"Why do you act like someone responsible for leading all those conscripts away, when you are here just to help them out?"
Leon spoke out his question with utmost confidence.
This statement of the question was the result of all the observations he concluded both in the forest and in the camp.
"Who are you?!" the girl called out. Her fingers nearly turned white from how strongly she gripped her short spear in one hand and a short sword in the other.
By pure coincidence, her set of weapons perfectly mirrored what Leon picked for his armaments for his mission. Or rather, she followed the same logic as the bloodmancer when picking up what kind of murder tools would be of the most use in the tight spaces within the forest.
"Judging from how you are clearly trying to help those people survive... And given how easily I can kill them..." Leon spoke out in a casual manner. He then put a short pause at the end of his two statements, hoping to raise the tension of the situation up a tiny notch.
Then, he openly smiled at the girl.
"All in all, it doesn't feel like a situation where you can be the one asking questions."
The girl's face tensed up as soon as she noticed the truth behind Leon's words. Yet, it was the deserters surrounding her that allowed terror to appear on their faces.
After all, in this debacle, they were the hostages, even if they were a few feet away from Leon and still held weapons in their hands.
For an unnervingly long moment, the two sides continued to seize each other up with their eyes. And after what seemed like an eternity, the girl finally lowered her weapon.
"I yield," she stated with a voice that hid a fair bit of fury.
'Well, no wonder,' Leon thought, barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes. 'She has to yield only because I'm shameless enough to take the people she wishes to protect hostage.'
Then, a small smug smile grew out of the corner of his lips.
'Little does she know, she is no match for me either way,' Leon thought, hiding his smirk and putting a cold, emotionless expression on his face instead.
"Then, I believe you owe me some answers," Leon stated, bringing both of his hands forward and crossing them over on his chest. At the same time, he didn't let go of the handle of his spear, displaying the intricate patterns all over its surface by keeping it close to his chest as well.
"I'm a gold-rank adventurer," the girl revealed, acting as if that alone should suffice for an answer.
Only when Leon failed to move even an inch for quite some time did the girl realize that her answer was far from enough.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, taking her sweet time to sigh it out a moment later.
"I took a request from a family that learned how their father and brother were tricked into conscription and then taken away to this forest," the girl revealed. "And as you could expect, they only realized it when the real conscription started in their town and the province officials announced they had nothing to do with the fake one that happened beforehand."
'It's just like Leynel believed it to be,' Leon thought, recalling the officer's attempts at figuring out the situation.
"Why didn't you bring them back home, then?" the bloodmancer asked, lowering the intensity of the coldness of his face and showing some genuine interest in the answers.
Yet, Leon fell right into the trap of his own obliviousness about the common sense of this world. And he realized it as soon as the girl's face froze in shock and utter disbelief.
"Sir... I don't know who you are, but mortals like us..." the girl attempted to answer. Then, she cut her words short and bit her lips. "I had my hands full trying to keep them alive. Even procuring food is a challenge here. I can't afford to bring them back through the forest," she revealed, shaking her head over her own powerlessness. "Not on my own. So I'm waiting for my team to return."
'A gold rank sounds like a big deal, but she can't bring those people through the forest on her own?' Leon thought, trying to make any sense of the situation. 'Is it because of the wildlife, or...?'
The bloodmancer took a deep breath to stop his emotions from appearing all over his face.
'Right, that makes sense,' he then thought, pressing his arms into his chest so hard it started to hurt. And then, he used his pain to mask the excitement that his own guess brought upon his soul.
"When will your team return?" Leon continued his line of questioning. And the more the girl answered, the weirder the situation became.
According to the girl, her team should arrive two days ago if not earlier. And yet, there was no sign of them anywhere around the places she went out to hunt for food.
'That means they either betrayed her, got lost, died to the wildlife, or were taken out by the factor that stops her from leaving on her own,' Leon summarised the situation after he exhausted all the questions he wanted to ask.
"I see..." he muttered, relaxing his body and raising one of his hands only to rest his chin on it as he fell deep into his own thoughts.
For a moment, the girl wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She saw no hints of the stranger really aiming to go through with his threats nor did she sense any bad aura from him.
And yet, for some strange reason, he still used the people she wanted to protect to threaten and then extract information from her.
Yet, as soon as some semblance of an idea started to appear in the girl's eyes...
"Well, there is nothing left for me to do here, then," Leon said out loud, lowering his eyes and turning around on the spot.
"Wha..." the girl opened up her mouth, baffled by the sudden and decisive movements of the man. "Wait!" she then shouted when Leon started to walk back towards the forest. "What are you going to do now?" she called out, asking a question despite acknowledging how she wasn't in a position to do so.
"I already found the missing recruits. And that's all my mission was about," Leon smoothly lied through his teeth, even shaking his shoulders to signify how little he cared.
'There is no telling whether she isn't one of those spies who orchestrated the entire thing,' he thought on the inside.
Leon saw the darkest parts of the human soul. And he wasn't going to discount the uncomfortable scenarios just because this particular girl looked like someone he used to love.
Yet, as he stepped into the forest and hid behind the line of trees, Leon couldn't stop himself from tightening his grasp over his weapon.
'All I did in the past was kill the good guys,' he thought, stopping in his tracks and raising his eyes towards the treetops of the forest. 'Maybe it's time for me to do one-eighty and take out the bad guys for a change?'