{Rin}

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," Rin replied to one of Kate's friends.

"How... How did you get into that whole thing? And, why? I-I don't mean to be nosy or anything, it's just... I can't imagine how that sort of thing happens."

"It's fine," Rin waved a hand dismissively, proceeding to then flip some of her white hair over her shoulder. "I understand. And, well... As far as how is concerned, I had heard some stories about this one place near my house and, well, one day I decided to check if those stories were true. As far as why, same as everyone else. I needed the money."

"It's the same on my end," Kate muttered. "I came to Libera from Cradle to escape slavery and, uh, I didn't have any sort of education or whatever, so, I looked around and it turns out that, in Libera, at least slaves get paid," she shrugged.

As much as Rin was trying to keep her confident exterior up, she couldn't help but let it slip a little as she heard their stories. As she saw Kate's lowered, self-pitying eyes, she felt like she was looking into a mirror.

Before Rin could fall into that mental rabbit hole too quickly, she turned and searched the room, looking for Sara. It had been a few minutes since she'd gone to check on what John was talking about. Rin couldn't see her anywhere, a fact that made her feel a little colder than she should have.

"So, uh, what do you guys think about this place?" Kate asked them all and Rin forced herself to pay attention to this conversation again.

"I didn't think there'd be so many others like us," one of her friends muttered before lifting a wine glass to his lips. "I'm almost starting to believe what the guy said."

Rin arched a brow.

"Who, John? What did he say?"

"You know," Kate answered instead, "the stuff about everyone here being outcasts and all that."

"It sounded nice but I was kinda wondering if they were just trying to sell us on some weird religion," another of her friends stated.

"Ah, so I wasn't the only one, huh?" Kate muttered with a giggle, making all of her friends chuckle as well.

[Okay... Good to know these people are probably innocent,] Rin thought to herself, nearly breathing a sigh of relief. [Doesn't mean the others here aren't actually the psychos we're worried about, though.]

As Rin took a second to keep looking for Sara, someone else joined their little circle.

"Rest assured, all we want to do is make the world a better place for people like us."

From Rin's right, a middle-aged man said that. She jumped. She hadn't noticed the guy approach them. The man who'd spoken up had a quaint smile fixed onto his face, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Feel free to grab more drinks if you want. We bought it all for a reason, after all. Have fun!" He slapped Rin's shoulder gently and it took everything she had not to flinch.

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He sounded so much like John to the point where Rin wondered if they'd both taken classes on how to sound as eerily polite as possible. As he walked away, Rin allowed herself to breathe and turned back toward the group.

Upon doing so, she noticed that pretty much of all of them had taken his advice and drank a little more from the glass cups in their hands.

Rin was tempted to do the same, but she stopped herself.

[No, if anything happens tonight I want to have as clear a head as possible. Hopefully, nothing will, but better safe than sorry.]

---

{Sara}

Sara had stood under that staircase for the past twenty minutes now.

The conversation she'd spent the better part of that time eavesdropping on had been unimportant, with John and those he was currently speaking with sharing frivolous anecdotes and discussing trifles Sara had no interest in hearing about.

"Ah, did you hear about that new store opening up in Cradle? That variety Essence shop?" One of John's friends asked.

"Yeah!" John replied cheerfully. "I'm almost tempted to take the trip up to Cradle just to take a look myself."

Every syllable that came out of their mouths was so boring that Sara was strongly tempted to walk away if only to keep herself from falling asleep. She didn't, however, because she knew that if anything that actually mattered was said, she'd regret it. Still, the thought of moving on and telling Rin that they were wasting their time here was a seductive one. Especially given the fact that Sara's Essence had nearly been spent.

That was one factor that truly concerned her. Sara had talked a big game to Rin earlier about fighting off enemies easily if such a thing was necessary, but part of her plan to do so involved pushing Essence through her body. Using the fact that she looked so skinny and was dressed in such anti-combat apparel to her advantage and catching the enemies by surprise. If her Essence ran out because of this, however, she wouldn't be able to do that.

In addition, the adventurer felt like every now and then, people were passing by and giving her weird looks, like they were onto her. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but in a situation like this, Sara felt that it was best to keep her guard up.

It was as she scanned the room for any straying pairs of eyes that she finally heard something that actually mattered.

Only, it didn't just matter for the sake of Rin's investigation, but Sara's own as well.

The investigation that had driven her to come to Libera. The investigation that had been the singular reason behind Sara's path to becoming stronger.

It began when John asked:

"Well, ladies, gentlemen. What do you think about today's batch of new faces?"

"Admittedly, I question what you see in these people," a woman with a stern voice replied. "Out of all of them, there are maybe two or three who look like they could be useful. On what criteria did you recruit them?"

"On the criteria of potentially believing in us, sister," John replied. "Combatants are great and all, but, public opinion can't be swayed on the basis of brute force alone. Ideas are what will change this world. And for that to happen, we need people who might see things our way."

"That's all well and good, but," a man countered, "thanks to that one fuck-up in the east, the authorities are finally starting to look into us. If they make any progress at all, if they so much as stumble across one of our bases, I feel like this decision to recruit based on beliefs might bite us in the ass."

"If anything was to happen, it would have happened already," John dismissed his concern. "How long has it been since that woman escaped? Months? She probably got eaten alive the minute she took two steps away from us."

It didn't take long for Sara to guess they were talking about Rin here. With that being the case, the connection to that group that Rin was looking for had been found. That meant that Sara could finally walk back to her.

She sighed and began to do so. However, just before she could cancel that spell of hers, she heard:

"Besides, it doesn't matter how strong our people are. What matters is how strong our monsters are."

The instant Sara heard that, she stopped. Her eyes widened, but didn't move as she kept her head lowered, trying to listen as best as she could.

"We've already amassed quite a few Rank C forces. We'll be taming the B ranks soon enough."

As soon as she heard that, she put two and two together.

These people were taming C Rank monsters. A very specific detail that shook Sara to her core.

[... Were they the ones?] Sara asked herself then, paling. Her fists shook as she kept them balled up at her sides. [The ones who laid waste to my home?]