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The wind howled past the opening, and light wisps of snow sailed by.

Not a snowstorm, luckily.

We weren’t sure if the demons had anything capable of flight amongst their ranks, and we would be out in the open in the snowy plains if we left the cave like that.

The tunnels were filled with so many twists and turns that it was unlikely that the demons would chance upon us anyway, so we decided to take a brief rest there, warming our bodies around a small pile of warmth stones that Koise produced from his item pouch.

Rhil and I still hadn’t said much to each other yet. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say. Should I have said how happy I was to see her? How much I missed her? How I had been looking for her?

My indecision caused my silence, and Koise spoke up after glancing between Rhil and me a few times.

“…I take it you two know each other?”

Holding my hands cupped over the warmth stones steadily radiating before us, I let out a wispy breath.

“Yeah… we’ve known each other for a while now.”

“…”

He waited for more, but it wasn’t my information to share. Rhil had retired for a reason, after all. I was the one who had dragged her out of retirement and caused her to get captured.

It would be no wonder if she hated me after all that.

“That’s it…?”

Haah…

He scoffed into his hand and alternated looking between us again.

“Did you… did you know about this beforehand and not tell me? You didn’t come here for her, did you?”

I hadn’t, although I had hoped, but he already had the doubt in his mind.

“You risk my life and you won’t even tell—”

“Leave it,” Rhil said, her voice quietly overpowering his.

“Oh? And who are you to tell me to leave it? If he won’t tell me, maybe you will,” Koise spoke pointedly to Rhil, still trying to figure out what was going on.

“A better question would be to ask who you are if this is really to be an exchange of information rather than an interrogation.”

Koise narrowed his eyes at her question, probably contemplating if he wanted to argue further, before giving in with a deep sigh.

“Scouting division leader for the Lion Guild, Koise. There you go. And you?”

“Citizen of Karfana, Rhil.”

Koise gave her a long look as she toyed with him.

“I met Aizen while trying to hunt down who killed a few members of the Lion Guild and found out that they were simply reaping what they sowed rather than being maliciously murdered. He saved my life and asked for my help in hunting a demon.”

He leaned his head back against the cave wall and gave her a pointed look.

“Is that better?”

“You’re used to others just giving you what you want, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with simply introducing yourself.”

“Typical, all of you guild bastards are the same,” Rhil said, “I used to be called ‘Skybreaker’.”

She took a deep breath before continuing.

“I retired years ago to the border city of Karfana, Aizen turned out to be my neighbor, we got along over the years, I got dragged into stopping a demonic invasion on my city, got caught in a portal trap at the end, and ended up as you saw me.”

Koise gave her a long, silent look.

“…You’re the Skybreaker?” he asked, surprise evident in his voice.

“Yeah, I used to be, anyway…”

“Huh…”

He still got what he wanted, in the end.

We rested in the cave for a few hours longer before Koise gave the call that there were no scouts evident nearby, and the rest of the journey back to the City on the Edge went by with a tense atmosphere.

It could have been any moment that we saw a demon scout coming up behind us, after all, and it became impossible to properly rest.

Finally, though, we crossed over the last mountain, and the city came back into our sights, much as I remembered leaving it… Save for one little detail…

“Wow, this is the city you mentioned? I thought you said that it was relatively sparse,” Rhil said, looking down at the city.

There were numerous little dots all around the city, people who couldn’t fit into the gates.

The city was only really structured for a few hundred people, after all. It could hardly even be called a city. It was apparent that much of it had fallen with the land when the great Edge had been created, but we still had no way of knowing if it could ever be recovered.

We still had the quest to drive away the cold and restore the Edge, so it must have been possible.

The bigger problem for the moment, though, was figuring out just what the hell was going on.

Why were there so many people without warning?

“Well, it was certainly much sparser when we left…” Koise said.

We continued down the slope towards the crowd.

Finally, after a few hours more of travel with the distant dots of people growing closer, there was something else we noticed…

‘They’re all wearing earth clothing…’

It wasn’t that they were necessarily wearing drastically different clothing.

People enjoyed fashion and feeling like they looked good, and things like jeans and t-shirts were among the first industries to be mass-produced again with the help of the orcs after the Merge.

What was telling, though, were the old designs, the old brand names, classic sneakers that we didn’t quite have exact copies of, bright colors, and the lack of any armor or magical gear whatsoever.

People watched us as we passed, the chatter of the crowd going strangely silent in our presence.

We continued all the way through to the city gates in a similar manner, where the guards greeted us.

“What’s going on here?” I asked the guard at the gate, who looked over us briefly before allowing us in.

“Ahh, a pair of adventurers showed up the other day, leading this crowd behind them. The mages are struggling to make enough food for all of them. None of them are Awakeners as far as I can tell, though there have been quite a few questions about it… Ah… Not that anyone could find a monster around here to Awaken from, anyway.”

The guard kept going on. Despite having general observations, he wasn’t really able to tell us much, and we nodded and wished him well before entering the city.

There would probably be an easy place to get the answers we wanted. The castle.

Traveling through the city wasn’t nearly as packed, as it appeared that most of the non-Awakeners were kept outside of the gates.

As cruel as it might have seemed, especially with the insides of the city being warmer due to the proximity of the pillars of flame, packing hundreds more non-Awakened into the city would be even more chaotic.

More guards stopped us in front of the castle gates. I wasn’t recognized as the city leader, of course, so it was only understandable.

“Do you have an appointment?” the guard asked, much more to the point than the guard watching the main gates.

What was the fastest way for us to get through the gates in the least conspicuous manner possible? Asking the guard to let us in without an ‘appointment’ would probably be a waste of time, and forcing our way in could just get people hurt.

We really should have set up some sort of code with the dwarf ahead of time. Did we just expect the gates to be open for us all the time without actually telling anyone we would be able to enter?

It would be like a king having someone run his castle without having ever told anyone he’s the king. He wouldn’t be a king at all.

Then the thought occurred to me.

Didn’t we have a high-ranking official from the Lion Guild with us?

“We don’t have an appointment, but we’re here on guild business.”

I pointedly looked at Koise, who stared at me for a moment before catching on.

“Right… Koise Argeen, leader of the Lion Guild’s scout division,” he said, fumbling around in his item bag before pulling out and showing a badge with his guild’s crest to the guard.

“May we enter?”

The guard looked over the crest for a moment, though I doubted he even knew what to look for—I sure as hell didn’t—before calling for the gates to open.

“Go on through, though the lord might be a bit preoccupied right now… If you couldn’t tell.”

The castle courtyard was as empty as we’d left it, though I noticed that someone had come along and cleaned up the discarded armor, scattered weapons, and decaying dummies. It was just a simple, clean courtyard.

Nobody was waiting for us within the castle’s main elevator room either, and we had to take the elevators up to the royal quarters before we finally found who we were looking for in the meeting room.

Not only that, but there were two other familiar faces there as well…

Bernard and Velle.