The sturdy-looking door was locked tight, just as expected.
"Even I can't open this one."
It was structured so that it could only be opened from inside.
Judging by the small window above the door, it seemed they checked your identity from within before letting you in.
From beside me, Aileen, clutching the dagger I'd bought her, asked with an anxious face.
"...Then what do we do?"
"We break it down and go in."
Kane answered with a tone that said she was stating the obvious.
Locked, you pick it; blocked, you break through. A mindset befitting a mercenary.
"Are you sure we can just go in like that?"
"Then the only other option is to climb the wall and go through the window up there... You know how to climb walls?"
Aileen and I quietly looked at each other.
...With this body, climbing a wall would be too much right now.
Aileen seemed to feel the same; she slowly shook her head.
"Will the three of us be able to take them all on?"
Honestly, I was more worried about Kane.
The enemies probably weren't all gathered in one place, but even so, this was their main base. Their numbers wouldn't be few.
Was he really saying he could break through them alone?
A sense of unease quietly crept in.
"I'll take the lead, so just follow me. If it gets dangerous, pull out immediately."
Kane said tersely.
But then, Aileen tilted her head.
"Why are you going so far for us?"
It was a natural question.
Kane was an outsider completely unrelated to us. No matter how much he'd been commissioned, there didn't seem to be any reason for him to go this far.
"I've got something to collect from the branch chief too."
Kane's tone was still indifferent.
...As expected. He was a mercenary, not a volunteer.
Having understood the situation, we decided to watch Kane's movements.
Kane took a brief breath, then suddenly charged the door.
Boom!
A tremendous impact rang out as dust filled the air.
Through the broken shards of wood, clamorous voices could be heard from inside.
They must have been lookouts; only about two were visible.
"What the hell, the door's broken!"
"Intruders! Everyone— gkh!"
One of the thugs who'd been shouting clutched his throat and collapsed.
Behind him as he sat spewing blood, Kane revealed himself before anyone knew it.
The dagger in his hand, his agile movements.
So he was an assassin-type mercenary. No wonder he'd picked the lock with such ease.
"You bastard!"
Whoosh!
He lightly dodged the crude sword swung by one thug and drew the dagger at his waist to throw it.
With a shriek of "Gaack!", the dagger embedded itself in the thug's thigh.
That pain didn't last long, thanks to the follow-up strike that came right after.
Thwack. Thud!
Blood splattered the floor, ragged breathing, and the thug collapsed without even a scream.
Kane's back as he stepped right over him and walked past.
All of it took no more than a few seconds.
I instinctively took a step back.
"...Ugh."
Aileen let out a small groan.
Her eyes were wide, and the hand gripping her dagger was visibly trembling.
Her lips were so dry that I could hear her gulp.
I was like that at first too.
She remained frozen like that for a while.
When she finally opened her mouth, it held an indescribable jumble of emotions.
Anyway, did you have to be at that level to become a Gold Badge?
The prowess Kane had shown was considerable.
It almost felt as though his body naturally followed every movement.
There was something else there, something that couldn't be explained by strength alone.
While I was thinking that, the wooden stairs in the left corner of the room creaked and shook noisily.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
"What the hell is that noise!"
"Who the hell are they!"
Rough-looking men with lanky builds wielding crude weapons came down spewing curses.
They must have heard the commotion, because thugs came pouring down from upstairs with heavy footsteps.
"Damn, there's too many of them."
As I muttered to myself, condensing water over my staff, they kept coming down.
There looked to be at least twenty of them.
Damn, did they have a meeting scheduled today or something?
"If we drag this out, we're finished. We take them down fast."
Kane didn't flinch in the slightest even seeing their numbers.
The moment he said that, he leaped forward alone.
Shhick!
His dagger flashed like lightning, slicing precisely through the lead thug's knee.
The moment the thug toppled, Kane took advantage of the shock on the next man's face to roll through the air and slip sideways.
Without losing momentum, the tip of the blade plunged into another thug's abdomen.
Thuk.
"Gwaaagh!"
"You crazy bast—!"
While the thugs were thrown into chaos, distracted by Kane, I watched for an opening and reached out my hand.
[Water Bullet]
The water droplets gathered at the end of my staff spread out once in the air, then immediately condensed into a solid mass.
I flicked it straight into their midst.
Thwack!
It wasn't all that big, but the focused Water Bullet sent the thug in the back flipping over backward.
"Magic? Damn, was what that bastard said for real!"
Looking at his fallen comrade, one of them shouted with a look of despair.
At those words, the thug beside him snorted and retorted.
"Why would a mage come to a place like this! It's an artifact, an artifact!"
"An artifact?"
The word spread in an instant, and the thugs' eyes changed.
Their gazes as they glared at my staff were filled with greed.
Exactly the expression of moths discovering a flame.
'Damn, if this keeps up...'
Taking advantage of the gap while their attention was on me, I tried to create a water barrier to block the door.
But surprisingly, Aileen stepped forward first.
The hand gripping her dagger was trembling, but her eyes were firm.
Clang! Clash! Clang!
She hadn't been lying about learning the sword; her parries and deflections of the incoming blades were quite skilled.
But the difference in physique was unavoidable.
"You bitch!"
"Kyaa!"
While maintaining a favorable one-on-one fight through the narrow doorway, she resisted a thug trying to grab her wrist and lost her balance, falling backward.
Crash!
"You little bitch, I've got you now."
Thugs were crossing the threshold, trying to squeeze through one by one.
The spatial advantage was disappearing.
Aileen was about to be buried under the hulking figures rushing in.
But I wasn't just watching either.
Vrrmmm.
The massive amount of moisture I channeled onto my staff.
This was preparation for a single spell.
A spell I was using for the first time. But if not now, there wouldn't be many chances to use it.
The moment the thugs tried to rush at Aileen, I released the gathered moisture.
[Sea Fog]
Fwoooosh—!
The droplets scattered as if wailing at the top of their lungs, and white fog spread throughout the enclosed room.
In an instant, vision blurred white, and the thugs' shouts echoed like reverberations.
"Wh-what the hell is this?!"
"Damn, I can't see a thing!"
"Watch out, I said watch out!"
Holding my breath, I snatched Aileen's arm and pulled her to the back.
Kane seemed to catch on too, moving quietly to hide his body within the fog.
I'd consumed a considerable amount of mana casting this, but this wasn't my stage to begin with.
Because the star who would shine in this fog was someone else.
Shhk.
"Haemil! Damn it, where are you! Where the hell are you!"
One of the thugs screamed like a wail.
As if answering that cry, someone revealed themselves in the fog.
But the thug standing before him couldn't say a word, clutching his throat instead.
"Beron? What the hell—"
"Hiss... hiss..."
The desperate sound of breath leaking out.
And soon, thud.
He collapsed to the floor helplessly, like a balloon with the air let out.
Another thug who'd been trying to back away in surprise was also cut by a shadow that brushed past through the fog and collapsed just like that.
Kane moved without a word.
Silently, like a shadow skittering across the floor.
The fog was his stage, and fear was his weapon.
I gripped my staff and carefully put my arm around Aileen's shoulder.
She was shaking noticeably, but she didn't scream.
The tension felt in that silence actually calmed me down.
Courage is a flame that stirs a person to action; fear is the shadow holding its breath before that flame.
Aileen was standing somewhere between those two right now.
Though she was clearly terrified, the mere fact that she held her ground instead of running made her strong enough.
Fssh— Thwack! Thud.
Sharp breaths and the sounds of collapsing bodies continued.
Even without me doing anything, the situation was tilting in our favor.
"What the hell, who just— kck, fuck! Behind my—!"
"Damn, where are you! Where are y—"
The one who shouted fell to his knees on the spot, and another thug who saw it tried to flee in a panic and cracked his head against the wall.
Only then did they seem to realize that magic wasn't what they should truly fear.
Invisible death.
That was Kane's way.
"Stop it! We're sorry! Just let us leave!"
Before I knew it, the fog had completely swallowed the room, and I couldn't see a thing either.
Instead, all I could hear were the thugs' sobs and Kane's footsteps.
Kane. What he showed inside this room was a 'mass murderer' incarnate.
Perhaps that was the true nature of a mercenary's work...
For a while, screams and sobs continued until, at some point, there was nothing.
"......."
Silence stretched for several seconds.
Soon, a single breath sounded from somewhere in the fog.
"It's over. Let's go."
At that moment, the Sea Fog began to dissipate.
The remaining fog slowly sank low and seeped into the floor.
Beneath it, only the quietly lined-up corpses and Kane's eyes looking at me from beside them remained.
"Let's head upstairs for now."
Kane spat out tersely.
He flicked the blood-stained dagger in the hand that had been felling people just moments ago, as if nothing had happened.
His voice was calm, and there wasn't a hint of agitation on his face.
I looked at Aileen.
She quietly nodded.
The dagger clenched in her hand was still trembling faintly, but her gaze alone remained unwavering.
I stood up and focused mana into my staff.
A small water droplet floated up above it.
It was in a form that could easily be converted into a water barrier, so I could react at any moment.
We stepped deeper into the room like that.
I calmed Aileen, whose face had paled at the scattered corpses, and carefully walked so as not to step on the bodies until we reached the stairs.
The upper floor we climbed to via the creaking stairs was narrower and more cluttered than I'd expected.
Liquor bottles were scattered across the desk, and the lit lamp still retained a warm air.
Signs that someone had been here until just moments ago.
Kane looked expressionlessly at the narrow window in the wall.
Outside was a narrow alley between building walls.
Barely enough space for one person to squeeze through, but there was no sign of that.
"Their boss is gone. I don't think he was in this room to begin with."
Kane said, looking under the desk.
Just as he said, this space didn't look like somewhere a thug boss would stay.
Well, it had the atmosphere of a school club room.
I looked around and shook my head.
"There doesn't seem to be any evidence either..."
"I don't think it's upstairs."
Kane said shortly.
After looking around a bit more, we eventually turned our steps back downstairs.
When we came back down, the room was still filled with the stench of blood, and the fog had almost completely vanished.
I cleared away the remaining moisture with magic and noticed something that caught my eye.
"...Wait. This is..."
Fog rippling and seeping through the bottom gap of the wardrobe.
Following my gaze, Kane gently pushed the wardrobe and placed his hand on the wall behind it.
Where his hand stopped, there was a very slight gap between the wooden panels.
"It's a secret door. It might be locked from the inside."
I lowered my stance and peered through the gap.
There was definitely some space inside.
Kane crouched down and knocked on the floor.
Thud, thud.
And at exactly one spot, the sound changed and stopped.
"Here. One of the floorboards sounds hollow?"
I immediately placed my hand there and carefully applied force.
Creeeak—
The hidden cover slowly lifted.
It was stairs.
A gloomy stone staircase descending into pitch-black darkness.
"So this is the way to the basement."
Kane started down first, and I immediately grabbed Aileen's wrist.
"Will you be okay?"
She took a short breath and nodded.
"Yes. I'm fine. Right now... I think I can do it."
I nodded and followed behind him, tightly clenching the water droplet in my hand.
The real thing was starting now.
Because there was definitely something we needed to find in the basement.