After talking with the tavern owner (the beautiful woman), the girl walked back to the part with the patrons.
She had agreed with the woman that she would start working there the next day.
So she was free to go home or even sit around and drink or eat something; as long as she had the money to pay for it.
When the woman said the girl could go home, the girl told her she had nowhere to go since she was from a faraway town.
And the woman had a quick solution for that.
Actually, nearly all the taverns in the lawless area had that.
Employees of the taverns could live in small rooms in the taverns.
The woman told she would have a room like that prepared for the girl.
Until then, she could just wander around or something.
And, since the girl still remembered that there was a familiar face in the tavern, she went there.
Not even looking at anyone else, she went straight for the guy in black.
He was staring at her the moment she returned into the patrons' area.
"It has been a while!" the girl sat down opposite him.
"I didn't expect to see you here. Did you come to the Capital to sell the material you got from the Screechers?"
The man opposite her was the very hunter she had met back at the field where she was training her Power of Death and Extinction.
Another person that knew she possessed the power.
"No, I came to look for you," the hunter was cold, just like the girl remembered from the field.
"Oh?" the girl raised a brow at his answer.
"And what would make someone like you search for a traitor like myself?"
As she spoke, she reached out and grabbed at the hunter's coat, pulling at the though ordinary‑looking but very sturdy material.
That had to be expensive; the guy was far above her in society.
The hunter moved his gaze to glance at the hand on his coat.
A seemingly ordinary hand of a seemingly ordinary teenage girl.
"Want to hear an offer?" he moved his gaze back to the girl's face.
It was easy to tell that once she grew up, those childish features would turn into a beautiful face.
And with her brains, she could use it for terrific (or terrible) things.
"Let me hear it!" the girl leaned on the table, quite curious about who this cold hunter was.
She felt that he could be an important figure; maybe not to the plot, but definitely for her.
The hunter took a swig of his drink (the girl didn't yet look what it was), before talking again.
"With your skills, and clearly mind of steel, you could be very useful up in North. Come work for me."
Hearing that, the girl's smile momentarily froze.
She might have messed up.
"North?" she raised a brow.
"And what do you have to do with the North?" she asked.
But she already knew the answer.
The young man sitting in front of her could be nothing else than the new Master of the North.
If she remembered correctly, shortly before the book plot started, his mother (who was the Master of North after his father died) died in a monster attack on the castle (more of a fortress).
After that, her son took on the title.
But the ceremony only took place after the book plot started and that was when the world found out.
Until then, only a few nobles and the Emperor knew of the Madam's death.
So, the guy in front of the girl was the new, still uncrowned, Master of North (who was later in the book known as the Monster of North) Philip Wayana.
And that very guy was the Male Lead's friend the girl had to watch out for.
Oh, how life was messing with her.
It was laughable.
The hunter, after the girl's question, went silent for a bit, considering what to tell her.
Then, he stood up and placed a card on the table.
"If you go to that address tomorrow as the sun sets, I'll be waiting for you and explain more to you," he was clearly prepared to leave.
"Well..." he pulled his hood up.
"Until then. I hope your answer will be favorable."
The girl watched the hunter's departing back, feeling like laughing and crying all at once.
Did that mean he wouldn't kill her when the time came?
If she agreed to go work for him in the North, she would break out of the plot?
She doubted so.
Just because something that wasn't in the book happened didn't mean the plot was deviating.
In the book, it had even been stated that the Monster of North recruited all kinds of geniuses and talented individuals to work for him.
So, him inviting her to work for him wasn't any form of deviation from the plot.
But what was strange and weighed on the girl's mind were his very first words:
"No, I came to look for you."
The Monster of North she knew from the book was never so desperate enough to recruit someone to go looking for them.
Especially considering that at the moment was just around the time his mother died.
The girl knew he didn't really care about his mother—the two were described in the book to have had a terrible relationship before her death—but after taking over her position, he was drowning in responsibilities and such.
How did he even have the time to come look for her?
And how did he know she was in the Capital City?
Even if that could be found out, how in the great heavens did he know she would come to the lawless area and to the tavern?
It was clear he had been waiting for her.
The only real thing the girl knew was that at the moment, he wouldn't kill her.
Just like in the past, it annoyed her when she had incomplete information.
In her past life, she was so obsessed with having complete information, that she started to write the book to cope with it.
It was on purpose that she left holes in the plot.
She left those there to tick at her obsession.
But, back then, she didn't know she would end up in the book and would need the information.
Of course, she could work with the same efficiency even with the massive holes in her knowledge, but oh—how it annoyed her.
In her annoyance, the girl nearly didn't notice that she started exuding a bit of her powers.
It was a tiny bit, so it couldn't harm anyone, but there was the difference that when someone was to walk by the table she was at, they would walk much closer to the opposite table.
Seeing that, the girl took the power back into her body and stood up.
In long strides, she walked out of the tavern.
With the beautiful woman, she had agreed she would come back in the evening, so it didn't matter where she went.
Once outside, she went to an area she had already been in when she scouted the lawless area.
With each place she had been to, she made a mental mark in her head about how dangerous the place was.
Of course, compared to the areas falling under the Empire's laws, the whole lawless area was deadly, but even there, some were more and some less deadly.
The girl walked straight for the area she remembered to be the most dangerous.
Damn, she was angry.
Her own book was messing with her.
Her very own creation.
The girl didn't mark the location as the most lethal because there was a danger of being ambushed.
The location she was in at the moment was the most peaceful of them all.
There were completely no attacks reported there.
The life there even resembled that of the people who lived outside the lawless area.
And that was what made it the most dangerous.
To keep up such order in a place swarming with criminals meant there was a threat looming above them all, keeping them in check.
That meant, if a fight did break out, it would be suppressed in an instant.
Such a thing was exactly what drew the girl in.
She was angry; enraged.
So challenging a mortal threat was something she very much wished to do.
The worst that could happen; she would die.
She didn't desire that, but in her past life, her everyday life was just threat and threat and keeping her life was a miracle.
So, provoking the absolute wasn't that much of a big deal to her.
She wanted to vent her anger, and she would do so in the most extreme way available.
Walking into the deadly area, the girl looked around for a while until she found something that would let her get what she wanted.
In just a few long strides, she was in front of it, gathering her power on her palm.
With a single strike, the stone she was looking at broke into pieces.
And in an instant, the people around looked at her in shock and terror.
Only someone with the wish for a slow and brutal death would do something like that.
Just what was the little twelve‑year‑old girl thinking.