Chapter 207 - No Choice

"The group of Anais?" Gem repeated and looked at Fily who was also wondering who these people were.

"KumaReina and the Pearl of the east…" she said while trying to recall with her memories where she heard these words from.

"Ah, I got it!" she said and stood up, "Anais is the daughter of the well-known mechanic Erthretcha, right? The one who got sold off by his partner for exposing their transactions with the other countries?"

"You're right," Venedette said.

"And KumaReina! The power duo of the jungle!" Fily said, which caught Petunia's attention.

"That Kuma and Reina?" she asked as if she was familiar with them.

"Yup! Those two are definitely two of the most prepared superhumans in this country to go outside and face the harsh world and the monsters in it. I wonder what made them want to offer us a partnership?" Fily asked and then stood up to calm her excited self down.

But not even a second later, Gem immediately held her wrist and looked at her with puppy eyes, "How about the Pearl of the east? Who are they and what do they want from us?"

"Pearl of the east. The bandits who likes to call themselves pirates even though there's not enough water in Clandamascarene for them to do island hopping or even pirating. They're just basically a group of dorks who likes to steal from rich people and call it justice."

"They're thieves?" Gem asked and quickly reminisced of her younger days where she would steal food and tools from strangers just to survive in the wilderness of the outside world.

"Yes, but as I said, they don't like being called thieves. You should refer to them as pirates so they wouldn't set their eyes on you. We don't want those dorks stealing this necklace from you now, do we?" Fily said and flashed a very sweet smile before swirling around and returning to her seat.

"Does anybody still have a question you might want to ask now? If not then I'll join the meeting immediately," Venedette said and used her stat-hut to connect with these other guilds from the far corners of this country.

"Shut up!" A loud growl was heard the moment Venedette entered the call from a woman wearing a leopard one-piece swimsuit with two thick animal furs wrapped around her shoulders and the other one serving as a little skirt with an open front just above her swimsuit.

She was obviously an adult but her yellow hair made her look much younger than what her age truly was.

"Oh no, the lioness is angry," a teasing kid's voice said coming from the Pearl of the east's team screen which made Reina even angrier.

"I said shut up you imbecile babies!" Reina said, preparing herself to smash the keyboard if the other team still wouldn't mute their microphones but was immediately prevented by a brown bear's cute little pinch of Reina's forehand to take it away from the keyboard.

"Don't worry, I'll just mute us for you," another little voice came from the Pearl of the east's screen even though they could not see anyone there.

"Can you please stop playing with the camera settings, we're having a formal meeting here, alright? Give us some respect, children," the same soft and melodic voice sounded from the pearl of the east's camera which was now finally being focused on the person speaking.

"A dwarf," Von whispered and looked at Fily who was the most nonchalant about this revelation.

"Is this really a good thing for us?" Von said, whispering to Fily without being careful if Venedette and the others could hear him or not.

"Just wait for the third one, you'd be surprised," Fily said, which Gem also heard, making her pay more attention to the only other participant in the meeting with a blank screen.

"Hello, I'm so sorry for the delay, we got caught up with some small task," a female with a slim face and circular features such as her monolid eyes and dark fashion, including her shiny long black hair and leather crop top jacket said, totally looking like a badass in between KumaReina's jungle background and the Pearl of the east's makeshift beach.

"No worries, we also just got here a minute ago," Venedette said, stepping forward to the meeting circle and showing off her royal charms with her change of fashion for today.

"Didn't she just told us to be ourselves in front of these people? Then why is she wearing a more presentable and expensive version of her normal clothes? Is that really necessary?" Gem whispered to Fily who immediately told her to shush.

"Of course Venedette had to leave a good impression on these people. They might not be the highest class of participants we can team up with but they're the only ones we got. OUt of the fifty groups that Venedette sent an invitation to this meeting last night, these three were the only ones who responded, according to the data I just received as of the moment," Fily said and shifted her position into a more comfortable one since the screens were above them.

"Should we start?" the gangster-looking lady said and pressed a button that immediately made the whole room of screens around Leviathan shine with different live footage of individuals from the other group coming from their own individual stat-huts, including Leviathan which Gem only noticed as she turned around and saw her surprised expression staring right back at her.

"I would like to introduce my team first since I initiated this gathering in the first place, my name is Anais Erthretcha, team leader of the group Anais. These are my members, Gideon, Bolt, Onikuwa, and Starettcha, masters of weapons in both ranged and melee at some point. My members and I have fulfilled each necessary role in the team except for one, we don't have a healer," the girl named Anais said.

"Healer? Is she talking about me?" Gem asked Fily who just nodded at her silently.

"And also, doesn't she look too young to be a leader?" Gem whispered to Fily again which made Fily look at her before answering her question.

"One of us is also going to be a leader soon at a young age, Venedette is just acting as our leader now because most of us here are still inexperienced, but once you guys learned about all the basics in teamwork, we're going to have to vote for Venedette's replacement and have our own leader soon. And besides, that team has been training for this tournament for the last two years, they probably have very good teamwork by now," Fily said, unintentionally spewing all the unorganized thoughts she had in mind that were causing her to ignore Gem's questions earlier.

"I see," Gem only said and paid attention to the chaos that was now happening among the other three teams in the video call.

"Why would they need a team full of weapon masters as a partner when they have their own weapons master and even a magician in their team already? Don't you think you need a more sturdy and tougher company when facing demons in the outside world?" Reina said to Anais and then shifted her eyes Venedette the last sentence which made Venedette the center of attention at the moment.

"Uhh," Venedette stuttered and then composed herself before being interrupted by the leader of the pearl of the east's team leader.

"Excuse me, we haven't had the moment to introduce ourselves yet, my name is Soda and I'm the leader of our group which you have already heard the name of-"

"Of course they have, aren't we famous?" another high-pitched voice of a boy said while seemingly sliding on a playground.

"Sorry about that," Soda said and then continued on with her introduction, "We may not look like the most organized team in the eyes of a stranger, but believe me, once we have a work to do, we're really determined to finish it till the end. Just like our mission now, if you haven't heard already, Pearl of the east has made this city one of the largest and happiest cities in the whole country thanks to our hard work, making rich people voluntarily donate to the poor instead of having us steal their goods and donate it to the poor ourselves. We made this city balanced thanks to our determination and we're not afraid to try our luck in the outside world too."

"Yeah, right. Balance," Fily laughed as if she could not agree with the things that Soda just said.

"Why are you laughing? Is something wrong?" Gem asked, being the innocent and clueless little girl that she is about politics.

"No, don't mind me, I'm just thinking about the old times and how some things never really change even after all those seasons."

"Like what?"

"Like… how people glorify themselves so badly in front of others," Fily said and then smiled brightly.

"You know what? This is not actually something we need to concern ourselves with yet. We should just focus on developing our skills first instead of listening to these groups fight each other for a spot that was open to all of them anyway, teaming up with a lot of groups is actually advantageous in the first stages of the game and because no other groups offered their hands to us, we have no other choice but to collaborate with these three whether we like it or not," Fily said, whispering the last sentence to Gem with a chuckle that also made Gem laugh even though she had no idea what was going to happen next.