’t put enough love into them.”

“Don’t talk. I’m about to throw up.”

Loren ground his teeth and put all his strength into the next attack, but it once again
failed to get past the Luxuria’s hand defense to touch his body.

In the first place, the speed of Luxuria’s hands and Loren’s sword was too different. No
matter how fast Loren tried to swing his sword, Luxuria’s bare hands would never be
slower. Loren’s attacks, which couldn’t even graze the Evil God’s palms, simply couldn’t
reach his body.

“Can I perform some counterattacks? Don’t worry, I’ll nurse you properly if you become
unable to move.”

“I’m seriously horrified. If I can’t move, just leave me alone!”

Loren swung his greatsword while screaming out those words. Luxuria caught the
blade with one hand. Loren was unable to move, and the Evil God drove his log-like
leg into Loren’s flank.

Surprisingly, the force was absorbed by the jacket Loren was wearing; most of it didn’t
reach his body at all. But there was still the impact of being kicked: Loren was literally
blown off to the side, and he rolled around on the ground a couple of times.

“Eh? What a nice jacket you’re wearing. I thought it’d be a decisive blow.”

“You’re truly a monster in many ways…”

Luxuria hadn’t seemed to put that much strength into the kick; he hadn’t even pulled
his leg back and just kicked out. But he was able to send flying aside not only Loren, a
well-trained, large build man, but also the heavy greatsword he was carrying. The
power Luxuria kept hidden must have been unthinkable. Just like Luxuria had said,
without the jacket, that kick would have ended him. Loren understood that very well.

“I should aim for some place that jacket doesn’t cover next.”

Luxuria said. Whenever he put strength into his legs, the muscles there could be seen
twitching under his tight pants. Loren thought of how he would hate to be kicked by
those legs and lost composure for a moment, but then straightened his stance again.

Just then, Gula, whose approach he hadn’t realized at all, placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll help you a bit. Do the same thing you do when using self-boost.”

From her hand, something poured into Loren’s body with such force that made Loren
wonder if it was even alright to receive such a thing. He believed it to be the magic
Gula possessed, and immediately sensed its flow throughout his body.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You should explain things more clearly.”

Not understanding Gula’s instructions, Loren muttered. No matter how much boost
Loren got from an Evil God, the only thing he could do was attacking head on. Loren
stepped forward with that thought in mind. But the speed of his step was different
from before, and he was bewildered for a moment when he noticed.

But Luxuria was closing in, and Loren couldn’t stay bewildered forever. He put off that
sentiment and swung the greatsword down towards the Evil God.
Luxuria moved to catch the blade in his hand like before. Yet his expression somehow
stiffened momentarily, and he turned to dodge the strike instead.

Having lost its target, the blade hit the ground. Wondering why Luxuria hadn’t caught
the blade, Loren pulled the sword upwards in a diagonal slash. The Evil God once again
chose to dodge instead.

“Amazing. You’re already this powerful with just a bit of help from Gula-chan. You’re
so wonderful.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about!”

Loren stepped forward and swung the sword down again. This strike also couldn’t
touch Luxuria’s body, but at the same time, it also wasn’t repelled.

Not giving up, Loren took one more step forward and made an upward slash from
Luxuria’s crouch to the top of his head. The Evil God dodged again. It seemed like since
Loren had borrowed Gula’s power, Luxuria could no longer stop his attacks barehanded
or swat them away.

Noticing this, Loren tried to change into the offensive. But then Luxuria gave Loren a
casual kick to the stomach, sending him flying backwards. The ground shook with the
force of the impact.

“You need to come up with something better if you plan to hit me.”

“This guy is such a monster.”

That kick was meant to be a counterattack and targeted Loren’s abdomen. It made him
feel slightly nauseous and lose his breath. The kick contained so much power that
without his jacket, all of his internal organs probably would have ruptured.

“Bastard! I can’t touch him at all!”

“Shouldn’t you just give up? I’ll invite you into my love nest then.”

“I’d rather die!”

Loren truly believed from the bottom of his heart that death would be better than
joining that love nest. He raised his sword again for that very reason.
Just then, Lapis, who was standing beside Gula, looked at Luxuria in surprise and
asked.

“If Loren loses, that thing and him will…?!”

“It’s kind of late to react at this point!”

“N-no, I don’t like that, Loren! I don’t like that!”

“Neither do I!”

Loren answered and decided to try one thing he hadn’t yet. It was probably the last
option for him. He didn’t know whether it would be successful or not until he tried it,
but if he didn’t, the situation would just become worse and worse, and there would be
no way to break the deadlock.

“Your eyes look like you’ve made some kind of resolve. Very well, come!”

Having noticed the look in Loren’s eyes, Luxuria invited him and gave him a fascinated
flirty gaze.

Feeling his resolution crumbling, Loren braced himself and began to focus on the
remnants of Gula’s power inside him once more.
Loren was able to smoothly execute the first step of his plan, as it was something he
had done multiple times: performing self-boost with the magic received from Gula. He
didn’t really understand the details, but he somehow managed to do it by following
the sensation and mental images. He had never failed at executing self-boost, maybe
because Lapis’ teaching method was good.

“That again? Your skill doesn’t match your determination, does it?”

Luxuria moved first this time, as if he could sense magic coursing through Loren’s
body.

Instead of using his fist, the Evil God attacked with a kick. Loren used the flat of his
sword to defend himself from the impact and wordlessly focused his awareness
towards Shayna.

[‘There’s a somewhat strange aura, so I feel a bit reluctant… ’]

Shayna didn’t know what was happening in the outside world since Loren wasn’t
sharing his vision with her.

Normally, Loren found her state to be quite pitiful and would try to share his senses
with her as much as possible. But this time, he thought he shouldn’t share his vision
even if she asked. Lapis and him were old enough that shocking sights didn’t have that
much impact on them anymore. But Shayna was much younger, and Loren was
worried about the mental impact she would take.

After sharing that thought with Loren, Shayna began supplying him with magic power.

The power he had received from Gula was immense and powerful, but it would be
exhausted soon if he kept using it. In order to push back the point of exhaustion, Loren
had asked Shayna to supply him more power with Energy Drain. This would
dramatically extend the length of his self-boost; Loren himself couldn’t even predict
for how long he would be able to use it.
“Is this a war of attrition, I wonder?”

Sucking from Lapis would mean preying on an ally. Since she still didn’t know how
much power an incomplete King of Death like Shayna could absorb, Evil Gods like Gula
and Luxuria were out of the question. Hence, the targets of Shayna’s Energy Drain
were the trees in the surrounding and the naked men, almost all of which had fallen.

It seemed like Shayna had also realized that Loren was using a stronger version of self-
boost. The effect of Energy Drain was stronger than ever: the trees withered in the
blink of an eye while the men’s bodies became wizened.

Receiving such an immense supply of power from Shayna, Loren focused only on the
greatsword he was holding. Even while dodging punches and kicks that held deadly
power, his mind was wholly occupied by the thought of slaying his opponent.

Before long, Loren could feel something clicked in his mind.

“You won’t make any progress if you continue to defend only… huh?”

Luxuria broke off in the middle of the sentence. Loren had suddenly attacked. The Evil
God leapt back to dodge, his eyes widened at the speed of the strike. He was built much
larger than Loren, and the scene of him leaping lightly looked rather unpleasant for
some reason.

But Gula and Lapis didn’t have time to pay attention to him; they were captivated by
Loren’s strike. It was released at such a speed they had never seen from Loren.

“What was that just now?”

“That is…”

Loren let out a roar, his voice making the air vibrate like a jolt of electricity. Lapis
reflexively covered her ears with her hands and recoiled. Gula stood still, her expression
stiffened slightly and Luxuria unthinkingly stopped moving at Loren’s sudden change.

Loren raised his greatsword and charged at Luxuria. He didn’t seem to have a specific
aim, didn’t even set up a proper path for the blade. He simply struck at the Evil God
consecutively.

Luxuria was able to somehow dodge the first few blows, but he soon gave that up. He
reinforced his hands with magic and instead chose to meet Loren’s attacks directly.

That showed how fierce Loren’s attacks were. Even if Luxuria had chosen to continue
dodging them, he would have needed to prepare to take some hits.

That said, even though Luxuria’s hands were reinforced with magic, him parrying
Loren’s strikes with bare hands was still quite extraordinary. But Luxuria himself also
found Loren’s attacks to be extraordinary.

“What’s with this boy?! Isn’t he too fast?!”

Speed-wise, Luxuria should have had the upper hand, seeing how he was using bare
fists while Loren was wielding a heavy sword. But he noticed that the attacks
successively coming at him matched the speed and frequency of his fists.

Luxuria shot a magic shock wave from his fist in order to gain some distance from
Loren. But Loren not only cut off the shock wave but also continued to pursue him.

“What is this?! If you’re capable of something like this, do it right from the beginning!
It’d be much cooler, right?”

Seeing Loren suddenly switch to offensive only, Gula complained with a voice full of
expectation.

Next to her, Lapis scowled intently at Loren, who was attacking continuously with a
power she had never seen before. His movements seemed to be different from his usual
rampages, even if she also counted the ones she had just witnessed.

“Maybe that’s what it is?”

“What? Lapis-chan, if you know he was hiding a secret talent like this, you should have
told me.”

Gula pat Lapis on the back as she told her this. But the next moment, she was surprised
by Lapis grabbing her top.

“It’s not that! This is unlike what I know!”

“W-wait a bit, Lapis-chan. If you pull that hard, it’ll show!”

Gula frantically pulled down her tube top, which had ridden up thanks to Lapis’
grabbing.

Lapis didn’t notice Gula’s distress at all. Her mind was full of the realization of the god
damn thing Loren had done.

“He is combining them!”

“Combining… what with what?”

“He was combining self-boost technique with his rampage!”

Lapis had guessed correctly.

Loren had known that he wouldn’t have been able to compete against Luxuria if he
fought the usual way. So, he had decided to activate his rampage state, but not from a
normal state as usual: he had activated it from the enhanced state after using self-
boost. He had simply thought that if going into rampage from a normal state could
make him become relatively strong, then going into rampage from an enhanced state
would make him become even stronger. And he wasn’t wrong about that.

“Isn’t that a good thing? Physically fighting against one of us Evil Gods is overwhelming
for humans.”

Luxuria couldn’t make any effective counterattacks against Loren. Whenever he was
about to throw a punch or a kick, countless slashes would come at him, driving him
into a defensive stance.

From the look of it, the fight had become one-sided, with attacks coming from Loren
only. Some of Luxuria’s defenses had come a bit late, and Gula believed it would only
be a matter of time before he took a blow.

“This is not good! Loren always loses consciousness as a backlash from his rampages!
If he forcibly enhanced his rampage, do you understand how much backlash his body
will have to take?!”

If he forcibly did something he shouldn’t have been able to do, he would have to pay
an appropriate price.

Rampages caused a lot of damages to Loren’s body to begin with. It hadn’t been fatal
so far and he hadn’t sustained any irrecoverable damages because he had always
exhausted his strength and lost consciousness before reaching that point.

But this time, Shayna was continuously supplying him with power, and Lapis worried
that this rampage might cause dangerous damages to Loren. Not to mention that he
was supplementing the rampage with the power received from an Evil God. Lapis
wasn’t sure how harsh the backlash would be.

“We must stop him!”

“We can, but… It’ll mean he gives up.”

“That…”

Once the battle was stopped, it was unlikely that Loren would be able to enter the fight
again. Unable to continue fighting would mean giving up, which meant he lost.

If it was just losing, then Lapis wouldn’t hesitate at all. But it was not an exaggeration
to say that losing here meant death to Loren.

“He might not be able to recover… But if the fight stops here, he’ll die mentally…”

“If that’s the case, we should quickly make a decision… Even if that idiot is completely
rotten, he’s still an Evil God, and he won’t just simply take a blow anytime soon… If
there’s an opening now, Loren probably can make it.”

“An opening…”

Loren continued to attack, and Luxuria continued to dodge, even though just barely.
Lapis watched them and thought about how to create an opening for Loren.

With folded arms, Lapis contemplated for a while. Then she threw a question at Gula,
who was watching her with interest.

“Gula, is it correct to say that Luxuria is lustful, and a philanthropist who is alright with
both men and women?”

“Your words are a bit too generous, but that’s right.”

“Which does he prefer, men or women?”

“He has no preference. He likes anything and everything with no discrimination.
Macho or lanky, men or women, young or old, they are all the objects of his lust.”

“Hm, in short…”

Lapis unfolded her arms, extracted both arms from her sleeves, and put her hands
inside her clothes. She rummaged for a while, then finally placed both hands on her
lapel and took a deep breath.

“Luxuria!”

She didn’t need a response. But when she confirmed that the Evil God had turned away
from his fight and looked towards her, she pulled her lapels open.

Of course, her clothes fell away from her upper body as a result. Moreover, Lapis had
taken off her chest cover during the rummaging earlier, and her naked upper body
was now fully exposed with not a single thing concealing it.

Her action was so sudden that both Gula and Luxuria were surprised. They had
thought she would do something, but she had just undressed and exposed her upper
body. Gula thought Lapis had been thinking too much and lost her mind, but Luxuria
was captivated by the naked sight of the two bulges and their darker tips.

“Well! Those look delicious…”

To someone who liked both men and women and could associate anything with lust
like Luxuria, the sight of Lapis’ half-naked body was so beautiful that it was more than
enough to distract him even during a fight.

However, his opponent, Loren, was in a berserk state, and wouldn’t be distracted even
if Lapis had gone completely nude.

The result was, even though Luxuria had only been distracted for one moment, it was
enough of an opening for Loren, who had nothing in mind but the fight.

The first blow was a direct hit on the top of the head.

Luxuria’s head wasn’t split open as his magical defense seemed to be still working, but
the impact made him stagger. An upward slash followed right after, and a scream
erupted from the Evil God’s mouth.
Even so, Loren’s attacks didn’t stop. Luxuria’s defense seemed still held on tight, so the
blade didn’t cut into his flesh. But the sound of steel continuously clashing against
flesh and the Evil God’s high-pitched scream reverberated in the air.

Amidst all that, Lapis straightened her clothes with a slight blush on her cheeks.

“That idiot. Even the way he got defeated is so stupid that I’m speechless…”

“He’s been hit quite a lot of times, so could you put Loren to sleep now?”

“Let Loren hit him a bit more to weaken him, then I’ll stop this fight. Nevertheless,
Lapis-chan, it was really brave. And nice boobs you have there.”
“I-it’s not like it’s the end of the world if I show them.”

It was clear from Lapis’ expression that her reply had been just a bluff. She had literally
taken her clothes off for Loren, and Gula decided that it would be cruel to tease her
further. She went to check and confirmed that the injuries-covered Luxuria had been
sufficiently beaten up, then took a nibble at Loren’s magic and stamina as she had done
before, stopping the fight. If not for this, Loren would have still been slashing at Luxuria.
Loren thought that a man was happiest when he was sleeping. He didn’t need to open
his eyes, and could rest in the warmth of his bed all he liked.

He knew that he couldn’t stay sleeping forever, and that he would need to wake up
sooner or later. But until someone came to wake him, he wanted to relax within this
pleasant warmth while doing nothing.

Loren stirred, and found his movement somehow sluggish.

Maybe he had been hospitalized again, and was bandaged from head to toe? But it didn’t
feel like that. He could still move if he tried, albeit slowly. It somehow felt like he was
covered with thick, warm oil. The sensation bothered him a little, so he tried to wipe
it away, but his hand was met with something soft.

For some reason, he was clearly aware of his hand being brushed away. Then something
suddenly tightened around his chest, and even though he was still reluctant about
leaving his slumber, Loren slowly opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a familiar ceiling. It was the ceiling of Kapha city’s hospital,
a place he had been admitted to numerous times before.

Memories about what had happened before he had lost consciousness finally came
back to Loren one by one. He sighed, it seemed like he had caused Lapis troubles again.

Realizing that he was lying face up on the hospital bed, Loren tried to sit up but couldn’t.
Somewhat scared that the damage to his body this time was more serious than he had
expected, he turned his gaze to his body to check his own conditions. But what met his
gaze was a pair of purple eyes.

“…Ah?”

Even Loren knew how stupid he sounded.

The owner of those purple eyes laid her cheek on Loren’s chest and closed her eyes.
Her blond, almost white hair was spreading over Loren’s body.

What the hell was happening?

His thinking ability belatedly came back. He realized that the warm sensation he had
felt in his sleep was brought about by him being hugged. He also realized that the one
hugging him was somehow naked, and that he could feel her nakedness because he
also wasn’t wearing anything.

Loren believed that if he had been a woman, he would have screamed by now. But he
lightly grabbed the head of the person who was burying her face into his chest and
lifted it up instead.

He was met with purple eyes.

“What are you doing?”

Loren asked tranquilly. He was not angry, nor his partner was someone he could get
angry with.

Gula answered with a serious expression:

“I told you I’ll give you something good.”

“So this is the benefit you mentioned?”

“This is nothing but a benefit, isn’t it?”

Gula wrapped her arms around Loren’s arm and her ample breasts squashed between
them. Her torso stuck to Loren’s torso as if glued, and her legs wound tightly around
one of Loren’s legs. She was using her whole body to get as much contact as possible
with his body.

“Well, I’m an extremely ordinary man.”

“That’s right. You’re truly a man. It was somewhat hard when you were sleeping, but
it has got up properly now that you’re awake.”

Loren looked at the ceiling awkwardly. Gula grinned.

“I’ll… eat you.”

“Well, it’ll be nice for your reputation if the Evil God of Gluttony is eaten by a human
like you, right?”

(TL: In japanese slang terms “eat” is referring to “having sex” => Unchanged to preserve
the word play by the author)

Gula rose up slightly and looked at him with purple eyes and a charming smile. She
whispered into Loren’s ears, as he was starting to get worried for his life.

“Right… I had a meal. I ate a bit too much, so I’m full now.”

Not too bad then, Loren thought.

But the next moment, Gula’s head was punched sideway with a muffled sound. She
fainted and collapsed on Loren’s chest.
Loren could actually guess what had just happened. And just as expected, Lapis peeked
into the room.

“…Did I interrupt you?”

“You’ve helped me.”

Loren actually thought it would have been nice if things could have continued and he
could have ‘released’, yet he knew Lapis would be in a bad mood if he told her so. With
some regret, he moved Gula’s unconscious body to the side and sat up. Lapis’ face
suddenly became red then, and she turned away.

“Please put on some clothes.”

“So I wasn’t put to sleep naked.”

Loren’s cheeks felt a bit hot when he thought about how Gula had undressed him
herself, but he was careful to not show what he was feeling. He looked around restlessly,
searching for his clothes.

Lapis quietly handed him the clothes that had fallen on the ground, face still turned
away.

Loren asked while putting on his clothes:

“So, it’s over now?”

“Yeah, it is.”

According to Lapis, something had happened during the fight, creating an opening for
the berserk Loren to rain a storm of attacks on Luxuria. He had been slashed all over
his body by Loren’s greatsword, had admitted defeat because of that, and had
obediently let Gula take him away.

Thanks to that, the villagers and soldiers that had been under the influence of the Evil
God’s power had regained their sanity. But things had become troublesome after that.

Luxuria’s power, as the Evil God had declared himself, was increasing libido. In short,
those under his influence would engage in acts that were difficult to be put into words
with no regards of the gender or age of their partners. The villagers and soldiers had
regained their sanity right in the midst doing such acts; it would be more strange if
things hadn’t become chaotic.

“That was… literally Hell on earth.”

“I don’t even want to imagine that scene.”

Of course, Lapis had had no reason to try to control that situation. With Gula’s help,
she had quickly carried the unconscious Loren away from that place. They had fetched
Klaus’ party on the way and had told Rose, the person they had been involved into this
in the first place, that the problem had been resolved more or less. Then, they had
returned to Kapha as if they had been running for their lives.

And incidentally, the skirmish happening near Rose’s village had come to an end at the
same time. The reason was unclear. However, the number of soldiers pulled into the
forest due to Luxuria’s power had been quite high. When the spell had been broken
and those soldiers had regained their sanity, they probably had thought about what
they had done and with whom, and had been in no conditions to continue fighting a
war. That was what Lapis had guessed, anyway.

“So, where has Luxuria, the culprit of all this, gone to?”

“I don’t know. Gula took him to somewhere.”

Both of them looked at Gula, who had been struck unconscious in a moment of
distraction and was now sleeping beside Loren. They wanted to know about Luxuria’s
whereabouts, but Gula was an Evil God herself; she wouldn’t just give them the
information like that.

“She won’t tell.”

“No, she won’t.”

Convinced that their questions wouldn’t be answered, the two of them decided to stop
thinking about that matter.

They would probably meet again if that was what fate decided, but for now, Loren
preferred to think that it had been the last time he had met that muscle head.

“That aside, Loren, you can’t use what you did when fighting Luxuria again, unless
things go terribly wrong!”

Lapis brought her face close and glared at Loren. He vaguely nodded at her.

As he would never have been able to hit Luxuria with normal methods, he had tried to
go into his berserk stage from a self-boosted stage. He had just now slowly realized
how severe the backlash of that action could have been. His whole body hurt, and even
though he didn’t feel anything strange with his bones right now, he wondered how it
had been right after the rampage.

“I tried to heal you as much as I can, but there are things that can be healed and things
that can’t.”

“It’s my bad. I’ll be more careful.”

Loren meekly nodded as he knew he had made Lapis worried. But he would still do it
again should the need arise; this was something he didn’t plan to tell her.

“And, why is she here?”

Loren pointed at Gula, who was still unconscious, and asked. Lapis stepped back a bit
and tilted her head in puzzle.

“Why… She somehow followed us here.”

“Weren’t you too harsh on me?!”

Gula suddenly sat up and said. Her bare breast jiggled, and as Loren’s eyes reflexively
fixed on them, Lapis pinched his ear.

“It can’t be helped… I’m a man too.”

“I know, but still.”

“So, why are you here? It’s not just to give me those nice things, isn’t it?”

“There was that too.”

Gula straightened up and sat cross-legged on the bed. Loren threw his blanket on her
lower-half body, thinking about how it was not the type of posture one should take
when being naked.

“I’m getting a bit interested in you two, so I plan to stick with you for a while.”

Loren was about to reply how troublesome that would be, when he suddenly realized
how much of a danger letting an Evil God loose could be.

So far, Loren was aware of only three Evil Gods roaming the world: Gluttony, Lust, and
Sloth. He had no ideas what kind of havoc they were planning to wreck though. If they
didn’t cause a mayhem, he wouldn’t care about them whatsoever. But in case they were
scheming something, it’d be better to keep an eye on one of them. That way they could
at least try to prevent get caught up in their mess again. And Gula was the one least
mentally-taxing to be around.

“Of course, I’ll help you guys out, and do nice things for you. Just repay me with lodging
and food expenses.”

“Food expenses will be outrageous in your case.”

“But I can make lots of money, don’t you think? So, what’s it going to be?”

Feeling troubled, Loren looked at Lapis, but she silently cast her eyes down once she
noticed his gaze. Realizing that she was somehow leaving the decision to him, Loren
pondered for a while, then said.

“Don’t cause us troubles.”

“Hope you won’t mind my food expenses.”

Gula showed them an easy smile.

Lapis pressed a hand to her forehead as if trying to suppress a headache and told
Loren:

“In the past few days, Gula has consumed enough food for ten or so restaurants, so be
prepared.”

What she meant was, his payment was already used up. Loren had begun to feel like
turning Gula away, but he still managed to grit out:
“…Add it to my debts.”

“No, let’s split it in half.”

“Ahaha, I really can make money, so please treat me well!”

As Gula smiled nonchalantly and scratched her head, her breast happily jiggled.
Loren’s eyes reflexively fixed on them again, and Lapis pinched his cheek with a sullen
expression on her face.

Loren didn’t know if his choice would bring them good fortune or bad fortune, but at
least this case had ended here. Loren shrugged and let Lapis continue to pinch him.