Deal with The Devil!

"The Legendary Dew Stealer!"

The spiked man shouted with a prideful tone like he was praising himself and not the burly man in the front. "They say no one can steal someone's Dew like him."

"Please stop with that nickname." In the front, the leader was dying of embarrassment; his earlier enthusiasm was fading. His embarrassment deepened further when he noticed the woman's slightly disgusted expression.

"Why?"

Just then, the four of them froze and looked ahead with serious looks on their faces.

The beast horde had stopped… which meant they had arrived at their location!

The burly leader guided the group to a secluded corner where he could see the clearing ahead without obstruction.

The sight they saw was so magical that not even the beasts were making a move against each other and watched the divine phenomenon occur in peace.

They had surrounded this clearing from all directions. Each beast stared at the center without blinking.

The burly leader raised his head to look up and whispered, "it's about time. Be prepared to steal the dew while the beasts get entangled with each other."

"Huh? Boss, isn't it better to take it before them? Why waste time?" The young woman asked with a confused look on her face.

The three men looked at her as if she was joking or something, but seeing her genuine emotions, they felt baffled.

The leader slowly tried to explain everything to her when it happened—

Boom!

It seemed like something had snapped in the air. A burst of sound followed by a cold clap was like a ready sign as all the beasts suddenly tensed.

Something did indeed snap. If one looked closely, there was a dark crack in the middle of the air, which shimmered with faint white energy.

The darkness in the crack seemed to have the power to swallow the air around it.

The pale blue light slowly lost its radiance and was dragged towards this crack.

Once swallowed, the crack widened, and a milky white liquid that faintly glowed with blue light seeped out like a tear.

Drop by drop it started falling from the crack onto the group.

BOOM!

Roar!!

As if their nature had been unleashed, every beast charged forward with full might.

Some of the beasts had already started tearing down those close to each other.

"Now!" When the leader bellowed and charged, the rest of the group followed. Even the trembling woman seemed to have gained some confidence.

"Follow behind me—"

Just when every living creature in the area was about to step into the clearing, their body jolted from shock at what they saw happen right in front of their eyes.

Woosh!

The dew that was supposed to fall on the ground was hovering in the air for a few seconds before… it disappeared.

Literally disappeared. One second it was there, and the next it was not, leaving behind nothing but an unusual gust of wind that sent a couple of leaves flying.

"What just happened?"

"Where did the dew go?"

"Did someone steal the dough from the boss? How dare they!"

The beasts went into a frenzy and charged in all directions while the group of mercenaries looked for spots to hide from them.

They did not want to become an outlet source for the beasts.

All they could do was hide while wondering what happened at the clearing.

What kind of mysterious presence could take something right under the eyes of tens of bloodthirsty beasts and powerful mercenaries like them?

While the leader of the mercenary group was thinking all of this, Jinn had reappeared far away from the chaos.

He was still in the forest, but the beasts were nowhere near him.

Huff! Huff!

Use of energy like that had left him exhausted. Just as he stopped to dispel the illusion, the panicked voice of the Imp tried to stop him.

"Master, Wait!!"

But it was already too late. The exhaustion was catching up with Jinn, so he had already removed the illusion.

"So, this is your power. Was it related to space like Miss Skinner… wait. No. It seems more an illusion. So you were hiding yourself with this power."

'What!?' Jinn froze before snapping his head in the direction of the voice.

"To think even I would not be able to detect your presence. You must have a high star awakening."

'I was careless.' Jinn suppressed the grin, looked inside his heart, and focused on the person standing before him. 'I should not have let the imp watch over the mercenaries, or he could have informed me about her earlier.'

"What are you doing here?"

Jinn asked the black-haired woman standing under the cold shade of a lone tree in the farther corner.

Her face was clouded in darkness, but Jinn could see the faint smirk on her face with his enhanced eyesight.

"A blessed spot appeared in the area where I was completing my last quest, so I had to leave the space and come here, away from the chaos."

As she spoke, Evelyn's eyes drifted to the glass tube Jinn was holding; inside it was the same white dew that an entire beast horde and a mercenary group were looking for, turning every rock and destroying any hideout.

'Calm down, she has only seen my human ability.' Jinn knew his illusion capabilities were known to the teachers, and it was bound to be discovered by students.

Good thing was, Evelyn was someone who owed him a few favors.

"So, how many missions does that make it?"

Jinn slowly sat down on the ground and replied, "three."

Evelyn's eyes widened in shock. She never expected him to complete three missions in one day when she barely managed to complete one in a day.

Jinn closed his eyes and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Slowly, the exhausted dragon energy was recovering itself.

"Now, I am even more certain of taking you to that mission."

Jinn sighed but did not avoid her this time. 'She already knows about my abilities, and it will be trouble to refuse her now. I can take this chance to contact Agnes.'

Although he could refuse her request over and over again by ignoring her, Jinn did not want to turn their relationship sour.

He knew how well Evelyn could be of use to him. Having her owe him and also having her as a friend was a good thing.

"Let me recover, and then I will go with you to let you complete your mission. Then we can return and maybe get some sleep."

Evelyn pursed her lips, thinking Jinn was about to reject her once more, but she never expected the next words to come out of his mouth.

"Then we can leave for that mission in the evening after preparing everything."

Jinn was not arrogant enough to think he could take on a demonic mission just with Evelyn without even the slightest preparation.

"…yeah." After staring at Jinn's face for a second, she nodded coldly and spread her arms.

[Caress of Death]

The shadow beneath her feet suddenly expanded into a circle with a diameter of one meter, centered on her.

Out of the shadow, a huge furry hand emerged, grasping the edge of the earth beyond the shadow.

The hand seemed to be covered in cracks and stitches, as was the rest of the body that emerged.

"Think of it as a sign of my trust." Evelyn stated as the Bearclaw Tiger and the Ironhide Wolf emerged from her shadows.

But something about them felt off to Jinn.

Their movements were stiff and inhumane, just like…

'A puppet!'

The thought struck Jinn hard. 'So this is the power of the god of the end.'

"You should recover; these two will keep watch for us." Evelyn's voice snapped him out of his daze.

"What about your reserves? Won't keeping them active drain you as well?"

To his question, Evelyn shook her head in reply. "The energy cost to keep them active is barely minimum. They only need energy when they are in a fight."

'So they can fight as well as gather intelligence and patrol.' Jinn casually extracted information out of the woman out of habit.

Then soon he returned to his recovery.

After an hour of rest, he was back to his peak. Then the both of them moved deeper into the forest, into the territory of a familiar beast.

"What is your task?" Jinn finally asked once she said they were in the right place.

"Collecting the Horn of the Goat-Faced Bull."

"…"

"What?" Seeing his complicated expression, Evelyn felt something was off, so she asked him directly.

But she never expected him to take out a spiral horn from his waist tucked beneath his jacket.

Evelyn looked at the horn first and then at Jinn. "Thanks, but I would like to hunt the beast by myself. It could offer me more than just the horn."

Seeing her gaze drift to the shadow following her, Jinn understood and tucked the horn away.

It did not take long before they encountered the first goatfaced Bull.