175 No Free Lunch in this World

One of the women went up to them and waved, "Hey Charlie, we brought the guests for our base leader."

Charlie gave her an affectionate look before directing a diresive gaze towards them. He then spoke into his walkie talkie to inform the base leader of their arrival. A response immediately came through and Charlie said, "Our leader is ready for you. Please leave all your weapons out here before you enter."

Rin rolled his eyes, "Oh come on, everyone has powers now, why would you even ask us about weapons."

Light gave Rin an admonishing look that made him fall silent before complying. The women on the side looked towards them with confused expressions while Charlie's expression turned severe. Light's face turned thoughtful as he read their expressions, he seemed to have discovered something.

Lucifer took the lead to remove the guns and knives in his pockets, but also secretly kept the Reaper nails he got from a long while back around his neck like a necklace. It was always good to keep a backup plan just in case.

Only after they were all thoroughly frisked by the guards did Charlie's expression relax. "You will get your weapons after you leave the base."

Their group was finally allowed into a big room with windows lining the walls, presenting a perfect view of the entire base. It was reminiscent of Attack on Titan where humanity lived behind giant walls to protect themselves from the outside. If Aida were here, she would surely have made that reference and pointed out the major issues with that sort of lifestyle.

The base leader stood up from his desk and opened his arms in a welcoming manner. "Hello friends from afar, welcome to Yellow Base. My name is Ronaldo. Please, have a seat and let's chat."

The moment Light stepped into the room, he was immediately on guard. One of Light's long forgotten and unique skills is that he could smell the scent of blood no matter how subtle. In this case, the entire room was suffused with the smell of blood.

He began to study Ronaldo very carefully with his ability. Although the man appeared very kind and amiable on the outside, he could sense there was an underlying current of viciousness in his personality.

Despite the alarm bells ringing in Light's head, he still continued to act normally and unaffected. They still didn't know what Ronaldo's intentions were and there was no way to escape the current situation, so all he could do was wait before determining his next course of action.

Sitting down at the sofa, Ronaldo pulled out a bottle of red liquid from the refrigerator and poured himself some in a wine glass. Taking a sip, he smiled in delight. Then he looked up and said, "Oh! I'm terribly sorry, please excuse my bad manners. Would you like a drink?"

Light spoke for all of them and refused smoothly, "No thank you, we are in a bit of a rush. Thank you for agreeing to meet us on such short notice, did you get a chance to read over the information we sent over?"

Ronaldo swirled his glass silently for a moment before shooting a dazzling smile towards them, "Certainly my friend. We have already arranged a group of people to bring with you to fight against City M. Please, just allow me one evening to gather the people."

"That sounds great. How do you want us to compensate you for your help?"

Ronaldo chuckled and responded, "Oh don't be silly. We don't need compensation. We have a shared goal so this will be a good trust exercise for the beginning of our relationship."

After a few more courteous responses, Ronaldo ended the conversation. "This has been a delightful conversation. I insist that we have dinner together. How about I send you all to a room to freshen up while our cooks prepare a lavish meal?"

Lucifer responded, "Thank you for your graciousness, we will see you at dinner."

Ronaldo then called in the same two women, "Take them to the Lavender suite and provide them with everything they need."

They both had smitten looks on their faces as they nodded and brought Light and the others to a different floor in the skyscraper to stay for the evening. Light had maintained a calm and polite smile the entire way.

One of two women said, "Just use the phone or knock on the door if you have anything you need! We will see you around."

With that, they closed the door. The moment the door was shut tightly, Light's face turned stormy. Seeing this face, the twins immediately opened their mouths to ask only to be silenced by Light with a gesture.

He motioned to the room and indicated that there might be surveillance devices. Nodding, everyone remembered their counter-surveillance training from before and began to search the place. After sweeping the place, they had found over 40 pieces of surveillance in the room. Seven stood there silently gawking for the nth time today. He had no idea what was happening.

Sitting down, Light grimly explained, "There's something very wrong with this base and that base leader."

With that, he began pointing out all the points of abnormality since they stepped foot onto the base. Everyone thought back to their own experience so far and began noticing all the anomalies as well. Seven was the only one with a confused look on his face.

Light continued, "The base leader was clearly lying when he said he wanted to help us. There's no reason the base leader would comply so easily and promise with such a short deadline."

Lucifer nodded gravely, "In my experience, whenever we have a hostage situation, we do the same thing. Make the perpetrator believe that we are their friends and are on their side. Afterwards, the negotiations begin. Typically, when the negotiator chooses to comply with all the suspect's wishes, it means that they are going in for the kill shot and have given up on negotiations."

Light nodded, "There's no free lunch in this world. The most expensive meal is the one given to you for free. We're in trouble. We need to leave immediately."

Seven spoke up, "Eh? But this place seems nice. There shouldn't be anything wrong with it. Let's stay here for a bit longer. I'm sure they won't hurt a representative from Orange Base."

Lucifer shook his head at Seven and repeated his words firmly, "We need to leave."

Ace grumbled, "If they hadn't confiscated my laptop and everything else, I could've hacked into their network and figured out what was going on."

Everyone wholeheartedly trusted Light's judgement and Lucifer's experience. If he said it was dangerous, then it must and they should leave.