“Jaime, forget about these idiots and tell us our next set of plans. We can’t be roaming in the forest every day and have nothing to show for it.”
The last person to speak was another woman. But unlike Linda who was dressed messily and talked crassly, this woman was exuding elegance and sternness. She had dark green hair and short stature. She looked stronger than Ronald and Linda.
“You are right as always, Verna. But don’t worry our assignment is going to end soon. As soon as we find out exactly what happened in the Osan woods and who was the culprit behind it, we can convey our findings to that man and our job will end here.”
Jaime replied to Verna while chugging down a potion of unknown effect. But Linda intruded in their conversation before Verna could reply to him:
“Verna, stop thinking like you are better than me just because your ranking stage is higher. And who are you calling stupid? I’ll tell you who is the stupid one here. All of you, including me. Aaaargh! That indeed makes me stupid, doesn’t it?
Whatever! My point is we should have never agreed to complete this assignment. God knows what will become of us if we interfere in the big league’s games.”
Linda vented her pent up anger on everyone. But there was a sense of fear in her anger! Ronald found some truth in her words:
“As drunk as she might be, Linda is right! We shouldn’t have accepted this assignment. If I find that rat who messed up so “royally” in a royal affair, I would kill that person myself.
First, that rat messed up with the demon beast’s evolution. That wasn’t enough. It leaked the whole disappearance of hunters to the masses. And even hinted at the kingdom’s hand in this affair. What kind of idiot paints a bull’s eye on their back by doing this?”
Ronald concluded and finally snatched the Golden Grain from Linda before hurriedly sending it down his throat. Linda could only look at him angrily. She was the one who had teased him about having her booze. Now she had to face the consequences.
“But the bigger question is, how did they find out about everything? Leaking this news seems like sending that man a message. I’m not sure how that man will retaliate after knowing his plans were put to rest just because of this cockroach!”
“That’s what we need to find out in this forest. Our search can only be initiated during nights when other hunters from the city of Osan remain idle. We don’t want any more information breaches. During the daytime, we will search and find clues about the students’ deaths. And during night time we will conduct our separate investigation.”
Jaime stated and the rest nodded. Verna asked another query:
“So will we be able to stick to the same excuse? Jaime the lecturer at the LA academy and his three assistant lecturers are here to investigate the deaths of the academy’s final year students?”
Verna asked rhetorically. To which Jaime could only smile mirthlessly before sounding his agreement:
“Yes! Most high ranked entities will see through this BS. The academy will seldom send the lecturers to do these investigations. And they all know we belong to which faction in the royal court. Even that scheming but shallow man Isen Osan will see an oddity here.
But this ruse is enough to keep the lower-ranked entities in check or second-guessing. Plus, it also doubles up as the academy caring about students’ welfare. That’s good PR.
Though, the biggest damage that rat has done is to our reputation and credibility. Now that man thinks the leak took place from our end. We need to clear our name by finding the real culprit of this incident.”
“Do you think it’s Dom Walker as the reports submitted by the city of Osan say?
I’m not sure why, but my instincts say there’s a veil woven with the strings of dead ends, confusion, and mysteries to hide a vile evil under it.”
Linda talked as if she was sobered up all of a sudden. The three members around her didn’t act surprised by Linda’s sudden clarity. As if they were used to it. Verna was the one to answer her:
“I don’t think so. At most, this Dom guy can be a puppet for someone really powerful. They knew about that man’s plan in the Osan woods and decided to sabotage it using Dom as a spoiler. Everything will be answered if we find this puppet named Dom.”
Jaime shook his head at Verna’s opinion, indicating his disagreement:
“You are naive if you think that Dom is still alive after all this. If there’s someone powerful behind for real, they’ll get rid of Dom now that he has served their purpose. Or to be precise, after he damaged their interests after telling more than he should have.
Why would they leave a loose end behind in the form of a blabbermouth who was okay with puking out everything he knew on that recorded footage just to get laid. If you ask me, he is down under some lake, talking with the fishes.”
“Then what should we do? Keep running around in the forest day and night without knowing about what we are looking for?”
Verna asked with frustration. She was bothered the most about spending her days in the forest, where there was no bath or proper toilet facilities. She looked elegant and cool, but only she knew how hard it was for her to maintain that facade in this environment.
“Well, Linda will use her powers to detect the smallest of clues if we find some other trail of the person who was with Dom. So far, we have only confirmed what the city of Osan claimed to have found. That there was a second person with Dom whose identity is unknown.
Following Dom’s trails is a waste at this time. When you have so many clues regarding Dom out as public knowledge, it can only mean they’ve been left behind purposely to mislead the pursuers. We can’t track the demon beast either because of its speciality.
That leaves us only with this person who is as elusive as they are cunning.
Even someone like Linda could only come up with that person being rankless, which is not true. So we can’t use the usual methods to know about their identity. They’ve taken necessary precautions against it.
That leaves us with the grid-wise, manual search for that person’s previous presence in the woods. They must have travelled in the forest a lot of time before the demon beast evolution was triggered. They had to, after knowing so much insider detail about the case.
Or they can return to the scenes of their crime, trying to see if they’ve missed anything. We have already placed artefacts at both the crime scenes, which will let us know as well as record the person’s identity there.
Meanwhile, we can only try to complete our grid search as fast as we can. This area has been cleared. We will now move to the next grid, heading towards the western side of the forest. And we need to hurry. As Verna said, we don’t want to spend a second more in this pathetic forest any more than we have to.
Alright! The break time is over. We will take some rest after the next grid gets finished. Let’s go.”