By Zephyria Meeting the man’s serious gaze, she seemed to snap back to her senses. But the sudden commanding tone only aroused a cold sense of defiance.
“Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?”
At her still sharp response, the man sighed softly and said.
“…If you don’t like it, you can just get buried by Filione Delberg.”
The Merchant Company Leader flinched for a moment. This man knew of Filione Delberg’s existence.
As soon as she heard that name, she felt as if something she had only imagined as a possibility had become a reality, and she felt like her mind was collapsing.
If this matter didn’t succeed properly, she really could die. The leaders were her supervisors, but they also served as middlemen connecting her and the members of the Merchant Company, so their absence was a bigger blow than she had thought.
This would not only make it more difficult to control the members of the Merchant Company, but if the leaders returned to the General Merchant Company Leader and told them everything, this matter would be as good as a failure.
And the culprit was right in front of her, she wanted to tear this man apart, but to survive right now, she had to find a way to live instead of acting emotionally.
When she heard Filione Delberg’s name and fell silent as if she was shocked, the man said to her quietly.
“Since you said you’d stay here, I have to take responsibility for you and save you.”
At the man’s words, the Merchant Company Leader glared at him as if she was dumbfounded and shouted again.
“Save me…? Ha, if you were going to do that, you shouldn’t have let the leaders out of here in the first place—!”
At her angry eyes and resentful voice, the man sighed and said.
“You, if you successfully complete this deal here, and return to the central region with the leaders. Do you think you would have been able to live?”
The breath she had been taking roughly seemed to stop for a moment.
She couldn’t answer his question, which seemed to imply something.
He seemed to be saying that even if she had successfully completed the deal and returned, she would have been dead. Instead of voicing the thought that had flashed through her mind, she looked at the man with eyes asking what he wanted to talk about.
He realized that she had understood his words to some extent with just that look, then slowly closed and opened his eyes, looking directly at the woman in front of him.
“Follow me.”
With those words, he immediately took the lead and headed somewhere.
It was true that she had to grab at straws, but she felt like she was going to vomit at the thought that the person who was going to save her was this unknown man who didn’t know what he was going to do.
But at least right now, that man knew the situation she was in within this territory the best, and she had a strange feeling that he wouldn’t let her die. With just that thought, she hurriedly followed the man who was moving away alone, wavering.
Terzio, after confirming that the Merchant Company Leader had followed him, immediately moved and told her about a place where she could hide when the Council entered the territory. It was an underground storage in a remote and secluded place, the same place he had brought Flynn to and showed him the inside.
When the man brushed away the fallen leaves and lifted the plank door, a hole with cool air seeping out was visible.
As she looked back and forth between the entrance and him with distrustful eyes, the brown-haired man took out an artifact from his pocket, enlarged it to the size where only one arm could fit, and then put his arm inside and rummaged around, looking for something.
At that, the Merchant Company Leader said, as if she now understood how he had appeared silently in front of her last night and jumped out the window and disappeared.
“You, are you a mage?”
The man only glanced at her when he heard her words, but didn’t answer. Then, he pulled something out of the artifact and threw it at the Merchant Company Leader.
She barely managed to catch what was flying towards her, and what he threw was a oxygen mask and a thermal cloak. Since they weren’t items that could be commonly found on the market, she was hesitant to hold those suspicious items.
The man, as if there was nothing else he was looking for inside, shrunk the artifact again and put it in his pocket, then started taking off his top with a bit of annoyance.
At the man’s sudden strange behavior, she became quite nervous and looked at him strangely. Soon, he took off one of the thin clothes he was wearing inside his thick clothes and handed it to her, saying.
“Take it.”
When he held it out, she reached out her hand from a distance, cautiously, and took the clothes. And at that moment, she could vaguely guess what it was.
‘This texture and the warmth inside…. It’s a military-grade top-of-the-line cold-weather suit. It’s hardly ever seen even in Merchant Company supplies, how does this man have this?’
The man gave it to her and shivered as if he was cold, taking out another layer of thick clothes from the artifact and putting it on top. Then, zipping it up and buttoning it, he said to her.
“Wear that and hide in here until I tell you to come out.”
“…Are you telling me to freeze to death?”
“That’s why I gave you those things. Endure it somehow. And never come out until I say ‘come out.’ If someone comes in the middle, hide behind the boxes no matter what. Got it?”
The man cut off all the context and urged her to answer, saying that there was no time. Even though she was suspicious, she barely nodded, and the man pushed her into the pit, telling her to quickly go in and hide, and then closed the plank.
From the top of the plank, she could hear the sound of fallen leaves being covered again. She was very confused by this situation, and she just stared at the firmly closed plank.
Soon, a cold air surrounded her, and she put on the cold-weather suit that the man had given her and wrapped the thermal cloak over it, wrapping herself up tightly. Then, after putting on the oxygen mask, she picked up one of the two lamps hanging on either side and slowly went down into the dark storage.
She was hiding behind the pile of boxes as he had told her to. Not long after, she heard the sound of the door opening from above and two men coming down. One of them was the brown-haired man who had told her to hide here.
She became very nervous and held her breath, thinking that he had brought an outsider here even though he had told her to hide. When the men came down to right in front of the box pile, she was overcome with fear that the man had tricked her and brought her here for another purpose.
They seemed to be stacking boxes, and when one man tried to go behind the boxes, the man who had brought her here naturally stopped him.
“These boxes will have to be moved to another place later, so it’s better to stack them in the front.”
“I see.”
She covered her mouth behind the pile of boxes and was frozen still, unable to move. After that, they fortunately only moved the boxes and went back out. But she had to be very anxious that someone else would come down again.
As time passed and a voice amplified by a sound amplifier echoed from afar, announcing that there were illegally distributed demon beasts within this territory and requesting cooperation in the investigation, she couldn’t comprehend how everything had been exposed so instantly.
The Council had only come to the village because of the arson incident in the neighboring town—she was certain of that—but her mind was in complete disarray, unable to pinpoint where the trail had been picked up.
And that confusion led to the conviction that it was all because of that guy who had brought news of the outsiders, hidden her here after the leadership had left, and caused all this.
She became increasingly consumed by the thought that he had isolated her here and deliberately called the Council.
And so, she had reached this point.
* * *
As the covering plank was torn away, the outside air poured in.
It had clearly been morning when she entered this place, but now it was almost midnight, with a large moon hanging in the sky.
Inside the storage, she had been on the verge of her limit due to the lack of oxygen when the entrance door was forcibly torn off. Rather than fear, she felt a sense of relief, as if she could finally breathe.
“Come out quickly.”
Before her stood the man she still couldn’t believe, holding out his hand.
The team leader, who had been silent in bewilderment, soon bit her lip and spoke. “…Did you call the Council?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Terzio reached out his hand again, but the team leader only glared at him. Her voice grew even sharper, perhaps due to her too-quick acceptance.
“Ha, then why did you hide me? Are you going to take me to the Council now?”
“If that were the case, why would I go through the trouble of hiding you here, even giving you an oxygen respirator?”
“Then why on earth—!”
The team leader screamed with a disgusted expression. Watching her, Theo let out a hollow laugh and replied.
“You were used.”