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7th Guild Master, Nond

Everything was okay, things were still under control! I still wasn’t completely doomed just yet!

“[Booming Arrow!]”, I shot with powerful skill, and the projectile flew from my bow enveloped in a green light; just the whistle that the projectile emitted was enough to inflict [Fear] into monsters with hundreds of [Levels].

Yet, she swapped the attack as if it was just an insect on her way, with the back of her hands pushing away the mortal arrow, which easily felled many strong beasts during my long lifetime.

“BOOM!”, The arrow pierced through multiple trees, and rocks, and put a large crater on the ground once it finally lost enough altitude.

O- Okay, things were s- still under control!

I never expected to win against someone who fought Lord Bat and survived, anyway. I just intended to hold her back a little, my most powerful [Skills], shot with my most expansive arrows but a distraction.

Yes, a tank class like hers cannot hope to be as agile as I; she may have more potential for velocity with greater strength, but I have much better [Perception], I can easily make up for her quickness by navigating this jungle with much more efficiency!

“[Ground Shaker]”, the woman used one of her own skills just as I was about to jump onto a high tree branch, making me miss the stepping place, and fall down; of course, I managed to roll, and couldn’t possibly get hurt with just that, but she made me lose about 1 precious second with the stunt. “You’re not the only one who can do magic shit, arrow boy!”

“Shit, shit, shit!”, I clicked my tongue, focusing 110% on running away.

I- I- It was sill okay! T- Things were still under control! As long as we were inside the dense jungle, the woman wouldn’t be able to catch me!

“…Where’s the jungle?”, I asked myself, jumping over one final moss-covered rock, and finding myself in some kind of crater, a barren land that extended itself for about a hundred meters in all directions, nothing but charred earth, upturned rock, and solidified lava.

Nothing but a perfect terrain without obstacles to keep my pursuer behind me.

“[H- Horde Feller!]”, still in the air, I turned around, and shot one of the expansive arrows, which exploded in a thousand more while flying after my target.

“[STAMPEDE]”, the woman screamed, jumping from the tree line, arms crossed before her face as she took in dozens of projectiles without hesitating. They barely scratched her horribly scarred arms, breaking in contact with her skin.

When my feet touched the ground, my pursuer, the 9th Guild Master (demoted), Giselle, was already but a few centimeters away.

I still tried to reach for my knife, but she was just much, much faster, and swapped my hand away from the weapon before I could even feel the handle of it, breaking all my fingers in the process, and sending me spinning.

“Kuh!” my back hit burned and upside-down earth of the crater, and not long after, I felt a foot stepping over my chest.

…Things were not okay and under control anymore, that woman could easily pierce me all the way through with her boots if she so wanted. The pressure alone made me even forget about my torturing finger injury.

“Hello, Giselle. I thought you were against all this bullying the weak bulshit? Or you came after me to ask me out again?”, I asked her pretending to be more confident than I really was. Maybe I could scare her away with the name who was backing me up?

“Don’t even try, Nond, we both know that you’re only still alive because I permitted it”, she said, pushing her definitely too-long hair out of her pretty face.

“Really? I’m pretty confident that, if you didn’t have the luck of the bitch you are, I’d have everything okay and under control. Seriously, a meteor crater? By the way, unless you want a few more scars, you better let me go. You know better than anyone with who I have connections to, after all.”

She laughed at my attempt at persuasion, as I internally was, actually, desperate.

“Oh, Nond. I don’t even know where to start. How about: this is not a ‘meteor crater’?”, she replied.

And I heard someone steadily approaching from behind me.

“Hmm, surprisingly few people fit the requisites, but there’s at least this ‘Mamon’ guy here… I’ll need to check him out, my demons whisper to me that he's probably a cultist”, the approaching person murmured to himself.

And it didn’t take much more for me to connect the dots: the crater wasn’t natural, that familiar voice, the obsession with the Cult of the Unborn Stars…

Before even the 1st Guild Master stepped into view, I showed my palms in a signal of surrender, saying:

“T- Things are definitely not okay, they’re out of control.”

“Good that you know. Now, Nond, tell me: where’s the Eagle shit-head?”

“I have no idea”, I answered immediately. And immediately felt the pressure over my chest increasing. “It’s true, shit! He came, did whatever was his mission, and went away as quickly as possible! It was almost as if he was scared of something.”

“Where was the direction he took?”

“What? The Nalatza Empire, you know it, he doesn’t go too far away from Lord Tez, unless ordered to do so”, before the (demoted) Guild Master could start to crack my rib cage, I quickly added: “But he didn’t take one of the fancy official ships, this time, and from what I’ve heard, they didn’t head to the Empire’s capital.”

Probably to one of Lord Tez secret bases. Would I tell her if I knew where exactly? No. She can threaten me as much as she wanted, but I’d never betray a [God]; while I was answering her questions, it wasn’t like there was much she could do with what I told her, and I suspected she already knew most of those things.

“What was Eagle’s job this time?”

“I don’t know-”

“CRACK!”, one of my ribs finally gave in under the boot’s pressure, and I clenched my teeth in pain.

“T- They came to collect an item!”

“What item, Nond? Stop wasting my time already”, Giselle let her gelid aura penetrate deep within my bones and give me the chills.

“I don’t know, it was a box of some kind! All gray metal, shiny, big. Magically sealed apparently, even if I wanted to, there was no way I could look inside.”

“There you go, shadowling: the 3rd went back home, being just as useless as ever”, the 1st Guild Master finally closed his book (and I noticed it had many hearts drawn on its cover, along with an embarrassing message from his sister), and turned to Giselle. “Now, how about you start to ask the questions I’m here to listen the answers of?”

The woman with the scarred arms sighed, before turning back to me, and questioning:

“Who killed the 10th Guild Master Brak?”

“Uh? Someone killed the old man?”, I asked back, faithful to the [Gods] as a good mortal.

“…You know, Nond? How did I discover the Eagle shit-head was planning to divide the Guild?”, the woman with scarred arms crouched down beside me, but kept her boot over my chest. “You know how I always get to the wrongdoers who go murderhobo for [EXP]?”

“…You interrogate them by breaking their ri- Guh!” I was interrupted by yet another boning cracking.

“[Detect Lies], though not as impressive as [Revive Scene], which shows the crime scene to the detective as if the crime was happening right before his eyes, it’s a very useful passive skill, and any half-good investigator can get it. So, next time you try to lie to me…” As Giselle got back up, her foot moved from my chest to my groin. “I’m gonna crush your balls instead of your ribs.”

T- T- Things were DEFINITELY NOT under control anymore.

E- E- Even a [God] would understand if I left something slip in this situation, right?

No! In the first place, this wasn’t (kinda) directly related to a [God], so it should be okay? P- Plus! Lord Bat himself said no one actually cared about the weaker deities, so, it definitely was okay!

I nodded frantically to Giselle, saying the truth just after:

“Lord Bat was the one who killed Brak.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why?! Because the 10th Guild Master helped those infidels! Once the mission was completed and they retrieved the box, we quickly stopped at the Beginner’s City, and learned that a couple of mortals had dared to kill an Intermediate [God] and all of his priests! Plus, they massacred a bunch of Lower [Gods] too! And that fucking old-tree-bitch helped one of them when a [High Priest] finally managed to inflict them some damage! I volunteered myself to go hunt the head of the fuckers myself, but Lord Bat took this mission for himself, once he felt guilty of leaking info on the Lower [Gods], and fueled the couple’s revenge against all the [Gods], apparently.”

“Hu. Seems you were right, Giselle”, the 1st Guild Master said, and I only then noticed I may have had spoken a little too much…

“Of course I was. Kon, seriously, why don’t you let your older sister out so I can talk with someone with an actual brain? She is the one who takes care of the planning in everything you do anyways.”

“I can’t, she’s barely [Level: 200], and I have too many enemies to not keep her safely inside my pocket dimension”, he finally turned to me, and made me a question himself: “You said the Bat guy himself is going after them right? We need to be quick, then… So, where are these ‘infidels’ now?”

I told them.

Then, Giselle flattened my chest cavity and everything within it with her boot.

Author's note: