The Luen Order
“What worries me is what comes next.”
In the heavy silence that had settled over them, it was Ross who carefully spoke up.
They had gathered after recovering the bodies from a place where the stench of blood had yet to fully fade. Ren and I, Ross. And three unfamiliar faces.
Pria was also there on one side of the room, having returned from the carriage at some point.
“Even after going through something this... fucked up, we have to focus on the dungeon raid right now. Revenge is a luxury. We have no choice but to push forward even in a situation like this.”
The Deep Night Clan led by Ren had a total of about eighty members. But nearly half of them had lost their lives in this Black Moon Cult attack.
Even that was only possible because some members had been away on other commissions.
According to Ross, the situation before I arrived had been nothing short of a one-sided massacre.
Despite that, Ross insisted they had already progressed too far to pull out now.
In truth, this matter had never proceeded smoothly from the start. Even after receiving imperial permission long ago, the raid had been delayed because of the tangled interests between the clans.
Then Ross, after receiving Ren’s letter, had confidently pushed the plan forward—only to immediately fall into this difficult situation.
The one who raised an objection was an unfamiliar man sitting in another seat.
“What the imperial family cares about is ultimately the dungeon raid, right? With our forces reduced like this... they won’t try to force the raid through.”
“Do you think the other clans will see it that way? Even before we started pushing for the raid recently, we thought we already had enough power to clear a Calamity-class dungeon. The problem was how to divide the rewards. That’s where opinions split.”
“In the end, Ross pushed hard this time for distribution based on contribution, and that was pretty persuasive.”
“Yeah. Ren, you said you were confident.”
Ross’s gaze turned to Ren, but Ren remained expressionless, arms crossed, holding his place. A frozen face from which no emotion could be read.
I already knew why Ren had said he was confident.
It was because of me. Seeing my strength had given him the confidence to set the plan in motion right away.
After a long silence, Ren finally opened his mouth. His voice was low and calm.
“To put it coldly, our current forces... are actually superior to what we had before.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Half of us are dead.”
The immediate rebuttal.
Even at a member’s reaction, Ren didn’t glance over, quietly continuing.
“The reason is......”
He turned his head toward me. Naturally, every gaze in the room focused on me at once.
“This person’s power surpasses half of our clan?”
It was Ross who stopped the member asking in disbelief.
“Calm down, Kez. You saw it too. This person’s strength.”
“That may be, but...”
The member named Kez still couldn’t hide his skeptical expression.
He seemed to feel as if his comrades’ power was being lightly dismissed. Common sense made it hard to believe that a single person could replace the strength of forty elites from a top-tier clan.
Once the member settled down, Ren continued in a calm voice.
“Of course, that’s just how the words go. It doesn’t mean the situation is good. The reason I brought this person here is because we made a deal. A deal where each of us grants the other what they want. But I’ve already received this person’s help, and so the justification for holding onto him has also disappeared.”
He wasn’t making a new request of me; he was simply laying everything out honestly in this place.
It meant he was leaving everything to my choice.
He truly seemed to think that my eliminating the Black Moon Cult that had attacked the clan was sufficient payment. So even if I didn’t help with the dungeon raid afterward, he intended to connect me with the imperial family.
While I was briefly lost in thought, every gaze in the room was still directed at me.
Perhaps thinking it might feel like pressure, Ren quickly changed the subject.
“It can’t be helped. We made a big move, and something blew up before that... that’s entirely our own circumstances.”
“If things continue like this... we’ll be treated like nobodies. It’ll be like cooking food just to feed it to the other clans.”
“Accept it.”
Ren’s voice was coldly resolute.
“That’s the reality before us right now. ...And once all this is over, we will definitely find the Black Moon Cult. We’ll kill every last one of them without exception. Since things have come to this, while we raid the dungeon, we should also assign separate personnel to investigate the Black Moon Cult.”
“Going that far...”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Pria opened her mouth to retort, but immediately closed it under Ren’s gaze. If even she, who was usually full of playful energy, shut her mouth at a single look from Ren, one could guess how heavy his expression was.
I had thought Ren had maintained his composure well until now, but that wasn’t the case.
I could feel the rage boiling within him. It was like a raging current surging beneath a calm surface.
As silence fell over the emotions everyone could sense from Ren, I spoke up.
“I can help.”
The moment the words left my mouth, the atmosphere in the room changed at once.
I felt every expression hurriedly turn toward me.
I wasn’t particularly inclined to back out now after agreeing to help with the Calamity-class dungeon raid. But it was also an undeniable fact that I had already helped these people with whom I had no deep connection.
So I chose a more realistic deal. Just enough of what I needed, obtaining the things I wanted.
That said, I had no vicious intention of bleeding them dry to the bone.
“But I definitely want something too. Want to hear it?”
“A connection with the imperial family, is it?”
“That’s the first one. A solid connection with the imperial family.”
I calmly folded my fingers one by one as I continued.
“Second is gathering as much information as possible on black mana. You said you’d call the Luen Order, right? Ren will be responsible for finding that out from them. Third, if the black mana really is connected to the Black Moon Cult... help me track and investigate that cult to the end.”
“There’s no reason to refuse the third condition.”
Ren nodded as if there was nothing to even consider.
Even I thought they weren’t particularly difficult conditions.
Just things that would be annoying or time-consuming for me to handle alone. Things that couldn’t be easily resolved with force alone, which I decided to entrust to them.
I added one last thing.
“Lastly, the rewards obtained from the Calamity-class dungeon. I’ve heard there might be things like ancient weapons or forbidden knowledge among them. If there’s something I want among those, hand it over to me. I’ll leave the rest entirely to your clan.”
I no longer had any great greed for money. I had already secured sufficient funds from the rewards of a Taboo-class dungeon, and those were currently entrusted to Arnen.
More money than that? I didn’t particularly need it.
I was confident that when the moment came that I needed it, I could obtain it again anyway.
As the price of this deal, I decided to transfer most of the rewards that would be obtained through the Calamity-class dungeon raid to the Deep Night Clan.
For them, this was also a chance at recovery. To put a clan that had lost half its members back together, both money and resources would be desperately needed.
“The last condition is also not a burdensome one for us. However... the ancient weapons and forbidden knowledge you mentioned aren’t necessarily discovered, and more than anything, it’s only possible if the contribution share in the raid is so clear that no one can deny it, so it’s difficult for us to freely promise that.”
“I’m confident enough about that.”
I answered briefly. Not out of bluff, but because I truly was confident.
If I had been myself not long after coming out from beyond the Red Barrier, I wouldn’t have been able to say such a thing so easily, lacking information about this place.
But now, I suppose I had a certain grasp of my place.
From the lowest-rank to the highest-rank adventurers. Until receiving their requests. I had gone through the entire process so quickly that it still hadn’t been long since I came out, but I could say I had come into contact with their common sense to a certain degree.
“...Understood.”
With some wearing dubious expressions and others already looking a bit relieved as if the matter was resolved, the meeting came to an end.
A few days later, the personnel from the Luen Order that Ren had requested visited the clan.
There were only two in the party. The first to enter my sight was an elderly man wearing a round hat studded with purple gems pressed down on his head.
Beside him was a young woman with silver hair neatly tied in a ponytail. Clad in sturdy full-plate armor from head to toe, she stuck close to his side as if attending the elderly man.
Her eyes were sharp, and there was no waste in her movements—she had the unmistakable presence of a knight.
“...The Bishop himself has come.”
Ren greeted them with a somewhat flustered expression.
“I couldn’t very well not come upon hearing there was something similar to a Relic.”
He lightly raised his hand as if making the sign of the cross and added a greeting.
“I am Nilain, Bishop of the Luen Order. May you find peace within the embrace of the Radiance.”
Standing beside Ren, I felt from the bishop a solid aura that was different from the knightly presence of the woman next to him—something indescribable.