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"Yes. I dropped by a few days ago. Their prices were very high."

As the young ladies jumped onto the new topic that Laurene had brought up, Suzanne tapped the arm of the princess seated beside her and passed over a sealed envelope.

"From Sir Eris."

Hearing this, a look of surprise flashed across Laurene\'s eyes. This then quickly changed to realization as she spoke."

"I see. So that\'s why."

Laurene chuckled lightly as she accepted the letter and offered her thanks before flicking her fingers and causing it to disappear. She then stood up and walked over to her assigned seat, saying a few words of thanks to all the ladies present as the tea party officially began.

◇ ◇ ◇

Inter-City Freeway

Unnamed Abandoned Village Outskirts

Hobha

March 14th

Year 1052

A carriage surrounded by more than a dozen Knights with some on horseback and some on foot made its way down the freeway that led to the main City of Viscount Perhorn\'s territory, Dungeon City Osto.

Seated inside the carriage, were six people, with three of them being the Daughter of Viscount Perhorn herself, her maid and one of the female knights in her guard detail.

The other three were the group of adventurers who saved them from their earlier predicament, with one of them being a noble ranked higher than the Viscount, and the other two being his companions whose identities were not so simple either.

"Give us the details, from the very beginning.

And please try not to leave anything out because whatever is happening in Osto right now, might be related to why we\'re going there in the first place."

Pride spoke towards Viscount Perhorn\'s daughter, Leena, with a hint of impatience in her tone, something Evan believed was only natural, given that this \'Boss\' person that wanted her dead was most likely her brother\'s contractor.

Hearing this, Leena went silent for a moment, her eyes darting towards the back of Pride\'s palm and seeing the familiar-looking crest.

She then heaved a sigh in the next, before finally opening her mouth and beginning her story.

"About two months ago, a powerful adventurer named Terence Stickels emerged from the \'Tower of Avarice\', the main dungeon in the Perhorn Viscounty.

As soon as he came out, he rushed straight to the adventurers guild and reported that he was abandoned by his fellow adventurers when they were attacked by a powerful monster.

The people he listed to be his party members, had apparently reported him and some other members of their party dead earlier in the month, but his testimony had changed the whole situation.

So, the adventurers guild took action to locate the people in question, however, just when they finally located them, it was too late.

Terence had personally gone over to where they were and killed them all brutally. He even ended up chasing one of them into the adventurers guild building and killed him there.

This is where the problems started.

Although his party members have most definitely deserved punishments for their actions, Terence was in no position of authority to dish out said punishments.

Besides, in the process of chasing that person, a lot of city facilities were destroyed and citizens were injured.

This caught the attention of my father and the Adventurer\'s acting guild master, causing them to take action immediately.

They had attempted to apprehend him but the knights and adventurers who were sent to bring him in, were all defeated by him and returned with injuries all over.

These defeated Knights and adventurers brought to light new information about Terence that we were formerly unaware of.

In the time that the adventurers guild had taken to find his old party members, he had taken performed a hostile takeover of one of the illegal gangs that existed in Osto.

It was a gang that my father had been trying to completely uproot from Osto for years, a gang that has been rooted in Osto for decades, yet this man took out its top brass and made himself the sole leader. He then went on to absorb the other smaller gangs that existed and killed off all those who resisted him.

It was using this gang\'s resources that he was able to locate his former party members and chase after them.

After becoming the \'Boss\' of this gang, he somehow stabilized his rule within a few weeks and by the time we discovered this, he already had the leaders of the other gangs working for him, obediently following his orders out of fear of being killed.

Naturally, there was no way that someone who achieved this would be weak, so a few knights were sent to probe him and investigate his power, and it was discovered that he, like the acting guild master and the leader of the Knights of Perhorn, was an existence at around Level 185-195."

"So, this Terence dude is the same one who sent those guys after you?"

"Yes."

Leena replied to Evan\'s question before Pride urged her to continue with the story, wanting to understand more about this man called Terence and how he was related to her brother.

"After the squad sent to gauge Terence\'s power level returned, the man revealed his ambition; to take over the entirety of Osto and put it under his rule.

Naturally, there was no way that my father would let that happen so he cooperated with the adventurers\' guild and sent out a subjugation force to take him out, one that was led by one of the most powerful adventurers in Osto, along with the leader of the Knights of Perhorn.

However, this decision...was a mistake.

We were unaware of the fact that Terence possessed another kind of power, one he revealed only when he saw the two existences over Level 185 who were sent to take him out.

What\'s more, he seemed to be able to give this power to his subordinates too, allowing them to display enough might to resist the subjugation force that was sent after them.

From reports, whenever one got within a certain range of them, they suddenly lost all the strength in their bodies, so much that even moving their bodies became difficult, much less lifting their weapons to fight.

It was discovered that the reason for this was that Terence\'s ability somehow let him and his chosen subordinates to debuff his opponents, reducing their Strength Stats greatly.

That alone was dangerous, however, it turned out that he wasn\'t exactly reducing their stats, but absorbing the power behind that stat for himself.

And while it was possible to resist this power when it was used by his subordinates, it was impossible to do so when used by Terence himself."

"And you sent two over Level 185 existences against him?"

"...yes. To be precise, they were Level 189 and 191 respectively."

"The end results?"

"..."

To Evan\'s question, Leena was silent for a few moments before she finally replied.

"They were wiped out. Both Knights and Adventurers were all killed.

Nearly three city districts were destroyed in the ensuing battle where Terence fought against the Knight Captain and the Leader of the Adventurers.

The strength he displayed was too overwhelming, and they were unable to display their full power as Terence\'s power had deprived them of their strength, something that was fatal for a melee-type fighter like they were.

What\'s more, was that the battle encroached into areas that hadn\'t been evacuated beforehand, causing civilian casualties.

The Knight captain couldn\'t focus fully on the battle as he was also taking action to reduce the casualties, even so, nearly a hundred lives were lost.

In the end, only the Knight Captain survived while all the others lost their lives. It was from him that we were able to acquire details of Terence\'s strange power."

Leena bit her lips as she finished talking, while Evan and Pride shared a knowing glance.

The two of them already realised what the \'Strange power\' Terence had was, it was Greed\'s Idiosyncrasy.

The ability to absorb the physical prowess of his opponents without making direct contact with them. An intangible attack that bypasses obstacles in its way, including a majority of magic-based barriers, armour and battle equipment.

He could also pass a watered-down version of this power onto his thralls who had been enslaved by his \'Emperor of Greed\' skill.

There were naturally limitations to this power but the people of Osto did not know of this, and the end result would not have changed even if they were aware.

While Evan was thinking this, Leena turned her gaze towards the crest on the back of the young hero\'s palm and spoke.

"The Knight Captain did note that Terence had a crest on the back of his palm that glowed multiple times mid-fight, one that looks similar to the crest on you two\'s hands."