Luphen could see that he wasn't going to be able to fool Larwood, and the smile on his face faded as he put on a serious expression. "Alright, then how about thith? I'll give you 10,000 Loonieth. In exthchange, all you have to do ith exthit thith battle and let uth go. What do you think of that?"

"I don't think that's a very sincere offer, either. Why would I accept only 10,000 Loonies from you now when we can just take everything you have after we wipe out your entire mercenary legion?" Larwood said in a cold voice.

"I'd advithe you not to push me any further than thith! You're only a tiny merthenary legion of a few hundred people, there'th no guarantee that you'll be able to take all of uth down," Luphen spat through gritted teeth.

"Alright, if you don't want to negotiate any further, then let's not waste any more time here. We'll let our blades decide the outcome rather than our words," Larwood said in a decisive voice as he flicked Luphen's whip aside with a sweep of his sword before retreating a few steps.

Luphen was furious, but he had no choice but to conform. He knew that he was at a disadvantage here, so there was nothing he could do in this situation aside from to try and appease Larwood. With that in mind, he asked in a resentful voice, "Fine! How many Loonieth do you want then?"

"I want 30,000 Loonies," Larwood replied with a faint smile. "Also, we get to keep all of the spoils of war from the Wolf Moon mercenary legion."

Luphen glowered intently at the young man standing before him, and he was so enraged that he was left completely speechless.

"I won't force you into anything, but I think you should have a good, hard think about this. If you delay any further, I don't think your cavaliers are going to be able to last much longer," Larwood said as he took a glance at the remaining cavaliers of the Heavenly Star mercenary legion. "You can either hand over the 30,000 Loonies, or all of you can die here."

"Fine, I'll give you the 30,000 Loonieth," Luphen said with a hateful expression. He knew that he couldn't afford to hesitate any longer. Just like Larwood said, if the battle were to drag on any longer, the entire Heavenly Star mercenary legion could be wiped out.

"I can give you the 30,000 Loonieth, but you have to return the airship to uth," Luphen said as he pointed up at the metal-plated airship in the sky.

"Keep dreaming! There's only one person left on the airship, and he belongs to our Four Winds mercenary legion, so the airship naturally also belongs to our mercenary legion now," Larwood said as he rolled his eyes at Luphen.

Luphen was so enraged to hear this that he almost threw up a mouthful of blood! Never did he think that Larwood would be so greedy.

"Think about it: most of your magicians are already dead anyway, so you won't have any use for the airship even if I agreed to return it to you," Larwood consoled with a mocking expression.

Luphen knew that there was no point in negotiating with Larwood any further. "Fine! I should've known that the Effer Kingdom wath full of greedy pigth. I'll give you the 30,000 Loonieth and the airship, get your men to exthit the battle now!"

"I can tell that you're a very shady individual. Let me make this clear: if you try anything funny after you finish off the Wolf Moon mercenary legion, we'll make sure that none of you leave this battlefield alive," Larwood said with a menacing smile.

"There'th no need to threaten me! I'll make sure to follow through on my promithe," Luphen grumbled in a resentful voice.

Thus, Larwood issued an order to the Four Winds mercenary legion, and all of its mercenaries immediately ceased their pursuit of the Skycourt Kingdom's cavaliers.

Up in the airship, Erwin could see that Larwood and Luphen were communicating with one another during the course of their half-hearted battle. After that, he saw the mercenaries of the Four Winds mercenary legion cease in their pursuit of the Skycourt Kingdom's cavaliers, and he had a rough idea of what had happened.

At this point, only less than 200 of the Heavenly Star mercenary legion's cavaliers still remained. Thankfully, their legion commander had been sufficiently decisive in negotiating a truce with Larwood. Otherwise, those remaining cavaliers weren't going to last much longer.

"Are we really just going to let them go? I don't think that's a good idea. Aren't we betraying the kingdom by doing this?" Chase asked as he turned to Larwood with a concerned expression.

"There's nothing wrong with this. They're willing to give us 30,000 Loonies, which will be enough to cover our costs for some time," Larwood replied in a nonchalant manner. "I don't think we're going to get much more than that even if we wipe out these Skycourt Kingdom mercenaries. If we force them too far, they might team up with the Wolf Moon mercenary legion instead to launch a suicide attack against us. If that happens, we'll definitely suffer severe losses as well. Weighing up all of our options, accepting this deal from the Skycourt Kingdom's mercenaries is our best choice."

"But what if someone discovers what we're doing and reports us to the department of military affairs? How are we going to explain ourselves?" Chase asked in a low voice.

"There's no way that there are going to be any survivors from the Wolf Moon mercenary legion, so we won't have to worry about them," Larwood said in an indifferent voice. "As for Haggardy, take a look up there. Does it look like there are any witnesses who'll be able to report us?"

All of the guards standing atop Haggardy's city walls had already burned to ashes. As for those who had fled into the underground bunker, they naturally had no idea what was happening outside the city.

"I think what Chase is worried about is that someone within our mercenary legion could turn against us," Kaiba cautioned in a wary voice.

"That's not a problem. Given our backgrounds, we can easily take care of anyone who tries to turn on us," Larwood replied with a sinister smile on his face.

Lanyon and Sherry felt chills run down their spines upon hearing this.

The only thing that Larwood was concerned about was whether Princess Onean would do anything if she were to discover what they had done, but there was no time to worry about that under the current circumstances.

If worse comes to worst, we'll just have to get Erwin to take care of things. He seems to always have a way to deal with strong women like Lana and Her Highness, Larwood thought to himself.

"Alright, let's not think about money for now. Sherry, assemble all of our men. Be prepared at all times for any potentially unforeseen circumstances that could arise. Those Skycourt Kingdom mercenaries aren't very trustworthy," Larwood instructed.

Sherry accepted his orders and departed.

"If you've had enough fun up there, then hurry up and get back down here!" Larwood yelled up at the sky, and his words were clearly directed toward Erwin.

"I would do that, but the problem is that I don't know how to pilot this thing," Erwin sighed to himself with a resigned expression. 

He was looking at all of the levers on the control panel around him with a dumbfounded expression. In the heat of the moment, he had thrown the pilot overboard as well, and he was being left to rue that decision.

Right at this moment, he heard the sound of dull thumps ringing out from the cabin of the airship, and a hint of suspicion welled up in his heart.

Erwin followed the direction the sound was coming from as he made his way toward the cabin, but he didn't discover anything even after searching through both levels of the airship. What was even more befuddling to him was that after taking a moment to gauge where the sound was coming from, he discovered that it didn't come from the cabin beneath the deck. After that, he made his way to the captain's room at the back of the airship, but there was no one there, either. However, he could tell that this was the room where the sound was coming from.

There was not a single person in the room, yet Erwin could clearly hear someone knocking on the floorboards. Thus, he knelt down and pressed an ear against the floor, upon which he discovered that this really was where the noise was coming from.

"It looks like there's a secret room," Erwin said as he continued to make his way around the room with his ear pressed against the ground, listening carefully to see which floorboard the sound was coming from.

"Aha, it's this one." Upon finding the exact floorboard where the noise was coming from, Erwin knocked on the floorboard with his knuckles.

In response, the thumping coming from down below became even louder and more frantic.

What on earth is down there? A bewildered look appeared on Erwin's face as he began to be led astray by his own imagination.

The thumping sound continued to ring out incessantly from beneath the floorboard. It was as if someone were doing a construction job beneath the floorboards, and it was the same sound that one would expect to hear from a rawhide hammer banging against a wall.

Erwin was worried that he would release some type of sinister creature, so instead of smashing open the floorboards right away, he pressed his ear against the floor again to listen carefully.

After some more insistent thumping, the commotion suddenly died down, following which Erwin heard the sound of what appeared to be broken sobs.

There's a person under here! Upon making that realization, Erwin immediately got up before blasting the floor with an instant-release spell. To his surprise, the floorboard was very sturdy, and it took him quite a few spells before he was able to break through it. It was clear that this floorboard was specially made, and judging from its thickness, it appeared to have been designed specifically for the purpose of acting as a door panel for a secret room.

Thankfully for Erwin, the Skycourt Kingdom's mercenaries hadn't installed the same metal armor from the exterior of the airship onto the floor here. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to blast through the floor so easily.

Erwin peered in through the hole that had been blasted into the floorboard, but it was completely dark, and he couldn't see anything. The lighting in the captain's room was also very dim. Due to the metal exterior that had been installed onto the airship, no natural light was allowed to pass through.

Thus, he unleashed an elementary illumination spell, then used the light glowing from the top of his staff to look into the secret room again. This time, he caught sight of a horrified face whose mouth had been gagged using a strip of cloth. There was blood flowing down most of the face, and such a harrowing sight had given Erwin quite a fright, particularly considering the dimness of the environment.

Erwin's heart was racing as he stared into the secret room with a dumbfounded expression, temporarily at a loss for words. He finally understood why some people who were experiencing excessive fear were unable to scream.

Upon catching sight of a potential savior, the person in the secret room desperately wanted to say something, but they were unable to do so due to the fact that they had been gagged.

They were vigorously squirming from side to side while yelling into the cloth gag in a completely unintelligible manner. Upon closer inspection, Erwin discovered that the person had had their four limbs bound together behind their back by their wrists and ankles.

"Hold on a minute, I'm going to widen this opening a little." Erwin hurriedly offered the person some words of reassurance, then began to chip away at the sturdy timber floorboards bit by bit.

The person in the secret room was looking up at Erwin with an excited expression with tears swimming in their eyes, while Erwin didn't even dare to look at them.

Only after a long while did Erwin manage to shatter the entire floorboard, following which he huddled over and squeezed his way into the secret room while using the light on his staff as a torch. At the same time, he was internally cursing the designer of the secret room for making the room only half as tall as the average person.

"Alright, let me get you out of here." Erwin stowed his staff away before grabbing the person by the shoulders and dragging them out of the secret room. In doing so, he discovered that the person was very light, having most likely lost a lot of weight from being starved in confinement.

Even though the person was quite light, the limited height of the secret room still made it very hard work for Erwin to drag them out, and by the time they finally emerged into the captain's room, Erwin was already sweating profusely.