Two shadows scaled the sheer cliffs of Northground at tremendous speed, reaching the plateau at the summit. The moonlight illuminated the figures of a man and a woman.
One was a strikingly short, hunchbacked man dressed in black, wearing something resembling goggles over his eyes.
The other was a woman clad in remarkably revealing black attire, an eyepatch covering her left eye.
"Hey, Vinegar. No matter how you slice it, this place has gotta be a bust, right?"
The man with the goggles grumbled in dissatisfaction.
"Could beee!"
The woman with the eyepatch, Vinegar, replied cheerfully as she rolled a hard candy around on her tongue.
"Still, for that info broker to not leave even a scrap of a trail for our Kyou network over the past six months... That guy's definitely not right in the head."
"To think I'd actually agree with you on something. Seriously gross!"
The man with the goggles furrowed his brow.
"Then why are you in such a good mood? This is gonna be a total waste of effort, you know."
He leveled a half-lidded stare at her.
"Because, of course... I found a whole bunch of toys gathered together!"
Vinegar, the one-eyed woman, squirmed in delight, clutching her flushed cheeks with both hands.
"Ah, that settlement in the forest on the way here? Well, sure, for a backwater bumpkin town, they did look like they had some decent loot."
As the goggled man licked his lips, she snapped back playfully:
"Right, right! The women and children are my toys, so don't you dare take theeeem!"
She drew a knife from her hip, twirling it deftly around her fingers while offering a menacing smile.
"I won't! I couldn't care less about anything that won't fetch a pretty penny as treasure. Unless, of course, those women and brats happen to be worth a fortune."
"Heh... Pepper, are you saying you're gonna snatch them from little old meee?"
Still smiling, Vinegar's exposed eye flashed a dangerous, blood-red gleam. She caught the spinning hilt of her knife and let her posture go deceptively slack.
"Don't be stupid. We're Kyou, remember? Of course I'd take 'em by force."
Sharp blades extended from the fingertips of the goggled man, Pepper, as he dropped his already low frame into a predatory crouch.
"..."
"..."
The two glared at each other in tense silence for a moment before letting out synchronized sighs and stowing their weapons.
"Fine. I take all the treasure. I'll leave the women and brats to you. Deal?"
"No objections to thaaat."
Having reached an understanding, both wore eerie, self-satisfied grins.
"So? Sugar's last piece of intel was about a settlement of cat monsters, right?"
"Seems sooo. But from what I hear, this area wasn't even on the list of places Sugar stayed, thouuugh."
"Then it really is a wild-goose chase, isn't it?"
"Probablyyy. But what if—just what if, you know—those cat monsters are here, and they're the ones who killed Sugar? Wouldn't that be insane, seriouslyyy?"
"No matter how much of a scrub Sugar was, he was still Kyou. If a rare monster managed to kill him, capturing it as a slave would fetch an astronomical price. Bring it back home, and we'll be set for life."
"Indeed, indeed. With a haul like that, the captain would definitely consider Sugar's fuckup wiped cleaaan."
"Damn straight. Now I'm actually fired up."
"Me toooo..."
The two set off across the sparsely vegetated expanse of Northground.