On the outskirts of the capital, a man wearing a black hooded cloak leaned against a wall in a back alley and breathed out smoke from his cigar. White smoke wafted along with his breath and slowly dispersed into the sky.

The man muttered as he watched the smoke scattered from under the hood, "Are you here?"

A man wearing a similar hooded cloak appeared in the alley.

"So it’s the Mercenary King. I heard you usually hide your presence, but for me to have noticed you right away—”

Malecia pulled back his hood. "I asked you to call me Black Knight.”

The man in the hooded cloak burst into laughter. "Oh, well, it seems being in the capital has made me call you the Mercenary King rather than the Black Knight."

With a bitter smile, Malecia threw his cigar and stepped on it to put it out. "Seems like something Eranto would hate.”

Eranto, that Malecia spoke of, was the name of the head of the empire’s Mercenary Alliance. Malecia was thought to be competing for the title as he was inadvertently called the Mercenary King.

But in fact, Malecia was not very happy with the title of Mercenary King....