The reason Ren Kuroda had noticed Will o' Wisp in the first place was simple.
Although only a few of their members were heading to the South District for the Harvest Festival, alongside Aisha and Pumpkin Jack there was someone new.
A face he had never seen before.
She had long silver-blue hair tied into twin tails. Judging from her height and apparent age, she looked about the same as Aisha, who stood beside Jack.
And yet—
She possessed a strange, dangerous allure.
Beautiful, cute… and utterly lacking in caution.
There was something almost sinful about her sex appeal—an indecent magnetism that could draw in men without effort. Her figure was shockingly voluptuous, wildly disproportionate to her youthful face.
To put it plainly—
She had Leticia's expressionless elegance and refined features.
She had Alger's headache-inducing personality.
And she had Latia's devastatingly curvy figure.
But beyond her eye-catching appearance, what truly caught Ren's attention was the aura around her.
It was powerful.
Far stronger than Pumpkin Jack and Aisha.
By all logic, Jack and Aisha—being Will o' Wisp's most active Gift Game participants—should have been their strongest duo.
According to Leticia's intelligence, Will o' Wisp, much like No Name, was primarily composed of children's souls. There shouldn't have been anyone stronger than Jack and Aisha.
Which meant—
If she was stronger than them, and belonged to Will o' Wisp…
Then she could only be—
Ren had just about pieced together her identity and was preparing to greet her when—
A blunt, cross-shaped weapon came flying straight at his face.
It happened without warning.
But to Ren, whose swordsmanship was maxed out and whose five senses far surpassed ordinary beings, such a crude attack was laughably easy to avoid.
With the smallest tilt of his head, he dodged.
The weapon whistled past him.
Yet before he could even process the situation, the silver-blue twin-tailed girl calmly pulled out two more cross-shaped blunt weapons.
Her expression didn't change in the slightest.
If anything, she looked completely unaware that what she was doing could be interpreted as blatant provocation.
Look, being cute and having a killer body didn't give you the right to just assault people on sight, okay?
Fortunately, just as she raised both weapons again, Aisha and Jack finally reacted. Each grabbed one of her arms, frantically apologizing to Ren.
"Hohohohoho! Members of Ghost Travel—this is our first meeting since the Fire Dragon Birth Festival," Jack said with exaggerated cheer. "We deeply apologize for Will o' Wisp's rudeness just now. It's likely because we told our leader so much about Mr. Ren's performance at the festival that she became… overly interested."
Regarding the recent attack on the North District by the Demon King Alliance, most people only knew that Pest had assaulted the newly appointed Floor Master.
As for the true masterminds—the Princes behind the scenes—very few knew anything. To avoid widespread panic, Sandra and Shiroyasha had sealed that information.
However, for a major North District community like Will o' Wisp, ignorance was not an option.
They knew far more than the public.
And they knew very well that the one who had turned the tide was the man standing before them—Ren Kuroda.
What Ren couldn't quite wrap his head around was this—
Being interested in him was one thing.
But why did that interest manifest as throwing cross-shaped hammers at his skull?
"Sorry about that," Aisha said helplessly. "This has always been a headache for us. Vera-onee-sama is perfect in almost every way… except for one rather unfortunate habit that causes trouble for everyone.
"When she encounters someone she finds interesting for the first time, she'll either hide somewhere and observe them… or suddenly throw a cross-shaped blunt weapon to see how they react.
"And when she does it, it's purely instinctive. Sometimes she doesn't even realize she's done it afterward…"
Ren was speechless.
He had traveled across multiple worlds and met all kinds of people.
But this?
This was a first.
Still, that explained why he hadn't sensed even a shred of hostility when the weapon flew at him earlier.
It wasn't an attack fueled by malice.
It was… curiosity.
Through Aisha and Jack's confirmation, Ren finally solidified his guess.
The girl before him was none other than the great demon said to walk the boundary between life and death—
The North District's strongest "Azure Flame Demon"—
Vera Za Ignifatus.
"Nice to meet you," Ren said, extending his right hand. "I'm Ren Kuroda, leader of the newly established North District community Ghost Travel. For now, you could say I'm something like a Demon King. And I'm also a friend of Aisha and Jack."
The silver-blue twin tails swayed slightly as Vera stared at him in silence.
Then—
She calmly pulled out yet another cross-shaped blunt weapon.
Ren's eyelid twitched.
She was seriously committed to this, wasn't she?
What baffled him even more was the fact that she was wearing nothing but a light, elegant dress.
Where exactly was she storing this arsenal of blunt instruments?
"Vera-onee-sama!" Aisha hissed urgently. "If you hit him with another hammer, we'll completely offend Ghost Travel! We have something we need to ask of them, remember? If you anger Mr. Ren, he really won't help you!"
Ren had originally intended to pretend he hadn't noticed.
Now that he understood it was just a bizarre quirk rather than actual hostility, he had even considered letting her bonk him once to get it over with.
With his current physique, even taking a solid hit wouldn't amount to more than a mild inconvenience. He could endure it as a courtesy to Aisha and Jack.
But Aisha's words stopped Vera cold.
The raised weapon froze midair.
Whatever they needed from him apparently outweighed her instinctual urge to conduct impact-based social experiments.
"You need something from me?" Ren raised an eyebrow. "If this is about borrowing money to use the Gate, that's a hard no. Our community is newly established. We're practically broke ourselves.
"And you can see how many people we're bringing to the South. It's two Double-Goddess gold coins per person. Will o' Wisp may have a lot of kids, but you're still a long-standing North District community. Don't tell me you're short on travel funds?"
Given that Will o' Wisp, like No Name, had a large number of dependent children, it wouldn't have been shocking if finances were tight.
After all, the North and South Districts were the farthest apart in Little Garden's lower levels. The Gate usage fee—two Double-Goddess gold coins per person—was astronomical for ordinary communities.
Jack laughed theatrically again.
"Hohohohoho! Mr. Ren truly has a sharp tongue. While it's true that we have many children to care for, we're not quite that destitute.
"The favor we wish to request… concerns something else entirely."