Kayden set aside his suspicions about Alice. He had just realized how intensely he was staring at her, and it did little good for him to offend her for now, lest he wanted to meet the same fate as the goblins. He smoothly took a bottle of water from a satchel and unscrewed the cap, pretending as if he hadn’t been eyeing someone for an uncomfortable period of time just now.

Although he wished to set off immediately to try and reach the dungeon as soon as possible, he supposed that there was nothing else he could do but take a break, no matter how much he wanted to reach their destination sooner.

‘I shouldn’t worry too much. Ezekiel already assured me that nobody has gotten through the gate yet. And Cathy may have a way for us to get through. We can take advantage of that.’

He had pieced together the information he gathered from a short conversation that Cathy and Ezekiel had. The magical barrier, which countless other B-ranked adventurers are trying to break through, can potentially be solved by Cathy? Kayden had a hard time believing this, but he had no choice but to hope.

He reevaluated Cathy’s abilities, which are still not fully revealed to him. She had been able to heal his injuries completely, speak into people’s minds, and apparently still had a slew of other abilities that he didn’t know about. And now, she could even disable barriers. For a C-ranked adventurer, she sure was quite versatile.

‘Speculating won’t bring me anywhere. Let’s just appraise her and be done with it…'

He gave Ezekiel a wave to indicate what he was about to do, before focusing his attention on the blonde girl.

“Appraise.”

 

‘Aha! She’s only one level ahead of me! Finally, someone I can compare myself to! Let’s see here… I have a higher health value… yay for me… Oh, she has thrice my Mana, wonderful.’

Now that he had appraised everyone in the party, he had realized something crucial. Based purely on the System’s numbers, he was the weakest member of the party, and he didn’t know what to do with this information.

“Estimated PDMN for Cathy is E/D/D/A. We don’t know the full extent of her abilities yet, but from what we know, she definitely fulfills the support type role, and nothing else. In addition, her physical ability seems very poor.”

And that was most likely the reason why she was only a C-ranked adventurer despite her A rank in the Niche category.

Another thing he noticed from the System’s stat page were the two titles that she had. ‘Lady Black’s suggested that she had some sort of status, while ‘Myona’s blessed’ suggested that she was part of a religion?

‘Myona… If I’m not wrong, she’s a goddess of some sort that people here in the Central Continent worship. What was she the goddess of? Crap! I’ve only ever read about the God of Thieves’ religion!’

He racked his brains further but it came out empty. If he wanted to know, he supposed he had to directly ask. It likely wasn’t a sensitive topic or anything.

‘Though, Alice is weirdly protective of her. I’ll try to disguise my question as a question posed to the entire party then. It shouldn’t set off any alarm bells if I did that.’

Speaking of the entire party, he observed that it had a nice, varied spread of roles, making this pretty much the best party Kayden had ever joined. He was getting excited about what was to come.

‘Just four days until we reach the dungeon… I’m looking forward to it!’

***

A short and stout mummy was limping menacingly, stomping through the inner city gates. A man with a scary reptilian face followed close behind, giving the impression of a predator stalking his prey. Many looks were drawn to the strange duo, but neither of the two of them cared.

“Brandon! You’re not fully recovered! What are you rushing ahead for?”

“Shut it. I have to avenge myself! He fought completely unfairly, and I can’t let him off thinking that he’s won!” Brandon seethed through his bandages.

Ryan smacked his scaly forehead. What has gotten into him? This desire for revenge is bordering on obsession. They had already been beaten twice, by both the master and the disciple. What sense did it have to go after him again?

“Ryan! Don’t be a chicken! This time, join me in beating up that bastard. When we fight together, nothing can stop us!”

The reptilian face of his gritted its teeth, presenting a sight so horrifying, that a passersby’s baby started crying. He was starting to grow agitated and annoyed.

“You’re dragging me into this? This always happens! And I keep trying to warn you! Also, when we fought together against the master, we were defeated instantly! What do you mean ‘Nothing can stop us!’?”

“Yeah! But that’s an A-ranked adventurer! We never stood a chance!” Though he was talking themselves down, Brandon said this in a strangely confident tone. “But the kid’s different. We can win if we try!”

Ryan was flabbergasted, “Y-you… do realize we’re talking about a C-ranked adventurer here? Why are you so obsessed? As B-ranked adventurers, these kinds of things we can leave beneath us!”

Brandon shook his wrapped head. “It’s not an obsession, it’s about not sending the wrong message. If we let even C-ranked adventurers mess with us, we’ll become a laughingstock! Haven’t you heard about informants? The Assassins Guild? These kinds of info spread like viruses, you know?”

Thinking about it carefully, Ryan had to admit that Brandon was right. Information was constantly gathered about adventurers usually B ranked or above and sold to various insidious and untrustworthy people. If there was someone who wanted to destroy their reputation, and by extension, their livelihoods, this kind of info would serve as ammunition for that.

Not many adventurers knew this, and both Ryan and Brandon themselves only discovered it on accident back when they were targeting someone. Much like this time, Brandon had wanted to take revenge on a particular person and made use of black-market info to track that guy down. Unfortunately, in the end, he failed.

This was most likely why Brandon was so insistent on payback since he had failed back then. The person they targeted had been a B-ranked adventurer, and they lost miserably against him. However, this time was different, the person they were targeting was much weaker.

“Hmm… Fine. I’ll join you, but we have to leave immediately after taking your revenge. Something tells me that the A-ranked master of his won’t mind breaking a few laws just to see us dead.” Ryan warned, but it fell on deaf ears.

“Good. To arms!”

Ignoring his still recovering wounds, Brandon rushed ahead towards his destination, the Kelekona mountains. As the well-known disciple of the only A-ranked adventurer in town, it wasn’t hard to gather information about his whereabouts.

Both of them had incredible stamina and speed, so their effective traveling speed wouldn’t be that much slower than horses. As the intel they gathered mentioned that Kayden and his party had not left on horses, Brandon was confident they could catch up.

“Just let us through already!”

Their attention was drawn by a loud voice, and they both slowly approached the source. What they found was a medium-sized crowd all blocking the road for some reason, and everyone present looked frustrated at something.

“What happened?” Brandon asked.

“No idea, but we don’t have the time for this…”

Even still, they had to pass through the crowd if they wanted to reach their destination. Putting on the most intimidating look they could, which wasn’t that difficult, they resumed their walking pace.

As they got closer, they started to get the gist of what was happening. A few guards were preventing the entry of D-ranked adventurers, and the surrounding crowd wasn’t happy. Naturally, since this had nothing to do with them, they simply pushed on.

The guards noticed their adventurer passes and easily let them through. One particular guard in front was just about to rehearse his speech to them when he was interrupted by the crowd of D-ranked adventurers. They began to mob the duo and peppered them with their pitiful begging.

“Please, help us!”

“You’re B ranked adventurers, right? Let us come with you!”

Ryan was a little bit unsure of how to proceed. If the mob managed to strike a nerve in Brandon, he might just resort to extreme violence. With the guards right there with them, they would never get away with it, and their plans would be stopped before they could even step out of the city.

“Bring us with you. We won’t be useless!”

“Are you going to abandon and laugh at us, like the party before you?” A young man with pitiful, basic equipment shouted with an accusatory tone.

Brandon has had just about enough. He grabbed that young man by the collar and pulled him close to his face. A threatening glare was all it took for the young man’s knees to start buckling. “Who cares about the party before us? Let us through—”

“Now now, no need to get so violent.”

A middle-aged man, also equipped with basic gear, interrupted. He had a grey mustache and a monocle, which him look extremely jarring when combined with his adventuring gear. It looked like a butler that had no choice but to go adventuring.

The man adjusted his monocle and continued, “I know who the two you are! You’re the ones intending to go after the Raging Alcoholic’s disciple, yes? Well, I have good news for you!”

The duo was intrigued by the man’s words. Not only was he eloquent with his words, but he also had a deep, calming voice as well. His tone was oddly persuasive enough to get them to loosen up, even Brandon, who was prone to anger, let the young man in his hand go.

“Listen to me. We all hate that disciple too! Remember the party from earlier that we mentioned? He was in there, and they laughed and abandoned us! We would like to aid you in your quest for revenge!”

The other adventurers didn’t know the duo’s identity at first but caught on to the smart plan relatively quickly. The middle-aged man was trying to help them and had already given them the opportunity!

“Yeah! We hate them!”

“Yes, boss! Let us join you, boss!”

Immediately, Ryan grew suspicious. They seemed to turn all vengeful all of a sudden with no logical explanation.

‘Every single one of you is angry… because a party, who had every right to do so, abandoned you? And now you wish to kill a man? Something’s fishy…'

They had to be even more obsessive than Brandon to think this way, and Ryan was having none of it. Brandon took it at face value though and immediately accepted their request to join.

“You hate that nasty little cheater too? Alright then, join me in my quest for vengeance! Big boss here will ensure you can pass through to the dungeon no problem!”

“YEAH!!!”

The eighteen new additions to the party cheered all at once, leaving Ryan aghast with his tongue hanging out.

“What? Why would you—”

“Follow me, my comrades! Charge!!!”

The nineteen of them stampeded ahead, leaving Ryan and the guards in a cloud of dust they kicked up. Watching the crowd slowly rush off into the distance, Ryan sighed.

He turned to the equally shocked guards, and asked,

“Do you allow this?”

“Well… yeah. The rules state that D ranked adventurers in the company of adventurers of a higher rank are allowed to pass, so…”

The guard shrugged.

Ryan raised a finger. There was something that was bothering him.

“Couldn’t they have just circled around you and passed through without you noticing? I doubt you have guards surrounding the entire city, right?”

“Yeah… It was only a few people at first. But as more and more of them keep crowding around, they all sort of convinced themselves that they could only pass through this exact road. And I’m not allowed to tell them of this loophole, so… they kinda just stood here, complaining.”

Ryan gave a blank look.

“So they’re all idiots?”

“Yes. Yes they are.”