It was a familiar voice and when Ellis turned around, he saw a familiar face. Furrowing his brow, he hesitantly asked, “You… do you really know the way?”

The newcomer in front of him was short and skinny. He had a head of scraggly hair and wore a single loincloth around his groin. It was the child from the Commerce square.

The boy nodded his head, but he did not elaborate.

“No, no, no,” Grisella shook her head. Her face contorted into something that revealed half shock and half denial. “This kid, I don’t know who he is, but isn’t he a bit too young?” Grisella whispered to Ellis. “In the first place, who is he?”

“Ah, he’s a kid that I met,” Ellis spoke with uncertainty. Even he was a bit skeptical about this whole situation. While he did ask him for a guide, this was certainly not what he meant. The last thing he had expected was for the kid to offer himself up like this.

“Kid, what’s your name?” Ellis turned back to the boy and asked.

“Hal-Wrynn.” The boy answered.

“I’m Ellis. This is Ena.” Ellis quickly introduced themselves. Since Grisella was rather famous around here, he did not bother to do the same for her.

“Wrynn?” Grisella unconsciously frowned. It was a somewhat familiar name, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint why she found it so familiar. A vague sense of recognition. A far-off memory too far off to recall. Irritating. It was very irritating.

For a few seconds, silence filled the air. Hal-Wrynn nervously shuffled in his spot, before he pushed on, “So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?”

Ellis struggled to respond. There was a sort of moral ambiguity to this decision. This kid, Hal-Wrynn, he looked no older than ten. In fact, if going off his youthful face alone, he would probably be somewhere around seven or eight. If they really hired him to do this, wouldn’t that be basically the same as child exploitation? Bringing a kid to a dangerous place like a forest where death was a very strong possibility… was it morally okay for Ellis to agree to such a thing?

The man who was just making plans to kidnap someone suddenly fell into a moral quandary.

After he pondered over this issue for a bit, strangely enough, the tension in Ellis’s shoulders dwindled. The knot in between his brow also disappeared. Speaking logically and leaving out the outlier that was Grisella, the average age of his party was actually lower than Hal’s. Somewhere around the five or six range, give or take. Even Ellis himself, he was considerably younger than the boy.

Children can’t really exploit other children, right?

As such a strange string of thoughts buzzed through his head, Ellis eventually nodded.

Grisella hesitated. Although she was still a bit unsure of his decision, in truth, they really had no other choice left in the matter.

They were quite literally out of options. No one in the village would take them up on their offer. In fact, short of kidnapping someone, there really was nothing else they could do.

Ellis even briefly wondered whether or not he should just stop the war himself. Still, getting involved in something like a war between two tribes was certainly not something he wanted to do, especially one as morally ambiguous as this one.

If the Majins were the clear bad guys, then Ellis would have been less hesitant. Unfortunately, as it stands, it seemed more like a conflict of interest than anything else. What’s more, according to the Tribal Chief herself, it was the head warrior who kicked off the conflict. Such a revelation made the waters even muddier than they were before.

He really had no interest in involving himself with something so bothersome. Ellis simply wanted to see a legendary world tree. Why was something like that so hard to accomplish?

Although Hal’s offer came as a surprise, it was definitely better than the alternative.

“But, do you really know the way there?” Still, he couldn’t help but ask.

Grisella was the first to respond. “He should. As long as he truly is a squirrel tribesman, then he’ll know.”

“Is that so?” Despite her words, Ellis was not so easily convinced.

“Why are you doing this?” Grisella abruptly asked. For the most part, she was not one without suspicion. The solitary witch did not possess Ellis’s great strength, nor his sometimes-ridiculous confidence. As a relatively normal person, she had to be wary of traps and machinations.

As for this kid? Nothing screamed ‘SUSPICIOUS’ more than he did.

Hal-Wrynn frowned. “Is that necessary for you to know?”

Grisella nodded. “We’ll be risking our lives by trusting you in the forest. As a squirrel, you should know exactly just how dangerous that place is, especially for outsiders like us.”

He remained silent for a long time. Then, he said, “There’s…. there’s someone who I want to save.” The boy spoke with a voice barely above a whisper. “I can only do so at the other side of the river.”

Hal-Wrynn did not explain any further.

Just as Grisella was about to say something, Elis suddenly interrupted. “Well, if that’s your reason, then fine, but since this is not a one-sided deal, but rather a mutual exchange, don’t expect any payment from us. It will be your directions for our protection.”

A somewhat rueful smile stretched his lips. “After all, it’s why you came to us in the first place, right?”

Hal nodded his head without hesitation. “That works for me.”

Seeing his reaction, Ellis breathed out a light sigh. So, my earlier guess was right, huh?

The reason why the kid approached him back then, the reason why he suddenly volunteered as a guide, it was all so he could go to the river.

For some reason, Hal had something he wanted to achieve. Unfortunately, it was not something he could do alone. What’s more, the villagers likewise did not want to help. Left with no other choice, he naturally turned his eyes towards the outsiders. Ellis was the obvious alternative.

But what is he planning to do there? Whether it really was to save a person’s life, or if it was for some other reason, he couldn’t help but be curious. He also came to another conclusion. Without a doubt, that boy’s scheming something.

For the most part, Ellis was not overly concerned. As long as they get to the river, everything would work out fine. Whether the boy betrays them or throws a nuke right in his face, as long as they get to where they needed to get, then nothing else really mattered.

With his nod, Grisella also agreed, albeit a bit hesitantly.

“Good. With this, I’m your guide.” The faint trace of a smile stretched his lips. “Don’t worry, you can trust me. I can take you there, no problems.” He suddenly paused for a moment. “Ah, we have to leave tonight though.”

Ellis raised his brow. “Why?”

Instead of replying, Hal looked up towards the canopy. He watched as a golden light illuminated the leaves above. Without hesitation, he turned around and ran away.

“You— hey!” Ellis shouted in surprise.

“I have to make preparations!” The boy responded without stopping. “Let’s meet back up when the sky darkens! Same spot!”

With those words, Hal-Wrynn jumped onto a nearby bridge and disappeared into the distance.

The group stood there for a moment, half surprised.

Ellis let out a strained cough. “He, he does that pretty frequently.”

“…”

After a few seconds of silence, Grisella turned towards him and stated, “He doesn’t seem very reliable.”

He ruminated over her words before he nodded. “No, no he doesn’t.”

“Do you think everything will work out fine without incident?”

“Absolutely not,” Ellis answered with a straight face. “That boy is definitely scheming something.”

“Eh!?” Grisella widened her eyes in shock. Such harsh words definitely weren’t what she was expecting. Rather, she half expected him to reassure her. A familiar look of panic colored her face. “He’s scheming something? No, more importantly, you knew yet you still agreed to it anyway!?”

“Geh, you're loud.” Ellis instinctively covered his ears. “Don’t get so worked up over it. It’s not something I can’t handle.”

“That’s not the point here, you shouldn’t go playing along with another person’s schemes, especially when it comes to something like this!”

“You’re overexaggerating.”

“You’re the one whose underexaggerating this whole thing! The place we’re going to is dangerous! One wrong move and we’ll die! We’ll really die for real!”

“He’s just a kid, what harm could he possibly do?” Again, Ellis reasoned.

“A lot! He can do a lot!” No matter how many times she screamed, Ellis simply did not seem to care. “Please don’t toy around with our lives like this!”

Eventually, he caved. Ellis breathed out a sigh. “Fine, fine. For now, we’ll go uncover his schemes. Are you happy?”

“Thank you.” Grisella finally breathed out a sigh of relief. “So, how are we going to do that? Are we just going to ask the child?”

Ellis shook his head. “If we do that, then he’ll probably quit being our guide. We need another method.” He really did not want to go through the trouble of looking for another guide again. It’s mostly why he accepted the scheming kid’s offer in the first place. After a few seconds, he responded, “well, if we can’t get the kid to squeal, we can always just ask someone else.”

“???”

Grisella titled her head in confusion. Ellis ignored her. The wheels in his head were already turning. Without him realizing, a somewhat amused smile stretched his lips.

****

Mira-Moore was a young squirrel woman who lived near the outskirts of the village.

She worked as a barterer. Her main job consisted of taking a commodity from one client and trading it for another commodity from another client. Basically, she was a glorified middle man. In return for her services, she’d get a cut of profit from both sides. It wasn’t a very lucrative job, but it kept her fed and alive.

Usually, she worked in the Commerce square, but on rare occasions, she would go out and make personal house visits.

After she finished her last transaction, Mira-Moore quickly packed up her things and began the long trek back home. By the time she set off, the sun had already set.

A pink halo illuminated the village. The light was somewhat dim, but that did not really bother her all that much. Squirrels were naturally adept at seeing in the dark. It wasn’t to the point of nocturnal, but they were generally better than most creatures within the forest.

The journey from the Commerce square to her house was rather time-consuming. It did not help that the village was eerily quiet. Ever since the war, not a lot of people ventured out at night. Even before then, squirrels were generally more active during the day. The war only extremized this tendency.

Right now, the village felt like a ghost town.

The young woman unconsciously shivered. The empty bridge felt especially spooky tonight. Mustering up her courage, she hurried along the pathway.

Eventually, she reached a platform that contained a row of residential houses. Most of the houses were currently empty. This platform was well-known for the two-people families that lived on it. After the husbands left for war, the wives could not take living alone so most of them grouped together and set up a temporary communal style house.

Mira-Moore did not have that luxury. Unfortunately, she had yet to find a husband of her own, although, considering the current climate of the village, she felt this to be a blessing in disguise.

Just as she was about to pass the last house, someone suddenly grabbed her.

“!”

She instinctively tried to scream, but unfortunately, she quickly learned that she couldn’t. Someone had covered her mouth shut.

After a few minutes of struggling from both sides, she soon found herself sitting cross-legged behind a hut building. Her mouth had been gagged, while her hands were tied behind her back. Sweat dripped down the tip of her nose as fear and panic quickly filled her eyes.

Staring directly down at her were two faces, one man and one animal. For some reason, both of them were wearing crudely formed masks.

****

Ellis really went and kidnapped someone.

It was a somewhat risky decision, but nonetheless a necessary step.

Throughout their campaign for a guide, Ellis had felt this weird dissonance with all of the squirrels that they had talked to. They weren’t necessarily lying, just that, it felt as if they weren’t really telling the whole truth.

Elis had experienced something similar with the kids from his orphanage. Children tended to make mistakes, and sometimes, they did not want the adults to learn of those mistakes. When faced with such a dilemma, some choose to lie, while others choose to omit the truth. It wasn't all that hard to pick apart a child's lie, but the latter was a bit more difficult. The comfort of knowing that 'we didn't actually lie' was a strong one. It made the children more cunning, more convincing.

Still, Ellis eventually learned how to identify such cases.

Right now, the squirrels were like children. They were guilty, they knew they were guilty, yet they still tried to actively hide it away.

He had grown tired of the little charade that they were putting on, so rather than continuing to prance around the subject like this, he would much rather get straight to the point, even if it was through somewhat forceful means.

Of course, Grisella naturally tried to persuade him out of it, but if she was like the angel on his right shoulder, then Ena was the devil on his left. For some reason, that little fox goaded him along. Ellis was almost certain that Ena knew absolutely nothing regarding the current topic at hand. Still, she was adamant. She was even the one who picked their target.

Looking back on it now, he somewhat regretted his actions.

After all these years, her style of mischief had rubbed off on him. I need to be careful. I don’t want to get any worse than I already am. He mentally noted to himself.

Either way, it was too late to change things. After all, he already went ahead and kidnapped someone. He couldn't exactly take such a thing back.

Right now, his victim lay sprawled in front of him.

It was a young girl with bobbed hair. Like with most of the other squirrels within this village, she had tanned skin and wore a furry loincloth with a matching top. She was also fairly attractive, but that was only a coincidence.

The girl glanced up at him with fearful eyes. Ellis puffed up his chest and swaggered forward. He tried as hard as possible to look intimidating. Judging by the girl's reaction, it worked. Just as he was about to begin the interrogation, a loud shout suddenly reverberated through the air.

Ellis narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue. Damn, she finally caught up. He turned his head.

There, he caught sight of Grisella hurriedly running towards him. She looked just as panicked as when he had last left her.

“You idiot, I told you to wear a mask!” Ellis instantly berated. At the same time, he pointed to the mask that currently covered his face. “What are we going to do if they trace back our identities?”

“You’re the idiot! Like that stupid mask will work!” Grisella immediately countered. “We’re the only outsiders within this entire village! They’ll know full well that it’s us!”

“Ah,” Ellis’s eyes widened in realization. After a moment’s pause, he uncovered his mask. “I guess there’s really no point in this then.”

With his face revealed, there was definitely no turning back now.

On that note, Ellis scrunched up his brow, as he turned back around to his captive. How should I properly dispose of the body? Bury her alive? Cut her up into tiny pieces and hope the rest of the squirrels don’t find the pieces? I could also just take her with me and dump the body somewhere far away...

Of course, such thoughts only passed through his head for a few seconds. Right now, he had much more important things to do.

“Ellis, we really can’t go out and kidnap random people like this,” before he could do anything though, the voice of reason (Grisella) once again interrupted. “It’s, it’s immoral!”

Naturally, as a relatively normal law-abiding person, the solitary witch found it a bit difficult to do such a deplorable act. At the very least, she definitely shouldn't do it in a place where practically everyone knew her face.

Ellis ignored her protests and simply stared at the young girl beneath him.

Sweat dripped down his back. Right now, things were looking kind of bad. The girl’s original fear was quickly turning into utter confusion. If he wanted to go through with the interrogation, then he needed to do it now.

Still, he hesitated. In truth, he has never really interrogated anyone before.

Does the torture come before or after they reject my initial offer? After some thought, Ellis simply just shrugged his shoulders. I’ll just play it by ear.

For now, he decided to go with a standard ice-breaker. “Tell us what we want to know or face the consequences.”

...

To his surprise, the following interrogation went pretty smoothly. In the end, the information that he wanted to know wasn’t exactly a very well-kept secret. In the first place, this was already apparent by the fact that a random villager knew about it.

The reason for all the secrecy was due to a gag order set in place by the tribal chief. Apparently, it was to prevent any information from spreading to their enemies.

Luckily, this young woman wasn't very loyal to the Chief’s orders. She readily told them.

“So basically, there’s some sort of Majin base located on the other side of the river?” He skeptically questioned.

The girl frantically nodded his head.

"And you're sure this base is on the other side of the river?"

Again, she frantically nodded.

"And the base is filled with Majins?"

She nodded again. At this point, she was starting to get tired of Ellis's repetitive questions.

“I see…” Ellis sank into thought.

According to the captive, the Majin base had a connection with the silk-weaver incident that Ellis and Grisella had heard about earlier from the Apothecary lady. The Majin base was where they took the captives. Due to the distance and danger, nobody was willing nor able to rescue the captives.

He suddenly thought about Hal-Wrynn. Does he want us to help save the prisoners or is he luring us there with malicious intentions?

When Grisella first heard of this base camp, she immediately began to worry. As for Ellis, he simply thought of it as a fairly interesting development. Unbeknownst to him, a small smile twisted his lips.

“Since it seems kind of amusing, I’ll play along for now.”

“You most certainly will not play along with it.” Naturally, Grisella immediately shot down his plans. “First of all, a Majin base is already bad enough, but there are other, more dangerous threats that lurk within the other side of the river. Second, it's not a very smart idea to travel through this forest with someone with clearly sketchy intentions. Rather than ‘playing along’, we should be actively preparing a plan!”

“A plan?” Ellis tilted his head. Unfortunately, his brain was devoid of any plans. Rather than a plan, wasn’t it simpler to just blast everything away when the moment comes? That’s how Ellis had lived up until now. He didn’t really feel all that inclined to change such a successful formula.

Still, having a plan was always better than not having one. After some thought, he nodded his head. Ellis turned to Grisella, “okay, then you come up with a plan.”

“Me? Really?” Grisella furrowed her brow. Even before she could spit out her second word, the gears within her head were already turning.

Seeing her hard at work, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

A part of him was somewhat expectant. The Majin base, the dangers of the river, a ten-year-old’s carefully crafted schemes, Grisella’s own hasty planning, it all seemed so… interesting. At the very least, it certainly beats aimlessly wandering a forest for five years. Right now, he could quite confidently say that he was having fun.

Either way, if things get too annoying, I can always just blow them all away.

Ellis smiled to himself. Living in another world was truly a blessing.

....

Ah, after the interrogation, they returned the poor girl back to the pathway. Aside from being a little shell shocked, she was safe and sound with nary a scratch on her. This was only the natural course of action. After all, Ellis wasn't a monster.