The room that Dauma, Anten and Yuu were standing in looked much different from the one Aleby was using earlier.

Apart from the usual table and chairs, which had been piled with various papers of diagrams, reports, and propaganda posters, leaving no room for them to sit anywhere but on the floor, there was also a rifle rack, a board covered with even more papers, and what looked to be a mannequin, with a red angry face painted on it and a knife in its head.

In short, it looked less like a meeting room, and more like the room an overly obsessed detective would own.

“Sorry about the mess,” Claine cheerfully remarked as he hopped from one empty space on the floor to another, skillfully avoiding stepping on any of the papers on it, “I don’t usually invite anyone to my room, I usually brief them in the field itself.”

Carefully making his way to his table, he turned around to face them and leaned back with his hands supporting him from behind. The table slightly shook, and the piles of paper precariously wobbled, but he ignored them and continued.

“But I think that this is a special exception, and that is why I have invited you.”

“Eh?”

“Huh?”

“…”

He did not say ‘you three’ or ‘all of you’. In fact, he was referring to and pointing only at the girl who was concealing herself behind them.

“Yuu?”

“Indeed. That is why I need you two to leave the room, so that she and I can discuss private matters.”

Dauma looked back at Yuu. Behind her curtain of hair, she was warily eyeing Claine and not saying anything.

“You want us to leave?” he asked her.

“…”

She frantically shook her head before gesturing for him to lean closer to her. Standing on her toes to almost reach his height, she quietly began whispering into his ear.

“What is she saying?”

“Erm… no,” he conveyed her whispering to Claine, “she isn’t interested in being alone with you.”

“Hm, why? I don’t think I scared her that much, did I?”

Anten scoffed and rolled her eyes in response.

“Nevertheless,” Dauma carried on, “she says she won’t trust you yet.”

“And does she think I can change her mind any time soon?”

“…not likely.”

“Tch. Well, that’s disappointing,” Claine sighed and replied, “but I guess that means I’ll have to do it with you and her. I still don’t fully trust you, so don’t expect the same treatment.”

“I’m staying here as well.”

All of them turned to look at Anten, who shrugged.

“What? I don’t see why I should be left out.”

“No offense, angel,” Claine remarked, “but while I do appreciate your work with healing the others, I don’t trust you either. You haven’t fully earned it yet.”

“Is that so? Then, the feeling’s mutual.”

“There, you have your answer. Please leave.”

“Just a sec.”

Anten narrowed her eyes.

“I want you to clarify something for me.”

Her tone and volume slowly increased in intensity as she confronted Claine.

“I saw what happened just now. You’re the Mission Chief, so would you care to explain why your general locked your own soldiers inside the temple and left them to die? And you didn’t care about the whole thing as well. They were still alive, so why?”

His face remained unchanged even as she was practically shouting at him.

“Do you want me to say it?” he casually responded, “surely you should know why.”

“You…”

“You’re still young if you ask these types of questions, angel.”

He leaned back further and further down until he was practically lying on the table with his head facing the ceiling, and the carefully stacked piles of papers tumbled to the ground.

“Someday, you’ll understand why we did what we did. Until then, keep learning.”

She clenched her fist.

“Don’t you talk to me like I’m a child,” she raged, “and even if I’m one, you all are monsters. You’re no better than beasts if you don’t care about throwing away people’s lives like that.”

“…”

His dangling feet suddenly slammed down onto the floor, sending papers flying, and he stood up. His smile was fully gone.

“You think I’m a monster?”

“Yes.”

“And who are you to tell me that?”

“Huh? I’m an an—”

“Does being an angel make you smarter than everyone else? Maybe you think you can tell other people what to do, and they’ll do it?”

“The—”

“So, what do you think I should’ve done, huh? What should I have done?”

Anten staggered backwards as Claine continued to deliver verbal blow after verbal blow to her, and just like what Kara had done to her previously, her strong façade began to break.

“I… I would have found another way!”

“Another way? What would that be?”

The argument was being turned against her fast, and she desperately attempted to regain control of it as she struggled to come up with a rebuttal.

“I… don’t know! If you give me enough time… I would have found it! And… and so would you if you had… thought about it!”

At that, Claine sighed again. Slowly, his angry mood began to dissipate.

“You see, that’s your problem, not mine. I’ve encountered people like you before, the ones who always believe they’re going to find a better way when really, there is none.”

“Wh… what makes you so sure there is none?”

In response, he did something none of them expected.

He reached up and fiddled with the military uniform he was wearing, unbuttoning the first two buttons before pulling it down to reveal his shoulders and the top half of his torso.

“Because there are some things that do.”

Yuu looked away immediately as soon as he bared his chest, but Dauma and Anten simply flinched a little, with their gazes still fixed on him.

“I don’t trust you guys, but I figure showing you this wouldn’t change anything anyway.”

Alongside a few healed scars on his bare torso, there was something else.

At the top part of his left pectoral was some kind of symbol, emblazoned in red and etched in like a tattoo.

It was a simple symbol, merely a circle with a horizontal line running through the middle of it. However, as Dauma and Anten laid their eyes on it, they could feel something emanating from it, something very ominous and awful, something that sent a quick chill through both of them.

“This… is something I cannot avoid. No,” he lowered his head and gently touched the symbol, “something that me and my brother cannot avoid.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know the specifics, but all I know that it’s a curse.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“A… curse?” Dauma repeated as he continued to stare at the symbol, somewhat transfixed by its aura.

“Yes. A curse that will kill either me or my brother at any time, leaving only one.”

“What? How do you know?” Anten inquired, her angry mood slowly switching to one of growing concern.

“Because it has happened before. I won’t go into any kind of sob story because I’m not willing to share it, but just know that what I say is true. There’s no lie involved.”

Dauma turned to Anten, who silently shrugged.

“I cannot confirm it,” she whispered worriedly, “I’m just as confused as you. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of this ‘curse’.”

“…huh. It seems like you guys haven’t seen this before. That’s… interesting.”

Claine rubbed his chin in thought before rebuttoning his uniform, hiding away the symbol and quickly removing its menacing aura from the room.

“…I didn’t know about this,” Anten mumbled, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“It’s alright,” he bluntly replied, “you still have a lot to learn about this world, angel. It’s not in black and white.”

“I see,” she lowered her head and replied.

“So, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to restate my earlier request. Please leave.”

“R… right.”

With a conflicted expression, she slowly trudged out of the room, only glancing back once for a second as she left the three of them alone.

“Well then!”

As soon as the door closed, Claine smacked his hands together and spoke with enthusiasm as he turned back and sat on the table with his legs crossed, catching Dauma off guard who proceeded to stare at him with a dubious frown.

Did he really make up the whole thing after all?

“Let’s get back to business, shall we?”

“…”

Yuu, who had been hiding her face behind Dauma, slowly came out again as he focused his gaze on her, and his smile widened.

“Now that we’re back on track, I would like to ask a few questions to the spirit girl.”

“…”

“You see, before I tell you and the devil our current mission, some things would have to be clarified first.”

Scooting forward on the table, he tilted his head and rested his right cheek on his hand.

“I won’t get mad like earlier. Just answer honestly.”

She silently nodded.

“Excellent. Now, the first question.”

He dropped his tone and spoke seriously again.

“Why did you open the temple door earlier?”

“…”

After a few moments of thought, she leaned forward and whispered in Dauma’s ear again.

“…she says she’s not sure.”

“Are you sure?”

“………”

“…she can’t exactly describe it,” Dauma continued repeating the words she was transferring to him in a monotonous voice as though he was reading from a script, “…she says she could… feel something trapped behind there. That’s why she was drawn to it.”

“Hmm,” Claine responded curiously, “interesting. Just to clarify something, how do you feel them, spirit girl?”

“…”

“I think I can answer that for her,” Dauma cut in as she fell silent, “it probably has something to do with the Particle that brought her to the world in the first place.”

“Particle, huh?”

Claine slightly adjusted his position to shake away any numbness before returning to his earlier posture.

“Alright, second question. Perhaps… that Particle has something to do with souls?”

The wide smile stayed on his face as he watched Dauma’s eyes slowly widen.

“Don’t act so shocked, devil. My disciple already told me what happened before I invited you guys here. I just wanted to confirm some things first.”

“…”

“Regardless, now that I got to know the girl a little better, I can explain what I need from her.”

His head quickly shifted left and right as he looked around the table for something before finally reaching down and picking up a piece of paper off the floor.

“Right, there we go. It’ll be quick, so don’t worry.”

Looking closely at the paper for a moment before returning his gaze to them, he cleared his throat and made his proposal.

“Spirit girl. I need you to help us retrieve a powerful weapon from the temple we saw earlier that has the potential to kill beings like your angel and devil friends.”

“…”

“Huh?”

Naturally, both of them blinked in confusion at the sudden load of heavy information that was packed into the request.

“I did mention it was quick. But… maybe I should elaborate a bit more.”

Turning the paper around in his hand such that its contents now faced them, they could see what it was as they walked closer to him.

It was a diagram of what appeared to be the temple interior. A drawn line started from the entrance, went down through a maze of tunnels surrounded by pictures of skulls, and ended at the bottom, which had a drawing of a chest surrounded by riches.

It almost looked cartoonish, like it was a treasure map left by a sleazy movie pirate.

“This is what we’re here to get. The weapon,” he continued to explain as he pointed at the treasure chest.

“Do you know… what it is specifically?”

“Not at all,” he straightforwardly admitted, “all we know based on past records is that it was so dangerous, they had to shut it away. That’s why the city above us was created, and this one was abandoned.”

“…seriously?”

“How else would you explain this place, devil? A city below a city, wouldn’t that strike you as odd?”

“…”

His logic seemed sound, for the most part.

“So then, why do you need Yuu to help you? It seems like you have it all figured out already.”

“Tsk, tsk,” he tutted before pointing to the skull drawings in the tunnels, “I haven’t finished yet. Before we can get there, we need to get past some nasty traps, and we’ve run into some... let’s say problems on that front. That’s where we need the spirit girl—Yuu, was it?—to help us. My disciple keeps telling me to wait, but after seeing what you did to the mockingbeast, it tells me otherwise. It tells me that we have found our solution.”

“…”

“So, what do you say?”

Yuu was still staring intently at the diagram, seemingly lost in thought. She did not reply or even seem to react to his question at all.

“Hm. Regardless, that’s all I have to say. I’ll give you some time to think about it.”

Dauma turned to look at her. She did not react to his gaze either.

“I think…” he spoke for her, “…we can give you her answer by tomorrow.”

“I’m fine with that.”

“…and I think she needs the diagram.”

“Go ahead.”

As he carefully lifted the paper out of Claine’s hands, she suddenly snapped out of her trance and took a few steps backward, away from the both of them.

“Well, that doesn’t inspire confidence,” Claine laughed as she lowered her head and looked away again.

“I think it’s time we made our leave,” Dauma replied as he walked back to her and laid his hand on her shoulder, causing her to involuntarily jolt before settling back down. With a quick nod to each other, they turned and began walking out of the room.

“…wait.”

However, just before he opened the door, Dauma stopped and turned back.

“I would just like to ask one last thing. You said you didn’t trust me, so why would you tell me everything about the mission? Even if I had to be here for her, you could have just told me not to listen.”

“…”

Claine closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and scrunched up his face as he pondered the question for a few moments before he smirked.

“I don’t know,” was his answer, “now that I’ve spent some time with you, I’ve realized that you don’t seem too dangerous for a devil.”

“I… see.”

**********************

“Hmm…”

After meeting back up outside the mission room, the three moved to another quiet room, where they updated Anten on what he had said. She was now perusing the temple diagram slowly and carefully, occasionally glancing at Yuu a few times.

“So?”

“I can’t say for certain,” she remarked as she put down the diagram, “but I don’t think it’s a trap. He may not trust us, but there’s no way he’ll try to kill us with this.”

“…I don’t think that’s what I meant. How did you even come up with that?” Dauma warily replied.

“Call it a hunch. You can’t deny that we aren’t exactly popular here.”

“Regardless, what I meant was, should we take him up on his offer?”

“Let’s see.”

She turned and stared at Yuu with judging eyes before making her decision in a cold, dry tone.

“On one hand, I still don’t like her. On the other hand, I don’t care about her. Ok, case settled. She should go.”

“Wait, wait, wait.”

As Yuu shrunk back upon hearing her answer, Dauma stopped her.

“What?”

“I think you’re making a hasty decision here.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with this,” she crossed her arms and huffed, “she doesn’t need to be here, she should go. Simple.”

“But she has a Particle.”

“Good. All the more reason why I want her gone.”

“…”

Yuu opened her mouth to retort, but she still did not say anything, and she quickly retreated to the corner of the room.

“You see?” she pointed at her, “if she wants to say something, she should say it herself. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me why you should stay here.”

“Anten…”

“Still silent as always. That’s perfectly fine with me. Anything you say will only ruin things even more, after all.”

“Anten!”

“What, Dauma? You’re trying to tell me I’m wrong? Huh? I’m wrong about everything, just like earlier with Chief Claine? I’m wrong about trying to protect the villagers? Huh?! Tell me!!!” she snapped at him.

“No!”

Undeterred by her outburst this time, he stood firm and shouted back at her.

“What have you become? I do not recognize you at all. You are not the same angel I met on the wasteland.”

“What are you trying to imply?”

“I am saying you are not wrong, but you are being incredibly hard to work with right now, you know that? How many times do you intend to pick a fight with everyone we meet, huh?”

She was slightly taken aback at his response, but she shook it off and kept up her attack.

“Maybe I want to be! Maybe I will do this as many times as I want to! Because none of what has happened has given me any good things from the start!”

They continued to verbally spar with each other, with neither of them being willing to back down as they tried to outargue the other person.

“…I’ll go.”

However, an unexpectedly vocal declaration caught them off guard and abruptly stopped the argument.

Yuu had stepped forward and spoke in an uncharacteristically loud volume for the first time, completely interrupting both of their trains of thought and causing them to turn back towards her.

She clammed up again as soon as they made eye contact, but her gaze seemed different. It was almost like it was fiercely looking at the pair.

“You see?” Anten ignored the sudden change in character and gloated proudly, feeling like she had won, “even she wants to do it. Who are we to stop her?”

“Yuu… are you sure you want to do this?” Dauma replied, his tone returning back to normal.

She hesitated a little before nodding, beckoning for him to come to her before whispering in his ear again, her confidence seemingly gone as soon as it appeared.

“…alright, I get it.”

He patted her shoulder softly.

“But if you want to go, I’m coming along with you as well. I don’t want other people to take advantage of you.”

“Huhhhhhh?” Anten responded with a loud sigh, “just let her go on her own, she’ll be fine.”

“You should come along too as well.”

“Say what?”

“If this so-called ‘weapon’ can kill beings like us and is being guarded heavily by traps,” he replied earnestly, “it might be another Particle. It’s worth a shot.”

“Psh. I don’t think it’s one. You guys are just going to walk into another trap, which will kill more people. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She stood in silent contemplation for a few moments before she spoke again, pointing to the city above them.

“But, if you’re that insistent on going, I’ll be up there, with Chief Aleby. Who knows what you guys will bring out.”

As she crossed her arms and looked away sulking, Dauma could not help but give a small smile as he looked at her.

Still can’t resist protecting other people, even when she’s being an ass, can she?

“Seems like we have our next objectives all figured out. Let’s get started then.”

**********************

“Why are you still here, devil?”

As the group met at the entrance of the temple on the day of the mission, that was the very first thing Masse said to Dauma.

“I’m here to help,” he countered confidently as he looked back at Yuu, who was once again hiding behind him, cautiously eyeing the general.

“Hmph, whatever. Try not to slow us down with your tricks.”

“I would not dream of it.”

“Alright, that’s enough arguing, let’s move out,” Claine cut in as he securely adjusted the large backpack he was carrying and began walking into the temple.

“…”

Matty stared silently at them with his golden eyes as he walked behind him.

“What a lovely pair you two make. You’re like a father figure to her now, ue he he.”

Kara grinned at the three of them as she turned and followed closely behind the two in front.

As the other Foxes did the same, Masse scoffed and moved behind Yuu.

“Just in case,” he aggressively warned as he glared at Dauma.

Trying his best to ignore him, he walked forward to join up with the advancing group.

A devil, a ghost, a scientist, a cursed chief, a bitter general, a strange boy, and a few resistance soldiers.

The mission to uncover the angel-killing weapon at the bottom of the temple in the underground city was finally underway.