Bermuda [bl]

The woman seemed to come to her senses when she met the man's serious gaze. However, the sudden commanding tone only aroused a chilling sense of rebellion.

"Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?"

At her still sharp reaction, the man said with a small sigh.

"...If you don't want to listen, then get buried by Filione Delberg or something."

The grand master flinched for a moment. This man knew about the existence of Filione Delberg.

As soon as she heard that name, she felt like her mind was collapsing as the things she had only imagined as possibilities were becoming reality.

If this job didn't go well, she could really die. The executives were also her watchdogs, but they also served as middlemen connecting her and the members, so their absence had a bigger impact than expected.

With this, not only would it be more difficult to control the members, but if the executives returned to the chief grand master and reported the entire situation, this job would be as good as a failure.

And the culprit was right in front of her eyes. She wanted to tear him apart, but in order to survive right now, she had to find a way to live instead of acting emotionally.

As she remained silent, unable to continue speaking as if she had been shocked by hearing Filione Delberg's name, the man said to her in a low voice.

"Since you said you're staying here, I have to take responsibility and keep you alive."

At the man's words, the grand master glared at him as if dumbfounded and shouted again.

"Keep me alive..? Ha, then you shouldn't have sent the executives away from here in the first place!"

At her angry eyes and resentful voice, the man sighed and said,

"You, if you had successfully completed this deal here and returned to the central region with the executives... Do you think you could have lived?"

For a moment, it seemed like her rough breathing stopped.

She couldn't answer his question that seemed to imply something.

He seemed to be saying that even if she had successfully completed the deal and returned, she would have been a dead person. Instead of voicing the thought that brushed past her intuition, she looked at the man with eyes asking what he wanted to say.

Realizing that she had understood his words to some extent with just that gaze, he slowly closed his eyes, opened them, and spoke while fully facing the woman in front of him.

"Follow me."

Having said that, he immediately took the lead and headed somewhere.

It was true that she had to grasp at straws in this situation, but she felt like throwing up at the fact that the person who said he would save her was this man of unknown identity, not knowing what he would do.

However, at least within this territory, this man seemed to know her situation the best, and she had a strange feeling that he wouldn't let her die. With just that thought alone, she hesitated but quickly followed the man who was moving away alone.

Confirming that the grand master was following, Tergio immediately moved and informed her of a space where she could hide when the Council entered the territory. It was an underground storage located in a secluded and remote place with few people, and it was also the place where he had brought Flynn and shown him the inside.

When the man brushed away the fallen leaves and lifted the board door, a hole was visible with cool air leaking out.

As she looked at the entrance and him with distrustful eyes, the brown-haired man took out an artifact from his pocket, expanded it to the size of one arm, put his arm inside, and rummaged around looking for something.

At that, the grand master said as if she finally understood how he had appeared silently in front of her last night and jumped out the window to disappear.

"You're a mage?"

The man who heard her words only glanced at her without answering. Then, he soon pulled something out of the artifact and threw it to the grand master.

She barely caught what was flying at her, and what he had thrown was an oxygen mask and a thermal cloak. They weren't items that could be commonly seen in the market, so she hesitated, holding those suspicious items.

The man seemed to have not found anything else inside, so he shrank the artifact again, put it in his pocket, and started taking off his top with a bit of irritation.

At the man's sudden eccentric behavior, she tensed up and looked at him as if he was strange. Soon, he took off a thin inner layer he had been wearing under his thick clothes and handed it to her, saying,

"Take it."

As he held it out, she looked at it warily and stretched out her hand from a distance to receive the clothes. And at that moment, she could vaguely guess what this was.

'This texture and the warmth accumulated inside... It's a top-grade military cold-weather suit. It's something you can rarely see even in merchant group supplies, so how does this man have it?'

The man handed it to her and shivered as if cold, taking out another layer of thick clothing from the artifact and putting it on top. Then, he zipped it up, buttoned it, and said to her,

"Wear that and hide in here until I tell you to come out."

"...You want me to freeze to death?"

"That's why I gave you those things. Endure it somehow. And don't come out until I say 'come out.' If someone comes in, make sure to hide behind the boxes. Got it?"

The man cut off the context and urged her to answer, saying there was no time. Although she looked doubtful, when she barely nodded, the man pushed her into the pit, telling her to go in and hide quickly, and closed the board.

The sound of fallen leaves being covered again came from above the board. Confused by this situation, she just stared blankly at the tightly closed board.

Soon, when the chilly air enveloped her surroundings, she put on the cold-weather suit the man had given her, wrapped the thermal cloak over it, and bundled herself up tightly. Then, after putting on the oxygen mask, she slowly descended into the dark storage below, holding one of the two lamps hanging on either side.

She was hiding behind the pile of boxes as he had told her. Not long after, the sound of two men coming down was heard as the door above opened. One of them was the brown-haired man who had made her hide here.

She held her breath and tensed up, thinking that he had told her to hide but seemed to have brought an outsider here. When the men came down right in front of her, beyond the pile of boxes, she was overwhelmed by the fear that the man might have deceived her and brought her here for another purpose.

They seemed to be stacking the boxes, and when one man tried to go behind the boxes, the man who had brought her here naturally stopped his action.

"It's better to stack these boxes in the front because they need to be moved to another place later."

"I see."

She was frozen stiff behind the pile of boxes, covering her mouth and unable to move. Fortunately, they only moved the boxes and went back out. However, she had to tremble in anxiety, worrying that someone else might come down again.

As time passed and the sound of a voice amplifier was heard from afar, saying that there were illegally distributed monsters in this territory and asking for cooperation in the investigation, she couldn't understand at all how all of this had been exposed in an instant.

Clearly, the Council had only come to the town because of the arson incident that occurred in the neighboring town, but her mind was in complete disarray, not knowing where the tail had been caught.

nd that confusion led to the conviction that it was because of that guy who had brought the news of the outsiders, and after the executives left, had hidden her here.

She became increasingly immersed in the thought that he had isolated her here and deliberately called the Council.

And so, it had come to this.

***

When the covered board was torn off, the outside air poured in.

It was clearly morning when she entered here, but it was already almost midnight with a large moon hanging in the sky.

The inside of the storage was also lacking oxygen, and just as she was reaching her limit, when the forcibly torn entrance door flew off, she felt a sense of relief rather than fear.

"Come out quickly."

In front of her eyes, that still unbelievable man was standing with his hand extended.

The grand master, who had been silent in bewilderment, soon bit her lip and said,

"...Did you call the Council?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

Tergio held out his hand closer again, but the grand master only glared at him. Perhaps because of his overly quick acknowledgment, her voice rose even higher.

"Ha, then why did you hide me? To take me to the Council now?"

"If I was going to do that, why would I bother hiding you here while even giving you an oxygen mask?"

"Then why the hell-!"

The grand master screamed with a look of disgust. Seeing her like that, Teo answered with a hollow laugh.

"You were used."