Elmer was silent.

In truth, he was usually like that majority of the time, but as of now it was for two completely different reasons.

The first was because he had made a rule not to exert his spirituality by unnecessarily using the various essences of spirituality when it wasn’t sensible to—though, he had already used it twice: to mask his voice in the pub above, and to check the status of someone from his old life. And the second was simply because… he didn’t know what to say.

That one was unusual, seeing as he had many questions whirling in his head.

“I’m done with my smoke,” the tall female, who had aided Elmer in triumphantly moving past the first resistance he had met, said to a pair of hard-as-nails eyes scrutinizing them through a narrow rectangular doorhole. “Come on. What are you waiting for? It’s me?” She threw her hands sideways.

She sure hasn’t changed? Elmer was in his thoughts as he gazed at the ginger tousled hair of the woman standing in front of him. The ginger tousled hair of Patsy Baker.

Occasionally, the scenes of how they had parted ways kept popping up in his head, so he overshadowed them with questions that left him pondering.

Why was she down here in the Black Market even though she wasn’t an Ascender? What had she been doing in the past months? Also, did she know it was him? Despite his whole postiche mask?

That last thought of Elmer’s had some layer of truth to it.

He could only hide his features against those who didn’t know him at all. Pip had recognized him in an instant, so why should it be impossible for Patsy to have recognized him?

That would also explain why she was helping him; although, it would not explain why she’d decided to. They had not stopped communicating on a good note after all.

“Baker, I know. The shrimp, I don’t.” The man behind the door was obviously unfriendly; even his shrill voice proved as much. “What’s the little shrimp want?” That question was not for Patsy to answer, Elmer knew, but she answered anyway.

“He has something for the boss; a business deal, I suppose.” She looked over her shoulder for a mere second, but it was enough for a wave of nostalgia to hit Elmer as he beheld her deep and mischievous brown eyes again, and a bit of her freckles.

“Boss takes no deals. Boss makes deals,” the man behind the door spoke like a child still in preschool, and Elmer grew to have a hunch that that person might have a very limited supply of brain power. Trying to convince such a person always seemed more likely to end in utter failure; sneaking in was the better option. But since Patsy was doing the talking, Elmer chose to behave himself.

And besides, it was Patsy. Patsy Baker. She had a way of convincing stupid people. Elmer knew that since he had once both been stupid and been with her.

She was a sly one.

And now she has ties with the Underground Cartel. I really want to know what you have been up to all this while, Patsy?

All of a sudden Elmer lowered his head and laughed briefly. “What a joke,” he said to himself.

“Joke?” the man behind the door spoke in a rather confused manner. Elmer looked up and saw Patsy staring at him with her head tilted.

Oh… My words spilled out?

“Joke? Joke? What joke?” the man behind the door continued, his voice a tad more aggravated.

Patsy, who had been calmly trying to convince the door guardian to let Elmer in, had fallen silent. She too was seemingly curious as to what was a joke.

The answer to that was the laughability and unbelievability of how the first person Elmer had been friends with in the city of Ur had gone down a similar path as he—the illegal one.

Maybe he should have been expecting it. After all, their first expedition together had been to sneak into a mansion and steal.

Elmer suddenly began to wonder about what Patsy had done with her supposed item that she had retrieved. Sir Reginald had not mentioned anything relating to any item besides the Warlock’s Torch, so maybe it had actually been hers. He felt like it wasn’t though, rather strongly.

Well, it wasn’t really any of his concern, so he just shifted his focus to what was.

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The child-man on the opposite side wanted to know what the joke he had talked about was, right? Then he would give him an answer.

“Your boss,” Elmer answered nonchalantly. “He’s the joke.”

The child-man began to stutter uncontrollably. Patsy gasped in shock, her face shadowed for a moment by a hazy feeling of regret for bringing Elmer in.

“Barge,” Patsy called out with a shivering smile. “Relax. He didn’t mean it the way you think.”

Uncontrollable anger, I see.

“Didn’t? He didn’t?” Barge muttered, his anger seemingly simmering down before it had even blossomed. Elmer couldn’t have that.

“I did,” Elmer said, turning Patsy’s look incredulous. “I’ll repeat it for you to hear.” Patsy rushed to place her palm over Elmer’s lips, but he simply shifted aside, causing her hand to swipe past his face and her body to move behind him. “Your boss is a joke.”

There was a roar, then there were bangs on the wooden door which led to the inside of the Underground Cartel’s base.

Elmer looked toward the netfence where his first hurdles stood and he confirmed that the noise of the passersby were louder than the ruckus originating from Barge’s unhinged fury.

“What are you doing?” Patsy asked dumbfoundedly in a whisper; or maybe her voice was just significantly low because of a superior noise. “Barge won’t let you in at this rate. Also, you’ll only cause trouble if you keep this up.”

Elmer looked at her. He wanted to ask why she was helping him and if she knew who he was, but something else came out of his lips. “Watch.” And then he walked forward.

At this point he couldn’t even see Barge’s eyes through the doorhole again, but he could still hear the man’s tantrums.

Why hadn’t Barge just left them at the door instead of wailing? Why hadn’t he just thrown Elmer out? There were a lot of whys, but Elmer could only think of one answer to cover them all. Because, during Barge’s uncontrollable muttering, he had heard something with his exceptional hearing:

“Boss is no joke. If boss is a joke, then I’m a joke. I don’t want to be a joke. I hate being a joke.”

Those words had brought Elmer to a singular realization, Barge had a personality disorder.

His whole being depended on what his boss was viewed as. If his boss was called strong, then Barge was strong; if his boss was called weak, then Barge was weak.

Elmer had not known that at first, though.

His previous motive had been to take control of Barge’s anger and make him report the situation to someone higher than he was. Since Barge wasn’t smart, Elmer believed that the child-man would either do that or try to chase him away; the latter would have made Elmer go down the sneaking in route, while the former… he’d had no reason to even think he would fail in convincing a person who was higher than a doorman on why doing business with the Underground Cartel would bring in a large sum of money at a lesser casualty rate.

But… it seemed he’d come upon something better.

Elmer smiled deviously as he stood at an arm’s length from the only wooden door built into the wall of the alleyway he was in.

“Barge, do you believe your boss is a joke?” Elmer said, his tone low and shrewd.

“No!” Barge roared. “Boss is no joke.”

“Then will you stand for such an insult?”

“No!”

“I deserve to be punished, don’t I?” Elmer said, almost masochistically. He was sure Patsy’s expression would make him laugh, since her voice was nowhere to be heard for someone who liked to talk.

“Yes! You called boss a joke. Punishment. You deserve to be punished!” Barge answered, his eyes back to the doorhole now.

“Good. Then let me in,” Elmer said. “Punish me to your heart’s content where no one else will see.”

Barge fell silent.

“King… King says not to let anyone in. Punishment is impossible.”

King? Elmer was visibly frustrated at the presentation of another barrier.

If it went on like this he’ll have to sneak in instead.

“Then come out and punish me out here,” Elmer proposed an alternative.

“King says no to go out as well.” Barge didn’t budge.

The next thing Elmer wanted to say as he gritted his teeth internally was: “Open the door for Patsy”. That was so he could sneak in when that happened, but he thought against it.

He could not let himself become agitated. All he had to do was tap into what would make Barge snap and abandon all the little sense of reasoning he had.

A moment’s silence and Elmer had an idea.

“What would your boss do to you when he finds out you let someone who insulted him go unscathed?” he asked Barge. “Hmm? Don’t you know what it means if someone freely insults your boss and is not punished? It means your boss is weak.” There was a ferocious gasp from Barge and Elmer saw hope again. “For hesitating, you do not deserve to punish anyone, Barge, only your boss does. And if you try to prevent that from coming to pass then you and your boss are both weak.”

He got the child-man there.

“Punish. Punish. Punish. Punish.”

Clicking sounds entered Elmer’s ears, and a second later the locked door before him swung open, causing his heart to almost jump out of his mouth as he saw the humongous beast who was Barge.

The human who seemed like a giant was leaning forward, looking down at Elmer, with one hand pressed against the upper frame of the door in a manner that made it seem as though he was using it to push his body low enough to make himself visible.

Elmer chuckled nervously. Did I do too much?

“Boss must punish you himself.”