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Lizith—The face of the tavern that also served as an inn for Adventurers, only noticed that sound by pure coincidence.

It came from the first floor when she started coughing at night in her room on the second floor and poured water in the glass.

Since they ran an Adventurer’s inn, they had many Adventurers returning at nighttime. They needed to give duplicate keys to those Adventurers.

Normally, it was her father’s job to do it, but the source of that sound seemed to have erased its presence now, so he had not noticed them.

She wondered whether to wake her father up for a moment, but in the end, purely by a whim, she decided to check it on her own.

This was an Adventurer’s inn. Even if some robber had snuck in, one scream from her would be enough to get them immediately arrested.

She could not deny that she had such carefree thoughts somewhere in her mind.

As she headed to the first floor with a lantern in hand, she discovered someone crouched at the door. They looked like a young man, and one that Lizith knew.

“Kufar!?”
“Ah, is that you Lizith… Did I wake you up?”
“Who cares about that! What’s wrong, are you injured?”
“No, I’m just tired, so don’t worry. That aside, are Egan and Uno here? I have an urgent report to make.”
“Both of them are in the second floor’s room.”
“Can you call them for me? Wait, I’ll go there myself. It’s work-related, after all.”
“You can’t walk in such a—”
“Stop, stay back!”

Lizith put the lamp on the table and was about to rush to his side and lend him a shoulder, but Kufar’s yell stopped her.

This was not because his condition was as perfect as he said. Rather, because it was so bad, he did not feel confident in maintaining his human form.

If someone touched him now, the shape of “Kufar” could get disrupted and break down. He was exhausted to that point.

“W-Why…”
“I… Because I’m dirty. And also… You get it, right?”
“I don’t. But okay. You Adventurers are like that.”

Adventurers tended to possess things they could not reveal to others. Lizith assumed Kufar also had a similar situation now.

Naturally, Kufar simply made her think that way intentionally, but it could be said that that saved her life in the process.

After all, had his identity gotten revealed, Kufar would have mercilessly killed her.

“Then I’ll go and give them a notice. Ah, you can drink water if you want, so just rest for a bit, okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that. Sorry for all this.”
“What are you saying? You are our customer, Kufar. I can offer you this much as a freebie.”

The first floor was diner-c̲u̲m̲-tavern, so each table had water jugs on it. They replaced the water every morning, but some of them still had water remaining at night. Normally, it was only for the guests to drink, but she worried for Kufar’s health and offered it now.

Thus, after taking a short break, Kufar headed to his comrades’ room. Lizith seemed a little concerned, but she was a girl serving at the tavern where the Adventurers gathered. She was sensible enough to not delve too deep into it and walked away without asking anything.

“Hey, sorry for showing up so late.”
“That’s fine… But what’s wrong? Your movements look crude.”
“I had a bit of a blunder. I don’t feel so good.”
“Did you get injured? It’s unusual for you to make a blunder.”

They joked about it, but they still found his words unexpected.

Kufar fundamentally acted carefully. He made sure to stay away from the front stage as much as he could and conducted secret maneuvers.

The fact that he failed and even suffered a wound was a shocking event.

“Well, the enemy was who he was.”
“You went to keep Raum in check, right? So I guess the Six Heros made their move?”
“Yeah, and the most unexpected one out of them.”
“Since you say unexpected, it wasn’t Maxwell or Cortina I assume? Did Lyell or Gadius show up?”
“No, someone even more unexpected. Reid turned out to be alive.”
“What!?”

Reid the Assassin. In a way, he was the person they had to be the most vigilant of. However, Reid should have died twenty-two years ago.

That was a fact widespread throughout the entire world, and there were also many who had seen his corpse. As a matter of fact, no one had seen him in these twenty-two years.

So him appearing so suddenly was shocking.

“No, that can’t be. Everyone knows Reid is dead. Something like, “he’s been alive all along” is impossible after so long!”
“Yeah, you are quite right.”
“Then—”
“It was probably… Reincarnation. He was strangely desperate to avoid getting hit by my Jamming spell.”
“Did he use the Illusion spell to take on his former appearance?”
“That’s not it either. There was no awkwardness in his movements at all. So most likely, it was Polymorph.”
“I see. You should be able to tell that well. Still, an Assassin that can use Polymorph is no laughing matter, you know?”

One of the men—Egan, knitted his brows at Kufar’s words, who seemed to have fought Reid head-on.

If that Reid with his assassination techniques had magic to top it off, they could not even imagine being a match for him. In some sense, his existence was even more threatening than Lyell’s.

“Yeah, he can’t be left alone. We… Have to eliminate him with maximum priority.”
“Yeah, I am of the same opinion. But since he’s transformed, what’s his real form?”
“I would not be having so much trouble if I knew that. It’s unknown so far. However, it should be certain that he lives in Raum, and that he arrived there recently.”
“Why would you think so?”
“It has been a few years since things started going not our way in that city. It’s been going smoothly before.”
“But Raum is not the only one, you know? Our collaborator in the southern Geeze Union has been taken out too.”
“You mean that slave merchant? But that’s because he was too bad at self-protection. His information leaked somewhere probably. He got the Jend Sect involved too.”
“The ‘famous’ assassin group, eh? Reid was the same, but doesn’t having your name known make you a third-rate assassin?”

When it came to master assassins, their assassinations looked like accidents rather than man-made. So in that sense, Reid being a third rate as an assassin was not a wrong claim.

But in this case, Reid had enough power and achievements to overturn all that.

“Yeah. Still, Reid’s skill in bloodshed is not to be underestimated for sure.”
“So someone like that’s staying in Raum, huh?”
“Until we know our enemy’s identity, it might be better to stay away from Raum. In exchange, let’s replenish our combat potential. How is the summoning going?”
“We managed to summon one vanguard-class, one warrior-class, and four small fries too. As for the summoners, we got two more of them.”
“Hmm… In that case, give me one of the vanguard-class.”
“What do you plan to do with it?”
“It’s a waste, but I will use it as a nourishment…”
“Sacrificing a Devil to a Devil? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“That’s the thing. It’s a closely-guarded secret.”

Kufar smirked in response. That smile made shivers run down the two men’s spines. The two shivered and didn’t say anything unnecessary, and their night talk came to an end.