"Esteemed miss," the female adventurer said through gritted teeth, "please, do not point your blade at my young master," she requested.

"We do not take orders from you. Bark elsewhere, mutt," Sophie replied and then stepped closer to the table the three young nobles were sat behind.

Her shortsword was now only a foot or so away from Bastion's neck and oh did it look so very, very, sliceable to Sophie’s Mana Sensing.

The roguish adventurer frowned as she unsheathed her own weapon - a delicate-looking dagger. "You may be of noble birth, and you may be wearing armour, esteemed miss, but trust me when I say that my aim is true. Please, stand down. I am sure that we can discuss this like reasonable adults."

‘She lies. Does she think the tremble in her very bones to be so easily hidden? Her fear of us will make her an easy kill,’ Sophie observed.

‘If… If it will help find L-Lone, do whatever you need to!’ her meeker self said, having stopped her incessant weeping.

"We shall discuss nothing, you fool!" The bastard leading noble child yelled through his own more than obvious terror. "Kill her! Cut off her head! The boat has already sailed! The time to talk has long since passed!"

The errant adventurer raised her dagger, but she hesitated to move. Sophie could see it. It was hard to get a perfectly accurate estimation of a person’s strength, but people of different ranks had differing amounts of mana in them, and the density varied too.

Observing both herself and Lone as they had ranked up made this theory all but certain. With that in mind, Sophie could feel this adventurer was no stronger than a B-ranker but likely weaker, meaning all it would take was one well-placed Teleportation to finish her off.

She could see the cogs turning in her head. She was being paid to be here Sophie assumed, but she saw her death in this room and didn’t wish to meet it. ‘A coward then, but a wise one.’

She supressed the rampant urge to paint the walls of the room red and instead did something that, hopefully, would not lead to further trouble for Lone and both of her selves later down the line.

She stabbed the contract and the table it was on with her sword and then lifted the parchment from the wood. "Whom did you get this from, and where is Lone? Tell me this and we will leave peacefully. He is not yours. He belongs to us. Do not think it beneath us to take Guildmaster Gilbert's offer to contact Grand Guildmaster Sarah in order to right the wrong that has been done unto ourself and to our foxkin."

It was uncommon for Sophie to lie or stretch the truth, but for Lone and Soph's sake, she'd do it without hesitation. If acting like Lone’s owner would get him found sooner, she would play her part without fault.

George Leston was shaking like a leaf under the pressure of her barely contained bloodlust, but he somehow managed to muster up the courage to stand. "M-Miss...?"

'Oh? This chicken has a spine, does it?' Under all her impatience and anger, Sophie felt some amusement leaking out of herself at this prospect. The most useless of the bunch turned out to be the one to try and speak cordially with her. How very, very, entertaining. "Vladimirovich. Don't bite your tongue when saying it, boy."

"Miss Vladimirovich," George struggled his way through the surname she wasn’t born with but did consider her own, "Bastion's had a bit too much to drink. I-I understand why you are upset, really, I do. My friend will t-tell you everything he knows, won't you, Bastion?"

The girl Sophie knew to be called Emma Malik nodded. "Bastion's hot-headed, but he isn't stupid. Right, Bastion?"

Sophie could feel the intense emotion of hatred and disgust rolling off the boy who was a single decision away from dying. Perhaps it was her bloodlust, or perhaps it was the blade pressed up against his flesh, regardless, he spoke.

"... A man approached me. I don't know who he is. He hid his face and never gave me his name. I thought he was being quite rude, honestly, but he claimed to have possession of the Golden Foxkin. I didn't start any trouble with him because, to my surprise, he owns an estate in the noble district. I'll give you the address if you want it so badly," Bastion said as he averted his eyes and furrowed his brow in displeasure.

"Now we are getting somewhere, are we not?" Sophie asked as she smiled sarcastically under her helmet.

The female adventurer sighed in relief as she put her weapon away and resumed leaning against the wall.

Bastion listed the seller's address and then offered a warning. "I wasn't the only person he contacted regarding the foxkin, no doubt. Many eyes have been drawn to Milindo after the baby Golden Foxkin appeared a year ago. With an adult possessing nine tails suddenly showing up too... well, I'm sure that those eyes would have shifted focus since the baby is set to be sold at that stupid restricted access auction soon anyway."

Sophie snorted. "We need not your false concern. Do as your kind always do and scurry back to your family and attempt to use their influence to get revenge on us."

"Why you-"

"We have no time for fools. Farewell." Sophie offered no more words as she quickly left the nightclub.

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Silence and the sound of the establishment's music filled the booth. Emma suddenly stood up and arched her back, resulting in it popping. "Wow. That was amazing!"

George scratched his cheek awkwardly. "I-I guess?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"You too, George! You were so cool when you faced her! I could barely move let alone talk until you mustered up the willpower to face that bloodlust head-on! We should hang out more, y'know," Emma Malik said as she offered her fellow duke's child a cheeky wink.

"Uh, um, I-I'd like that," George answered sheepishly.

Bastion, however, bit at his fingernails in both anger and anxiety. 'I've already sent a letter back to Father of my success in obtaining the foxkin... How do I deal with this now?'

Ceela leaned over and passed her young master a note. Bastion was about to toss it on the floor since it had come from a peasant, but he had accidentally read some of its contents and his interest was caught.

'Yes, yes, yes! This might just work! If he's participating in the tournament and has a grudge with the hero... Yes, Father will believe this!' Bastion was elated. 'Ceela, you may be a worthless whore, but even worthless whores have some intellect it would seem!'

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Lone carefully made his way out of the basement with Grimsley and Shana in tow.

Shana, that was the girl's name. Apparently, she was Grimsley's niece. The dwarf hadn't mentioned any further details given their situation, and Lone didn't care either. Not now at least. Getting to The Adventurer's Guild where they would be safe was his current number one priority.

"A storeroom?" It would seem that the dungeon-like cellar was connected to a room primarily used for keeping crates and miscellaneous items.

There weren't any windows, but the room looked like it belonged to a large and nice house even despite the few cobwebs that decorated the room's corners. "Are we in the noble district, maybe?"

Grimsley shrugged. "Ah'll be fooked if ah ken, Laddie." He was still in shock at how perfectly Lone had healed him and his niece.

Lone frowned. "Try to stay as silent as possible. I'd rather avoid killing even more people. Best-case scenario, we escape this house then fuckin' leg it through the city."

"An' worse-case, laddie?" Grimsley asked despite already knowing the answer.

"I cut us a path out of here and we pray that we don't meet a powerful ranker. I'm really banking on this guy being a one-man operation. The drug he used on me isn't easy to get though, and this house suggests nobility, so we may already be up shit creek," Lone explained softly.

Grimsley scowled with that rugged and grizzled face of his. "An' ah dinnae see a paddle in fookin' sight."

"Exactly." Lone took in a sharp breath and then steeled himself for potentially having to end even more human lives today. "Well, no time like the present. If we wait too long his accomplices will get suspicious. We still don't know if he was a lackey or the boss."

"Ah'm right behind ya, laddie." Shana was still unconscious, but to a burly Stone Dwarf like Grimsley, her weight on his back was inconsequential.

At that exact moment, a fully armoured figure roughly a little under a metre and a half tall appeared in the middle of the room.

Grimsley's eyes almost popped out of his skull, but he managed to not make a loud exclamation from the shock he was currently feeling. "Did 'at fella jus' fookin' appear ootta thin air?"

A smile wormed its way onto Lone's face. "'Girl' not 'fella', and yes, yes she did."

Sophie took off her helmet and stormed over to Lone while somehow keeping her footsteps soft and silent. Quite an amazing feat, really.

She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down for a deep, long, and sloppy, kiss. A few moments later she pulled back and glared at him. "Useless. Why did you not escape sooner? If we knew that you were capable of such on your own, perhaps we wouldn't have had to spend the effort to find you ourself."

“That’s Sofia? Fook me up the arse an’ call me Sally if ye’re naw actin’ entirely different fae normal,” Grimsley commented in confusion.

Lone smiled wryly. "Will explain later, to both of you. Can you get us out of here first?"

Sophie scowled fiercely before she roughly grabbed both Lone and Grimsley's arms. Not a second later they had disappeared.

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Gilbert peeked over his shoulder and glanced at the two moons hanging in the sky over Altros through his office's window.

It was rare to see them both in one night. People usually only referred to Altros as having one moon since the second only made itself known one night every four years.

Of course, on this most special of evenings, Gilbert was too stressed to fully appreciate with rice wine as he liked to.

"Another 20 or so minutes," he grumbled.

He turned his head back and then almost had a heart attack. "Lone?" Much to the guildmaster's surprise, Sofia had appeared in the middle of his office along with Lone and two unfamiliar dwarves.

"Hey, Gilbert. So, uh, I may or may not have murdered a nobleman..." Lone sheepishly said as he scratched his neck.

Gilbert narrowed his eyes. "Well, now the second moon’s entirely ruined. Explain. Now."

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"Ha-ah... Gregory Milatod, huh? He's the son of the late Count Feston Milatod. From what I know he's been under the watchful eye of Duke Henry Malik for some time under suspicion of treason and leading a criminal gang. These are only rumours though," Gilbert explained.

Not a moment later he reached under his desk and pulled out a smoking pipe. He stuffed some sort of substance into it and then snapped his fingers and said, "Spark." Whatever he had put in the device lit up and began producing smoke.

He walked over to the office's window and opened it. He then took a big puff of his pipe and blew the resulting smoke out into the open air.

"I'm glad that you and your blacksmithing master are safe, Lone, really, I am, but henceforth you are banned from leaving this building until the annual fighter's tournament begins. I know none of it is your fault, but you've really stumbled from one mess to another, and that's only from today," Gilbert expressed wryly but in a serious tone.

Lone nodded. "It's regrettable since I kind of need to get stronger, but yeah, the danger is too great," he said. 'If I can't level-up for now, then I'll just have to perfect my skills as much as possible to kick Daisuke's teeth out. One way or another, he's getting the shit beat out of him for all that he's done.'

Gilbert's eyes drifted over to Sophie. "And you. You are also forbidden from leaving this building. I suspect that Duke Leston and Duke Malik won't take your actions lying down. Margrave Griffset is situated in Ros, so I doubt he'll cause any direct trouble for you, but I can't say the same for the dukes. They may employ some adventurers under silver-plate to harass you, but I doubt you're unable to handle that."

Sophie held her head up proudly. "Indeed. We do not regret our actions even slightly, however. Were we not aware of the consequences, then we would have no doubt murdered all of those noble wastrels."

Grimsley mumbled under his breath, “’Er’s ‘at weird fancy talk again…”

"Mister Ironsbane, I also suggest that you, too, do not leave this building. The hero clearly wishes to kill you for stealing his slave from him," Gilbert said.

Grimsley's face turned sour. "Shana's nae a slave, ya big scaly cunt! She's Shana. Nutin' mere nutin' less."

"I meant no offence," Gilbert said with an apologetic smile.

Lone held his chin curiously as he gazed at the unconscious dwarven teenager. "Shouldn't she have woken up by now?"

"I suspect her slave collar is preventing her from awakening," Guildmaster Gilbert said. "Perhaps a clause in her slave contract stated that should she escape her master's servitude that she would be put to sleep? Contract magic is very strange. Poor quality contracts always have hundreds of tiny clauses to make up for the massive expense not being applied known as 'external subservience'. Only high-level contracts include that. Usually, running away in that case results in immediate death."

Lone frowned. "Well, we can't be having her asleep for the rest of her days, now, can we?"

"Whaddya mean, laddie?" Grimsley asked sceptically. Anything concerning his niece was of the utmost importance to the man, so of course he was wary.

Lone grinned. "I have enough MP now. Lemme get that collar off of her."