If his time standing outside of the entrance was mostly sound-free — a certain girl ruined it to a degree — then the moment he moved past the azure door, wave after wave of sound propagated the air, pressuring his head to no end.

  Times like this was when he wished he could control Sound Sense somewhat, but no, it just picked up everything, from a gossip between two women behind a desk about a bright kid getting accepted by a scribe master, the grunt of a man complaining to an enforcer about a green thief sneaking into his house last night, to a squabble in a corner on the topic of a tournament among all the academies. None would escape the radius of his passive skill.

  Since when did it become this wide? The hall was at least half the size of a soccer field, and here he was, being able to catch word for word clearly from across the building. Shaking his head, he tried to filter the noise and followed Dakrua to the left. No need to catch everything. As if he would be able to understand any of that without context.

  They passed by a long line of people waiting in front of a big stall, where a woman wearing an undecorated black mask was checking some sort of keepsakes in the face of a troublemaker. To her right was a whiteboard full of … wind chimes? Too far, he wasn’t sure, but nothing a conversation wouldn’t reveal, and he just happened to have the perfect tool for that.

  “What do you mean it isn’t the peppery rose? Look! Red tint, round leaves, and growing on top of a ridge. I don’t care. It is exactly as the description says, so pay me.” The man stomped the floor, reflecting a dull metallic sound on Zalanir’s ears.

  “It’s just an ember sprout, stop wasting my time. You can see that there is no bulging, brown vein on its surface. You have failed the task, so pay,” the woman said.

  “That place looks fun. What’s it?” Zalanir ran up to Dakrua and hurled his head toward the stall. He had an idea, but it didn’t hurt to get a confirmation, as it might be the place he would spend some time at if he was to remain in this city.

  “You mean the city’s task board? You can buy tasks there and complete them for rewards. They are rather competitive though, so you have to be fast to get the easy ones.” The chef raised his eyebrows and then nodded in a slow rhythm.

  “Have you done any? How’s the general difficulty?”

  “A couple. Not too hard, though I only did them with a team, as some were rather tricky. Now? No, if not for my shift or some special missions, I would prefer being at the restaurant. Can’t leave it to Irene alone.”

  “She’s lucky to have you.” Zalanir smiled. A father’s love, huh?

  “No, you got it wrong.” Dakrua shook his head, his eyes brimming with stars and his face relaxed. “I’m lucky to have her in my life.”

  Under a picture of a blue-haired woman snapping the neck of a vicious, one-eyed bear lay an ornate gilded door, its frame curved into an ovate shape. There was no guard outside, but Dakrua stopped, adjusted his clothes, took a deep breath, and knocked on the antique drop ring door handle three times. Only after a light click that the chef turned to him, nodded and pulled the door open just enough for the two of them to enter.

  There were five people inside, including Hiina who docked near one of the two white pillars in the room, her eyes closed. So they weren’t the last ones to arrive. Good.

  A giant round table occupied the center of the room, its shiny white color reinforced its importance compared to the brownish-yellow wall. Sunlight invaded the room via seven square windows slithering on the ceiling, with the one in the center right on top of the table.

  Four of the five chairs were already taken. The rightmost was an old man in a white robe, his beard long and smooth like silk. Facing the man on the opposite side was probably the general — Zalanir could guess that much based on the blue uniform that he was wearing. In the 40s, younger than the chef, with a pair of piercing eyes leaving him uncomfortable to look at.

  Though he quickly darted his eyes toward an intrusive gaze from a woman in a black dress who styled a light ping scarf over her shoulders. Her beauty lightened up the room, but his attention was on the emblems of a white downward-facing triangle hosting a black open palm inside woven evenly on the scarf. He had a feeling that he had seen that symbol before, but where, he couldn’t recall.

  The last one was a masked man who was leaning back on the chair in a relaxed manner next to the general, both hands behind his head. This one, Zalanir recognized, as the symbol of the white parchment pinned by a red dagger sent his mind back to the show in the fighting pit when he battled the cocky mercenaries. Zerkshi. So this was the representative of the biggest mercenary guild in the nation.

  Zalanir squinted his eyes but then shifted them away instantly. Although he hadn’t had the most pleasant experience with them, lingering on and catching unnecessary attention would do him no good in this situation. Better just stayed away from that guild for the time being.

  Pressure engulfed the room as no one talked to each other. The chef had come to stay behind his boss, leaving Zalanir standing like a lone rock next to the door.

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  One empty chair in the middle. Who were they waiting for? Zalanir’s muscles itched and tensed up, and he had to try his best to not show that by diverting his gaze to the sky above. The comforting white shade of the snow painting the windows up there did help to keep his attention away from that woman. That

  Why did she look at him like that?

  Fortunately, it didn’t last long, as light started to bubble up on the only chair that wasn’t occupied, and then something like a hologram of another woman in a sky-blue grab appeared. A veil of identical color swathed her left and the under-half of her right, leaving only her right eye in the open. There was no glitch, everything blended naturally to the spot, from her straight posture to her instance assessment of him, as if she was right here in the room.

  “Good, everyone is on time.” The general rose up, his hands pressing on the table. A soft metallic sound cackled where his blue uniform met the white table’s edge. “Now, all three of you. Tell us everything about what had happened. I don’t think this is needed, but lying won’t end well. Clear? Dakrua, you first.” His voice rasp and carried such a weight and attitude of someone with power.

  Dakrua and Hiina both moved to the center of the room, in front of the council. Coincidence or not, they left an empty spot in the middle, which Zalanir could only sigh to himself and stepped forward. Whatever, just got this over already.

  Strawberry-like flagrance wafted into his nose, its origin from the cold-hearted female enforcer to his right. He still didn’t like Hiina, too bloodthirsty with no hesitation to end a life, but the chef had mentioned that she was the one helping him out back at that lair. A debt that he had to pay back later.

  Starting from the chef, all of them recited everything, from finding the cultist lair to how it ended. Zalanir’s part of being confined in the cell up to the first summoning ritual attracted no interest, but when he touched on the desperate attempt to reach the main altar, he became the center of attention.

  “Stop there. What prompted you to go with that decision?” The man representing Zerkshi asked. His relaxed posture was gone, instead, he was leaning forward, hands under his chin and the mask.

  There it was. Zalanir had been thinking about this, about how to respond to all the soul stuff. There was no way he would reveal the unique skill and the incident with the butterfly, but he also couldn’t just avoid this topic entirely. At the end, he had decided before coming here to approach this by half-telling the truth.

  “I’m sure you all know this is a sensitive topic, so please keep this a secret.” A line of soft warning like this wouldn’t hurt. In the best case, it could reinforce his hesitation and stop further probing. “I have a skill allowing me to take over a soul for a duration. It helped me against the birduomera, so I just risked this because the situation back then was dangerous. The captain hadn’t defeated the prophet yet, whereas the ritual was close to going off.”

  “Birduomera?” asked the masked man.

  “It’s the summon from one of the associate leaders of the cult. We fought them earlier in a different cave.” Hiina inserted herself into the conversation before Zalanir was about to explain. Good. He wasn’t sure why she did that, but it helped.

  “Rarity of the skill?” This time, it was the old man in white robe who pressed.

  Zalanir was taken aback by this follow-up question. Should he answer? Didn’t this seem too specific?

  “Don’t worry. It reveals nothing. You can answer it. We won’t go overboard to poke something too personal. Right, Zachiriah?” the woman in the black dress who had been assaulting him with her intense look said. Hushed tone, with a bit of playfulness. He still had no idea who she was, but didn’t this sound like she was … helping?

  “Just my curiosity.” The old man laughed, his white beard swaying along.

  They didn’t seem to be bad, Zalanir assessed before going along. This could be a data point for him to gauge the power of the skill, or part of it. “Epic.”

  “Good for you!” The laughter got louder. The joy seemed genuine?

  Similarly, the woman who helped him earlier also put on a light smile. Her hand caressed the scarf, brought the darker ping fringe up and tapped them on her cheek. That action could catch any guy off guard, he had to acknowledge that.

  “Continue on!” came the general’s raspy reminder.

  There goes the first hurdle! Zalanir sighed internally. Good start.

  For the part where he reached the altar, Zalanir just admitted that he passed out and had no memory whatsoever about what was happening. The soul being summoned was just too strong for his own ability, and he failed to control his mind in front of the overwhelming invasion. Perhaps because this was exactly what was happening, so he had no trouble convincing the council. Was his acting skill always this good?

  Dakrua also admitted that because he was under the attack of the soul from the blazing stag’s death, he had no idea what was going on. The man mentioned how Irene’s image landed him a hand in combating the soulful raid, and that he just barely made it out alive, being able to keep his soul intact.

  Zalanir had to give the chef a mental thumbs up. Makin the assassin — a peak D-grade — couldn’t survive the same final attack from the birduomera’s death, so it was such a relief for him that Dakrua managed to beat that bicolor stag’s soul.

  With both himself and Dakrua being out of consciousness, all the attention was on Hiina. Zalanir was also curious about what happened, as the memory of killing rabbit was sure not how the whole battle had played out.

  Hiina mentioned that he didn’t go berserk right away, but collapsed and spasmed under the altar for a while, that the cultists guarding there sneered and treated him like a moron. Then, the battle shifted toward the two leaders where a monstrous black bear broke out from the cell and joined Wagenner to battle Putrieta.

  The enforcers were being killed one by one, but the captain held, so they had hope. Then, Zalanir woke up, killing everyone with the black magic and primal aggression of a wild beast.

  Silence descended on the room, heavier and thicker compared to the initial moment when Zalanir just walked in. There were some minor deviations and details, but the development and ending were just as he remembered.

  He cracked his neck, earning four small pops of gratefulness from his muscles. This was it. The moment of judge—

  “But I think the fault should also be on Putrieta, as he had devised this whole mess.”

  Zalanir turned to his right. And so did everyone’s attention. There, Hiina stood with her back straightened, eyes fixed on the leader of the enforcer force in the city.