Some time later.

Basto, standing in front of the inn, pressed his palm to his forehead and opened his mouth.

“...I’ll say this one last time. No matter what happens in the square, we do not interfere recklessly.”

“Yeeees!”

Tie answered first.

“How many times do I have to say it — I got it, I got it. And honestly, I’m tired.”

Bale replied irritably right after.

But Basto, sighing, recalled what had happened not long ago.

Earlier.

Tie, caught red-handed trying to slip out of the inn together with Kkamani, had looked defiantly confident.

“Tie, where are you going right now.”

“With Kkamani to the square!”

“Why to the square?”

“Umm... if bad villains hurt people, Tie has to save them, right?”

Basto lost the ability to speak and simply shut his mouth.

But soon he said seriously:

“Listen carefully, Astie. You are not going. In any situation, making enemies among the nobility is dangerous.”

“Eh? But Tie is a mercenary?”

“What we are as mercenaries and the affairs of this city are different things. We have no obligation to save them.”

At those words, the girl’s face stretched in shock.

She fiddled with the mercenary badge pinned to her chest for a long time, then asked in disbelief:

“Then are we kind of playing villain roles? Not good roles...?”

It was not strange.

All this time, Tie had completely misunderstood what mercenaries were.

‘I thought mercenaries and heroes were the same thing!’

In little Tie’s mind, a mercenary was something like an avenger.

They helped when people were in danger.

They coolly defeated magical beasts.

And when people shouted, “Thank you, King of the Dead!”, they modestly gave a thumbs-up and giggled.

In Pearlcity and the Weapons District, that had always been exactly how things went.

So with each passing day, Tie had grown prouder of being a mercenary.

And now it turned out it had all been an illusion.

“Sh-shock...”

Tie swayed in place, and Basto did not know what to say.

Bale did not miss the opportunity and began persuading him:

“Do you realize? You’re not just crushing the kid’s dreams right now, you’re grinding them into powder.”

“When did I ever crush Astie’s dreams...”

“Not only is the kid’s life already hard enough, now you want to take away her professional mission too? What if she files for resignation? Do you understand that if that happens, Agavert is finished?”

Soon Basto had to admit Bale’s words were not wrong.

More precisely, the sight of Tie, drooping and gloomy, weighed heavily on his heart.

“Haaa.”

Basto sighed and stared at the square, where a large crowd had already gathered.

‘It looks like nothing will happen.’

As Nordix had mentioned in the pub, the crates in the square were filled to the brim with coal.

In other words, the tax quota had been met, so there should not be any major problems.

Though there was one thing.

One crate looked slightly troubling.

Basto cast a heavy glance at the crate positioned roughly at the twelve o’clock direction.

It had a little less coal than the others.

But the difference was very small, so Basto deliberately looked away.

‘It’s nothing.’

Basto understood what Bale was thinking.

Bale clearly feared that the knights would use violence against the villagers.

Especially after hearing the word “suffer.”

Throughout their entire journey, he had shown complete indifference to other people’s affairs, which made it even stranger that he was making an exception now.

At that moment, Tie’s chatter sounded beside him.

“Bale oppa. If bad knights hurt people, Tie will go first!”

“And what are you planning to do?”

“Well. Ask Pupu to make fog, then we all run away together!”

Basto merely shook his head, as if unable to stop her.

And then—

“Hey, hey! Everyone step aside!”

A commotion suddenly rose on the opposite side of the square.

Turning, they saw a group of knights.

Parting their formation, a man in expensive clothing swaggered in between them.

The current lord of Caldenwein — Reginald.

“The tax for this week, my lord.”

At the knight’s report, Reginald slowly surveyed the square.

He opened his eyes wide, then burst into satisfied laughter.

“Ha-ha-ha! I told you! I warned you, didn’t I? If you want to, you can, can’t you?!”

With a pleased gait, he walked around the square in a circle, examining the filled crates one by one.

“What? Production has decreased? The mine is about to collapse? Nonsense. I already knew those were nothing but excuses.”

Reginald lazily stared at the villagers.

“If you put in the effort, everything works out. Hmm?”

The air in the square instantly grew cold.

But he brazenly continued: 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“When you kept making excuses and trying to avoid your duties, I was somewhat displeased. However, this time I will acknowledge your effort and temporarily freeze the tax quota.”

He chuckled and lifted his chin.

“So from now on, show your respect for me through your work and diligently mine coal. And now...”

But at that moment—

Reginald, who had been about to leave the square, suddenly stopped.

The smile vanished from his face.

He silently walked toward one crate.

The very same one Basto had noticed earlier.

“...Quilli.”

Reading the surname burned onto the lid, Reginald lifted his head.

“Which of you is the Quilli family?”

As soon as he finished speaking, someone was shoved out of the crowd by knights’ hands.

It was an old man with gray hair loosely tied back, leaning on a crutch.

Reginald extended his hand toward a knight beside him, who placed a paper resembling an accounting record into it.

After scanning the sheet, Reginald narrowed his {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} eyes.

“Why did your family fail to meet the tax quota?”

The old man trembled visibly.

“Y-your esteemed lord. Three days ago I fell in the mine and broke my leg... I could not mine...”

But Reginald sharply cut him off:

“It says here that six weeks ago your family also failed to meet the extraction quota.”

An old woman’s eyes widened.

“No! The following week we definitely submitted the missing amount additionally...!”

But Reginald irritably raised his hand again, silencing her.

He nodded to a knight, who roughly kicked the crutch out from under the old man.

“Ahh!”

Losing his balance, the old man collapsed onto the ground.

“Grandfather!”

At the same time, a girl around Tie’s age burst out of the crowd.

With a pale face, she ran over, embraced the old man, and desperately examined him.

“G-grandfather... are you okay? Huh?”

“Lea. Leave. Go quickly...”

The old man spoke urgently, but the girl did not loosen her grip.

At that moment, Reginald, watching them, muttered:

“...Now I see. Even with a broken leg, there was still a way to pay the tax.”

The old woman raised her head in stunned disbelief.

Reginald continued calmly:

“You should have sent someone else from your family into the mine. The narrower and lower the shaft, the more convenient it is for children to work. If they crawl or lie flat, there is no tunnel they cannot squeeze into. On the next collection day, your family will submit three-tenths more than the usual amount.”

He sneered at the girl.

“And you, little one, step aside. Your grandfather must bear punishment for failing to meet the quota...”

And at that moment—

Bale burst forward from somewhere and drove his fist into Reginald’s right jaw.

“K-khak—!”

Scarlet blood sprayed across the ground in a long streak.

And then two freshly knocked-out teeth rolled to his feet.