“Did you find anything?”

  “Not even a breadcrumb, what about you?”

  “Nothing either… Where else could a bunch of trainees have gone but here? That other trainee had seemed pretty confident that this was where they were headed…”

  Two instructors from the knight establishment stood under the shade of one of the many trees of Louwoods. These two in particular were supposed to be in charge of fresh recruits. Naturally, it was their job to find out where nearly twenty trainees had disappeared to…

  This was especially crucial, as they weren’t part of a small knight establishment. They were famous enough that bourgeois and small nobles would sometimes send their children to train in the ways of knighthood. Thankfully, there were no such individuals among those who disappeared, at least to their knowledge.

  Still, it was more than just a bad look for them if they couldn’t recover those youths quickly.

  Early on in the morning, an initial search had been performed throughout Louwoods, but no traces of them were discovered. But even now, in the afternoon, the two instructors remained…

  They had no better lead than what one other trainee had told them, a youth who probably would be amongst the missing if not for the fact that she had suddenly gotten sick to the point of puking all day and night.

  She claimed that the others had set off for Louwoods under the lead of Draklim to ‘test’ themselves in more ‘realistic’ conditions… The idea itself wasn’t too bad, but for trainees who hadn’t even been taught the basics of swinging a sword, it was way too soon to be engaging in such activities…

  The sickly trainee had no reason to lie, so it stood to reason that Louwoods had been the destination, and either where they currently were, or a place they had gone through before going wherever else.

  Both instructors thus believe that this was where the searches should be concentrated, even if nothing had been found following a large sweep through the woods.

  “You don’t think… Could it be that the ghosts got aggressive?”

  “I thought about it, but we’ve used the trail at night before, and they seemed to behave in the exact same way as during the day, so…”

  “Perhaps the trainees did something to anger them or something? I mean, what else but the ghosts could have caused them to vanish without a trace? There is no way for them to have been ambushed, as the attackers would have needed to know that they would come here in advance…”

  “I suppose it’s either the ghosts or that Draklim had set out to lay a trap for our trainees from the beginning… We don’t have proof for either option, do we?”

  “We could always call a mage capable of reading past events through energy residuals. Most of the trainees didn’t even know the first thing about energy circulation, so they should have left a hefty amount of residuals behind”

  “And where can we find a mage like that? Most of them just use magic to throw fireballs, waterballs… Why are mages so obsessed with balls anyway?”

  The two instructors looked around for the rest of the day, but were unable to find anything. This led them to focus on trying to find a mage with the proper capabilities who would be able to show up before the residuals faded away.

  One handy thing was a self-updating book where mages looking for jobs, most of them also adventurers, would put themselves in. The book in question was obscenely expensive, but the knight establishment had one for free because a previous supervisor had married a mage who just so happened to have the means to get one free of charge.

  Otherwise, no one would have been willing to spend the sort of money required to get their hands on something like this. It was mostly meant for nobles who wanted to hire mages for things like landscaping, tutoring a young noble, and things of that sort.

  “Investigative Mage, Binibelle? That name sounds a bit silly, but she seems to be an expert in reading residuals”

  The book also served as a way to contact the mages, so after getting authorisation from the current supervisor, they performed a long-distance hiring, which was done upon a special page of the book where both parties could write to one another in turns.

  After two days. She showed up at the knight establishment just as agreed upon.

  Since mages were very ‘proud’ of their skills and credentials over anything else, the book had not included anything about how the mages looked, or really anything that was not about their spellcasting abilities and nifty energy-based tricks.

  Based on the name and the way in which she had been writing, they had been expecting an energetic young woman, and indeed, they were correct in that regard. They just hadn’t expected her to be a halfling.

  “Hello, hello! I hope I am not too late”

  The two knight instructors had met their fair share of halflings. That sapient species wasn’t exactly uncommon in Rootriska. In fact, one of their fellow instructors was engaged to one. It was just that the halflings they had met had been similar in the fact that they were not only short, but also quite slim and frail-looking.

  That one? Didn’t fit the image they had for halflings at all.

  “Hum… No, you are early, in fact! Let us show you the way to Louwoods”

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  They went and followed the trail as the two instructors suspected that this should be where the trainees had been, and quickly, Binibelle seemed to find something.

  “Hold on a minute… There are quite a lot of residuals from a lot of different people here. I’ll need a few minutes to sort everything out neatly”

  She said, the two knights nodding as they stood a distance away to avoid disturbing her.

  “Hey, you do realise that you are staring intently, right?”

  “Huh? Was I?”

  “You absolutely were, do remember the code of our establishment… Be gallant”

  “It’s just that… How does this even work? They must make up at least a quarter of her body weight… What sort of bone strength does she have to support this?”

  “Heh, it’s probably just magic”

  “Mmh…”

  In the meantime, the mage was piecing the residuals together, allowing her to glean at what had transpired here not too long ago… The images she could see, and the sounds she could hear, were a bit fragmented as the residuals weren’t as fresh as they could ideally be for what she was doing. Nonetheless, her skill was high enough to get the picture in a short moment.

  “It would seem that they decided to form small groups to take on the trail as separate teams”

  She commented before beginning to walk alongside the trail, piecing things together as she went.

  Most of what she had to say wasn’t very interesting until they reached a specific obstacle. Namely, a pit which had to be traversed by using logs of different thickness and slipperiness that were dispersed across it.

  “Huh…”

  “What is it, Miss Binibelle?”

  “All residuals met an abrupt stop here”

  She seemed to randomly move her hands through the air, but the knight instructors figured that she was just doing magical stuff that they simply couldn’t see.

  Binibelle slightly readjusted the absurdly oversized witch hat she was wearing, scratching the side of her face.

  “Well… I am afraid that your trainees may all be dead already”

  “Pardon?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Every time a group reached this particular point, they were either submerged by ghosts or they were separated and silently knocked out by a… I frankly have no idea what that thing is. It kind of looks like someone customised one of those entertainment automatons to commit murder instead of singing songs? Do you guys have one of those places that uses automatons to scare people? It might have come from one of those or something”

  “Wait, they were all knocked out, can’t you tell us where they were taken then?”

  He chose to ignore the stuff about an automaton. It frankly didn’t matter what had taken them.

  Binibelle pointed at a patch of ferns just a short distance away from the trail.

  “Should be about… Here”

  The mage tapped her foot strongly, and the sound of wood resounded rather than that of dirt being struck.

  “Looks like there's a hatch… The residuals show me that the automaton dragged them down here, and from the looks of it, it was a ghost who covered the trapdoor up afterwards”

  The knight instructors looked at one another.

  “So, basically, you’re telling us that a strange-looking automaton abducted our trainees and dragged them into some sort of secret underground with the assistance of the ghosts of this forest?”

  “Yes”

  “So why do you think they are dead? You didn’t see any being killed, right?”

  “You didn’t see the teeth on that thing as it knocked them out in a single strike! I don’t know about you, but I doubt it just invited them to spend some quality time down here…”

  It was indeed rare for monsters to keep something alive that wasn’t a member of their herd or an offspring.

  The halfling looked up at the two knights.

  “Welp, do you need me for anything else?”

  She seemed utterly unfazed by the idea that a bunch of youths had been massacred. If anything, she was more concerned about being on time for her next job. She had only agreed to take this one up because it was along the path she was going to take anyway, but in truth, she had come from afar for one precise job.

  “Mmh… I guess not? Here is your payment, Miss… And thank you for your time”

  “No problem! Don’t hesitate to call me again in the future! I might be off the book for a while, though, so do keep that in mind!”

  She casually went and walked away like she was skipping through a meadow. Moving about in what the knights would describe as… Bouncy.

  “This can’t be normal…”

  “Stop hyperfixating and help me open this thing”

  “Knight or not, there are certain things a man simply can not ignore!”

  “Shut up”

  The two knights had little trouble forcing the hatch open, but they quickly noticed that the trapdoor had actually been carefully crafted, not only made from good wood, but also reinforced with steel… The wood had even been treated with something to prevent humidity or dryness from twisting its shape.

  Could a monster not only craft that, but also get the necessary materials to do so?

  Looking down into the pit, they had expected to see something, especially since they luckily had the sun shining a fair distance into the hole, but no, they could only see what appeared to be a bottomless fall.

  “This seems rather deep… Not to mention that the tunnel itself is a bit tight…”

  “Right, if something comes at us down here, we won’t be able to fight back. We know where the trainees are now, and we also know that there is a dangerous creature who has seemingly taken control of the ghosts. I say we report our findings to the establishment. This should be ground for a little crusade, don’t you think?”

  “You’re right, but even with the whole establishment to help, what can we do? Numbers won’t solve the problem of narrow tunnels where we can barely even use our weapons, and also, I highly doubt we’ll be allowed to just dig down to find the monster…”

  “... I mean, Louwoods is a pretty big source of revenue not just for the surroundings, but for the crown. The king won’t be happy if we damage the forest”

  “Right… We’ll have to figure something out nonetheless. This trail was a pretty large investment, and we can’t just allow a monster to roam the place as it sees fit”

  The two knights shut the hatch and stood up.

  “Where… Do… You… Think… You… Are… Going…?”

  Their activities had not escaped the attention of a certain quintet.