The sounds of muffled explosion still rang out consecutively, like a hammer striking an anvil. Judging from how the blows never stopped even after a while, Kayden could guess that the adventurers outside were having a tough time breaking in. Hopefully, this would give them enough time to get something of value from the dungeon.

As the party moved forward with Ezekiel in the lead, Kayden was deep in thought. With every step they took, he was putting together the pieces of the unknown puzzle. Aisha’s behavior just now was drastically different from how she normally acts.

Growing up, he knew from her expressions that she really admired his master. As such, many of her current traits were her attempts at imitating his master, save for the alcohol addiction. One particular trait that always stood out to him was her always going for the option with the highest chance of success.

Many of her choices were calculated risks, such as infiltrating the dungeon early. Although one might call the plan reckless, the Adventurer’s Guild laws were on their side, and the non-local adventurers cannot hurt them due to her influence and strength within the proximity of Dragonsteel city. All that was left was to profit from whatever treasure or knowledge from the dungeon that they got.

He had seen many examples of this kind of decision-making in the past, which earned her the nickname of the Crimson Menace. Her calculated exploits always allowed her to get the largest slice of the pie, be it dungeon explorations or monster hunts, much to the dismay of others. To commend her for her achievements, the Adventurer’s Guild had bestowed upon her an A-rank in Decision-making.

Hence Kayden’s confusion about her choice to split up. His master had been clear that it was always better to be safe than sorry, and if he was right about Aisha following in her footsteps, this choice would be the very last thing she would do.

This led to him concluding that something must have happened to her during the mission. Something that had caused her judgment to be clouded. Kayden couldn’t possibly guess exactly what happened, so he had to ask.

“Psst. Alice,” he nudged her shoulder as he whispered. “Did something happen during the mission? You know, when you and Louis were with her party.”

Alice cocked her head to one side as if deep in thought. Before long, she answered.

“No. Nothing of note comes to mind. Oh, Louis tried to flirt with her. Maybe that’s the problem?”

“Huh. But there are tons of people that tried to flirt with her… and it happens quite often, too. Wait…” he caught a glimpse of her shifty eyes just before she turned away. “Do you think I’d buy that? Come on, spit it out.”

As Alice was hesitating to tell, Cathy joined in the conversation.

“Alice, please tell. Do you know why Miss Aisha wanted us to split up?”

After taking one good look into Cathy’s bright and innocent eyes, she sighed and revealed her thoughts.

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I think the person at fault could have been me…?” She scratched her cheek in embarrassment and laughed awkwardly.

Kayden raised an eyebrow. “Can you be more specific? What exactly did you do?”

“Well, hear me out! She kept trying to tell me what to do and I didn’t like that! She kept going on and on about how fire magic is useless, but that’s not true,” her tone suddenly grew arrogant. “Look at me! I use fire magic and I have a B rank in Magical Prowess. So I shut her up with my skills!”

Kayden fell into deep thought once more. He wasn’t clueless about Aisha’s sore spot, though he never knew it affected her that much. He recalled past conversations that he had with her.

“Wow, must be nice! Illusion and Dimensional magic, both are incredibly rare, isn’t it?”

Many times he had heard her speak of how envious she was about his or his master’s abilities, but he had always assumed it was some kind of friendly banter. It goes to show that everyone had some sort of secret to keep. Or perhaps it was just that his perception of emotions was terrible.

“So what you’re saying… is that you put her in her place after showing off that firework?”

“Firework…? If you’re referring to the spell I cast into the sky, then yes! I’m surprised you get me so well!”

“Haha, yeah…” Kayden trailed off.

“There’s nothing we can do about it, Kayden. Besides, the power difference between our parties would mean that they get the better split of the loot anyway,” Ezekiel added, joining in the discussion. “Also, they lose out on me as the lookout, as well as Alice’s firepower. If you think about it this way, they’re the ones that drew the short end of the stick.”

“Also, don’t forget about Cathy’s skillsets! She’s been very useful too!” Alice reminded.

“What about me?” Kayden asked, hopeful.

“Uh… haha. You can be useful… at times.”

“…I’ll take that.”

Cough!

The party looked toward the source of the noise, which turned out to be Louis, with a fist covering his mouth.

“I think you’re forgetting about someone.”

All four of them deadpanned at once and continued walking in silence.

“A-aw, what? Come on! Guys—!”

“We’re about to reach the large room. Everyone prepare yourselves.” Ezekiel cut him off.

The party came upon an entrance nearly as large as the stone gates in front of the dungeon. Luckily for them, the doors seemed to be half-open, giving them plenty of space to slip through. Nodding to each other, they slipped into the room quietly, completely ignoring the upset Louis behind them.

***

Over at the other party’s side, Aisha was being bombarded with questions by the other members of the party. They were currently on their way to the other path where the corridor of the large skeleton room was located. She had calculated the chances of which room would the adventurers search first and decided that the one she chose had to be the least likely.

This was because assuming that the adventurers wanted to chase after them, they would follow the trail of undead ashes all the way to the library. From there, they would guess that her party would most likely go to either the right or left path. Of course, there might still be adventurers that decided to explore the path they chose, but Aisha had prepared a little something to deter them from discovering this route.

“Party leader. I don’t think it was wise to get split up with them. What if we encounter another part of the barrier? We’ll need that girl’s abilities then.” Conner argued.

“That’s highly unlikely, judging from past rooms we’ve been to so far. Even if the large room we’re heading to has a barrier, there’s another large room a little further along the way. If both rooms really are protected, we’ll turn back.”

Conner didn’t have much else to say after that. Although he was still feeling a little bit doubtful, Aisha’s logic had shut him down and he couldn’t think of a comeback. From his experience, he knew that Aisha made the right call most of the time, and so he decided to have faith in her.

The rest of the party didn’t have many complaints, due to their immense trust in their party leader. They didn’t need any further convincing after her rebuttal of Conner’s argument, and so they wordlessly followed her orders.

The group turned a corner and a wide entrance came into view, not unlike the room full of skeletons they had been to before. Without a word, the party drew their weapons and made their way towards the room with wary steps.

***

Boom!

“Melee squ—Hold on!”

Zhang was about to repeat the same order he had been saying for the past twenty minutes until something piqued his interest. There was a loud, distinct sound of glass breaking, and a few seconds after all the smoke and dust cleared up, he could finally see the fruits of their labor.

“We’ve done it! Both the barrier and doors are broken!”

Cheers and screams rang out from the crowd of adventurers, and many of them collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. There was joyous laughter, sighs of relief, and many other emotions swirling about, and even Zhang allowed himself a shaky chuckle.

It had been an intense twenty minutes, and to bolster their firepower, even more, he had to join in the assault, along with the D-ranked adventurers. Every little bit helped, and after toiling for what seemed to be an eternity, they were finally done.

“Those who are tired can take a break! Anyone who’s ready to go, feel free to move onward!” With his final commands to the crowd, he left to search for his party.

He had just spotted them when Ryan tapped him on the shoulder, alerting him to his presence.

“…Ryan, right? What do you want? I’m a little busy right now.”

“Ah, that’s fine. I’m just here to propose a deal.” He rubbed his scaly fingers together. “Me and Brandon, we wish to join your party. Temporarily, of course!”

Zhang raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Oh yeah? Are the D-ranks part of the package?”

“Um… well…” Ryan struggled to respond. He wasn’t sure how Brandon would react to him abandoning their ‘comrades’ without permission, especially since he was incredibly stubborn about it.

Zhang laughed at Ryan’s hesitation. “You can all join if you want. Your goal’s the Kayden fellow, right? Then, you guys wouldn’t mind us taking all the loot?”

Ryan’s eyes brightened, though, with his lizard face, it looked like a menacing glint in his eye. “No worries there. We don’t need the loot. Once we’ve obtained our goal, we’ll leave immediately.”

Zhang nodded and then ran off with a wave.

“We’ll meet back here once we’ve finished our preparations! See you later!”

Ryan waved back as the busy man disappeared off into the distance. Once he was out of sight, he clenched his fists in excitement.

‘Haha! I just secured the help of an all-B-rank party! That should offset the D-rank burdens that we have, and our plan will be considerably easier.’

He had asked around right before the barrier bombardment about the identity of that man and was surprised by what he heard.

“Moonlight Ghost” was his adventurer title, something that he got due to his reputation for his elusiveness and power, especially when the moon is shining. His opponents are known to become ‘possessed’ or enter a berserk state whenever facing off against him, adding on to the ‘ghost’ part of his title.

“From what I’ve heard. This ability of his can be used repeatedly without costing too much mana, only that it doesn’t affect nocturnal creatures. If he were to use it on that thief, he wouldn’t be too mad to run away!”

Ryan thought that his plan was flawless. After all, even if they could corner him, Kayden could simply turn invisible and render all of their efforts useless. However, with Zhang’s ability, he could ensure this doesn’t happen, and that thief won’t be able to do much in a head-on fight, ensuring their victory.

Cheerfully laughing on his way to Brandon, he took out a mana recovery potion and chugged it. The sight frightened several inexperienced adventurers and many of them gave him a look, but he didn’t care. As long as he could get this stupid side mission over with, he could get out of this place without anything to worry about.

“Oh, Ryan! What took you so long?”

“Brandon! You won’t believe this. I’ve secured the help of Zhang, who will be a huge help in securing that thief. Impressive, huh?”

Brandon laughed heartily. “Nice! While you were doing that, I also managed to secure help too! And it’s Heather’s party!”

“That’s gre— What did you say?” Ryan almost fell over from shock.

“Heather’s party! It’s good to have a pretty girl on your side, you know?” Brandon scratched his head, not knowing the extent of his mistake.

“W-what? Isn’t she the one who helped the Crimson Menace’s party at one point? And she quarreled with Zhang too! We’ve both seen this!”

“Aye. But that’s all in the past, right? Can’t enemies reconcile and forgive each other?”

“You of all people are saying that— My god…”