Around the time Rei and the others had fallen asleep near the Birth Tower... a certain figure was moving about in the Slum District of Gilm.
"Haa, haa, haa, haa... how about it? Hey, how about it? Is this good? Here, is this a good spot? Come on, come on, come on!"
"Gobueh... s-stop, please... I was wrong... so please, no more..."
The man's face had swollen from the repeated blows, rendering him barely able to speak.
Nevertheless, the person straddling him kept swinging their fists down again and again, seemingly reveling in every strike.
Judging by appearance alone, the face would be aptly described as lovely.
In the moonlight, however, that lovely face was now caked thickly with splattered blood.
Precisely because her natural features were so delicate, the sight struck all the more terror into anyone watching.
The blood splattered across that lovely person's—Francois's—face came not only from the man she was straddling and pummeling.
It was spray from multiple men lying unconscious around them.
"My, you were the one who attacked me first, weren't you? And yet you don't want to be on the receiving end yourself... isn't that a bit unreasonable?"
So saying, Francois struck the man once more.
He pleaded repeatedly for her to stop, but his cries went entirely unheeded... and a single blow from her fist knocked him out cold.
"Good grief, how pathetic. Well, at any rate, I've secured a certain number of people with this... but what should I do now? Dragging them along would be a hassle. Should I just wait for them to wake up?"
Muttering to herself, Francois weighed her options.
She had come to the Slum to use herself as bait, luring out men just like these.
Given what lay ahead, the more meat shields, the better.
...That said, even if she ordered these unconscious men to attack Rei, she doubted they would readily comply.
(In that case, I'll need to make them understand more firmly. But even if they go along with it for now, whether they'll truly follow through to the very end is another matter entirely.)
To the men Francois had beaten into unconsciousness, the very thought of defying her was likely inconceivable.
But that was only assuming things proceeded normally.
...If it were an order no more serious than picking a fight with some random passerby, the men would probably comply without protest.
But what if that person were Rei, accompanied by Set?
Anyone who truly understood the situation would never want to make an enemy of Rei.
What awaited anyone who attacked him was an obvious—and grisly—fate.
Considering all of that, even if ordered to attack Rei, those who would comply... wouldn't necessarily be zero, but it was clear they wouldn't be many.
If so, this particular matter clearly required a different approach entirely.
The problem was that no such approach presented itself.
Yet the absence of a method did not mean Francois had the luxury of giving up.
If this were only about herself, she might have surrendered readily enough.
But with her brother's life hanging in the balance, abandoning the task was simply not an option.
That was why, even believing it to be impossible, she had to find a way—now.
As she pondered this...
"Who's there!?"
With a sharp cry, Francois's gaze snapped toward the shadow of a building.
"Hoh hoh hoh. I never expected to be found. Well done, well done indeed."
What emerged from the shadow was a heavily obese man.
A man who, by no stretch of imagination, could have fit behind a building.
His voice made clear he was male, but his face was caked in the kind of makeup a street performer might wear, making it impossible to discern his actual features.
Even so, looking at him now, one thing was unmistakable: he was a person of real power.
"I'll ask once more. Who are you?"
Francois fixed the man with a sharp, murderous glare.
But the obese man seemed utterly unconcerned by her hostility, simply smiling in silence.
Grik. The sound of grinding molars echoed from Francois's mouth.
The reason she didn't immediately attack was simple: the man before her was clearly different from the norm. At the very least, she understood he was nothing like the unconscious men scattered around her.
He had appeared from a spot where a man with a balloon-like physique had no business hiding.
This was clearly no ordinary concealment. Magic, a skill, a Magic Item... or perhaps something else entirely.
Francois couldn't determine the exact cause, but one thing was certain: the man before her was no ordinary person.
That was precisely why she couldn't recklessly lash out.
"Now then, you asked how I came to marry my wife."
"...That's not what I asked."
Francois was momentarily caught off guard by the man launching into a topic completely unrelated to their current situation, but she recovered at once.
To begin with, the very idea that this man was married was surprising enough on its own.
To Francois, anyone choosing such a man as a marriage partner could only have questionable taste.
At the very least, she would never want to marry a man like this herself.
Of course, Francois still had copious amounts of blood splattered across her own face from the unconscious men, and no matter how lovely her features were, the number of men who would want to marry someone in such a state... well, it probably wasn't zero, but it certainly wasn't many.
"Oh, was it not? Then shall I tell you the story of how I first met my wife?"
"...If you're just fooling around, could you leave? As you can see, I'm busy. I still have plenty to do, and I don't have time to humor someone like you."
Francois could tell that the man before her was no ordinary figure of power.
But understanding that didn't mean she would let him steal her time—nor did she have such leisure to spare.
That was why she told him flatly: if he had no business, he should leave. But the man simply let out an amused laugh.
"Fo fo fo. Against Crimson Rei, no amount of men like these would mean a thing."
The man's laughter shifted slightly in tone, but Francois paid it no notice, fixing him instead with a gaze sharp enough to kill.
"How do you know I'm targeting Rei?"
"Well now, I wonder why. Though if I may say one thing... that information is the sort anyone could easily gather, if they set their mind to it."
Grik.
Once again—no, even harder than before—the sound of grinding molars leaked from Francois's mouth.
Tripala, the man who held a contract with Francois, could be described as a small-timer, if anything.
But precisely because he was a small-timer, he knew well enough not to carelessly leak information.
Moreover, Francois was Tripala's strongest piece in his rise to power.
She couldn't imagine him leaking intelligence about his most valuable asset.
"What's your purpose?"
"Why, our goal and yours are one and the same. Given that, I thought perhaps we might join forces. By the way, the reasons behind this concern you to some extent as well—so what do you say? Shall you hear me out?"
Put that way, Francois had no choice but to accept.
"Fine. So what do we do now? I'd like to accomplish my objective as quickly as possible."
"Let me see... for now..."
So saying, the man floated upward lightly. Or perhaps he had simply leapt—but to Francois, watching with his balloon-like physique, it genuinely looked as though he had flown. It looked that way, but...
Squash.
The man landed squarely on the head of one of the unconscious men lying at a distance from Francois.
In stark contrast to that nimble leap, the impact of his landing must have been tremendous.
The head crumpled effortlessly, scattering brains, blood, and bone fragments across the surroundings.
"Having others overhear my conversation would be troublesome, so I disposed of him. You don't mind, do you? What terrible luck. If he'd stayed unconscious a little longer, there would have been no need for him to die."
Despite having just taken a life, the man showed not the slightest trace of guilt.
That said, considering this was the Slum District, it wasn't particularly unusual.
In this world to begin with, the price of a human life was cheap.
For those living in the Slum District, it was cheaper still.
Perhaps that was why Francois also showed no particular concern that a man she had defeated had just been killed.
"It can't be helped. But if we cause any more of a commotion here, others might wake up. Let's move somewhere else. You can explain the details there."
"Hya hya hya. How very kind of you."
The man's laughter changed for the third time, but Francois paid his demeanor no mind whatsoever.
"Think what you like. I don't have time. I need to take Rei's life as quickly as possible. I decided it would be better to accept your proposal in order to achieve that, and that's the only reason I'm here."
"I see, I see. Well then, since idling here would be a waste, let us be off."
With that, the man departed.
He made no effort whatsoever to check whether Francois was following.
If she chose not to come along, that would be perfectly fine—or so he likely thought.
Naturally, for Francois, with her brother's life on the line, not going was never an option.
Things had deviated wildly from her original plan of gathering meat shields, but she told herself the change was for the better.
Following after the man, roughly thirty minutes passed.
They arrived at a location deep within the Slum District.
It went without saying, but even within the Slum District, the level of danger varied by area.
In the outer parts—areas closer to the general town—the danger level wasn't all that high.
Of course, that was only relative to the Slum District as a whole. No matter how close to the outer edge, the Slum District was still the Slum District.
Compared to the ordinary streets of Gilm, it was clearly more dangerous.
Be that as it may, the man entered a two-story building tucked away in a secluded corner of the Slum.
Francois followed, keeping a wary eye on her surroundings.
For a building in the Slum District, it was relatively clean.
So thinking, Francois stepped inside—and in that instant, she quickly scanned the area.
Because beyond herself and the man before her, there were multiple presences all around.
Francois had confidence in her own abilities.
Enough skill to dispatch an average Adventurer with ease.
And yet she hadn't sensed a single one of them until she'd stepped inside.
"Hey, she noticed us, this girl. Daub brought her so I had expectations, but this is beyond what I imagined."
"Tch. All she did was notice us. She can't actually respond, can she? Is someone like that really going to be useful? The opponent is that Crimson, you know?"
"Oh, I like cute girls like this one. She seems to have real ability too, so I wouldn't worry."
"More importantly, I'm hungry. You said if we came to Gilm you'd feed us something good."
Voices rang out from every direction.
Francois realized that people of all ages and genders were present. She turned her gaze to the man named Daub who had brought her here, demanding an explanation.
Daub shrugged with an exaggerated gesture in response to her look, then spoke.
"Hmm, hmm. First, let me ask about one fundamental premise. Francois, are you aware that many Underground Organizations have been moving into Gilm?"
"Yes. But most of them failed to survive and were destroyed, weren't they? In other words, the people here are..."
Without letting Francois finish, Daub nodded and spoke.
"That's right. The people here have been dispatched by the emerging organizations that survived in this Gilm. And our goal is to kill Rei, Bearer of the Crimson Moniker. How about it? The same as your objective, isn't it? In that case, would you care to cooperate?"
Saying this with a smile, Daub extended his hand forward in an exaggerated, clown-like gesture.