Azterlan's Analysis

Azterlan had his reasons for choosing Smile as his breakthrough point against the three invaders, whose motives were unclear and whose schemes were watertight.

While Punk, Kane, and the maiden goddess wreaked havoc and set fires throughout White Stone City, the White-robed Mage, busy putting out fires everywhere, carefully observed these three formidable adventurers.

In the end, Azterlan quickly reached an obvious and correct conclusion—the three members of this "adventuring party"—the Legendary Mage, the Legendary Knight, and the maiden goddess—were not on friendly terms at all! To some extent, the three were even hostile toward one another. They had only reluctantly joined forces for some unknown special reason.

Among them, the weakest, the maiden goddess, clearly had the least say and received the least consideration. Even though she faced the deadly predicament of potentially being unable to return to her divine kingdom for a long time, her two companions still wore indifferent expressions that said it was none of their concern. Even the Legendary Knight, who appeared closest to Smile, showed a hint of schadenfreude.

After discovering these strange facts, Azterlan, who had been racking his brains over how to deal with this "three-person party," came up with a brand-new idea. He intended to find a way to win over Smile, the maiden goddess who was "in trouble." Even if he could not recruit her, obtaining some intelligence about Punk's schemes would still be useful.

Even if neither of those objectives could be achieved, he at least had to stop this stealthy fellow from following him around so diligently every day. After all... although Azterlan had seemingly found Smile's true body without any effort, his spell was not actually that effective.

As the saying went, specialization bred strength. This concealment technique was Smile's sole Legendary Level divine spell as a