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Finia watched wide-eyed as Agares crumbled down while raising tremors.

Strength-wise, it wasn’t as strong as the twin-bladed Devil. But even so, she should have realized that it was plenty strong. She couldn’t hide her shock towards the boy who so easily defeated such an enemy.

“No way, to beat something like that alone…”

Actually, I did help him a bit, but it was probably within the margin of error for him. At any rate, having met him last night, I was already aware of how strong he was, so I wasn’t particularly surprised.

“You still have ways to go if you can’t see through people’s true ability, Finia.”
“I am aware of my inexperience, but seeing something like this with my own eyes does make me get cold feet.”

I lightly tapped her on the back as she broke into a cold sweat, and turned my attention to the fallen Agares. I actually wanted to tap on her shoulder, but she was still a bit taller than me.

Before my eyes, Baa was happily tearing the monster’s fangs, nails, and scales off.

“I guess this is it? Well then, I guess it’s time to go back.”
“You’re really doing as you please, huh?”
“This place is like my garden. Anyway, shall we return?”
“Speaking of which, what happened to those guys?”
“I returned them to the city in advance. Don’t worry, they are alive.”

With those words, he snapped his fingers. The next instant, I got teleported to the city square. Looking around, I found Finia there too, so I felt relieved. But Baa was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t imagine only the caster failing to teleport, so he probably just sent us ahead.

“We’re…in the city, huh?”
“Yeah, looks like he teleported us back.”
“He was an unbelievable person. Actually, where is he?”
“He probably sent us ahead. Ah, we should have brought back Agares meat as a souvenir for Michelle.”
“I’m not sure whether she’d be happy or angry about it.”

She probably meant that Michelle would be happy about the meat itself but get angry for entering the labyrinth on my own. I just responded with a shrug while feeling conflicted. Before us, there was quite a big crowd formed.

Our sudden teleportation was… not the cause, but instead, they had their backs turned on us and watched something on the other side.

“What’s going on?”
“Who knows?”

We pushed our way through the crowd to see the source of it. Both of us were a bit shorter than an average person, so we couldn’t understand what was going on unless we pushed our way to the very front.

With trouble, we finally passed the human wall, only to be met with three youngsters sinking down on the ground. Needless to say, they were the guys who were trying to hit on us.

Their faces were in a mess and their pants stained with piss and s̲h̲i̲t̲. Their bodies were covered in shallow cuts and all bloodied, frozen in place with senile expressions. Their spirits seemed to have been completely crushed, not even realizing in what state they were in and how many eyes they were drawing in.

“Now that I think about it, he said they were alive, but he didn’t promise anything else.”
“This… in a way is the same as being dead, isn’t it?”

After having tasted the fear of death over and being put on such a shameful display, they were practically dead, both socially and mentally. I could see why Finia shuddered at the realization.

“Well, they have nothing to do with us anymore, so let’s just move on.”
“Would that really be okay?”
“It would, it would. Look, they were looking down on the Six Heroes earlier.”
“That’s true. Serves them right.”

At my words, she clapped her hands with an unusually dark smile on her face. I was the cause of this, but it made me back off a bit as I was only used to seeing her cheerful side. I should keep it in mind not to anger her.

“That aside, you wanted to go buy a weapon, right, Finia? We got interrupted, but let’s go quickly buy it before noon.”
“Alright.”

We quickly turned around and we headed back to where we came from. Before, she wasn’t able to switch her mind as easily as this. Maybe she was being a bit too influenced by Cortina and Maria.

I suppose it was a happy thing that she was breaking out of her somewhat gloomy atmosphere.

“By the way, do you have a length in mind for your weapon? Normally you’re using around a two-meter-long spear though.”
“I think around that long makes it easier to attack from behind, after all. But that length is usable because it’s that particular spear, so an actual spear that long would be a bit heavy.”
“Ah, right, that spear doesn’t increase in weight even when extended.”

The handle with the Form Shift spell on it didn’t gain weight no matter how much you extended it. Thanks to that, I used it habitually as it was very easy to use even when I was extremely weak physically.

And as expected, an elf like Finia was also bottlenecked by weight. Elves were a physically weak race from the start, and they couldn’t carry heavy equipment. This spear was extremely convenient as it made up for that weakness.

“I see. That said, the spear being light would make it less durable too.”
“That’s true. So I’d like to check them directly and actually hold them in my hands.”
“I suppose affinity is something to consider.”

This was because even when a similar weapon was made with similar material, the sensation when holding it could still be strangely off. Many warriors tended to visit the stores and actually hold the weapons in hand to confirm whether or not that was the case.

As we turned the corner while talking about such trivial things, something strange entered our sight. No, it wasn’t really strange at a glance. It was an ordinary scene with two youths talking in the corner. But the person concerned was the problem.

“—Isn’t that…!”
“Cloud?”

Yes, the one having a conversation in the corner was none other than Cloud. And the person he was talking to was someone I… no, someone even Finia was connected to by fate—Kufar.