The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary

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Proofreader: Xemul

Loren waited for a while.

Inside the cocoon created by Nig, Rage seemed to be releasing flames incessantly to melt its threads; the red color of the flames was beginning to show through the gaps in the threads.

From time to time, Nig would jump down from Loren’s shoulder to the cocoon and spit out more threads to reinforce it. But after a while, he seemed to have run out of stock and was no longer moving from Loren’s shoulder, giving off an air of exhaustion.

Furthermore, since the flame-throwing Rage was now trapped inside the cocoon, no more flames were shot out, causing soldiers of both sides to be attracted back into Loren’s spot.

Loren, still wary that Rage might emerge from the cocoon at any moment, wielded his greatsword to knock down the approaching enemy soldiers while waiting for Lapis to bring Klaus to him.

“I’m not going to last much longer.”

Loren was whining when a huge flame erupted from a crack in the cocoon.

A tear appeared on the surface, not big enough for a person to pass through, but enough for an arm to push out, and through it he could hear the curses of Rage inside.

“Damn you, you bastard! Don’t think that I’ll just turn you into ashes after what you’ve done to me!”

For a moment, Loren was lost.

The size of the tear indicated that the cocoon was not that thick, and it occurred to him that he could now plunge his greatsword through it and deliver a fatal blow to Rage.

However, if he failed, he would only make the tear bigger and shorten the time it would take for the Evil God to come out, which would only make the situation worse.

Just as Loren put strength into his grip on the hilt of the greatsword, the voice he had been waiting for finally called out to him.

“Sorry, Loren! Did I keep you waiting?”

“It’s alright. You’re just in time.”

Kicking down the surrounding Kingdom soldiers, Lapis reappeared.

Behind her was Klaus, who was using his longsword to finish the approaching enemies, and following him were the three girls.

“Are you bringing your luggage?!”

“He’s all safe somehow. I mean, what kind of guy is he? I think I took a couple of good shots to the back, but he doesn’t look hurt at all.”

Loren nodded in response to Klaus’s question, while Klaus lowered the man on his back to the ground.

Dauna, who claimed to be the Evil God of Sloth, slowly descended from Klaus’s back and casually waved at Loren while cracking his neck, seemingly oblivious to the surrounding tumult.

“Hey there, did I keep you waiting for long?”

“I’ve been waiting a while, but not long enough to be fatal. Anyway, can you really do something about that?”

As he rushed to Dauna, Loren pointed to the cocoon, which now had several tears and began to spout fires.

Dauna stared at what Loren pointed at closely, then asked in a tone that lacked any urgency.

“What do you want me to do with this cocoon?”

“Not the cocoon. The thing inside it. It’s Rage.”

Loren was about to ask Dauna what kind of nonsense he was blabbing, but he stopped, thinking that it would be wrong to get angry. The guy had just arrived, and there was only a large cocoon lying in front of him; he could not know that Rage was inside.

In the meantime, Dauna curiously approached the cocoon. The moment he brought his face closer to it as if he was about to examine something, the cocoon burst open from the inside.

“I finally got out! Damn! What the hell is this cocoon?! My flames can burn it, but it takes so long!”

Rage rose up from within like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

The figure standing imposingly with angry eyes looked not so different from before she was sealed in the cocoon by Nig, but Klaus blurted out.

“She’s covered in something milky white. Somehow, it feels like… just after?”

It might just be an offhand comment from Klaus, but it made Loren turn his dismayed gaze toward him when he heard it. Lapis, who was standing next to the guy, glared at Klaus with a cold, disgusted stare.

Klaus’ companions did not react much as if it was something normal to them; they simply looked at him exasperatedly. But Dauna, who had taken a few steps backward when the cocoon exploded, began to laugh uproariously.

“After! Yeah, that’s exactly what it looks like!”

“Don’t laugh! I became like this because I was melting down the cocoon from inside, it can’t be helped! It’s not like I like looking like this!”

The angry Rage, who was baring her teeth, was indeed in the state that Klaus had described.

The milky white substance, however, was not what Klaus and Dauna had imagined, but rather the end product of Nig’s threads melting by the heat. But it was sticking to her clothes, hair, and face in clumps, and she was in a rather wretched state.

“I’m hot and sticky all over and not half as cute as I was. Damn it. You son of a bitch, I’ll never forgive you… Klaus?! YOU ARE HERE!????”

Rage, who was trying to pull off the sticky residue from her body with a disgusted look on her face, saw Klaus amidst the surrounding figures and tried to jump at him, only to be caught in the debris of the cocoon and stumble on the spot.

Thanks to Rage’s feet getting tangled in the melted threads lying on the ground, Klaus was not attacked. He quickly moved away from Rage and, without a second thought, hid behind Loren.

“Get away from me!”

“No, Loren, you and I are friends, aren’t we? I thought you’d help me out here.”

“What friends? There is no excuse for what you did!”

Loren tried to draw Klaus out in front of himself, but Klaus even made full use of his > not to get overpowered and continued to resist. It was a rather unsightly grapple from the outside.

Gritting her teeth, Rage, who was temporarily forgotten, was about to step toward Loren and Klaus when she noticed Dauna laughing nearby.

“Huh?! Dauna?!”

“Long time no see, Rage. You’re as stuffy as ever.”

Dauna took a step forward as he answered, and Rage took a step backward.

Her face was obviously tense, and everyone could see that Rage was not so much afraid of Dauna as she was uncomfortable with his presence.

“Why are you here?”

“Loren here, asked me to do a faaaavour for him. It’s a bit of a hassle, but I’m here to deal with you.”

“You?! Of all people, YOU?!”

“I think the only ones who can handle your flames are me and Envy if she is serious, aaaren’t we? I don’t think Loren made a bad choice.”

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

Cursing with the voice of a small girl, to everyone’s surprise, Rage turned around and tried to flee the scene.

However, the attempt was not successful.

Even if her footing was somewhat obstructed by the remnants of Nig’s threads, since she was a so-called Evil God, she should be able to escape with little trouble if she put her mind to it.

However, Rage was moving so slow and hardly made any progress that even Loren and his team had to tilt their heads and wondered if this was really a being who claimed to be an Evil God.

“My authority is >. It affects not only myself, but also those around me.”

“You, son of a bitch! Don’t come this way!!!”

As her legs were not advancing according to her will, Rage’s face contorted, and she released a flame toward Dauna.

The streak of flame burned the atmosphere as it headed in a straight line toward Dauna. However, it did not reach him; its force decreased midway, and it finally fizzled out.

“Strangely enough, as something slows down, its temperature gradually decreases, regardless of whether it is a living thing or an inorganic substance.”

As Loren heard Sloth’s words, alarm bells started ringing somewhere in his mind.

Not knowing what danger, he was in, he grabbed Klaus by the collar and shouted to Lapis and the others, who were watching the scene.

“Something’s wrong! Get away from here!”

Loren understood the nature of the sense of urgency he was feeling when he noticed that the movement when he took a step forward had turned out much slower than he had expected.

Since Dauna’s consciousness was focused on Rage, the effect on Loren’s group seemed to be a little weaker, but it seemed that his authority was not something that could be focused solely on selected target, but the type that affected everything within its range indiscriminately.

“I can’t control it once it is truly activated, but that’s okay. Isn’t it great to be sleeping forever in a world where nothing moves?”

As Dauna’s strangely contorted voice reached his ears, Loren looked over his shoulder and saw him stooping down to look into the face of Rage, who was now unable to move, her legs completely trapped.

Of course, there were Kingdom soldiers surrounding them, but perhaps because they were less resistant to the Dauna’s power than Rage, none of them made even the slightest movement, as if they were puppets. 𝔣𝔯𝖊𝔢𝖜𝔢𝔟𝖓𝖔𝔳𝔢𝖑.𝔠𝖔𝔪

The flames that had been blazing disappeared, and as if to replace them, the ground and the soldiers’ body surfaces were slowly covered with something white.

“Everything is starting to freeze.”

“Hurry up! That’s what happens when we get caught, too!”

Even from a distance, Loren could see that Rage’s face, which had been confident and determined until Dauna appeared, was becoming a crying one.

Her body, down to her fingertips, could move no longer, and Dauna, with a kind smile on his face, gently touched her cheek with a palm.

Loren, having seen this, decided that he should do everything in his power to escape and focused on running, dragging Klaus, who was screaming in protest, behind him.

Then, Dauna’s words reached Loren’s ears.

“Sleep well. Ahh, how envious. This is the perfect laziness.”

Loren could already feel the intense cold air on his back. Would they really be able to escape out of the effective range of Dauna’s authority?

As he wondered this, Loren, along with Lapis and the others who were running with him, just tried to move their feet and keep advancing forward.

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