Stella rubbed her chin and frowned. “This doesn’t seem like the right place.”

Vur was standing in front of a giant structure with the Recordkeeper standing beside him. Behind them, the Generis Squad was looking up, their necks craned towards the sky. The structure in front of them was built into a mountainside. There were gleaming white walls, and greenish-blue vines hung down from their tops. The walls created a winding structure leading up the mountainside to a spire that pointed towards the sky like a giant holding a sword.

“What do you mean this doesn’t seem like the right place?” Helden asked. “It pretty much looks like an endgame dungeon. A boss definitely resides in here.”

Stella glanced at Helden. “Your choice of words is so weird sometimes,” she said and shook her head. “Look at it. It sticks out like a sore thumb. If someone’s doing evil deeds like growing weird creatures with human faces on them, they’re not going to do it out in the open.”

“Who cares?” Vur snorted. “All that matters is someone inside can make a body for Mr. Skelly, right?”

“That’s right,” Stella said. She furrowed her brow. “As long as this is the right place, that is.”

“It should be,” Blau said and pulled a map out of her bag. “If you look at all the places where evil beasts have been spotted”—she pointed at the red marks on the map—“you’ll see that all of them are within a certain distance of this point. This is the center of the evil beasts’ activity.”

“Don’t forget how we got here,” Forster said. “We injured an evil beast and let it run. Whenever a predator is injured, it’ll instinctually try to find its way back home.”

Helden took a step to the side, away from Blau. “We’ll find out once we go in,” he said. “Shall I lead the way?”

“Do you want to lead the way, Vur?” Stella asked. A moment later, she shook her head. “What am I saying? Yeah, go ahead. Lead the way, chef.” A sigh escaped from Stella’s mouth. Even if Helden would use this time to kill more evil beasts and learn more skills, it didn’t matter. Vur was lazy. If there was someone there to do something for him, why would he do it himself?

***

Tafel sprinted alongside the river, running as fast as she could. Behind her, walls of ice were formed one after another. However, sounds of ice breaking echoed through the tunnel, the shattering sounds reverberating as fast as the ice walls appeared. Whatever the heck it was, Tafel had no intentions of fighting it. If it could break her ice as fast as she could put it up, then it must’ve been just as strong as her. As an adventurer, one of the worst things she could do was fight something as strong as her while by herself—especially if her opponent had the homefield advantage.

Tafel’s brow furrowed. Clearly, the ice walls weren’t enough to stop the creature. She pointed at her feet, and a layer of ice spread behind her, coating the ground with a layer of ice an inch thick. Her horns glowed red, and she waved her hand. Fire bathed the ice on the ground, melting the top layer, leaving a slippery field behind herself. Tafel ran forward a bit longer before gritting her teeth. She turned around and slammed her palms against the ground. Massive spikes made of ice rose out of the ground at a thirty-degree angle, ready to impale the creature once it slipped on the icy field. Once she was done, she turned around and sprinted again, once again forming walls of ice behind herself. Her mission wasn’t to kill whatever was following her, it was to find Susan and Emile.

Tafel pulled out Minerva’s feather while running and sent some mana inside. Judging by the brightness of the traces in the air, she was getting close. Not only could she see red and orange lines, but she could also see faint outlines of the images they left behind. They seemed to have been flying for their lives; perhaps the two phoenixes had even seen the unknown pursuer. Tafel wasn’t quite sure what the creature was; in all her years of adventuring, she had never seen footprints that looked quite like the ones on the ground. At first, they were human footprints, but as she ran alongside the river, they warped and contorted into something else. They looked like hoofprints, but there were also marks resembling something like toes. In front of the toes, there were deep incisions, indicating the creature had claws.

Right when her sides were starting to hurt, a bright light entered Tafel’s eyes. It looked like she had reached the end of the tunnel! She went around a bend, and as expected, an underground cavern lush with greenery came into view. She slowed down and inspected the area ahead, but she wasn’t given too much time. The sound of breaking ice came closer and closer, and Tafel made up her mind. She dashed forward, and to her surprise, the sounds of breaking ice disappeared. She turned to look behind herself, and from where she had just exited, there was a purple barrier blocking her view.

“The messiah! The prophecy has come true!”

Tafel whipped her head around. From behind bushes and trees, dozens of pale people were peeking at her. Their paleness must’ve been a result of a lack of sunlight. Despite there being so much greenery, the place she had just entered was still a cave. There were glowing white crystals embedded in the ceiling, illuminating the whole place. It was wide, and Tafel wasn’t sure just how big it was; all she knew was she couldn’t see the end of it no matter which direction she looked.

“Alert the holy messengers! The messiah has arrived!”

Tafel’s brow furrowed. What kind of place had she just stumbled upon? She glanced behind herself once again, but the barrier was still firmly in place. Seeing as there were so many people in the cave, she assumed whatever the creature was, it couldn’t get out. It seemed like she was safe for now. …As long as the pale people weren’t the reason why the creature didn’t dare to leave the tunnel.