"Is everything going according to plan, Lucy?"
"David? I didn't think you would come here. Yes, thanks to the 30 gold that guy brought, it is guaranteed now."
"Wasn't it already guaranteed?" David asked with a frowning face.
"Well... We would most probably make it to the festival. But now, we don't have any doubt," Lucy, the woman who was sitting together with David and another man the day before, answered. "By the way, what happened to him?"
They were in the middle of a storehouse-like structure. 2 weak-looking men were working on some kind of square thing.
"Who? The one who stole the money? Of course, I silenced him."
"What? Won't that affect the morale among the others?"
"This is our last time anyway. Before the others can understand, we will be done. Also, it was his own greed that brought his end."
"You are too cruel toward your underlings..."
"As if you are different... Didn't you use women in your team as sex slaves, Lucy?"
"Men disgust me, so what else could I do? Anyway, after the festival, I won't need those ugly girls from the slums."
"Whatever. I will go visit Mark. We need to make sure that there are no errors in the plan."
---
What the hell is this place?
Grey was walking through the forest, following the tracks of the people who came here before.
It was obvious that everyone who came here tried to clean their tracks. But so many people must have gone through here for so many years, since there were still some tracks left. Even then, they could only be followed by the experts like Grey.
However, no matter how much he went, he couldn't see anything. The forest was big, but the trees weren't too close to each other on this side. So, Grey could see where he would arrive as much as in half an hour.
But, this also meant that he knew he wouldn't find anything if he walked that 30 minutes.
Until suddenly everything went dark.
Thanks to the cheesy line told by Gordon, he got scared and jumped back. He instantly came back to the forest.
Did I get teleported? Or, is this a concealing type of Art?
Whichever it was, he knew that he was onto something, so he entered the darkness once again.
Thankfully, it wasn't something as scary as he thought. It only looked like clouds had covered the sun. He was just scared the first time he had entered.
But now, he realized he could see everything. And what he saw surprised him.
In a big, circular area, there were no trees. Instead, there were people running around and going in and out of buildings.
There were at least fifty people. But he didn't know how many were inside those buildings.
The unfortunate thing now was that there was nowhere to hide since there were no trees. There was only one way to proceed like this.
He exited the area once again and went around the circular area. He knew that if he moved for around a hundred meters, he would reach behind a building. If he entered the area through there, he could hide.
But he was scared. He wasn't a soldier or someone strong. He had a strong art, but it was only strong as support. And his knowledge of swordsmanship was probably only average.
Come on, I need to move!
Of course, this wouldn't prevent him from moving forward. He had always been brave, and he knew that only the brave could get stronger.
If he were to run away in front of death, he wouldn't get stronger. And then, he couldn't roam this world.
He circled the area for a hundred meters and checked where he was.
This tactic would only work if this were a concealed field and he wasn't teleported. If he were being teleported to somewhere else every time he went through an exact spot, he would need some other way to hide himself.
Thankfully, when he entered the same field from another location headfirst to check where he was, he found himself right behind the building he was aiming for.
He approached the walls. From what he could see, the buildings had two entrances in the back and the front.
He was near the back entrance when he heard two people talking to each other:
"This is our last time anyway. Before the others can understand, we will be done..."
"You are too cruel toward your underlings..."
"Men disgust me, so what else could I do?..
"Whatever. I will go visit Mark..."
Hearing it, Grey hid behind a ledge on the wall as a red-haired man left the field, passing near him. Luckily, he didn't realize Grey was there.
Grey went back to the back entrance and looked inside in secret. There was a catwalk right at the entrance, and ladders led to a lower floor.
There was only one floor under the catwalk. There was a square-shaped iron structure on the floor. Two people were hitting the tool with hammers as if trying to thrust something into the square structure.
The woman who was talking to the red-haired man left through the front door after going around on the catwalk.
What the hell are they doing here?
The building he was checking seemed like the biggest one, so he had targeted this one first.
Should I go down and learn what it is?
He could probably catch one of the two men working on the thing and question him, but he didn't know what the other one would do.
Grey couldn't fight against 20 people he saw outside. Even if they didn't have any Art, he wasn't strong enough.
Also, there was a chance they all had the Art of Stealing.
The Arts in this world were concepts more than powers. For example, Art of Cooking could boost his specific body parts, but maybe it could do the opposite, too.
The same was correct for the Art of Stealing. One of the owners of the Art could have explored a strong side of their Art and used it to fight or something else, like stealing his sword in the middle of a fight.
There were a lot of stories about the weak-looking Arts turning out to be strong.
Should I give up?
This wasn't why he was here for anyway. So, maybe it was the best thing he could do.
Just then, the unexpected happened.
"I knew there was a rat here."