As soon as the panther died, the blonde woman fell to the floor, feeling the backlash.

When a beast dies, the summoner doesn’t, but it hurts their soul temporarily or permanently depending on the tier of the beast.

Luke was aware when he tightened his grip.

A long-term anguish of losing her companion was a better punishment for her than a quick death. Luke wanted the woman to remember her mistakes for a really long time.

He watched her teammates scramble to her side to comfort her while she hyperventilated on the floor. Meanwhile, the leader stared at Luke with his one eye and the gauntlet around his arm.

"What is really happening here?" he thought. "This guy just crushed a beast’s head with his hand like it was cake?

Hey! You just killed a registered summon. The Confederacy will track you across the countries for this. You can’t just get away."

"She wanted it to kill me," Luke replied. "I thought self-defence is legal. Also, you guys owe me for the dental work on your pigs over there."

"Arrrgggh! This bastard!"

In anger, Billy drew his sword, leaped into the air screaming, and brought the sword down onto Luke’s head!

The blade cut through the air, split Luke’s mask open, and sprayed dark blood across the floor as Luke’s face was torn right down the middle—

Gasp!

Billy blinked as he realized he was feeding himself a delusion. He hadn’t moved an inch from his spot, and his sword was still at rest. What a fool he was. Maybe his survival instincts were warning him that would be his own reality if he fucked up before Luke.

Meanwhile, Luke noticed the twitch in his muscles, but he ignored the cowardly effort. He had a better deal that could change the entire relationship, sponsored by Amigo.

The little turtle popped its head out again and it used its claws to climb onto Luke’s shoulder.

"Listen up, you fickle scoundrels!" Amigo shouted. "My Master is a very generous man, and he is going to give you a contract. Since you guys were too stupid to take the twenty-five thousand, the price just dropped to fifteen. Take it or leave it!"

"Twelve," Luke corrected his assistant. "They wasted my time with that smoke trick earlier. Deduct three thousand for dry cleaning the jacket."

"Right, right, twelve grand it is!" Amigo sang. "You guys get twelve thousand right now as a down payment. In exchange, your garbage team becomes something actually useful for us. As a party, you register up for dungeons, set up the barrier to lock the perimeter, and keep the Hunter Bureau from poking their noses into our business."

The hunters stared at each other, struggling to understand.

"What are you talking about? What do you mean, become useful?"

Luke sighed.

"What my buddy is trying to say is very simple," he explained. "You guys are going to be our proxies, meaning you will continue to acquire dungeons as an official party. But once you do, I come in and clear everything. And then, I pay you big money for doing zero combat."

A Level 8 kid and a talking green turtle were dictating a corporate deal to a party that was still reeling from the death of their summon.

Yet they had to consider it whether they liked it or not. And honestly? It was a reasonable offer.

Many summoners were hunters just for the money. Team Blue Crow purposefully stagnated their levels to safely farm low-risk, lucrative Beta-grade dungeons. Luke’s offer to solo clear the gates while they simply secured ownership suited their greed perfectly.

"Wait," the fourth hunter muttered. "If you clear everything under our team name, our score will skyrocket. The Confederacy will force us to rank up, and we’ll die."

"No, you idiot," Amigo barked back, waving a tiny flipper dismissively like a strict boss. "Just let us through and hide the clearance times. If they suspect and test you, you’ll fail and they will leave you exactly where you belong: at the bottom."

The leader looked over at Billy, exchanging a silent look. This was the dream scenario for a bunch of cowardly, Bronze-rank lifers. In this world, ranking up was a double-edged sword: the moment your rank got too high, the Confederacy drafted you into deadlier red zones. By accepting Luke’s deal, they could pretend to be working hard, maintain their safe level, and collect risk-free paychecks every time for doing nothing.

"Think it over," Luke said, ending the negotiation. "I’ll send the twelve grand and the meetup locations once I’m out of Skeleton Town. Now, I’m going to finish the dungeon boss."

The party watched him turn around and disappear into the Boss chamber. Once Luke was gone, the blonde woman on the floor continued to cry.

"We can’t trust him... he’s a psychopath," she wept, hugging her knees. "Look at what he did to Mochi."

"Boss, she might be right," Billy agreed. "What if he’s an illegal hunter working for a villain syndicate? If the Bureau catches us fronting for an unregistered hunter, they’ll strip our licenses and throw us into the mines for life."

"You’re both stupid if you think we have a choice," the leader replied. "At least if we accept, he won’t kill us. If we decline? I’m not sure we leave this place alive. He holds our lives in his hands and can wipe us out in a second. Let’s just wait. If the twelve grand hits our account, the deal is real."

"But the risk—" the fourth hunter started to protest, but was cut off by a sharp sound from the boss chamber.

CLICK.

The hunters turned to see Luke stepping back into the ballroom, calmly dusting himself off as if he had just finished a stroll through a grocery store.

"Heh?! He’s already cleared the boss?!"

Ten seconds.

Exactly ten seconds had passed since the doors had closed behind Luke. Now he was out here again with that smug tortoise on his shoulder.

In Luke’s palm was a big orb. He was tossing it up and catching it repeatedly as he walked across the ballroom.

"What a scam," he muttered to himself. "The system called it a ’Chieftain’, but it was just a big cockroach."

"A boss usually requires a four-man team and two hours of tactics, yet this guy just backhanded one in ten seconds?" Billy thought.

--

--

--

--

A/N: Thanks for reading!