Aurora coughed.

Then she dropped her glass on the table with a frown.

"Do you mind me asking why?"

I set mine down and began. "The only people in your party are the Royal knights and the children of the three dukes of the Lumierian Empire. My party joining yours will just put all of us under them, and we do not want that."

The influential parties operated a bit differently from the other parties. There is a lot of hierarchy among them. And unlike the other parties where everyone partakes in stuff like hunts and watch duties, in the influential parties, except for times of large-scale operations, the low-ranking members are the ones used for all the tedious work.

If we were to join their party now, Leon is the only one who'd be regarded as a high-ranking member. The rest of us, as the lowest in the party, would just be used for errands and have our abilities exploited.

Other people would probably be jumping at an offer to join a party like this. But not us. We are doing fine on our own right now. We have enough food, and our abilities are self-sufficient… for the time being.

I continued on with my remaining points. "We need our freedom to hunt when we want, to move at our own pace, and we do not want to be under anyone's control."

Aurora's expression dropped.

"I see."

Rather than anger or resentment, I could see that she was disappointed and perhaps a little saddened by my answer.

For a moment, she looked lost in thought.

A few more seconds passed before she looked up at me and asked, "What if I give you this freedom? Will you join us then?"

I set down the glass after taking another sip. Then I replied, "Not in the way you are thinking."

Aurora looked intrigued and excited, yet confused at the same time.

I then continued. "We will have nothing to do with you in the two months before the raid of the Home of the Sculpted Ones." I looked into her eyes. "However, once the raid begins, I'm willing to make a temporary alliance between my party and yours as equals. We won't be under your command, but we are willing to work with you. You need Leon to make things easier for your party by pointing out which of the monsters are bearers of the red bridge energy and where exactly they would be. We, on the other hand, need your numbers to ensure my party members are able to get close enough to these monsters, in order to get enough of that energy."

Destroying the Red Bridge isn't as simple as marching into the territory and tearing down a physical structure.

Of course, there is a large portal-like structure at the center of the zone. But to actually destroy it, you have to hunt down and kill the specific monsters that hold the Red Bridge energy within them.

This is where things get pretty complicated.

These monsters won't be among the common ones guarding the territory. Instead, they would be hiding somewhere deep in the recesses of the territory.

Also, they aren't in one spot, but are spread out across many different sectors. The problem here is that the whisper-globes can't tell where these monsters would be.

This is why Leon is so sought after by the many influential parties. With his bonded ability, he could lead our party to sneak in to whatever cave or hidden lair they occupy, where we would then kill the Red Bridge monster.

Without a specialist like Leon, the many different parties would have no choice but to blindly scour the entire territory, wasting time and losing lives against the wrong targets.

A party killing one of these Red Bridge monsters is very important because doing so is the only way to secure a pass home.

After killing the monster, the Red Bridge energy within it would radiate out for a few meters around it. We need that energy. We, the people who killed it, need to absorb that energy into us. Without it, we won't be able to cross the Blue Bridge when it appears to return to our world.

It is for that reason I am here for this alliance.

The monsters with the Red Bridge energy within them have hundreds of other monsters who would be protecting them with their lives. It is absolutely impossible for the few members of my party to kill all their guards and then kill them. We would be killed long before we reached our target.

We need to make an alliance and work with Princess Aurora's party. That way, we have enough people to push through the guards, and then secure the energy we need.

After I spoke, unsurprisingly, Aurora didn't waste too much time thinking and quickly said, "I accept!"

I smiled.

It was a win-win after all.

She got the guide her party desperately needed to find the red bridge monsters, and we got the numbers we needed to get close to them.

I resumed drinking my juice. As I did, I couldn't help but wonder about the scale of the upcoming hunt.

'How many red bridge monsters will there be this time?'

The red bridge energy released by a single monster is only enough for at most a hundred people.

Once a hundred people get into the vicinity of a red bridge monster, some kind of barrier manifests, preventing anyone else from entering the zone to claim the energy.

So all the other parties will be busy hunting down a red bridge monster at the same time, while also trying their absolute best to defend against the other monsters that would be prowling around the territory.

I sighed.

Hopefully, at the end, all the red bridge monsters would be killed so that the red bridge can collapse.

Hopefully, many people get the energy so that they can return home.

Hopefully… many people survive that dastardly place.

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