After the discussion with his teammates, Dylan decided to escort Ian to the rendezvous point.

The Forest of Denial was located on the southernmost border of human territory. It was also an area where the territories of mankind, the Federation, and Parasites overlapped with one another.

So perhaps unsurprisingly, the rendezvous point lay somewhere in the way back home to Haramark. And quite obviously, they couldn't let Ian return all on his own when he didn't possess a lick of close-quarter combat skills to speak of.

There was the slight inconvenience having to take a bit of a detour, but regardless, an escort mission was a still mission, just like any other. Since they were promised suitable compensation, the members of Carpe Diem didn't complain much.

Seol Jihu also decided to accompany them on this trip to escort Ian, precisely because of those reasons.

While Dylan was negotiating with the two porters, Seol Jihu went to speak to Chohong. She was still in the midst of trying to cool her head, but her crumpled facial expression displayed how incensed she still was. She even intermittently spat out several choice words like 'fuck this', 'bullshit', etc, etc.

And then, upon sensing Seol Jihu’s gaze on her, she spun her head towards him abruptly and formed a tearful face.

“You were planning to ask me something again, weren't you?”

“….”

“How is it possible for a guy to be this curious about everything??”

“….Okay, okay. Fine. I will never ask you a question ever again.”

While feigning a look of dejection, Seol Jihu turned around to leave. But, when he did that….

“No, waaaait!”

Chohong hurriedly ran up to him and grabbed his arms.

“Hey, hey! That's not what I'm trying to say!”

“No, I know. It's my fault for being so tactless.”

“Hey, will you just listen till the end?! Whenever you are curious about something, you always ask me! But, compared to me, Dylan is….”

Chohong was about to point at Dylan, but then, stopped midway. He was still busy with negotiating a new contract with the porters.

“Well,...