Meeting Flight's gaze, I tried to give a friendly smile.

  Judging from the way his eyes shook, it probably didn't seem very friendly.

  Anyway, I had figured out an idea to handle the situation in a clean way.

  'Making up bullshit should do the trick.'

  I finished up the soup the porter had cooked before walking over to Flight.

  He was talking to the three blonde women in his party, though they paused as soon as I began approaching.

  They looked at me strangely whilst waiting for my words.

  "Hey, could I speak to you in private for a moment?"

  "Anything you want to say to him can be said to all of us."

  Before Flight could respond, one of the women clinging to him spoke on his behalf.

  Her tone was quite rude, but it didn't particularly matter to me.

  "Well, it's quite an important matter, I assumed he was the leader of the party, so I thought it would be best to talk to him... but if he's not the leader, I guess it's fine."

  "No, it's fine, you're right, I'm the leader of the party, so you can talk to me."

  As expected for a single man in a party of three women, he had some ego.

  We walked a small distance until we were out of earshot from everyone else.

  "So, go on then, what did you want to talk about?"

  What I was about to say was a gamble, but I had confidence it would work.

  "At the rate you're going at, you'll fail the test."

  First, I began with a vague statement.

  Flight responded as expected, donning a confused expression.

  "Test?"

  "Yeah, you know, the one where you're supposed to mess with me."

  Honestly, I wasn't sure if he was ordered to kill me or injure me or whatever else, so I chose a broad word.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The man in front of me remained silent, though I could tell his guard had risen to its maximum.

  "Just think for a second, why would a guild like Flame order you to do something as pathetic and dishonorable as that?"

  He clearly seemed tense, slightly chewing his lip.

  "So... you're telling me you knew?"

  "Yeah, of course, Corsen told me to play this role from the beginning, but honestly I don't like things like this, so I thought I'd just tell you."

  "Wait, wait, how is this supposed to be a test? Aren't you just trying to save your own skin?"

  His hand moved to the hilt of the sword on his waist, but I showed no reaction.

  The fact that he was asking me questions already meant that I had gotten into his head.

  "Don't you know anything about Flame? We value loyalty and honor above all else, so before we invite new members, we do things like this to see if you have suitable personalities."

  Actually, I had no idea what Flame valued or what they didn't value.

  "That makes sense... But... We. You're saying you're in the guild?"

  I scratched my head whilst making a slightly flustered expression.

  "Well... I'm just a new inductee, but yeah, I'm in the guild."

  I could see the hand over his sword return to its original position.

  "Okay, let's say this is true, I have two questions."

  "Go ahead."

  I maintained confidence in all my replies.

  Shamelessness was a must have in this situation.

  "Let's say me and my party really did attack you, I don't think you're strong enough to defend yourself so... what would you do? Would you really just get crippled?"

  This was a question I had expected, but my answer was questionable at best.

  Lowering the volume of my voice, I pointed back over my shoulder.

  "Don't look but... see the porter back there? He's actually a B rank... If you guys tried anything, he'd have interfered in an instant."

  Flight's mouth hung open for a moment, before breaking out into a smile.

  Smacking his fist against his palm, it seemed as if he had convinced himself of some nonsense.

  "Aha! I knew it, that guy was way too well built to be a porter."

  Honestly, I only said what I said because the porter seemed to be well built, but as far as I could tell, he literally just happened to be a porter with a good build.

  "Then, the next question would be why? Why reveal this to me even though I was planning to betray you?"

  "Ah, how could I not, seeing the love between your teammates and yourself? I'm sure you only considered Corsen's proposal out of desperation, right?"

  This was frankly a bullshit answer, but Flight was clearly already convinced.

  His blue eyes shone with gratitude before he bowed his head.

  "Yes, yes, that's right... I tried so hard to get noticed by a guild... who would've known. I'm sorry for previously disrespecting you, Outis."

  Raising his head, it seemed he had a newfound respect for me.

  At that moment, I wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but I had to continue the act.

  "Yeah, let's try our best from now on, Flight. Oh, and also, don't let the porter know that anything is off. I wasn't supposed to have told you this, so we'll both be screwed if he reports it to the higher ups."

  "Yes, of course, my lips are sealed!"

  With this, I felt that the situation should be able to resolve itself.

  I had gained his trust, and I could already guess that the women in his party would follow whatever decision he made.

  "I never would've guessed."

  We walked back to the main group with a considerably lighter atmosphere.

  His party mates looked at us with a confused expression, but Flight quickly called them to the side to explain the situation to them.

  As they left my vicinity, I couldn't help but smile widely.

  A few of the other adventurers looked at me weirdly, but it didn't matter.

  I had already won this battle.

  Now, all I had to do now was betray those bastards after the boss fight.