"My name is Persephone... Persephone Ther."
As the girl voiced her name, Rael thought for a while before introducing himself, "I'm glad to meet you, Persephone."
"My name is Rael Hamartia. Wouldn't it have been easier if you introduced yourself from the start instead of making me feel like a third-class villain? I'm at least a first-class, you know..."
Muttering the last sentence, it was only after that Rael managed to spot some excitement on Persephone's face; the girl seemed happy for a reason.
"Are you really Rael Hamartia?" She asked in an unsure tone.
Rael frowned for a bit before saying, "Yes. Why would I need to lie about my name?" What Rael didn't know yet was that Persephone was surprised for another reason.
"Are you kidding me? You're the number one on the top 1000 Rankings! How could I have known what you look like or things like that? Of course, I'm surprised."
Persephone just mentioned something that Rael forgot about: the top 1000 Rankings.
"Hmm, I'm number one? I didn't check the Rankings since last night. Speaking of which, it's about to get dark."
"You said you were going to wash yourself in the river. I think you should go now. I'll stay here with your companions."
Saying so, Rael found a tree and leaned his back on it before closing his eyes. He was going to check the rankings and see what changed about it.
Persephone was stunned. She didn't expect the number one on Earth, for now, to act like this. He was truly strange.
"Alright then, I'm going. You can accompany my friends until then, not beasts, friends," said Persephone with an angry tone. She seemed upset about Rael calling her companions 'beasts.'
'At least, they're better than humans, hmph!' thought an angry Persephone before disappearing from Rael's field of vision.
'What a weird girl. She doesn't look to be younger than 20 or 21, yet she trusts a stranger she just met.'
Shaking his head, Rael quickly checked the rankings to see why she was so surprised. 'Check Achievement Points Ranking.'
Top 1000:
1. Rael Hamartia - 134 Points
2. Dia Kosmos - 53 Points
3. Persephone Ther - 47 Points
4. Manuel Gonzales - 42.5 Points
5. Fiona Solaris - 41 Points
6. Christian Church - 41 Points
7. Kai Hoshizaki - 40 Points
8. Lia Hoshizaki - 40 Points
9. Andrea Florenzi - 39.5 Points
10. Ludwig Pope - 39.5 Points
'Hmm, I have double the second-place points. No wonder Persephone was so surprised. I bet she wouldn't want to mess with this villain in the future.'
Rael chuckled a bit, Persephone's companions around him putting a bit of distance between themselves and Rael. He was a weird human even by their standards after all...
It's been around twenty minutes since Persephone went to the river to wash herself, before barely coming back; her hair was still wet.
With her hood nowhere to be seen, Rael could appreciate her beautiful doll-face even more.
Seeing Rael staring like that at her, Persephone couldn't help herself from doubting the man's intentions.
'He couldn't possibly be after my body, right? Since he may think that he could take me anytime, this is quite scary...'
Blushing a bit, Persephone tried to ignore Rael's curious gaze and sat down beside him, trying to get to know him a bit better.
"So Rael, what's your plan? What do you want to achieve with your alliance?" These two basic questions earned Persephone a deep gaze, one that made her think that she shouldn't have asked that.
"For now, I'm not sure I should tell you about my plans in detail. I think it would be better for us to get to know each other before going into details."
Said Rael, trying to appear a bit mysterious in front of Persephone.
He didn't really want to tell her that this entire Apocalypse was orchestrated by powerful beings that wanted to enslave them, right?
Not to mention anything about his uncommon, crazy, insane, chaotic... plan.
"Rael, I'm not a cute girl that needs protection. At least not yet. If we are going to start an alliance between us, you need to be truthful with me. I don't want to do anything wrong like killing innocent people for fun or something like that."
"At the same time, if your plan differs from what I just mentioned, then please enlighten me about it. Anyway, I decided I want to travel with you already, so no matter what you want to do, I'll see for myself if I can follow or not."
Not expecting such a response from Persephone, Rael saw her in a new light. She wasn't the same frail and weak girl that she seemed to be when he was threatening her to kill her companion; now she was a mature girl in her 20s, one who seemed to be smarter than she looked.
With a serious gaze, Rael kept looking into Persephone's eyes, seeing that she didn't remove her eyes from him, Rael opened his mouth to speak, "It's like this..."
For half an hour, Rael narrated what he saw since he came here, his experiences in the Village, and he also repeated exactly what he heard from Reonald about Ceria and the Apocalypse.
At the end, he said what his plan was, what he wanted to achieve; things that shocked Persephone even more than what she heard until now.
"Y-You...! You're crazy! If God ever existed, I swear on his name that you're crazy! No, that's a compliment for you; you're..."
Not willing to hear Persephone's blabbering anymore, Rael simply watched her while trying his best to pretend he didn't hear her words.
After seeing that she calmed down, Rael once again opened his mouth and asked, "So? What do you say about my plan?"
"I'm in." Surprisingly enough, Persephone smiled a bit when she said this. It seemed that she also had a loose screw in her head, just like Rael.
"Oh, right! I forgot to ask before, what's your class? I'm guessing you also have a Unique Class or something."
"Divine Tamer, that's the name of my class. As you can see, it allows me to tame different beasts and life forms and transform them into my loyal companions; my friends, at least for now..."
A bit vague at the end, Persephone asked back, "What's your class, Rael?"
"Chaos Adept." When Rael said that, Persephone couldn't stifle her laugh anymore, "Haha! That's so fitting for someone like you!"
Watching Persephone laughing while holding his stomach, Rael's expression darkened, 'Why is this brat laughing at me?'
Despite only a few years between them, Rael dared to call Persephone a brat. Truly evil.