The Villainess and I, her Zombie

"Zombie, young lady Pride... that certainly wasn't a smart thing to do..."

Shanks approached the pair as soon as the blue undead rejoined his master.

"...? And why would that be? I thought that making that girl tear off her own finger would be quite the smart way of making her pay for what she did to our cute Blueberry."

Zombie scowled and pouted, deeply offended that the plan he came up with by himself was called not smart.

"Shanks."

"Yes, young lady...?"

Cranberry spoke up with amusement and made the rat-faced man look at her in confusion.

"Look at who are you talking to. Do you think that I would risk showing my face again if I wasn't absolutely sure that the two of us can defend ourselves?"

She tilted her head and smiled brightly - which funnily enough was the scariest face she ever showed to the leader of the Dandelions.

"My lady, that doesn't sound like you! You've said before that there is always someone stronger, right?!"

Lairs sneaked up from behind Shanks and popped up her head, looking at the red-haired girl with worry.

"My lady...? Someone seems to have been missing me a lot."

Cranberry raised her brows and giggled.

The black-haired elf stepped out from behind the rat-faced man, blushing deeply, and was almost instantly approached by the platinum-haired, copper-eyed woman who Cranberry wasn't able to recognize right away... until she did.

The copper-eyed woman grabbed onto Lairs's armor and shyly whispered something into her ear while staring at Cranberry with a mixed expression.

"Oh....?! Ah! I see, I see! Good for you Lairs!"

Cranberry's eyes widened and she clapped her hands in admiration.

"It seems that all you needed to find someone nice was a change of scenery..."

She nodded to herself, but then her eyes grew colder as she glared at all the Dandelions who had gathered back around her.

"That said, why are you even here? You might be good at dealing with and selling monster corpses, but Sloths' territory is hardly a place where a group like yours could survive. But that means..."

As the red-haired girl spoke, her voice was growing harsher and harsher and her ice-cold glare moved between the ashen-haired girl wriggling in pain in the distance, the white-haired young man by the girl's side, and the copper-eyed woman standing with Lairs.

"...you were forced to come to this dangerous place because someone figured out that Zombie and I arrived here, and of all the people who could have a chance of talking with us, you lot were made to comply."

Cranberry frowned at the copper-eyed woman.

"Isn't that right? Miss Ti, one of the CriTiCal trio of bodyguards protecting the queen herself?"

"...!"

She asked, making the copper-eyed woman flinch and get pale as a ghost.

"If my memory serves me right, that piece of filth who dared to harm our little chick is Mika Wrath, the daughter of the current avatar of wrath, and isn't that guy by her side the famous lucky prodigy, Corvus Wrath? Quite the search party. Though, I feel a bit offended that the queen didn't send all three of her bodyguards, but it seems that I didn't cause enough of an impact or maybe she thought that Roan is severely overestimating our capabilities because of that little charm skill I used on him..."

Cranberry scoffed and grabbed the black baseball bat that she kept close to her feet while playing with the blue griffin, and rested it on her shoulder.

"Congratulations, you succeeded... as long as your objective was to completely piss me off!"

The red-haired girl growled at the trembling copper-eyed woman while clenching her fist on the handle of her weapon so hard that her knuckles turned white.

"Young lady! No! You are jumping to conclusions!"

The rat-faced man stepped in front of the utterly terrified copper-eyed woman and spread his arm protectively.

"...haa... is that so? Let's just make one thing clear - if you four have betrayed the trust I've put in you, I promise that I will kill you off without hesitation."

Cranberry spoke in a low voice, glaring down at Shanks, who suddenly felt that maybe having to fight the mountain-like titan-class monster was a much better alternative to the situation he put himself in.

"...y-young lady P-Pride... our group... we weren't sent after you because of the queen's orders..."

Surprisingly enough, Ti managed to step up and started explaining on her own, pulling the attention away from Shanks.

"Ha. Well then, what really happened?"

The red-haired girl furrowed her brows and lowered her baseball bat.

"Once you have gone missing, the royal family began searching for you. Their investigators came to the wraths' mansion to inquire your personal bodyguard about your whereabouts..."

"Huh?! So there was one after all?! Why haven't I sensed them before then?!"

"Haa... Zombie, let her know talk for now..."

Zombie loudly interrupted the bodyguard's explanation which caused Cranberry to shake her head and breathe out with a tired expression.

"Continue, miss Ti."

The red-haired girl waved her hand benevolently at the copper-eyed woman.

"The thing was, the person who was supposed to be guarding you, hasn't been keeping an eye on you for months and kept submitting false reports. Once that was brought up, our family name was brought down and dragged through the mud. Every single active Wrath was dismissed from their bodyguard's position. To counter that, young miss Mika has come up with the idea that if we, the Wraths, and more importantly, the man who was supposed to guard you in the first place, were to find you - that would help us regain our reputation."

Ti continued.

"About the thing you've said... the three of us... CriTiCal, we had all came to search for you but... my friends have been killed by the titan-class monsters during the 6th monster wave, doing their best to protect miss Mika..."

The woman began blinking repeatedly to stop her tears from bursting out once she spoke about her fallen companions.

"Fig and Melon died the same way too..."

Mary spoke up in a shaking voice while hugging Arion.

"...I'll be right back..."

Zombie spoke up suddenly and disappeared.

"?!?!"

"Where did he...?!"

The others all freaked out, looking around trying to locate the blue undead.

"Haa... My Zombie said that he will be right back, so he will be right back. Move on."

Everyone, with the exception of his master, who sighed and nodded at the copper-eyed woman to continue.

"Because of an unfortunate series of accidents, we ended up confusing the recruitment mission of the Sloth soldiers with a case of serial kidnapping, that's when we met miss Mary who was investigating the very same thing, and after all that, we ended up in the Sloth territory. We were only able to stay, or rather, we were forced to stay because we all made the horrible mistake of accepting something called a special quest and its failure would have meant that the titan-class monsters would become a common encounter on the whole continent..."

Ti obediently continued her explanation.

"And the Dandelions?"

Cranberry asked.

"We were unlucky enough to be in the range of the mass teleportation skill. And then we also got a quest, but nothing as terrifying as they did."

Shanks explained, nodding at the copper-eyed woman.

"...not terrifying... Avocado and Cherry died during that quest, you know?! I still haven't received a proper apology!"

Mary trembled from anger and glared at the rat-faced man.

"About that..."

*WHAM*

"MIKA!"