“You must have already known that attacks made on me are of different elemental affinities than you.
The only common thing is the water elemental energy, but that could have just been from the blood essence. There is no need for a water elemental user amongst them to attack me with blood essence of a sea creature.
The rest are ice and lightning.
I just want to be sure if one of the other three might have possessed this elemental energy.” Smith explained to Saint.
“No, I don’t have any information regarding them. The only reason that I remember the main guy is because of the competition.
Otherwise I wouldn’t have paid enough attention to them to remember any detail about them.”
Smith nodded as if that was true. Saint is indeed a person like that.
“Okay then, how are you feeling? Your subordinates said you were still recovering a few days ago.”
“I am fine. I am the one who cured you, so don’t bother trying to help me now. I am perfectly alright.”
“I am just…”
“I already told you. I am perfectly fine. As for the investigation, if you are here to ask me to cooperate with you, I am not doing that. I am calling in every favor that I have and I will catch them by myself.”
“But if you move that many people, the mountain master might know about this matter before its resolved.”
“I don’t care. I will catch them. As long as these bastards are within the planet and the surrounding planets, they will be caught, no matter what nook or cranny they are hiding in.”
“Saint, this is not like any other time. This is very serious. We need to be extremely careful in the way we are dealing with this.
I hope you understand that.
Let’s cooperate.
I already have my men gather everyone who came in contact with the suspects. I might get some information in an hour or two. Why don’t you do the same. I am pretty sure if we compile our data together, we will get some valuable information.”
“I said, I don’t want to cooperate. Get lost from here. Or I will kill you.
How many time do I need to make myself clear? I don’t want to work with you and I will catch these perpetrators alone. Now fuck off.”
With that, Saint didn’t even bother to stay anymore. He just stood up and left.
Smith is very confused. He knew that Saint would be hard to deal with, but this on a completely different level.
He doesn’t know why Saint is behaving like this. But he knew that there is no point in sticking here anymore.
He left along with his deputy and went back to his own place.
His subordinates already lined up everyone that came into contact with Sam and his friends. Even though it was difficult finding them, they did find a lot of people.
Smith talked to everyone of them personally and after compiling everything, he got some information.
“One of them is a swordsman and another one is a wind elemental user and they came from North west.”
He muttered to himself as he wrote down every detail he could get.
The information regarding their affinities came from one of the bystanders who overheard Watt and Jack arguing.
As for the direction they came in, it is obtained from the guard of the city gate.
Smith sent his deputy along with some of his subordinates to investigate in the Northwestern direction.
They checked every detail with scrutiny, even though it would be next to impossible to find any clues in a forest that has so much activity after this many days.
But they didn’t give up.
That was the only lead they had until now.
Meanwhile back at Saint’s place.
Inside the private room of Saint.
He is currently laying on the bed writhing in pain.
*HMMM…”
He bit into a large piece of leather as he tried to control his painful screams.
He was lying still and he didn’t even turn from side to side. He acted as if his back is stuck to bed like that and even when he had the urge to move around, he controlled it with all he got.
While his arms are lying still as if they belonged to a corpse.
“Mmmf…” He kept on groaning for a while before he finally opened his mouth and spit the leather to the side. He took a deep breath and moved his arms.
The bed under him is soaked in sweat. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of anxiety and horror engulfing him completely.
He hesitantly used his diagnosis skill to check up on his arms and his face turned uglier with every second.
The muscle tissue of his arms is rotting from inside. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t stop and the effect is not just on the muscle tissue. It extended to his finger bones which seemed to have been hollowed out.
The pain is immeasurable. But it is coming at irregular intervals catching him off guard.
That is one of the major reasons that he didn’t agree to work with Smith. Even he knows that things would go faster if he worked with Smith.
But he also doesn’t want to expose his new found weakness to anyone. He is sure that the moment this news come out, the mountain master will dispose him off.
There is no way he could let that happen.
He has to find these people by himself and even if it comes at the cost of using every favor he got until now, he wouldn’t hesitate to do so.
As things are like this here, back at Smith’s place, they are not any better.
At least he is not groaning in pain, but Smith has been running around talking and delegating tasks to people. They are trying to find every minute clue they could get. But there are none until now.
All they found out was that there is a battlefield nearby the city in Northwest and it seems like the local beast that used to run that small area was dead for a few days and even though the battle field is very small and happened way too many days ago,
But they did manage to find some traces of lightning and wood elemental energy.
Smith went to the spot and started investigating.
“This beast is not that power. It is barely at Initial stage of Astral Plane consummation. It should have been a piece of cake if they are really strong.
But here it seems like the battle went on for quite a while. There are restraints from wood elemental energy. Restraints and traps with earth elemental energy. Lightning burn marks are everywhere in the surroundings.
There are also some traces of sword slashes. Due to the lack of energy traces they couldn’t differentiate it, but he could see a different set of slashes on the trees which could have been the wind element.
“There is a high chance that this scene caused by the perpetrators. But this means, they are only at peak stage of transcendence to Initial stage of Consummation.
And if they are really that weak and still managed to get this far, then his approach has to change.
He went back to the city and decided on act on his hunch. All the city was closed and everyone was shocked to find out that Smith is doing a search for some culprits who dared to set some traps here in Smith’s place.
This is something unfathomable to them. They do know that Smith has disappeared for a couple of days, but they didn’t expect such a reason.
After closing the city down, Smith started examining each and every person that matches the description of the four people.
They are all of same height. Around six feet. So, he started testing everyone who is six feet tall with a special device that could determine their elemental affinity.
Even if they are hiding affinity normally, it would still be visible as soon as they used some blood to test themselves.
Ten minutes later. A few miles away from the city.
“This guy is good. If we didn’t move away and stayed there, things would have turned nasty. He could have even identified us.” Sam said as he looked at the shadow mouse in his palm.
“Come on, Sam. We wasted enough time already. What are we going to do next?”
“Going for our third target of course and this person is the fifth among the subordinates. Since things are going exactly as we predicted with both Saint and Smith.
We will now bring out this volatile variable in to this mess and see how it turns out.”
“Okay then, let’s go. It has been some time since we hunted too. Let’s go and do that on our way.”
“Of course that is a given. And also get ready to move around a lot. Because after the third target comes into play, we need to confuse the living hell out of them. So, we need to move around a lot.
Do you understand?”
