Chapter 87: The Missing

After checking the general situation and confirming that not even half a living person could be found, the puzzled 【Tree Bow】 could only lead her two teammates away from the village temporarily to meet up with other team members who were camping outside to monitor the situation.

However, when they arrived at the designated spot…

“Wait, something feels off, Sophie!”

Suddenly, a low hiss echoed as the lead 【Tree Wall】, already walking outside the village among the woods, immediately halted and raised her shield in vigilance.

Being a highly perceptive treant, she had sensed the problem as well.

Considering the need for constant support and response, the positions of the other team members camping weren’t far from the village, but to avoid detection by the villagers, they surely couldn’t set up tents ostentatiously or light up bonfires. They could only take turns keeping watch and resting with sleeping bags and such.

The advantage of this approach was that the traces of their encampment were not obvious, making it hard for anyone coming nearby to detect. Yet still, it felt overly clean around them.

So clean that… it was as if no one had ever been here.

Exchanging glances with her two companions, 【Tree Bow】 stepped forward half a pace with her sister covering her, taking out a specially crafted wooden whistle and blowing it multiple times.

“Beep~ Beep~”

The melodious whistle sounded like birds chirping, quickly echoing through the woods. At a casual listen, it seemed inconspicuous, but anyone who had prior contact would immediately realize it was the agreed-upon signal.

However, over ten seconds had passed, yet there was still no response.

Enrique’s face gradually turned grim.

He wanted to do something, but Vilyric calmly shook her head at him.

“No need to try anymore; there’s not a single shadow of a person within hundreds of meters. They’re no longer here.”

“Damn it!”

With great unwillingness, he slammed the tree trunk next to him, causing a shower of leaves to drop. The green-haired young man murmured in frustration.

“What the hell is going on… Did we suddenly encounter some strong enemy attack? But when I met up with 【Tree Monkey】 last night, everyone was perfectly fine!”

“Calm down, big brother! Maybe they just… uh, just…”

Although she instinctively wanted to comfort her brother, Sophie hesitated and couldn’t get the latter half of her sentence out; it was clear she also couldn’t comprehend the current bizarre situation.

Just yesterday, everything was normal, but overnight, how could those few suddenly go missing? They were all top-tier, experienced high-level adventurers, after all.

“Suddenly going missing… a missing persons case…”

The Priestess observed the ground around her, noticing no signs of human interference, and then made her way to a particularly prominent sturdy old tree nearby, gently running her fingers along its rough bark, whispering thoughtfully.

“There are none…”

“Miss Vilyric? Did you find something?”

Glancing at the two legendary adventurers who had quickly gathered by her side, the black-haired girl nodded slightly.

“Do you all remember the information that Miss Qionghua, the Astrologer, mentioned last night on the mountain?”

【Tree Bow】 immediately nodded.

“Of course, she said the entire starry sky in this area looked abnormal, as if it was completely flipped upside down. But what does that even mean? Does Miss Vilyric already understand?”

“I can’t claim to understand, but I can offer a guess…”

The Priestess pointed at the old tree beside her, then lifted her hand to indicate her gem-like silver-blue eyes.

“I mentioned before that I can see certain special traces left behind by Xiao Guang along the paths we traveled. In simple terms, it appears as a faint golden line, like a paint strip laid across the road.”

“But there’s something very strange. Since we got close to this remote mountain area last night, that trace has suddenly vanished. I searched from a distance and found new traces appearing somewhere outside this village of Adelaide 192. Though it doesn’t affect my tracking, it is clearly unreasonable and abnormal.”

“Considering this oddity, just to be safe, I carved a small mark on this tree last night before entering the village and deliberately didn’t tell anyone. But look…”

She knocked on a specific spot on the tree trunk with her pale fingers, and clearly, there were no signs of human engraving.

A hint of a smile mixed with something inscrutable appeared on the girl’s lips, as if she was talking to herself.

“Clearly it’s the same place, the same tree, but not a single soul knew the mark, yet it mysteriously vanished just overnight. What does this represent?”

“This…”

Enrique exchanged glances with Sophie. As legendary adventurers, their sharp instincts and rich experiences quickly led them to vaguely realize the most likely cause of this situation.

“Wait… Are we actually not in the same place we were last night?!”

Following the astonished outburst from the green-haired girl, the Priestess nodded approvingly.

“Yes! That’s a very accurate description. This is also the most reasonable hypothesis I have so far, but if that’s the case, there are still several other aspects that don’t quite add up…”

“I understand. What Miss Vilyric wants to clarify should be the cause of these two distinct spaces, the key to distinguishing them, and why only 【we】 got separated and returned to this side… right?”

After a thorough analysis and discussion, Enrique had completely calmed down, entering a meticulous thinking mode.

“Then based on this assumption, I have a piece of information I want to confirm. You mentioned earlier that the unique traces left by Xiao Guang had broken in this area. What about now? Have those broken gaps healed at all?”

“Oh?”

Well done, legendary adventurers are indeed different from regular fish, as it’s rare for ordinary folks to catch onto key points in such a short time…

Of course, Vilyric wouldn’t say that out loud. She merely turned her head away, and not far off on the rugged country road, the golden traces that hadn’t existed last night were now shimmering softly in her 【Yin-Yang Eye】 vision, forming a long line extending into the distance.

“Now I can completely confirm, this is where those guys truly passed through~”

After some time.

Although 【Tree Bow】 and 【Tree Wall】 had basically acknowledged Vilyric’s views after detailed discussions and reasoning, they decided to conduct another search of the village and surrounding forest just to be sure.

No matter what defined the boundary point between the two spaces, or what differences existed, given the current circumstances, there wasn’t much they could do—waiting was the only option.

Considering that the others might also mysteriously return to this side at some point, and it seemed that there were no immediate dangers nearby, the three decided to leave Vilyric, who was relatively fragile as a Priestess, resting at the camp while Enrique and Sophie decided to circle the village to gather as much information as possible.

   

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