The mercenary’s blade cut through the air, and considering Diane’s height, the attack was aimed at her neck. A determined and lethal attack. Even if she was still invisible, it might have been possible to wound her.

"W-What?!" the mercenary cried, startled.

But of course, the distance between the two of them was the same as the distance between heaven and earth.

Even though I couldn’t see her, or even the weapon she was carrying, I knew Diane had protected me from the blow because of the sparks that formed from the clash between the blades.

There wasn’t a single drop of blood where the sword had stopped, so it seemed Diane hadn’t been hit. And not only that, the sparks followed a path towards the sword’s hilt, approaching the man who wielded it.

Everything happened in a single second, the clash between them ending with the mercenary raising his head high. My brain imagined Diane punching him in the chin.

My guess was close to reality. At that moment, Diane’s invisibility wore off, and her combat pose was that of someone who had just delivered a vigorous uppercut. In her other hand, Diane held her knife made from Shadow Blade.

But there were still two guys left for her to face. The moment Diane’s amethyst eyes stared at them, their legs began to tremble, and the two mercenaries dropped their weapons the instant they realized they would be next.

"W-We surrender!!" they shouted, terrified of Diane.

What a change in attitude from them. They were probably the weakest in the group, but even so, they could have had a little more dignity. Even if they were going to surrender, at least they could have done it in a way that didn’t make it seem like they were about to piss themselves in fear. It was shameful. Too shameful.

Diane sighed, calming her body, which was still in the heat of combat. Once she had calmed down, she turned to me.

"How did I do?" she asked me.

"Excellent work, Diane," I praised her.

A smile crossed Diane’s lips thanks to my praise. A feminine smile that, in isolation, wouldn’t make you think she was the one responsible for the three unconscious men on the ground.

’Serves them right!’ I thought, looking down at the mercenaries. ’They’d never heard that flowers have thorns. Well, in Diane’s case, they’re knives, though.’

At that moment, I looked at the weapon Diane had created with her skill. If I had Shadow Blade, I could use two black swords in combat. But aside from Camula, I hadn’t been intimate with either Diane or Erina, so I didn’t have either of their abilities.

"What the hell is happening here?" a deep voice said, coming from right in front of us.

The voice wasn’t angry, but it was firm and displeased with what was in front of it. The owner of the voice was a man taller than the one who had opposed me and Diane, which meant he was taller than me, around 2 meters tall (approximately 6’ 7’’).

His body was jacked, as if he had walked out of an action movie, and his right eye had stayed behind in one. He wore a black eye patch, but the scar from his old wound went down to just above his mouth. His hair was wavy and dark, and he had short stubble.

Besides the clothes that covered his tanned body, a cloak covered his back, with the part near his neck covered by a dark fuzzy material that seemed to be wolf fur. The guy had the clothing and aura that screamed, "I’m the boss."

As if that weren’t enough, he was also an Awakened. After the warm reception we had received, the boss and two more people, a man and a woman, came to greet us. All three were Awakened. They didn’t look like they wanted to fight, but they were clearly looking at us in a way that demanded respect.

"I apologize for the confusion and for coming to your camp at this time of night," I said respectfully to the boss.

"I’ve never seen your face in my life, and I have a very good memory. Who are you?" he asked me.

"Just an adventurer," I said humbly. "My name is Jean, and the young woman beside me is called Ursula. There’s someone I need to find, so I thought you might be able to help me find him. Your subordinates got in the way and tried to use force against my friend. The result of the fight is what you can see."

I decided to use fake names to hide our identities. Maybe it wouldn’t be very useful against these guys, who worked by digging up information on people, but it seemed like a better idea than saying our real names in front of his whole group.

"Hmm, I see. My bad for that," he said to me in a carefree tone.

Despite my greeting, the guy didn’t seem to care much about what I said. He then crouched in front of the guy who had picked a fight with me and was still unconscious, and started slapping his face.

"Hey, Bryan, wake up," he said in a strangely calm tone for someone who was slapping another person.

"Huh..." That Bryan guy was forced awake from unconsciousness. "Boss!"

The young man lying on the ground woke up with a start, realizing that he was in the presence of his leader.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" the man asked.

"I-I was just checking the intruders?"

"You call these two intruders? Did they infiltrate us, or did they come in through the front door?"

"T-Through the front," Bryan answered hesitantly.

"Do you think they would have gotten here without us noticing?" the boss asked that rhetorical question to his subordinate.

"N-No, sir."

"Then consider them our clients. Is this how you treat a new client of ours, Bryan?" the boss asked him, and even without changing his tone much, he was still intimidating.

The young man was still on the ground, and the boss was still crouching, looking down at him with a serious expression. I didn’t feel sorry for his subordinate. Quite the opposite, I had to hold back my impulse to laugh at the situation he had gotten himself into.

As if he didn’t already have enough of a gang boss presence, the muscular man pulled out a cigar and placed it between his lips. He pulled out an ornate lighter and lit his cigar in front of his subordinate.

Those items were expensive and quite uncommon where we were. Valleria, Ironburgh, and Greenville were rural towns, and those items weren’t common things for ordinary people to use around here. That only served to show how many resources this man had access to.

’Talk about flexing,’ I thought inwardly.

"Let’s say, by chance," the boss said, pausing to smoke. After releasing the cigar smoke in front of his subordinate, he continued, "that these two leave this place and dirty our reputation. What are you going to do? Beg me for forgiveness on your knees? Offer your life as payment? No matter what it is, nothing changes the mistake you made. Apologize to them immediately."

"I-I’m sorr—" he said hesitantly to the boss, only to be abruptly interrupted.

"Are you deaf or something?!" the boss shouted at him, so loudly that I believed the entire camp heard it. "I told you to apologize to the visitors!!"

Bryan got up and turned towards us. "I-I’m sorry."

The men who had accompanied him had already woken up from the beating. They joined Bryan and those who had surrendered, and apologized to me and Diane. I had to contain my smile in the name of professionalism, only saying to them...

"Apologies accepted." And then I turned back to their leader. "I don’t intend to say a word about what happened here. I’d like to discuss business now, if I may, of course."

"Of course, but before that, I’d like to say one more thing to my subordinates," he said to me in a more cheerful tone.

"Be my guest," I said seriously. I didn’t intend to meddle in the conflicts of someone else’s company. It wasn’t my problem.

For a moment, the air around him seemed to have grown hotter. No, seemed was the wrong word. The air really had grown hotter around him. The cigar he held in his hand instantly burned, reduced to ash because of the power that had leaked out of him, and when he tightly closed the hand that had been holding his very expensive cigar until just a moment ago, hungry flames burst from his fist.

He then addressed his men. "If you make this mistake again, you’ll wish you were dead. Understood, or do I need to repeat myself?"

There was no need for him to repeat himself. The subordinates nervously nodded and left their boss’s sight before he changed his mind and turned them to ash like he had done with the cigar.