Gaius was holding his chest while Lucillus and Antoninus helped the rest of his team lie down and passed healing potions around.

“I’ve had enough of those, Lucillus. I have to wait for them to be effective again. Give them to the younger ones,” Gaius pointed to two recruits.

Their faces were still disfigured by the horror of being sealed in a Dungeon with no way out. To that very moment, Gaius was still unsure of what had just gone down.

“Care to tell me what’s just happened?” he nudged Lucillus as everyone finally settled down. The other guard was looking around, noticing a few sentinels of the Watch having spotted them and making quick rounds to alert the Captain about this new development.

“Joey’s a very strong [Mage], it seems,” Lucillus slowly flopped on the ground, dead-tired. “He can summon a [Light Blade] capable of shearing through monsters with ease. He hacked our way through the hordes of monsters up to you. And after seeing that hellish place, I still don’t really understand what could be so valuable about it to spend months there.”

Gaius frowned while hearing about Joey. He truly couldn’t reconcile the image of the jolly baker who talked smack and got smacked by girls with a powerful mage who could almost solo his way through a place that gave them nightmares.

“There are hidden pathways where loot is stored. This whole mine was built on top of an ancient burial ground. And the Skraktalosias are supposed to be the first obstacle only. They will probably change the threat level of this place. The mines tapped into some sealed corridors built by adventurers way before we went down there. Judging by some of the corpses and failed enchantments we found, I’d say it’s been at least a couple hundred years.”

Lucillus widened his eyes.

For a moment, Joey was forgotten.

“Two hundred years ago, Amorium barely existed.”

“They were Human corpses, Lucillus. And some looked even older. Whatever is down there, it’s not just valuable, but also extremely dangerous.”

“Idiots!” a voice thundered as a huge Elf rode a horse toward them.

“Lucillus! Antoninus! What in the name of the World’s Tree is happening here?!” Captain Drusillus’s face was red. He was so angry that all the veins on his face were popping and beating like massive bass drums.

Antoninus stood up, looked around, and sat down again.

The poor man couldn’t be bothered after having just risked his life.

“Captain,” Lucillus stood his ground while the man dismounted the horse, furious.

“Gaius?” the [Captain] looked at the man for a second before locking an – if possible – angrier gaze onto Lucillus. “You went in and took the adventurers out? Do you realize you are going to be—”

A huge tremor ran through the ground, so loud a few people fell over.

“What was that?!” Captain Drusillus roared.

The man did not possess the cold gait a military commander should.

“Joey probably did something,” Antoninus said while taking out a meaty sandwich from his bag of holding.

“The Human?!”

Captain Drusillus looked like an Elf on the verge of losing it.

“You defected my orders because of the Human?!” the Elf’s deep voice could not conceal his contempt for the baker who had infiltrated his town.

Suddenly, the entrance stone of the mine was torn down, and a figure emerged heroically, princess-carrying an unconscious person. A cloud of dust covered most of the two silhouettes as they slowly approached the group.

“That’s cool,” Antoninus declared while shielding his sandwich from the dust cloud.

Every adventurer looked in admiration at Joey, convinced that the man had somehow blown up the mine and rescued Vilith in the process. That was the most logical conclusion after the secretly-super-strong baker had come to their rescue.

However, what they did not see coming was Vilith carrying a pant-less Joey like a princess. The man had acid wounds on his legs and had clearly been out for a while.

“Vilith!” Gaius painfully got up and went over to the woman. “What happened?!”

She gently laid Joey down on the grass in his underwear and dusted her hands off before answering.

“This man killed the mother of the Skraktalosias, Gaius. This man, right here.”

Gaius saw respect on the woman’s face that not even he had ever earned. But Joey just did something so stupid and idiotic that only someone of her kind could appreciate.

However, he had broken the law.

“That damn Human!” Captain Drusillus snarled while walking toward the passed-out baker on the ground. “Guards! With me! Arrest this—”

Vilith stepped forward and, to everyone’s surprise, punched Drusillus in the throat. The move was so sudden and unexpected that the [Captain], who wasn’t wearing any protective enchantment at the moment, got whooped right to the ground.

“If someone touches Joey, I’ll skewer them on a pole.”

There was no shouting, no screaming.

Vilith was clearly dead-tired, completely out of fuel. But damn everything in the world if she would let some spineless Elf touch a man worth sharing a meal with, the bravest of her kind.

The [Guards] ran to the woman, but her aura was something else. She had just punched the [Captain] silly, and no one dared to make a sudden move. Spears and swords were out, but no one advanced.

Four figures appeared in the distance—three on two legs and the last on four.

Gaius stood by Vilith’s side, even though he could barely hold himself up. And so did every other member of his team. Without Joey, they would have all been dead. Some of them were not keen on getting on the wrong side of the law, but no one was going to cross Gaius and Vilith.

“Human, I’ll have you arrested with that idiot of a kid,” Captain Drusillus slowly rose, a dark frown on his face. He was seething, but he was now much colder than before. The frenzy had boiled over, transforming into a poisonous gas he was inhaling straight from the source.

“Captain!” a deep voice came from behind the guards and their Captain. A silver-haired Elf was in the company of two women, both past their prime but still hard enough not to be intimidated by the scene.

“The homeless man? Agostina? And Julia?”

Agostina and her sister, a woman in charge of the treasury of the Adventurers’ Guild. A couple of very well-known Elves in Amorium. Agostina owned a good chunk of the real estate in the city, and Julia could pull many strings among adventurers.

What the homeless old man was doing there with his weird dog was beyond Drusillus, though.

What the hell was happening?