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~Eevulen~

Vanderby, Linc and Estra set out on their journey towards Losla.

Their supplies were half-filled so they could maintain a moderate pace, though if they saw any animals crossing their paths it would certainly be their next meal.

“So what do you think he did? To attract a bounty this large?” Linc asked.

Vanderby answered, “No clue. Someone that far out probably has zero chance of offending a royal; most of them have probably never even heard of Eevulen.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.” Estra said.

As they walked out of Eevulen, they noted many others buying supplies despite the high prices. Obviously, other hopeful young adventurers had the same idea.

A normal bounty would only be a few thousand gold at most – it depended who they pissed off – but even then, they were to be brought in alive, which raised the difficulty of such missions. The bounty would also, usually, be quite a high level.

This however was a unique opportunity.

With three hundred thousand gold on the line for the dead body of a level nine adventurer, it was needless to say that the bounty hunters were now like flies to dog shit as they swarmed towards Losla.

Even parties of fresh adventurers with no bounty experience were teaming up and taking their chances, and the path towards Tolgard would be more degraded than ever after they all passed through.

Vanderby’s group had a head start though, as Eevulen was considerably closer to Losla than many of the other cities in Astrata.

Countless groups departed Eevulen and some of them only had a few meters between the other groups as they marched along the road. Others didn’t bother with walking and simply flew using their magic.

There was even one group which travelled in a stone house which somehow sat on top of a large, rolling boulder.

Still, Vanderby was smiling, as he had a better chance than all of them, and that was due to one person: Estra.

Estra’s class was unusual to say the least. After it was discovered by the local adventurer guild, she was locked away, but after some discussion and a few interviews, they came to the conclusion that she wasn’t dangerous enough to be classified as a variant.

After a few days passed, she left the guild, still as a level one – but by then, she was simply too far behind, and with her unusual abilities no one would bring her into their party; she was dead weight.

Her only option was to join these two. Coincidentally, her only ability, which was useless in dungeons was quite practical in the real world; of course, she had gained more abilities since levelling up.

As for the ability which would help them find Jay?

<[Heart Trace]>

[- You miss your beloved; you long for their embrace and to listen for their heartbeats once more.]

[- Requirements not met.]

As for the requirements, she already found that out the day after receiving the skill – she merely had to sleep in the bed of her ‘lover’, though this could be any bed at all.

When she woke up, she would have a list of names to choose from – those whom she could choose to heart trace.

After that, all she needed was some quiet, and she would be able to hear a gentle heartbeat in whatever direction her ‘lover’ was in.

Still, she would need to sleep in Jay’s bed for this to work, and first they would have to get to Losla.

A few times, this skill revealed some more opportunities as well, such as when a name of a ‘righteous’ young noble’s name would appear in the bed of an ‘entertainment’ house.

This strange skill was their edge over others – others who would have to rely on information gathering, basic tracking skills and either heat, life or blood-based mana pulses.

All of which were time consuming and tiring.

The mage hunters used the latter, relying on the variants body warmth, life energy or blood, revealing anything with either of these on a spell-linked map.

However, it had its drawbacks, as these couldn’t distinguish between human, monster or animal alike, and in the wild Loslan forests which were brimming with life, there would be thousands of signals to track.

This also required a specific magic type, and in Lieutenant Marsh’s small party there were not any men who even had much skill with magic. They were low ranking soldiers who had melee classes. Most of them only used mana to power their armour.

The mage hunters armour shielded them from such tracking, however the approaching hoards of adventurers and bounty hunters coming to search the forests would only make the forests fill up with even more signs of life, making tracking more difficult.

Thankfully they didn’t have to execute anyone, but could simply mark off a signal from their map once they realized it was a person or harmless animal.

~Losla~

Losla was still locked down as the mage hunters conducted their door to door search.

No one could stop them – not only due to the authority of the mage hunters, but physically were much stronger, and if anyone tried to resist it would result in an instant execution.

A few knocks on the door and one would have to open it, otherwise the door would be smashed to pieces; the mage hunters were simply uncompromising in their duties.

Plus, many enjoyed the twisted feeling of power that came from frightening the weak.

The Losla residents were tense and angry, as game hunters weren’t allowed to leave. There was no one bringing fresh food back from the forests.

It was spring, so there wasn’t much to forage anyway, but having no meat still had an impact. Stored provisions leftover from winter were slowly being eaten away or perishing, so there was some food around, and the mage hunters at least let the farmers leave to till and prepare their fields, however food was only a small source of the stress.

This was just the beginning.

Currently, thirty-five thousand mage hunters were heading towards Losla, each with the authority to do as they pleased for the most part, but a bigger problem was the huge population influx.

Not only would it cause soaring food prices, but housing would become scarce and expensive – perhaps even some would be ‘seized’ for the greater good.

The forests would be cleansed of animals for food, and populations of precious glade deer may never recover.

The gentle stream which supplied their water? If not polluted, it would be turned into a scarce ration, with the mage hunters given priority. The famers fields which they were not planting would become barren, unless a grand water mage used some rejuvenating spell craft.

Coincidentally, there were nearly no plant mage’s in the whole of the mage hunter arsenal.

As for sanitation, there would simply not be enough hay to process all the human waste into manure. It would have to be burnt by fire mages or simply piled up somewhere.

In essence, to the people living there, Losla was going to be destroyed. It was in its last days. Each of its residents were packing their belongings while waiting for the knocks of the mage hunters on their doors, waiting for their homes to be searched.

As soon as the mage hunters let them go, the smarter ones were already planning to give up their houses and leave, finding another village to build their lives up in once more, and starting again from almost nothing.

The unfortunate ones were the those who were going to stay in Losla, and there were three types of these people: Those kept their heads down, focused on their daily tasks while they ignored the changing world around them, those who still thought of the mage hunters as their heroes, and the elderly who were too old to travel alone and had not saved a single gold from their younger years.

The shadow of death was on Losla.

~Losla, Adventurer Guild~

“Sir, the guild workers wish to settle back into the guild. They have promised to cooperate.” a mage hunter stood before lieutenant Marsh.

Marsh scoffed for a moment, but afterwards nodded slowly.

While there wasn’t much of a need to run the guild right now, the trade platform which Lillian ran was almost a necessity. Plus, in the coming days, the guild would have to be a fully functioning administration hub for the coming divisions of mage hunters.

Besides, the guild would also need to function as an area to form bounty hunting groups for the latest bounty placed on Jay’s head – and Marsh certainly wasn’t going to organize all of this himself. It was below him.

“Let them back – but no guards. Only functional staff.”

“All of them are functional except for one. An orphan girl.”

“No one has adopted her?”

“She cannot speak, she’s a mute… but I see defiance in her eyes.”

Marsh hid a sly smile as he replied, “Then we will claim her. Another mage hunter for the saintess division… have the ‘functional staff’ handle her transfer to the three sisters.”

The mage hunter nodded and left with his orders.

The saintess division was another crafty name made by the political class; a most basic example of weaponized language which coincidentally fooled most people.

The division, while named the saintess division, was filled with women who were anything but saints. It was simply another flashy, honorable-sounding name used to trick the peasants.

Sure, they wore shining white armour and said all the right things in public, but during variant, witch, and mage hunts, they were the furthest thing from a saint.

Nothing was off the table for them, and nothing was immoral: seduction, poison, torture, soul-burning, manipulation, human replacement – and this was what they did to innocent peasants as they searched for clues to carry out their mission.

The saintesses who were each like demons when visiting towns, and they even mage hunters would seem like valiant noble knights. Most variants were often more preferable.

Conversations about the saintess’s ranged from “Oh, they are so beautiful. They’re like angels here to protect us…” to “If a saintess comes to your town, just leave. Abandon everything.”

In another time, in another part of the kingdom, a villager had said, “Oh, all the mage hunters did was break down your door and break your nose? How very kind. A saintess came to my house in the middle of the night while we were asleep. She stole my child and replaced them with a humanoid golem. I only found out a few weeks later after the spell ended when the mana ran out… My child – at least I thought it was my child – turned to a pile of fucking stones while we were eating breakfast. All because I gave a variant directions one time… The worst part is, if I tell anyone, I’m made to look like a complete fucking lunatic.”

And no one would have listened to such a far-fetched story.

Suppressing the truth about these white armour-clad women, delivering lofty speeches, and using names like ‘saints’, were all part of the useful propaganda. In the human kingdom of Astrata, even simple speech was made into a powerful weapon, as powerful as any spell.