Fiona immediately added four more coins. Her calm gaze shifted ever so slightly, and only then did the old woman hand them the key.

Only one room? Ye Su’s face flushed a little. Well, he wasn’t actually a kid, and getting to share a room with a beautiful girl was practically the kind of treatment a light-novel protagonist got!

I’m getting excited!!! So excited!!!

Oh, gods, I swear I wasn’t pretending to be a child to let people lower their guard. They were the ones who made the first move.

The older girl took Ye Su by the hand. Her other hand stayed on the knight’s rapier at her waist, and she walked along as if nothing were amiss.

Click. The lock turned. Fiona shoved Ye Su straight into the room, then locked the door from the outside with the key.

“Ye Su, little bro, hide in the room for now, okay? Don’t come out unless I tell you to.”

Fiona’s voice was stern. As soon as she finished speaking, she hurried away. From the sound of her footsteps, she was running.

Huh? Ye Su hadn’t even had time to react before he was shut inside the room.

A confinement scenario? No, no, no! What was he thinking? Ye Su smacked himself on the head to get a grip.

With no lights, he couldn’t see a thing and had to feel his way around in the dark. What was that older girl doing?

As he wondered, the ground suddenly shook. A sound like an explosion came from downstairs, and Ye Su nearly stumbled to the floor. Then came shouts of alarm and screams—it sounded like they were coming from outside, on the street.

Damn, what was going on?

By the faint moonlight, he found the window. Following the direction of the noise, Ye Su opened the latch and leaned out.

On the street not far away stood the older girl who’d left him here. Moonlight reflected off her armor, giving it a cold, eerie gleam.

Fiona had drawn her knight’s sword and was facing off against the Boss Lady, the one who’d given them the key. The surrounding buildings seemed to have been caught in the crossfire: their walls were cracked, and some spots were on fire.

Most of the people screaming were residents from nearby. The sudden battle had jolted them awake, and now they were desperately trying to flee the fighting.

What kind of plot twist was this? Why were the Boss Lady and Fiona facing off?

Ye Su quickly switched to GM mode. He thought about checking the Boss Lady’s stats, and a blue-glowing status window appeared.

【A-Rank Monster】 Master of Deception—Stark Lv. 68

HP: 700/700

MP: 300/300

Attack: 550

Spirit: 450

Defense: 490

【SKILL】: 【Humanization Lv. 3】 【Sword Technique Lv. 7】 【Error】

So she was a monster? Ye Su had never seen one before. The wolves he’d encountered earlier probably didn’t count, right?

She could take human form thanks to the Humanization skill, but it looked like she had a strange skill, too.

And the monster’s name seemed familiar... He felt like he’d seen it somewhere before.

As he kept looking over the skills, he seemed to notice something.

Error? A bug? He didn’t remember them designing a skill called Error for the game.

As Ye Su wondered, Fiona kept her gaze fixed on the woman in front of her. She was wary of the monster disguised as a human.

Fiona had sensed something was off when she brought Ye Su to register for a room. It was the instinct of an A-Rank adventurer: something about the inn’s atmosphere felt wrong. The moment she got the key, a trace of the Boss Lady’s monster aura slipped out, and Fiona made up her mind.

“You’re the monster that’s been the talk of the town lately—the one that can take human form. You’ll die by my sword today!” Fiona cried, tapping her feet against the ground as she sprang from building to building.

This terrain was perfect for showing off her greatest strength: speed. Her sword strikes crisscrossed back and forth like a woven net. This was her signature move—【Blood Prison】!

Once a target was hit, the blood wouldn’t stop flowing. Their speed would be restricted, and the more injuries they suffered, the greater the restriction—until they couldn’t move at all.

The enemy hadn’t reacted in time. Good. Fiona felt she’d already won half the battle.

But when she struck with her thirtieth slash, she saw that her attacks—like a cutting net—had only carved a single blood mark into the humanoid monster. It vanished and healed in an instant!

Her heart tightened. Something was wrong! She hurriedly began to retreat.

At the same time, Ye Su, watching from the window, remembered: wasn’t Stark the name of a monster he still hadn’t finished fixing the bugs for? The third skill seemed to have a bug. He remembered it was damage reduction, but the value had looked wrong.

If he remembered right, it was 100% damage reduction!!

......To be continued