“Hello, beauty, we meet again,” a certain playboy priest greeted when he saw Lily entered the conference room with her party.

There were five men inside the room. Three humans, one dwarf, and one elf. It seemed like the guild’s and the guard’s representatives were not here yet.

“Hello, Mr. Martin,” Lily replied back with a strained smile. Despite wooing her right now, the bastard once talked about the scarcity in her chest department to other people. Lily had nothing but disgusted for him.

“How’s about we have dinner together after this meeting, beauty?” the playboy continued his woman’s game.

Her companions behind her all had a similar disgusted expression on their faces at the priest’s antic.

“Umm… sorry, but I don’t think so,” Lily replied back, a big frown appeared on her forehead. She tried her best to restrain her anger.

“Stop it, Martin. The girl knows better than you the limits of her beauty. Therefore, she refused your invitation. No existence could ever become as beautiful as me,” The only elf in the room said as he was admiring his own reflection with the hand mirror.

“Disgusting bastards…” Guts swore silently.

The other four couldn’t help but agree with that sentiment.

Rey picked an old pocket watch from his chest pocket to look at the time.

11:45

It seemed like they have to deal with these bastards for about 15 minutes more before the meeting began. He sure wasn’t looking forward to that.

"Oh, everyone is already here,” A surprised voice came at the same time as the sound of the door opening.

At the direction of the voice stood two men.

One was a middle-aged man in his forties. He had his armor on with one hand carrying a helmet.

The other one was an old man in his late seventies. His clothes had symbols of the guild on the collars. Everyone here knew who he was; the guild master of Onyx, Richard.

“That’s great. We could get to business immediately,” The other man, whose look obviously meant he was the representative from the guard, spoke.

“In a hurry, aren’t you, Gin,” The only dwarf in the room commented.

“I don’t have a lot of time to play hero-make-believe games like you guys, ‘God Slaying Sword,’” Gin glared at the dwarf and his companions.

“Hahaha… Isn’t that rude, old man?” The swordsman of ‘God Slaying Sword’ put his hand on the sheath of his sword, offense at the words.

“Does a delusional bastard like you want to attack the guard?” Gin answered back. His face showed not the slightest meaning of remorse.

“Y-You bastard!” The swordsman growled and was about to draw his sword out.

“Stop it, Sieg, it is not worth it,” The dwarf put himself in-between and stopped him. His right hand held the hand of the swordsman on the sheath.

“But Mr. Gobo!” Sieg tried to protest.

“…” The dwarf didn’t say any more words, but the strength of his grip tightened, and he looked straight into Sieg’s eyes. ‘Just don’t’ was the explicit meaning those conveyed.

“Tch!” In the end, Sieg let go of the sheath and looked away.

Nodding once in acknowledgment, Gobo turned to the guard’s representative, “It would be better if you don’t say unnecessary things, Gin. We would have to fight together later. It is best to maintain a cordial relationship between us.”

“I don’t want to hear that from someone who quit the guard and became an adventurer just because of that trivial matter,” Gin snorted.

Most of everyone in the room was surprised. They didn’t know that about the dwarf!

“You called that trivial matter?! You are still as heartless as ever, I see,” The dwarf replied with his own snort.

“I don’t want to hear that from the one who broke their promise!” Gin countered back.

The two glared at each other.

“Now, now, since everyone is already here, how about we get to the business at hand,” The oldest person here clapped his hands thrice to get everyone’s attention.

“We should leave old grudges and what not behind us and discuss what we should do with the oncoming stampede,” Richard gave an old but kind smile.

“…If the guild master said so,” Gin stopped his arguing with the dwarf and replied with a slightly dissatisfied face.

“…I agree,” Gobo also agreed to end the argument.

“Ok, then. Let’s begin the defense strategies meeting,” Richard’s voice resounded clearly to everyone in the room despite his age.

‘Is this meeting going to be alright,’ Lily couldn’t help but worry.

A lot of people here were not on good terms with each other.

‘Lily and co’ didn’t like ‘God Slaying Sword’ in general, especially the priest who called Lily’s chest flat.

The representative from the guard also seemed to have discord with the defender of ‘God Slaying Sword,’ and the grudge seemed deep.

Not to mention that ‘God Slaying Sword’ was weird in general and was likely to cause a problem during the meeting by itself.

Could they really have a fruitful discussion like this?

Lily couldn’t help but wonder.

Nevertheless, the meeting began.