Chương 510: Chapter 511: Tracking

The preparations for the first mist creature hunt were brief. We didn't know enough about the enemy to make extensive preparations against them. All we really had to go off of was information from our first encounter, along with our own assumptions. The person who was leading the group, to my surprise, was Veritum himself. I hadn't expected that, since yesterday it hadn't sounded like he planned to join in the mist-monster hunt - but I was more than happy to see him there.

Veritum was starting to take a position as one of the pillars of the town, and I was glad to see that he didn't plan to be a hands-off leader. Apart from Veritum, in total, we ended up with around 60 adults, which was a bit higher than I expected. Almost all of the other adults in the town were either tasked with babysitting the kids, or setting up the enchanted wall of flames around town - both of which were obviously important tasks.

"All right, rules for this hunt - I don't want anyone dead," said Veritum.

"We prioritize safety first. If you see an opening, you only take it if you think you're safe. If anything looks wrong, we back off and retreat to town. If we face a catastrophic loss of manpower right now, we won't have enough people to maintain both the food production and the security of this town - and that would be the real catastrophe. Pretend that if you die, you'll be dragging four or five of our kids with you into the grave - because that's what will probably happen anyway, just delayed by a few months."

Veritum gave the townsfolk hard stares, one after another. Most of them met his eyes with their own firm resolve. Finally, Veritum nodded.

"All right, that's the biggest thing I wanted to remind you about. Miria, you're ready to heal us if something goes wrong, right?"

"I can freely use magic again, so I'm absolutely ready for healing," I said.

"I also want to remind you that I have a gift, which will probably let me effectively hurt the mist monsters in an emergency. I'm going to try not to use it, because our objective is to learn the weaknesses of the mist monsters, and my gift can't be reliably replicated for future generations. But if an emergency happens, I'll handle healing and I'll test out my gift, to see if it works as well as I think it will." Veritum paused, as if he were assessing my words.

He rubbed his chin in thought, before he finally nodded.

"You're a competent mage. I'll trust your judgement of the situation. But please, do your best to keep people alive. If we lose even a few people, our most reliable safety net for the future will disappear." I nodded in acknowledgement.

"All right, now on to the actual hunt. This morning, I sent a few of the adults out to scout for potential mist monsters, so that we could hopefully find an isolated one. One of them got back to me already, and said that they found a mist monster that enjoys roaming around on its own. Last time the scout checked in with me, he said that it was located about half an hour of travel to the south, so we're going to head there first.

The scout will leave us some marks on the trees if the mist monster changes directions or runs away, so we should have an easy time following it. Let's go." As a group, we began to march through the forest to the south of the growing settlement. Each footstep in the forest seemed to echo through the mists. I couldn't help but think about how the exact same journey had seemed confusing and terrifying only a few days ago.

Every single step into the mist had hidden unknown monsters and dangers, lurking just out of our sight. We'd had little way of knowing where enemies were, or where friends were. Now, with my soul-sight active again, I could tell the group exactly where every potential threat was. This wasn't just useful for locating the mist monsters, which we hadn't come across yet - more importantly, it was useful for locating pits filled with flesh-eating insects.

The forest was, as always, littered with little nests of hazards that could seriously injure someone if they fell in and weren't pulled out fast enough. Previously, the journey through the forest had been very dangerous because of this. The odd little pits of magic-suppressing quicksand could be anywhere, and if one of us stepped on one, it might take someone out of the next fight. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Now, my soul-sight made the nests stand out like giant lighthouses in the darkness, for one basic reason. The nests of flesh-eating insects were, in and of themselves, alive. Which was… odd. I had not expected the existence of living, sentient sand until I saw it for myself. The flesh-eating insects were also living creatures, which made me suspect the two were living in some kind of symbiotic relationship.

I had to save my essence for now, so I had no idea whether there was a practical way to kill these pits of sand, but I decided to keep it in mind for later. It could provide a new source of experience points for the children of the village, if it was possible to kill the sand pits without too much fuss and they provided enough levelling progress. As we wove around pits of flesh-eating insects, we came across the first signs left by the scout after about half an hour of walking.

There were a variety of large arrows cut into the trunks of multiple trees, all made using magic. Somehow, each cut had also left behind a faint trace of mana, which must have been the result of some kind of Feat. It made it very easy to spot the symbols, and once we saw them, all we had to do was follow along. The next fifteen minutes were just a matter of following the symbols. We delved deeper and deeper into the forest, as we traced the increasingly erratic symbols left behind by the scout. Finally, I stopped.

"There's something wrong with these symbols," I said.

"They're getting increasingly erratic. The ones we found near the start of our journey were large, easily discerned arrows that pointed directly towards the direction we needed to follow. Now, they just look like random knife marks left in tree trunks." Veritum nodded.

"You're right. It's almost like old Thom was just stabbing trees as he ran through the woods. It shows that he was either not paying attention, which is dangerous in a scout - or that he was rushing. Or, perhaps most dangerous of all, it could show that old Thom didn't leave these signs at all." I shivered. I hadn't noticed anything unusual with my soul sight yet, but that didn't mean we could see every danger in the mist. After all, my soul sight only detected living things.

THere were plenty of other dangers that could be hidden in the mist, such as traps. While my [Perception] was exceptional and I could probably spot most traps before we walked onto them, there was always a risk of missing something. Furthermore, Veritum's last idea was… chilling. If we were walking straight into a trap, that could be very dangerous. The mist column had called the fog banks 'mindless,' and unconsciously, I had started treating them as much less of a threat after that.

After all, a mindless monster was far less threatening than a cunning one. Now, I realized that the mist column's words might not have been perfectly accurate. I wasn't sure whether this situation was heading for the worst case scenario yet - but I certainly didn't like what I was seeing, at least.

"Miria, you still haven't seen any fog banks, right?"

"I haven't seen any souls that correspond to fog banks," I said. Veritum frowned.

"Keep an eye out for any threats. I don't like this," he said. I nodded. The group started following the signs left behind by the 'scout' again, but we slowed down considerably. Every single step was assessed for threats and traps before we took it. At this rate, catching up to the scout and the fog bank seemed unlikely - but soon, I realized that was irrelevant.

"I see a fog bank ahead of us, but it's not alone," I said.

"There are five other fog banks nearby. One of them is pretty strong, too. There are no human souls nearby, unless they're hiding in the trees and I'm somehow not seeing them."

"I smell blood," said one of the other adults.

"It smells like a slaughterhouse. It reeks." I had a sinking feeling that I already knew what had happened to our scout - and more than that, I had a strong suspicion that we had found the fog bank he had been tracking.