A few days before Simon found Salem.

In the throne room of the king’s castle in Talvisota.

“Simon, you are my most trusted Royal Knight and as such I need to ask something of you. I assume you know of Crow’s Forest to the west? Recently there have been reports of people missing after going into the forest. While this could just be the usual monster attacks there is the possibility that it was caused by our enemies, the wood elves of the Forest Kingdom Levayin. I need you to go to Crow’s Forest and make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. If something is then you need to deal with it properly.” The king ordered Simon.

Simon stayed silent and left the room before starting to head towards Crow’s Forest.

He didn’t speak to anyone as he left and no one tried to speak to him. Simon wasn’t exactly hated but he also wasn’t liked by most people, this also made him quite trusted by the king as he knew that Simon wouldn’t be influenced by anyone.

Simon made his way to the stables to take a horse as otherwise the trip would take quite a while. There weren’t many horses that were available to use but due to Simon’s status, some more options were opened.

He grabbed the best horse available and swiftly made his way to Crow’s Forest. It was a smooth journey as he used the roads and bandits either wanted to rob someone with more wealth or they knew who he was.

There were a few bandits who did neither but they were taken care of as quickly as possible.

A few days later Simon arrived at Crow’s Forest, Simon wasted no time before starting to search around the last known location of the people who went missing.

He didn’t find much except their axes stuck in the trees. There was also a slightly strange feeling in the mana but that was probably caused by either the monsters or wood elves who killed the lumberjacks.

Continuing on, he found a spider monster but it was too afraid of him to do anything except cower away.

Simon frowned, he knew that this spider could be the cause of the missing people but its mana was different from the one that was mixed in at the location of the axes.

Then he heard voices, there was a lot of variation in them showing that very few of them were from the same place but they all had two things in common, the first is that none of them were children which wasn’t surprising but the second was that there were no humans in the mix.

Simon thought and realized that there was a high likelihood of these people being responsible for the missing lumberjacks but there was still a chance of him being wrong so he decided to watch rather than take action.

*****

“What time is it? Should be around nightfall right? Should we set up camp?” The only dwarf in the group asked.

“Eh, we can set up camp tomorrow morning, we still have until the next night anyways.” One of the other group members replied.

Over the day that Simon had been watching this group he noticed a few things. Firstly, the number of people in the group never exceeded 50. Secondly, there were six people who seemed to be the leaders of this group: the dwarf, a pixie, a beast person, a merfolk who didn’t seem to be bothered by the land, and most strangely two half dragons.

Normally anything with dragon blood would be hunted immediately but these two seemed to coexist just fine with this group, one was even a healer.

Thirdly and most strangely, this group of people had time magic placed on them. Simon didn’t know what this time magic was used for but whenever someone left the group the time magic on them would vanish and if someone joined the group then the time magic would appear on them.

The group hadn’t actually done anything except wander around the forest so Simon decided to take a risk and directly confront the group.

He moved a ways away and then started walking directly towards the group from the direction they were facing.

Once the group could actually see him instead of taking out their weapons, those who didn’t already have them out already at least, the group simply kept walking towards him.

Once they were close enough to have a regular conversation, one of the half dragons said, “Hello there, we appreciate you showing yourself to us but may we ask why exactly you’re following us?”

Simon was direct and asked, “Which kingdom or empire do you have an affiliation with?”

The half dragon thought for a moment before replying, “We don’t really have any affiliation, if we had to choose one then it would vary.”

Simon narrowed his eyes, there weren’t many people who were able to live freely without an affiliation, most were bandits and the rest were either people who were inconsequential or powerful enough to ignore restrictions.

Simon took out his bow and an arrow and asked, “Then may I challenge the leader of your group to a friendly spar?”

The half dragon thought for another moment before deciding to reply with, “We don’t really have a leader. However, due to the fact that you seem to use a bow then there aren’t many options to make this fair. The dwarf’s only ranged weapon is extremely short range, the beast person doesn’t use a ranged weapon, the other half dragon is a priest and while they do have a bow it is used to support allies, while the pixie would just be unfair for you since they’re so small. I can only offer myself or the merfolk. I specialize in attacking single targets with my bow while the merfolk focuses on small groups. Take your pick.”

Simon was amazed he was given this much information for free. He decided to fight the non-priest half dragon since it was much harder to avoid a bow that’s supposed to attack groups.

The half dragon smiled and said, “Well, I may as well introduce myself. My name is Vel and I hope you won’t run away too quickly.”

Simon felt only dread and despair when he saw that smile but he couldn’t back out now.

He readied his bow as the other group members surrounded both Vel and himself.

A random group member walked into the ring with a bow and a single arrow before explaining, “The spar will start when the arrow hits the ground.” He then proceeded to shoot the arrow straight up.

It seemed to take an eternity for the arrow to land but once it did Simon immediately dodged to his left and readied his arrow.

Vel didn’t seem very worried and merely watched for a second before raising her bow. It gathered the surrounding mana and some from Vel herself before it directed it all into the arrow.

Simon’s eyes widened as he felt a massive sense of danger from that arrow. He thought about his options and realized that even if he dodged the arrow it would still release the stored mana and cause a fairly forceful explosion. He could forfeit but that would be meaningless if the arrow was actually a lie and was weak. His final option was extremely risky and it was to hit the mana filled arrow with his own.

Simon was confident in his skills but it was still an extremely difficult target to hit.

Vel was merely watching with her arrow ready but she was starting to draw it back so she could fire it.

Simon quickly decided to go with the last option as it was the only one with a chance of letting him escape unscathed.

Vel drew back her arrow while Simon drew back his. They released at the same time but Vel’s arrow slipped past Simon’s. Simon’s arrow hit Vel’s body, which surprisingly didn’t cause Vel to change her expression, while Vel’s arrow flew past Simon and hit an undead person that was behind him.

Simon stared in shock as the arrow hit the undead, instantly destroying its head before carrying it flying through the forest.

Vel turned to Simon and smiled sadly before saying, “We have nothing to do with the missing people. The spider was the one who killed them. If you follow that strange mana trail you might find the thing you’re confused about. Now go, this is only going to get worse and worse so I would prefer you run away.”

The other group members were fighting against the growing horde of undead while some were healing and others were standing around what seemed to be a shrine to a god.

Simon took one last look before he ran in the direction of where the axes were.

*****

In the morning, Simon looked towards where the group was and saw that there were now three beams of lighting shining into the sky.

He put the thought out of his mind of going back and started searching the mana trail for whatever had caused it.

Slowly the trail grew more and more tangible until Simon saw some remains of spells being cast. Very weak spells but they were spells nonetheless.

At the center of the spells there were two things. Well, one thing that there were two of. Both were wolves with fur that seemed completely white but if you looked closely there was actually some very pale purple and blue mixed in and eyes that were a light red in color.

One was sleeping while the other didn’t seem entirely real. Simon walked towards the wolves and while the unreal one growled a bit, the sleeping one stayed asleep.

Simon took out an old manasteel cage that usually wasn’t even taken out from his spatial storage and put the sleeping wolf inside before covering the cage.

He then left the forest and before he got back on the road with his horse he looked into the forest for the shining lights from the shrines.

There was only one left.

As Simon was leaving he felt a mana fluctuation and looked back to see that the final light beam was gone.

He had the strange feeling that something about the world was off, like something that shouldn’t be possible had happened, but he didn’t know what it was.

He continued on the road back to Talvisota to report to the king and never realized that he slowly forgot his encounter with the strange group and Vel.