The bar hit me the second I step down, full volume, every conversation, scrapes of mugs and chairs arriving at once.

I spotted the group before I had to look for them because you do not look for Nom-Nom; you simply let your eyes go to whatever has created a ten-meter bubble of empty space, and you’ll find her in the center of it.

Peko clocked me coming down the stairs before I reached the floor.

"The contract is signed," she said, lifting the folded papers toward me.

"If you handled it, it’s handled..." I said, walking past her. "Let’s go."

The papers went back down, the Iron Vanguard exchanged a look, and I caught Garek filing this away in whatever mental folder he kept his observations about us in.

Trust like that was apparently not something most adventurer groups handed out casually, and judging from the way Garek’s eyes lingered on Peko for half a second afterward, he had definitely clocked the implication behind it.

Mitsuki folded the papers neatly before storing them away while everyone rose from the table, and soon enough, we were moving through the guild hall toward the exit together under the attention of practically half the building.

Some of the stares were aimed at Nom-Nom.

Some were aimed at me.

Most were aimed at both.

"That’s the dragon..." a rookie whispered near the request boards.

"That’s the guy from Hollow Cinder Mine..." another muttered quietly.

We stepped outside into the morning air while the sounds of the city rolled over us immediately from every direction at once, carts rattling across stone roads, vendors yelling over each other from roadside stalls, smithies hammering away in the distance, and somewhere nearby a woman was threatening to beat somebody unconscious with a fish.

Normal city ambience.

The traffic built as we walked, which I had expected, but the volume of it was something else entirely.

The closer we moved toward the southern district, the denser the streets became around us, while the flow of traffic slowly shifted from ordinary commerce into something heavier and more anxious beneath the surface.

At first, it was just more travellers, but then came more carts, more supply wagons, more families carrying entire lives across their shoulders.

Every race funneled into the same road: elves, dwarves, demon-folk, beast-kin, and humans, most of whom were moving with packs on their backs and children on their shoulders, dragging carts piled with covered supplies that someone had priced out before the market had a chance to respond to demand.

"You two heading toward the dungeon too?" Garek eventually asked while glancing between Peko and me.

"Nope," I replied casually. "Got some stuff to handle first."

Then I jerked a thumb toward Nom-Nom.

"I’m borrowing Nom for a bit."

Nom-Nom immediately looked over.

"Hm?"

That tiny sound alone confirmed she had absolutely not been informed about this beforehand.

And frankly, 15 minutes ago, neither was I.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"What stuff?" she asked suspiciously.

"You’ll see."

Her eyes narrowed immediately.

"Am I beating someone up?"

"Kinda... hopefully." I chuckled.

Peko sighed softly beside me, immediately figuring out what I was up to.

The gate square arrived loud before it arrived visible; the entire district had effectively transformed into a giant waiting zone for incoming refugees.

Tents covered entire sections of open pavement.

Cooking fires burned between tightly packed family camps.

Merchants had set up temporary stalls absolutely everywhere humanly possible, and the guards directing traffic near the gates already looked spiritually exhausted despite the day barely having started.

Children cried somewhere off to the side while wagons lined up in enormous queues stretching down entire streets, and every few minutes, another group of travelers arrived through the southern roads carrying whatever pieces of their lives they had managed to bring with them.

"These are all Red Moon arrivals?" I asked while looking over the crowds.

"Yes," Peko replied calmly. "Early arrivals."

"Because bunker positioning matters..." Mitsuki added quietly.

Peko nodded once, picking up where Mitsuki left off.

"Supply prices rise dramatically the closer the Red Moon approaches, and districts nearest to major shelters become overcrowded very quickly. Those who arrive later often struggle to secure enough provisions for their families."

"And the Night itself can last weeks," Garek added.

I looked toward him.

"The Red Moon only ends once the joint forces enter the Red Moon itself and kill the Keeper..." he continued evenly. "Until then, the waves continue."

[So the annual apocalypse event isn’t exactly a single night at all...]

I absorbed that alongside the square full of people who had done the math on their own survival and arrived at the same destination, and the city that was about to have all of them inside its walls.

As we passed one of the larger tent clusters near the gate square, a small Beastkin child spotted Nom-Nom and immediately waved enthusiastically toward her with both arms.

Nom-Nom froze mid-step.

The child’s mother saw what her kid was waving at one second later and reacted instantly, grabbing the child and pulling him back hard enough that the poor kid almost lost his shoe.

But before they disappeared into the crowd, Nom-Nom awkwardly raised her hand and waved back once.

The child grinned immediately, while the mother, thoroughly horrified, hurried away faster.

Nom-Nom watched them disappear into the crowd quietly before resuming walking without saying anything.

None of us commented on it either.

The guards at the southern gate processed us almost immediately once they recognized who exactly was approaching, and within minutes, we had cleared the walls entirely

And within a few minutes more, the enormous refugee was behind us, farther than I could comfortably see.

Outside the walls, the road opened up, and the noise of the city dropped behind us while the forest ahead came into view beyond the rolling dirt paths.

The air itself felt less compressed without people packed into every available meter of space.

I even saw Peko taking in a deep breath of the crisp, fresh air, now that she was finally away from the overwhelming scents of... well, just about everything.

"This is where we split for now," I said, slowing slightly.

Garek nodded once.

"Nom’ll meet you by the dungeon... I only need her for a bit." I continued, casually reaching into my inventory and pulling out a crate before extending it to Garek.

Inside sat ten glass bottles filled with pale green liquid so clean and clear that the sunlight passing through them produced faint shimmering reflections across the inside of the crate itself.

He took it on reflex, both hands coming up to receive the weight, and he looked down at it.

Taking out one of the ten Grade 8 potions inside, he turned it in his hands, checking the smooth translucent green liquid carrying faint mana density beneath the glass.

"These are absurdly pure," he said, breathless.

"Uh-huh, consider these your... Health insurance," I said with a chuckle.

Mitsuki’s eyes sharpened immediately afterward.

Berant looked between the crate and me like he was trying to determine whether I was secretly a government conspiracy.

Meanwhile, Selenne clutched her hand with the other, trying to stop the shaking.

Which honestly felt like her default reaction whenever I did anything now.

"These alone are worth a small fortune..." Mitsuki murmured.

"If you say so..." I smiled. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Then came the important part.

Because, while infinite potion production was a pretty fun concept, all for the wrong reasons, I needed society to stop asking questions before someone eventually arrived at the correct answer and had an aneurysm.

So I improvised.

"Peko made them," I said casually. "She’s gotten really into alchemy lately"

Everyone looked at Peko.

While Peko looked at me, wordlessly asking, ’Since when?’

While I continued, absolutely refusing to make eye contact with her. "Turns out she’s really good at it."

Technically speaking, this was not even the worst lie I had told this morning.

And now, suddenly, the existence of absurdly high-quality healing potions had a believable explanation attached to them instead of whatever horrifying conclusion people would otherwise eventually reach regarding me.

"Peko has been experimenting," I continued casually. "This batch ended up better than expected, so we figured there’s no reason to let useful stock sit around collecting dust."

Garek slowly looked back toward the potion in his hand as he breathed, "...I see."

"That explains the purity," Mitsuki said thoughtfully.

Peko finally sighed softly and said calmly, giving the Iron Vanguard a look over, "Please use them carefully."

And that single line immediately made the entire story infinitely more believable.

I almost laughed out loud.

Garek carefully put the potion back into the crate and bowed his head slightly toward Peko, "We’ll make good use of them."

Final farewells followed shortly afterward while the Iron Vanguard prepared to continue southward toward the dungeon routes.

Mitsuki thanked us quietly.

Berant gave an awkward half-bow that looked physically painful for him to perform.

Selenne avoided eye contact completely.

Nom-Nom looked at all of them seriously before speaking.

"Don’t die."

Berant looked deeply uncertain whether that counted as encouragement or a threat.

I watched the Iron Vanguard disappear further down the dirt road before finally turning toward Peko.

"So," I asked. "Pick a spot?"

Peko immediately opened the Party Module, unfolding a 3D topographical map between us, expanding the forest terrain.

She pointed toward a location deep within the southern forest between Shinkotsu and the border regions.

"Sounds decent," I nodded.

The reason we needed somewhere isolated was fairly straightforward.

Memory Extraction is technically classified as Dark Magic and was extremely illegal for several very understandable reasons.

Extracting intact memories from a living or recently deceased mind required invasive manipulation of the brain itself, and according to Peko, most practitioners either destroyed large portions of the target’s memories accidentally or simply exploded the brain outright during the process.

Which honestly felt like nature itself trying very hard to stop people from doing this.

"If performed improperly," Peko explained calmly while adjusting the map projection, "... the target suffers catastrophic neurological collapse before complete extraction can occur."

"So basically illegal brain archaeology?"

"That is an extremely irresponsible way to phrase it."

"But not inaccurate."

Without the ritual itself, she could only extract fragmented pieces. And that too while exploding her target’s head.

But with proper preparation and a proper ritual, full extraction is possible.

Still horribly illegal though.

Getting caught doing Dark Magic ranged anywhere from having your mana core crippled to outright public execution, depending entirely on how badly the Mage’s Association wanted to make an example out of you.

Which was exactly why we were absolutely not performing the ritual inside our luxury inn room like a bunch of psychopaths.

The ritual itself also required nighttime conditions to function properly, meaning we had the entire day free to prepare supplies and pick someplace more deserted than a library on New Year’s Eve.

Once that’s handled, by evening, I would return to the city for the meeting with Kisho Hikaru while Peko handled the extraction itself.

Which finally brought me back toward the final reason I had kept Nom-Nom behind.

"Now, the reason I kept you." I turned to Nom-Nom as she straightened immediately.

"We’re gonna spar," I continued. "I wanna see what you’ve actually learned so far and where your current level really is."

She listened carefully while I continued walking beside her.

"Look, I know I’m not exactly qualified to teach or judge..." I admitted openly. "I mean, right now we’re basically two middle schoolers winning by throwing overpowered magic around..."

Nom-Nom looked mildly offended by that statement despite not knowing what a middle schooler even is.

But I could tell she agreed with the statement.

"So instead of frankly beating me up... you’re fighting a Ferrum Knight."

I looked straight in Nom-Nom’s eyes, activating the magic, levitating the golden speck beside me, and continued.

"A Ferrum Knight charged continuously for one full hour... starting from now."

Her eyes widened immediately.

Then sharpened.

And there it was.

The little smile Nom-Nom constantly carried vanished from her face completely while her slit violet eyes narrowed into something colder and far more dominating.

Because she understood exactly what I had just implied.

The whole "not even one percent" conversation yesterday had absolutely wounded her pride, and now I had placed physical proof of that statement directly in front of her.

And judging from the way her posture shifted while staring at that little speck of gold without blinking, I had hit the target perfectly.

[Yep... there she is.]

And just like that, Nom-Nom was gone, and what remained was only a Greater Dragon with something to prove, and shove the results down my throat.