Tellap was a starting town in the Kingdom of Kallamore. Although, the size of the town did not come close to the size of the cities closer to Kallamore’s centre, it was large enough to be considered a small city or a large town. It was a day’s walk from its neighbouring town of Naidiriv which allowed the two towns to send reinforcements to each other in times of need.

Aside from being a town on the front lines of the kingdom’s defence against monsters, Tellap did not have any particular traits or attractions. Ever since its establishment, the town had faced constant sieges and attacks from monster armies. It was a precarious place where one slipup could result in the entire town being destroyed. One would think that not many people would want to live in a town like this.

However, Kallamore was simply that kind of kingdom. Even if you tried to move, all other frontier towns in Kallamore faced the same situation as the town of Tellap. If you tried to move inwards towards the centre of the kingdom, you also risk reducing the combat force of the frontier towns. To fight off the constant waves of monster attacks, the bulk of Kallamore’s defences were focused on its borders, that is, on its frontier towns. Once a frontier town falls, there would be nothing to stop the monsters from rushing in and destroying the kingdom entirely. Thus, the majority of the inhabitants of Tellap were people who had accepted this fact and stayed.

Several days ago, Tellap had once again suffered a siege from a monster army. Having lost the vast majority of their stationed Kallamore Knights due to an earlier event, the town fought in a rough struggle for survival with both sides being locked in a violent stalemate for several days.

Then on the final day of the siege, “it” appeared.

A 3rd tier entity descended into the moral realm which should only contain 6th and 7th tiers entities.

Tied as the strongest Light Elemental in existence below the Elemental Lords, Elemental Lord Candidate Knite.

Knite descended into the battlefield and wrought havoc on both sides, incapacitating a hundreds of combatants including two remaining four Kallamore Knights left in the town of Tellap.

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, Knite left.

The reason for Knite’s manifestation was unknown to all except a select few.

However, immediately after Knite’s exit, the combatants disabled by Knite awoke from the comas which they had been forced into and the fight resumed at its earnest.

Mustering its last reserves of power, the defenders of Tellap managed to repel and destroy the enemy army leader and reach their hard fought victory.

Although the siege was now over, this did not necessary mean that the town was at peace. As it was now, Tellap was a hive of activity. You never knew when the next monster attack would come and there was still much to do.

Remnants of enemy army were still likely to be in the area, requiring search and destroy parties to be created and sent out from the town. The walls and buildings of the town were also in need of repair and reconstruction due to the aftermath of the siege. Additionally, a powerful earthquake had struck the town shortly after the conclusion of the battle adding to the overall work needed to repair the town into a battle ready state.

The town was in a dangerous state. Currently, there were only four Kallamore Knights in the town and two of them were so heavily injured from the siege that it would take them months to recover even with the aid of healing magic. Due to the causalities caused by the siege there was an overall lack of manpower in the town. There was so much to do and too little people to do them.

In such a harsh environment, none of the veterans complained. They were used to it.

Constantly being shorthanded, constantly being short on supplies, constantly under the crisis of complete annihilation…

That was simply the kind of place the Kingdom of Kallamore was…

***

“Wow, this is surprising. This town looks completely destroyed.”

In the town of Tellap, a youth wearing a white long coat reminiscent of a scientist’s lab coat was carrying supplies to aid the reconstruction of the town. He was someone who had entered the town just before the siege began. A self-proclaimed information broker and a long time player of Royal Road, Satoshi. However, he was not the one who had spoken, rather the speaker was the person standing behind him.

Satoshi turned around warily. Judging from the voice, it was a girl who had spoken.

He hadn’t really been paying much attention to his surroundings but he was surprised that someone had actually managed to sneak up on him. Although it wasn’t actually that difficult to sneak up on him, doing so would require actively trying to hide one’s presence. In a public town the only ones who would do that were people with a guilty conscience.

The speaker had a slight build and was wrapped in a weathered hooded traveling cloak. Additionally, the top half of their face was covered by a masquerade mask. Weapons, abilities, other defining characteristics, all these were hidden by this attire.

This fellow… is definitely not sus at all…

Faced with this overly suspicious person, Satoshi’s mind momentarily went blank. However, he quickly recovered as he recognised this person. He raised a hand in greeting.

“Hello my overly suspicious looking friend! Is something up? For you to come to me…”

“… Overly suspicious? Does it really seem that way?”

Satoshi’s suspicious friend reacted with surprise. Though if the situations were reversed, Satoshi was sure that he would end up one the receiving end of some sort of obscene comment like “Nice! I see you have awoken your love of cosplay. What sort of pervert are you supposed to be?” or “Don’t tell me you’re not wearing anything under that? Is this some sort of exhibition play?” etc etc.

After all, although this person was feared as the “Scarlet Blitz”, Satoshi knew that she had a number of troublesome personality quirks that made her presence energy draining if you didn’t know how to deal with her.

Conversely, quite a number of people had told him the same thing about his own personality. As such he had no problems in his interactions with “Scarlet”. Birds of a feather flock together… something along the lines of that.

Under his glaze, Scarlet seemed to suddenly notice the issue with her appearance.

“Ah! This… this… This is my attempt at stalker cosplay!”

Even if you act flustered like that, your words don’t match your actions. Such a thought came up to Satoshi’s mind but he refrained to from voicing it. Seeing Satoshi’s unconvinced look, Scarlet momentarily deepened her voice and clutched her left eye, hurriedly giving another excuse.

“All this… is to seal the detested power which lies within my body.”

“Detested power?”

“Yes… the detested power of mine… which turns men gay and women into lesbians…”

Hmm? Satoshi couldn’t remember Scarlet ever being concerned about having that special trait before. Therefore, he had to conclude this is was just some act that Scarlet was playing out for entertainment. Now that he thought about, the only reason Scarlet would something like this was for insurance in case someone with a powerful detection skill was around. Such caution could be classified as overkill but when traveling to an unknown location Satoshi could agree with Scarlet’s choice to make sure.

“… I don’t recall you being the chuuinbyuu(8th grade syndrome) type. This is just a guess but is all this because you have the murder’s mark on you right now?”

“Hah~ you saw through me already… Chuuinbyuu? I guess that might be Lucy’s influence…”

Casually shifting the blame onto a mutual acquaintance, Scarlet sheepishly scratched the back of her head. Satoshi steered the conversation to more immediate matters.

“So what’s up?”

Although Scarlet was a fellow guildmate, Satoshi had not told anyone in his guild where his current location was. That meant that either Scarlet was here through pure coincidence or she had used her “secret ability” to come to his location. Since Scarlet had business to do in the Kingdom of Haven, it was probably the latter case which had brought her here before him.

“Oh nothing much. I’m just here out of boredom and curiosity I guess. Things aren’t going quite well on our side. We don’t lose in combat potential but I’m afraid we’re slightly outmatched when it comes to influence. Where are we anyway?”

Satoshi took a moment to digress this news but then stopped himself. It wasn’t his job to interfere with the guild internal dispute. That’s why he chose to remain in the neutral fraction. In actuality, his main goal right now was to find someone. It was for that reason that he took on the mantle of an information broker.

“This is the Kallamore Kingdom.”

“Kallamore huh…”

Scarlet looked at the damaged building around the two of them curiously. Suddenly Satoshi remembered… Scarlet considered ‘that person’ to be her rival didn’t she?

Both Scarlet and ‘that person’ were within the top 500 highest levelled characters in the playerbase of Royal Road. In other words, they were rankers. While ‘that person’ had outstanding combat sense and abilities which came very close to being considered gamebreaking, Scarlet was simply a “specialist type” who placed nearly all her stat points into a single stat only relying on her reflexes and dynamic vision for defence.

Speaking of which, ‘that person’ was looking for a partner for a quest wasn’t she? Satoshi made a mental note to recommend Scarlet to ‘that person’ later on. Perhaps doing so would enable him to make ‘that person’ sell a favour to Scarlet’s fraction in the guild. Realising that he was thinking about interfering with the guild again, Satoshi stopped himself from thinking any further in this matter.

He continued the conversation.

“I have met that person, the Grey Phantom, in this town if that’s what you’re wondering. Now that you’re here why don’t you stick around for a while? In any case, interesting things have been happening around this town.”

“Ah… so she’s here as well? Eh?! Interesting things? Oh yeah, how’s your search going on? Have you found any info on where Xef is yet? It’s been a year hasn’t it?”

In an offhanded tone, Scarlet casually mentioned the name of the person Satoshi was looking for.

“I haven’t found him yet but–”

With a forced smile, Satoshi walked closer and in a serious voice muttered.

“–In the church of Freya, there’s this one guy. I’m 50% sure that he’s a Divine Saint Variant. There’s a player a divine race here was well. Also, a few days ago, this place got attacked by an Elemental Lord Candidate. Something is happening here...”

Divine Saint Variant. The mere mentioning of that term would gain the attention of the big shots in the religious orders. Also known as the Proxies of God, Divine Saint Variants were “humans” who held a power which transcended imagination and were further classified as either the magic-based Divine Saint or the physical-based Divine Saint Knight.

However, knowledge of the Divine Saint Variants was a closely guarded secret. Considering how tight lipped the churches were about these people, the only real way to learn about them was to have encountered one in action personally. Given the fact that there were currently less than 10 awakened Divine Saint Variants around, the chances of that happening were astronomically small. The number of players who had obtained information on them was less than 15.

Personally, Satoshi did not have pleasant memories whatsoever about opposing a Divine Saint Variant. Of course witnessing someone destroying a party of rankers within 3 seconds would leave such a lasting impression on him. Moreover, if his goal was found out here, it was likely to be obstructed so he warned Scarlet to be careful just in case.

“Interesting indeed... I guess I will stay, if only for a while. So what do you plan on doing?”

Satoshi had casually walked passed Scarlet as they made this exchange and continued walking. Scarlet followed now him from behind.

“Right now, I just plan on observing, but if I find a lead on what happen to Xef, I plan on acting on it.”

“Remember to call us if you do find something though. By the way, where are we going?”

“What? Oh I’m going to hand in these supplies.”

“Oh! You’re actually helping people?”

“What’s with that surprised tone? This town got quite devastated by all the random stuff that’s been happening to it. It’s only natural to want to help isn’t it? You should all bow down before my saintly aura.”

As if in response to Satoshi’s frivolous statement, Scarlet put her hand on her chin as if thinking about something.

“Since I’ll be staying here for a while, I guess I’ll help out as well. Mind recommending me to people?”

Satoshi readily complied.

“Oh in that case, there’s this barman called Mark that you should give a go at meeting. Apparently, he was a famous blacksmith or something in the past. I’ve heard that the people who work for him usually get recommended to the various higher ups in…”

This conversation would then continue for quite some time. Afterward, the duo would go on and accept various quests to help the town’s reconstruction… but that’s all another story.

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