Rei was the one who decided to climb the ladder extending from the underground passage first.
Byune had made it clear through her demeanor that she wanted to go instead, but with the alchemist and the magic item shop owner who had fled through the passage potentially still lurking above, they couldn't afford to ignore the possibility of an ambush using magic items.
And Rei had full confidence that he could handle any number of ambushers.
Byune was a thief with a respectable level of skill, but fundamentally, thieves were not built for combat.
Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't fight at all.
Byune excelled at long-range attacks using long needles and close-quarters dagger strikes that leveraged her small stature and light frame.
Even so, her combat ability inevitably fell short when compared to Rei, Elena, or Vihera.
That was precisely why Rei, with his confidence in battle, had decided to climb the ladder first.
The Dragon Robe—a magic item boasting formidable defensive capabilities—and his trump card, the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor, should the need arise, were major reassurances.
"……Nobody here, huh."
He poked his head out from the ladder and scanned the surroundings, but all that greeted him were old buildings that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
There was no sign of anyone lying in wait.
Pulling himself up off the ladder, he took another careful look around.
Judging from the layout, the place was more of a storage shed than a proper dwelling. He reached out quietly toward a nearby door.
What he saw when he pulled it open were several buildings that looked like abandoned ruins, bathed in the light of the setting sun.
Several structures that clearly hadn't been tended to in ages stood in uneven rows.
Taking in the sight, Rei immediately understood where they were.
"The slum district, huh. Well, since someone managed to find the place I was hiding, there probably isn't anywhere else in Gilm I could easily slip into. Thinking about it that way, fleeing to the slums isn't all that surprising."
For now, there were no signs of anyone nearby… or more precisely, there were plenty of human presences around, but after confirming that none of them harbored any killing intent, malice, or hostility toward him, he called down into the hole where the ladder descended.
"It's safe. No enemies in the immediate vicinity—come on up."
At his word, Asimov, Byune, Elena, and Vihera climbed up in that order, but……
"With this many people, it's cramped."
True to its location in the slum, the shed wasn't particularly spacious to begin with.
Naturally, cramming several people inside meant it would feel tight.
Even so, Rei and Byune were both short, and Elena and Vihera, being women, took up less width than men—……though their amply developed chests and hips did claim their fair share of space.
Asimov was also an adult male, but he was no brawny giant. Given his habit of skipping meals to focus on his research, he leaned toward the thinner side.
All five of them were either shorter or slimmer than the average grown man, so they somehow managed to fit everyone inside. But with that many bodies, the air was undeniably stifling.
"So, what does it look like outside?"
"Outside this shed is the slum. Looks like they dug the escape tunnel a remarkably long distance. ……No way they did it by hand, so they probably used some kind of magic item."
When Rei answered Elena, the group exchanged looks of astonishment and grudging admiration.
It was true that the magic item shop was located in a back alley, relatively close to the slum.
But digging a tunnel all the way from there to here was, by any reasonable standard, far beyond the pale.
"Nobody's scoping us out either, so there shouldn't be any problem stepping outside. It'll be a lot more comfortable than staying cooped up in here."
Since no one raised any objections, they filed quietly out of the shed.
What spread out before them was the cityscape of the slum district, awash in the glow of the sunset.
Dyed a deep crimson, the scene before them was vivid enough to make one wonder if a fire had broken out somewhere.
Around the time Rei and his group emerged from the shed and turned their gaze toward the slum district, Adria—who had slipped away from the guards—was arriving at the slum herself, checking her surroundings as she went.
Naturally, she had stolen perfume on the way here and done what she could to mask the stench that had gotten her temporarily captured.
Even so, she couldn't shake the feeling of unease. That was because, despite several days having passed since she last visited the spot in the forest where the censer had been placed—and despite having bathed and wiped herself down in the meantime—Set had still caught the lingering scent of decay on her.
Given Set's extraordinary sense of smell, it was simply impossible to feel completely safe, even with perfume masking the odor.
"I came through those crowded streets, so I think I'm probably fine. ……Looks like the pursuit hasn't reached here yet. Well, they're likely still busy dealing with the chaos back where I escaped, so I suppose that's to be expected."
Imagining the guards scrambling in confusion amid the smoke-filled area, a smile crept unbidden to Adria's lips.
But the smile vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by the hard expression of a veteran adventurer.
At the razor-sharp gaze Adria flashed for just an instant, the men who had been loitering about—intending to harass her and shake her down for coin, and who would no doubt have demanded her body as well once they realized she was a woman—instinctively came to a halt.
The residents of the slum possessed a unique survival instinct, and they had sensed that pressing their luck with her would undoubtedly earn them a world of pain.
In truth, Adria's combat ability far surpassed that of the average adventurer roaming these parts.
And right now, she found the whole situation rather amusing—that she had nearly been caught by the guards—tempered only by a faint undercurrent of irritation at having been outmaneuvered.
If those men had failed to read the room and pressed their harassment anyway, they would have had an arm or a leg broken on the spot.
In the worst case, they might have lost their lives entirely.
By that measure, the men who had stopped in their tracks had narrowly escaped with those lives.
"Too bad."
Lamenting the lack of a convenient target for her simmering frustrations, Adria strolled casually deeper into the slum district.
(If they'd actually attacked me, I could have at least scored some spare weapons.)
Part of the reason Adria had stepped out of the magic item shop where she had been hiding was sheer boredom from being cooped up underground, but she had also needed to buy food and supplies.
Zboz, being an alchemist, was better off staying out of sight given his recent activities. More importantly, he was the type who found his experiments far more enjoyable than any trip into town.
There was also the risk that if Zboz caught sight of Rei in the city, he might act on impulse.
Zboz had never seen Rei's face directly, so he only knew the vague features—feminine face, short stature—but Rei had one unmistakable hallmark: the Gryphon at his side.
Zboz would have no trouble recognizing someone accompanied by a Gryphon as Rei, and Adria wanted to avoid sparking a major commotion at this stage if she could help it.
(This is supposed to be a festival. I need to build a proper stage for it.)
Lost in thought as she walked, Adria eventually reached a less populated area deeper within the slum.
This far in, it wasn't just the half-hearted drifters loitering at the entrance. Here, there were people strong enough to be called first-rate.
People who had been expelled from the surface world for one reason or another and had fallen to this place.
Precisely because they were such people, they would fight with the desperation of those with nothing left to lose if it ever came down to it.
(Yes—someone like this man, for instance.)
As if he had been waiting for her arrival, a single man stepped into view.
His entire face was obscured by a thick beard, making it impossible to guess his age.
Since Adria had only been out on a shopping run, the only weapon she carried was a spare longsword.
If it came to a fight with this man, she would probably……no, she would definitely struggle.
There was even a real chance she could lose.
"This way."
……That is, if it came to a fight.
"It's been a while, Dias. So Zboz and the others made it out too, huh? Well, I got caught the second I stepped out of the shop, so I guess that was inevitable."
Thinking back to when she was captured, there was no avoiding the fact that the shop would be investigated.
Until now, it had flown under the radar as just another run-of-the-mill establishment. But once it drew attention, all sorts of inconvenient details were bound to surface. And more than anything, if the interior was thoroughly searched, the odds of something that should never be found being discovered were dangerously high.
Weighed against that risk, getting out while they were still free to move and before the shop could be combed through was hardly a bad call.
"Zboz looked pretty unhappy about it. Since they had to flee in a hurry, he apparently couldn't bring out almost any of his already-scarce materials."
"I figured as much. I mean, part of the reason I went shopping in the first place was to run an errand for him. ……An alchemist without materials is just an ordinary man, I suppose."
As Adria chatted with Dias while they walked, he responded with casual indifference.
"It's not like he's completely helpless. An alchemist is still a mage. He can handle magic to a reasonable degree, and Zboz specifically has a few magic items he keeps on his person at all times."
"Even so, alchemists aren't cut out for combat. ……More importantly, was it just Zboz who was upset? What about Paul?"
An image of a large, quiet man—someone who brought to mind a still mountain—flashed through Adria's mind.
It was genuinely baffling why someone like that was working as an operative for the Bestia Empire.
With Paul's shop no longer usable, recovering the many magic items that had been stored there was virtually impossible.
No matter how she looked at it, he had been caught in the crossfire because of their group's actions, and Adria did feel at least somewhat guilty about it.
But Dias, seemingly unbothered by Adria's concern, spoke plainly.
"I can't say what's going through his head, but from the outside at least, he doesn't seem particularly angry. Quiet as always."
"Is that so. I'd like to do something for him as soon as I can, though."
Talking as they walked, the pair eventually arrived at their destination.
From the outside, it looked no different from the other buildings standing at a distance—half-ruined, as if it might topple over at the slightest disturbance.
But the hideout Adria had prepared for emergencies was hardly going to be exactly what it appeared.
It might look like an abandoned ruin, but that was merely a facade.
Adria and Dias entered the building without any visible tension.
Inside, they found furniture adequate enough for comfortable daily living.
Unlike the other structures in the area, it wasn't littered with garbage. It was undeniably far more livable than the cheap inns scattered around the surface.
Two people were already inside the room.
One was Zboz—Adria's partner in this affair—and the other was Paul, the magic item shop owner who had been sheltering Adria and Zboz.
Just as Dias had relayed on the way over, Zboz wore an extremely displeased expression.
Adria had already been told the reason was that he'd been forced to abandon most of his materials at the shop, but even so, Zboz's sour mood was hardly something she found amusing.
Compared to Zboz, Paul showed not the slightest sign of distress.
Zboz had lost a great number of materials but had at least managed to salvage the truly rare ones. Paul, on the other hand, had lost every last magic item in his shop.
By any reasonable logic, Paul should have been the one feeling the greater shock.
Yet watching him from the sidelines, he barely seemed affected at all.
If anything, he looked the same as he always did.
Finding Paul's composure vaguely amusing, Adria was nonetheless reminded that she couldn't afford to linger here indefinitely.
"Do you know why I got caught?"
None of the three people present answered.
Naturally. When Adria had been seized, Paul was inside the shop and Zboz was in the hidden underground room. As for Dias, he had been in the slum district the entire time. None of them had any way of knowing how she had been captured.
Seeing that no one could offer an answer, Adria sighed and spoke herself.
"The smell. That incident with the spot where the censer was placed. The stench of decay was apparently still lingering, and the Gryphon caught it."
The moment those words left her mouth, Zboz's gaze turned razor-sharp.
"Does that mean Rei was there?"
"Yes, that would be the case."
"……I see. To think my enemy was right there, and we fled from that shop. That was a mistake."
"That's not the point. For now, use this, Zboz. It should at least be enough to mask the stench of decay."
As Adria held out the perfume for him, Zboz opened his mouth to protest that this wasn't the time—but before he could get the words out, another man slipped into the building.
Adria discreetly reached for her weapon, but the newcomer paid her no mind. He walked straight to Dias and whispered something in his ear.
Hearing the report, Dias clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Looks like we have guests."
Who that referred to required no thought at all.