Ezra stared at Prise for several moments.

She was dressed in a thick winter cloak. Her floofy head of hair had been packed up into a tight little bun.

“Do you know each other?” Charles said.

Ezra continued to stare at Prise. Prise coughed into her hand.

“Me and One-Eye worked together during the Sundering of Toria,” she said. “I… uh, wasn’t expecting to see him here.”

“I thought you became guildmaster,” Ezra said. “What are you doing here?”

Prise rubbed the back of her neck. “The situation in Toria stabilized and HQ is a little hesitant to make me a full guildmaster. They wanted me to do a favor for the crown and assist the Otherworlders with something before my full appointment.”

“Something?”

“I’m a tracker.” Prise clasped her hands together. “It goes hand in hand with herbalism.”

Ezra’s mouth was dry. “I see.”

Even now, his feelings hadn’t really settled down when it came to Prise. A small—very small—part of him was grateful for everything she’d given him. Another part of him couldn’t help but wonder if he would get that same rush of satisfaction that he got from killing Idia by killing Prise.

Ezra was beginning to wonder if he was screwed up in the head.

One of the girls in their group leaned in toward another. “Do you see his eyes? I think they’re ex-lovers.”

The other girl gasped.

“Oh my gosh, and they split apart because of his mysterious past or something!”

Ezra internally screamed. These damn rumors had followed him ever since he put on the eyepatch!

“Where’s Dumrivil?” Ezra said. “Is he here too?”

“I honestly don’t know. He bought a ticket to a ship and then disappeared. Said something about seeking new horizons.”

Chronic adventurer symptom. Ezra idly wondered if they’d run into each other again.

“Well, good for him,” Ezra said.

The two stared at each other, slipping back into awkward silence.

Charles raised his voice. “Alright then, I think that we came here for a reason. We’re here to discuss our plans, not to gossip like a bunch of teenagers.”

Someone raised a hand. “But Charles, we are teenagers—“

“Shush!” Charles said. “Come on, we need to stay on target.”

The room settled down.

“Now, One-Eye seems to have some kind of unerring accuracy when it comes to the rough direction of the boss monster. I’m sure Prise will be of assistance with that, and she’ll probably be of aid to us in regards to making sure that we don’t starve to death.”

Prise nodded. “I’ll be heading up your logistics from now on. Rather than all of you managing your food separately, I’ll be hiring a cart and centralizing rations to make sure we don’t run out. I’ll also be teaching a few of you how to manage things like this so that you won’t need me in the future.”

A few murmurs rang out. The general mood seemed to be positive—especially in light of earlier when they’d started running low on food.

“With that in mind,” Charles said. “I want everyone ready to move out in two days. We’re going to train and get up to snuff before we fight. I want this Golem Sniper taken down, and I’m sure we can do it. Dismissed.”

The group spread out. Ezra caught Prise’s eye before he turned around and walked out.

----------------------------------------

…

As everyone else shuffled out, Charles, Dorian, Pete, and Yuki stayed inside the guild hall. Sen, detecting the tense atmosphere, coughed into his hand.

“I think I’ll just head to the back,” Sen said.

The four stared at each other before Charles broke the silence. “So, I think we’re all in agreement that the likely culprit was One-Eye.”

Dorian smirked. “I mean, the blood on his wrist during the meeting was kind of a dead giveaway.”

“What are we going to do about it?” Pete said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see Idia gone, but that was a cold-blooded assassination, and I’m just not comfortable with someone who’d do that.”

“What are our options?” Charles said. “I don’t think walking up to the guy and telling him that we know he’s a murderer will go over well.”

Pete opened his mouth.

Charles glanced over at him. “Also, you still tried to nominate him as a leader even though you knew he was the murderer?”

Pete rolled his eyes. “I still stand by my point. You’re too inexperienced.”

Dorian leaned against the guild counter.

“I think you’re all taking the wrong perspective,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Charles said.

She shrugged. “Who says we need to do anything? Idia needed to go and someone needed to do it. I’m just glad no one here had to get involved. If anything, we should be sending him a thank you note.”

Charles frowned. “If it’d been one of us, then I’d be a lot less worried. But One-Eye… I just don’t know enough about him.”

“I think that you probably know enough,” Dorian said.

Charles narrowed his eyes. There was something she wasn’t saying.

“Is there anything you want to tell the class?” Charles said.

“Oh, no, not at all.”

Yuki sighed.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Everyone in the room stopped. Charles and Pete looked over at her. Dorian raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think it’s wise to make any rushed decisions,” Yuki said.

Pete nodded and looked at Charles. “You say that you don’t know anything about him? So find out. Ask some questions, get some information from the guild. We’re representatives of the crown, so we don’t even have to do it directly. Just petition the monarchy to ask on our behalf.”

Charles looked at Yuki and Pete, then sighed. “I guess that’s the best move.”

Pete had an odd expression as he looked at the ground. Charles watched him carefully.

“Something on your mind, Pete?” Charles said.

“I was just thinking back to when we first ran into the Golem Sniper,” Pete said. “It suddenly jumped up, right?”

“Yeah, I’d been wondering about that for a while,” Dorian said.

“I… there was something that One-Eye did right before it happened. It seemed so familiar…” Pete shook his head. “Never mind. It’s just my imagination, I’m sure.

Charles shrugged. He’d get that letter written up and ask the crown to look into this… and unlike the other letter, he’d make sure it was sent in via the fastest channels possible.

…

----------------------------------------

Ezra sat on the steps up to Old Joe’s and stared up at the cloudy sky. He supposed that he should be training, but as of late, he felt rather lethargic. Part of it was probably due to simple burnout. He’d been fighting almost constantly, training, doing something, and that was bound to wear away at him.

Part of it was due to the silence of his partner as of late. She used to fill up the empty noise with her chatter, but she was quiet nowadays.

A woman in a white cloak approached him. She took off her hood, revealing the face of Dorian. He gave her a nod.

She smiled and sat down beside him, her ponytail whipping around her head.

“So,” she said.

He didn’t bother to turn toward her. “What is it?”

She pouted. “How rude. I take the time out of my day to come see you and you can’t be bothered to greet me properly?”

“I’d rather skip the pleasantries.”

She sighed.

“Everyone knows you murdered Idia,” she said.

Ezra stiffened. “What?”

“Come on, you weren’t exactly stealthy. For god’s sake, I can still see the blood on your clothes.”

Ezra looked down at his clothed arms and bit his lips. Like Dorian had said, there were dark red spots that blended with his black clothes.

“Oh,” Ezra said.

“Yeah. Oh.” Dorian leaned back and crossed her legs. “No one’s out to get you over it. We all hated Idia. But you’ve attracted a lot of attention with your little stunt. You’d better start working on some sort of backstory because questions are gonna start coming your way pretty damn fast.”

Ezra clicked his tongue. “I was right before. I should’ve been more patient and waited to kill him.”

“Probably. But it’s too late to change things now.”

She stood back to her feet.

“I’d best get going now.” She looked back and smirked. “Best of luck, One-Eye.”

She turned back around and walked off.

Ezra folded his head in his hands. He’d gotten caught, and in such an amateurish way too! If he needed to assassinate someone again, he’d have to be way more careful. He was lucky that Idia had been so unpopular.

He shook his head and looked over toward the town square where the rest of the Otherworlders were assembling. If he remembered right, they needed more training. He spent a few minutes working on a backstory before he stood up.

Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to test his newfound past soon, because he could already tell that it wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny.

----------------------------------------

The first thing he noticed was that the Otherworlders tended to be a little… scatter-brained? No, they held focus well enough, even so, it took them a while to get a single level up in [Basic Grappling]. Either they were poor learners or Ezra was a crap teacher. Either one was distinctly possible.

After an hour of this, footsteps shuffled up to Ezra from behind.

“Charles,” Ezra said.

“Oh, how did you know it was me?”

Ezra turned around. Charles smiled and tilted his head.

“What are you doing here?” Ezra said.

“Well, my troops are running some drills. I was hoping I could get some training from you. Specifically, I want to learn how to fight that thing you did where you broke my arm.”

Ezra raised an eyebrow. He’d been expecting an interrogation, as per what Dorian was talking about.

There was a part of him tempted to reject Charles outright. Ezra would prefer that he always had something in his back pocket to make sure Charles couldn’t cause trouble. However, that wasn’t going to happen. It would shoot Charles’s suspicion through the roof. And Charles would just find another teacher anyway if Ezra didn’t teach him.

No, better to go along with things for now.

“Right, let me show you a basic hold,” Ezra said.

Ezra grabbed Charles’s arm and locked it in place.

Charles winced. “That was fast.”

“You saw what happened? The way I used leverage?” Ezra said. “Here’s the important part. You won’t be able to overpower me directly, but there’s a limit to how much I can bend your arm before I lose a little bit of control. That’s your window.”

Ezra bent Charles’s arm.

Charles groaned. “For god’s sake, man. You could go a bit easier.”

“Don’t pull against the force.” Ezra loosened the pressure. “Twist your arm so that your thumb faces toward the lock. At the same time, rotate your body to create some space.”

Charles turned his head and gave Ezra a deadpan expression.

“Dude, you’re going to have to actually show me this stuff.”

Ezra sighed and let the pressure off Charles. “Here, you’ve seen me do the lock enough times. Put me in a lock and I’ll show you how I’d get out of it.”

Charles’s hands snapped out and bent Ezra’s arm into an uncomfortable position.

“So, where you from?” Charles said

Ezra twisted out of the lock and slammed Charles into the ground. He gasped for air.

“A distant region to the far east,” Ezra said. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

Charles grunted and pushed himself up. “Let me try escaping.”

Ezra grabbed his arms and set him in an awkward position.

“What was your homeland like?” Charles said.

“Temperate. Cold winters, warm summers.”

Charles tugged, then managed to rotate his arm and break out of the lock with a shove.

“You don’t teach very often, do you?” Charles said.

“No. This is new.” Ezra stepped back. “We’ll try putting it into action. We’ll restrict ourselves to the hold I just taught you. Ready?”

“No—“

Ezra inched forward, his hands at the ready. Charles sucked in a breath and narrowed his eyes.

“Where did you learn your stuff?” Charles said. “I can’t imagine that hand-to-hand is common among mercenaries.”

“It’s not, but most at least know the basics.”

Nobinar had several other adventurers in his little classes that Ezra had attended. Most of them only stayed long enough to pick up the Lv. 1 skill, and it was rare for someone to stick around and thoroughly learn it as Ezra did.

“Dad was a mercenary.” Ezra’s tone stayed controlled and casual. “I picked up most of the basics from him. I never asked why he used his bare hands, but it worked for him, so I followed.”

Charles hummed and nodded. He shifted his legs and jumped forward, aiming for Ezra’s arm.

Ezra easily dodged the attack and manuevered behind Charles. He locked Charles’s arm and held it in place.

“And what about—“ Charles tried to escape, but Ezra didn’t let him. “—how you got here?”

Ezra shoved the lock, demonstrating that he could’ve broken Charles’s arm, then let him go with a shove.

“Personal reasons. I wanted to escape my home,” Ezra said.

Huh.

Ezra had told the truth by accident. It didn’t matter, but still.

It was kind of funny.

Charles slowly turned around. There was a smirk on his face and his eyes were narrowed.

“I see. Well… I’ll come back tomorrow to pick up the skill. I’d best get back to my guys,” Charles said.

He walked off, and Ezra couldn’t help but feel as if he’d somehow lost their fight.

----------------------------------------

The rest of the day passed by quickly enough. Passerbys had looked at them but didn’t pay them any mind as they trained. Ezra wandered back to Old Joe’s shop and ran head-first into the man.

“You didn’t pay me for yesterday,” he said.

Ezra frowned. Joe was right. Ezra reached into his money pouch and handed him three silver coins. Joe nodded and shoved it into his pocket. Ezra went over to the stairs when Joe’s voice interrupted him.

“Hey, I found out that you’ve been talking to my daughter. You’d better stay away from her,” she said.

Ezra didn’t turn his head. “She came up to me, and I’m not going to shove a brat out the window for demanding a conversation from me.”

Joe crossed his arms. “Just try to avoid her, then. You’re some sort of hot-shot mercenary, right? That shouldn’t be outside of your capabilities.”

“Sure. I’ll try.”

Before Joe could say anything, Ezra rushed up the stairs and back to his room. He sat on the bed and put his hand on his heart.

There was a familiar, warm presence inside his chest. Filamenta, recalled into her spirit form and inside his body. Once again, she’d scarcely made a noise for the whole day.

“You can be shockingly needy,” her voice echoed in his head.

Ezra nearly jumped into the air before he glared at his chest.

“It’s not neediness,” he said. “Like I keep saying, you’re my partner, right? But you haven’t been very partner-like. Disappearing when I need you the most, keeping secrets—you still haven’t told me what’s going on.”

The room was quiet. Ezra’s heart hammered in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” her voice said, subdued. “I didn’t realize it was bothering you this much. I’ve just been… well, I’ve been trying to make sense of it all, myself.”

“Make sense of what?”

“Ezra,” she said. “The System is trying to kill me.”