Sadeena cast lightning magic that jumped from one enemy to the next, electrocuting the mercenaries as it went. They obviously didn’t bring enough magic users to interfere with our spells. And then, as if to add the finishing touch, Sadeena thrust her harpoon into the gut of one of the mercenaries as hard as she could. She sent him flying into the other few still standing, knocking them over like bowling pins.

And just like that, the whole lot outside of the building were put to rest.

“Heh. In an area this cramped, they wouldn’t stand a chance no matter how many they brought.”

There were also some archers or something attacking us from a distance, but I had cast Shooting Star Shield and the arrows were just bouncing off without ever getting near us.

“Sadeena, are the villagers’ slave curses not registered to the merchant, then?”

“Don’t worry, I paid to have the slave curses removed, and I told them ahead of time to run away if anything happened.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that they already ran away from here?”

Sadeena glanced over at the building when I asked.

“Hmm?”

Filo had her head cocked to the side for some reason.

“Umm . . . The new big sis just made some kind of noise.”

“Oh? I’m surprised you noticed. I was just checking to see how many people were in the building.”

Sonar? That must have been it. I’d heard that dolphins, whales, and killer whales could use sonar to locate objects in the ocean. I guess she had some kind of ability like that since she was a therianthrope. That sure must have been convenient.

“It’s okay. It looks like they got surrounded before they could run and are holed up inside.”

“And what part of that is okay? Oh, whatever . . . Let’s do this! Raphtalia!”

“Okay!”

The door had been locked from the outside to keep them from getting away. So Raphtalia cut the door down and stepped inside. I followed after her, and we made quick work of several thugs that were trying to capture the villagers.

“Gahhh!”

Behind them was the merchant that announced the exhibition match at the arena earlier. To think that he would go out of his way to show up at a place like this . . . That worked out just perfectly for us.

“Ugh . . . Nadia! You have a lot of nerve breaking your contract!” he screamed.

“What can a girl do? I got stuck with the wrong opponent. It’s not like I didn’t try, you know? Besides, this is something little Rock and I decided on together.”

“And that’s my cue. Thanks a lot for earlier. I’m not going to complain about that, since the match was decided by a vote, and you can never know what to expect at the underground coliseum. But this business here is different.”