An Enemy Beside Me

"Today we'll be raiding a C rank dungeon. Everyone, get ready. We'll be departing soon." Jax said, before walking off with Astro as they left, talking to one another.

After Ezra returned, the next raid was a C rank one, which they were going to handle in a few hours. HE couldn't quite say for sure, but the team leader was definitely giving him attitude. 'Is he too in touch with his feminine side, perhaps?'

Ezra needed not head to the arms section to pick any weapon for himself. Since he had all he needed in his inventory, there was no reason for him to. He found out that some of the lower ranked hunters kept their arms in the arms section of the guild. Even though the world was now like this, there were still countries that banned the carrying of weapons around if not in action.

One and a half hour later, the team had gathered and they were ready to depart.

Not long after, they arrived at the gate site and got ready to enter the gate. The place was actually a government office building, and the gate appeared in place of the main entrance into the building. Since the gate was within Gangdam Guild's territory, they were naturally the ones tasked with taking care of it. Besides, they were more than capable.

Jax, who was a tall man with hair the colour of the sun, stood before the team and addressed them before they entered through the gate. He seemed to like being set apart, and maybe that was showing form his flashy equipment that had pristine designs in red allover.

'Seeing as it is a set, the equipment probably have a special benefit or trait that in activated when the full set is on. Not bad.'

With that, they entered the dungeon and began their raid. Like Ezra always did, he performed just enough to not drag the team backwards, and just enough to be another average member. It was quite common sense; one shouldn't strive to be a crane amongst chicken.

Luckily, this time the dungeon wasn't an elaborate one, so after about five hours of raiding, they finally found the boss monster. After that, they spent one more hour making sure they visited areas they were yet to, to make sure that there were no monsters remaining. This was to ensure the safety of the excavation team and the transport teams that were going to work shortly. Immediately after they came out of the dungeon, the other teams got to work.

Ezra had been having this bad feeling for some time now, but now he was certain. The leader along with two others, Astro being one of them, really were looking at him in a malicious manner. There was no way he could mistake that feeling at all.

"It's done, let's go back!" Jax said, and the team entered the dungeon again, this time, to kill the boss monster.

After reaching the location, everyone got a look at the boss monster again. It looked like a draconic kind of monster, but dinosaur was more like it. Anyway, it was huge and fierce.

They had already prepared their attack strategy, so once the boss fight began, they were all ready. One weird thing though, was that Ezra had been put in quite the position where he needed to work more than necessary. Though he was also a damage dealer, an attack type, he was usually not positioned at a place where he would be the main lead, but today he was.

'I can't help but smell something very fishy with this.' He thought to himself. Even though it wasn't much work for him, all the moving around, since he played a very good role acting, he was a bit tired. Although he didn't want to think it that way, but it seemed like this raid was not going to end well.

'How exactly and when did I offend these guys for them to punish me so?' He thought to himself.

The boss battle was fierce, or so it seemed, but in the end, it was done. Everyone was exhausted, as the boss seemed to be a higher level C rank boss. Even though Ezra was alright and just a little tired, he still had to act like he was gone, after all, he was the most worked in the group. It would be strange if he wasn't the one suffering from the worsts of exhaustion.

'What's that guy doing? Isn't that rare normally?' Ezra thought, as he saw Jax, the team leader turning a bottle of blessed water into his mouth. This water had the effect of relieving fatigue, but that was really all. Unlike the almost godly system potions that could recover health and mana, there was no such thing on earth. The best one could have was the one that relieved fatigue.

Seeing the expensive gear the leader had on, Ezra wasn't surprised to see that he could also afford to buy one of those blessed water things.

"Alright you lot, today, you can count it as your unlucky day. You can all blame that one." Jax said as he pointed at Ezra. Everyone was looking a bit confused, but they were moved to ask why Jax would say such a thing.

The moment one of them tried to do so however, his head was cut off clean from one swing from Jax, he was a strong C rank damage dealer who was now less tired than everyone else, not to mention his equipment.

'I see what is going on here. But why though? Can I just ask him?' Ezra thought to himself. At this moment, though Ezra didn't notice, he was surprisingly calm for someone who knew that swords would be pointed at him soon.

"So I'm the target, huh? You can leave the rest, no need to kill needlessly." Ezra said.

"Hahaha, arrogant. They all have to die since they are witnesses. We don't want to have any loose ends now, right?" Jax said, with a telling smile on his face. Along with his words, Astro and another young man came towards Jax.

For this raid, they had come in as a group of 15. Since the energy from the gate was particularly strong, they were asked to add people to the team, by the guild. Since they had already killed one, they were now 14 left, and apart from Ezra and the three who were antagonizing themselves, ten people were left who had no relations to the matter.

The unlucky thing was that the rest of this group was made up of some C ranks who couldn't stand against Jax in battle, even without his equipment, and D ranks. Even then, three still tried to run away. Even though one of them had a speed and agility related class and had some chance at getting away, the others didn't.

'No one… leaves!" Astro said, as he appeared before them and cut them down. Even the fast one couldn't see his death coming. After all, Astro was a C rank ranger at least in the middle class.

"How about you tell me the reason for this? While I'm still being nice." Ezra asked.