Chapter 75 :

Episode 17 : A Child's Decision (3)

Frostina witnessed as JoonChul, her Liege was leaving her behind to keep watch on Mirai, Behemoth and Raiden.

As she watched JoonChul walking away with his back slowly but surely disappearing into the crowd, she closed her eyes and exhaled a long sigh.

She thought the backside of her Liege seemed like it was in pain with so many thorns and weapons stabbing into his back.

‘For as long as I live with my Liege, his back always seemed to be burdened by something.’ Frostina pondered, unknowingly emitting a cool breeze around her. ‘But I dare not to ask..’

The people who walked past her or stood beside her, could easily feel how it suddenly became cold.

"Big sis! Where's Captain?!" With Mirai's voice popping up, Frostina finally noticed herself letting out a cold air around her before she immediately removed it.

Frostina answered, looking over to the new necklace on Mirai's neck."He got business to attend to." 

"What kind of business? Oh, never mind. He's always like this whenever we have a break. Hmph." Mirai pouted, fidgeting with her necklace while swaying her fan.

"You know it can't be helped." 

"When will he ever hang out with us? After all these years, he's never the one who changes.." Mirai became saddened by the thought that she began to frown.

Frostina patted Mirai's head, teasing her. "Strange. Didn't you tell me that you love Captain no matter what?"

Mirai's face fading to red extremely fast, caused her to cover half of her face with her fan. "Well, I.. how could anyone not love him? I know big sis also do as well." 

"I admire him. That's all."

"Could someone help me please?" After hearing Raiden calling out for help, Mirai and Frostina shifted their eyes to where Raiden was.

As they discovered Raiden who was trying to pull Behemoth away from a wooden box, Mirai giggled while Frostina smiled at the sight.

"Meow! Let go of me! This is my box now!!!" Behemoth hissed, grasping onto the box firmly.

———

With how much we had to walk to get to the casino, one might wonder why this was taking longer than expected.

But eventually, we arrived at our destination thanks to Asher. 

Asher chewed on her fried chicken, telling us after stopping in front of the casino's entrance. "Welp. This is the place." 

"This place looks bad.." Before Mya said this, she observed the casino carefully, already figuring out that it wasn't a place meant for kids.

HwanGi, being the considerate guy that he is, told Mya. "If you wish not to go inside, you can stay outside with me." 

All of a sudden, Mya's eyes were directed to me, staring into my eyes which somewhat surprised me a little.

After that, Mya switched her gaze toward HwanGi and confidently spoke to him, letting go of HwanGi's hand in the process. "If I'm a player, I must be strong and brave! So I don't need to stay outside, uncle."

With Mya giving her smile to HwanGi, I looked at his expression to find that he was shocked by what Mya had responded to him.

‘Is it that odd?’ I thought before shrugging and going straight inside the casino.

Despite wanting to bust open the door, I second thought myself when I realized I may catch the attention of everyone in the casino, so I resisted.

However.. it seemed it didn't matter to Asher whether she would be putting us in the center of the attention.

Asher kicked open the door before stepping inside, completely ignoring the massive amounts of eyes being directed to her.

She turned around to glance at us as if she was wondering why we didn't come in after she opened the door for us. "Why are you guys standing there? Get your butts over here."

"R-Right.." HwanGi had a somewhat uncomfortable expression on his face while watching Asher storm in.

"Well, lookie here.. I got some faces that I recognized." Asher spoke when she looked up to find people on the second floor watching her.

While she was doing that, I surveyed the whole area, discovering that there weren't any players here except NPCs.

"Well, if it isn't Asher. The person who harmed my men." A guy confronted Asher who appeared to be the boss of the casino, considering how he was dressed and the way he talked.

Asher bit the last fried chicken on her skewer and swiftly used it to point at the guy's face. "Zip it, Calum." 

"Now now. I see you brought new friends to this place." The guy who's name was Calum, examined us one by one before taking out a cigarette from his pocket. 

He lit it up and at the same time, the door behind us was shut tight, along with people surrounding us in a flash.

"I don't know why you came back but I do appreciate you for bringing your friends here. They would do great like the other one we captured." Calum slowly walked toward his men as his figure was no longer to be seen when he blent into the crowd.

"Oh, so it seems Alanna is here somewhere." Asher said, entirely mispronouncing Alaine's name or it might have been Asher forgetting Alaine's name, but it wasn't something I should be focusing on right now.

The men around us were stepping closer, forcing us to have little place to move much.

"Is there another way we can do this without injuring one another?" HwanGi asked a question.

[Player ‘1’ has activated the Hidden Skill, ‘Favorability’ Lv. 2.]

‘Clever to use that skill.’ I thought as I observed HwanGi stepping up to one of these men.

..However, the men didn't pay much attention to HwanGi's question and laughed, joking around as to why HwanGi was asking such a silly question.

HwanGi was without a doubt surprised by the fact that his Hidden Skill, ‘Favorability’ not only didn't work back when he was attempting to save a person, but also currently at this moment, his skill wasn't functioning properly.

I couldn't blame him if he didn't know that ‘Favorability’ works well on those who have kind hearts rather than the bad ones.

For ‘Favorability’ to be applied on these bad hearted people, you needed to level up that skill to level 5.

But too bad for HwanGi, his skill level was only 2, thus it didn't work on these men right in front of us.

The men finally took steps closer to us from every angle after being entertained by HwanGi's silly question.

Rather than rushing in and destroying us, these guys were just laughing out loud like a bunch of morons.

"Jeez. I really hate fighting with these clowns. So I'll leave them to you guys while I go save Alain..Alian? Whatever her name was." After saying what she wanted, a disk emerged from her hand, spinning rapidly fast before Asher threw it at the second floor's ceiling.

As soon as the disk hit the ceiling, a portal appeared onto the ceiling.

In an instance, HwanGi figured out what Asher was trying to do and quickly told her. "What are you doing? You should stay here and fight!" 

Hopping backward to enter her portal underneath her, Asher put up a cross with her arms as if she was telling HwanGi ‘no’ with only her gesture.

I could see HwanGi's face expressing his rage little by little, but he was able to calm down very quickly.

"I'll protect your back while you protect mine, HwanGi-ssi. And as for Mya, this is a test whether or not you can become what you wished to be." As I instructed them, I stretched out my hand to signal to Lucifer for him to transform into a lance.

"Do not kill in front of Mya, JoonChul-ssi." HwanGi requested me as I found out that he wasn't going to even use any weapon against these people.

"Take these and use it." I got uncomfortable by the thought of him being beaten up again, thus I tossed the femurs from my inventory which I had used back in the Hidden Stage.

While HwanGi was staring at me, holding onto the femurs, I was telling Lucifer to change into a Bo Staff so that I wouldn't accidentally kill anyone.

Now that we were prepared to fight, it was just a rather of time before these imbeciles stopped laughing and started to become serious.

The men saw how we got ready and had expressions as if it meant that they already knew they would win against us.

"Get them!" A few men shouted, dashing toward us with their bare fists coming straight at us.

———

In this moment, Mya trembled from the overwhelming things which were occurring at the same time, she didn't know what was going on, yet she understood that the situation wasn't good.

She shifted her gaze over to JoonChul and HwanGi, watching them fight while she was just quivering like a fool.

‘Why did I say I would be brave and strong when I'm truly not at all..?’

Mya mumbled to herself quietly while clasping her amulet tightly. "W-What am I supposed to do.. Mom.."