"A stampede? Now out of all times?" I asked Vanessa when she handed me a report.
She had found me early in the morning to hand me this report, which just went to show how important this was.
"Yes." Vanessa said in a firm voice that had no quivers at all.
It was clear that she had already done all that she could on this matter, which was why she brought it to my attention.
But the fact that there was a stampede that appeared all of a sudden was anything but normal.
After all, it wasn't a stampede of monsters that was happening.
It was a stampede of beasts that was coming our way.
It was just that with the beasts that we had tamed and created a perimeter with around our town, it didn't seem likely that other beasts would come and attack us. After all, beasts respected the strong and the beasts that were in our town were certainly strong.
That was why it was strange that they would suddenly attack us .
It was almost as if they were going against the very laws of nature by attacking .
Or at the very least, they were going against their instincts by doing this.
That meant that there had to be something that was driving these beasts to attack our town. It meant that there was someone behind this matter that was specifically targeting our town.
After a moment of silence, I asked, "Any leads?"
Vanessa just shook her head before saying, "None at all. I've tried searching, but there really aren't any leads at all. Whoever is doing it is making sure that they're completely hidden. I haven't even found a trace of how they are controlling these beasts in the first place."
With a nod, I said, "Alright, leave this to me. Thank you for taking care of everything so far."
Vanessa gave a nod before turning to leave.
But before leaving, she said, "If it's too much, you don't have to force yourself. We can find a different way if it gets too hard."
I looked at her with a smile as I said, "Don't worry, I know."
She looked at me one more time before leaving the room.
Once I was alone, I said in my mind, "I have something I need your help with."
Of course, the one that I was talking to was Faust.
It wouldn't be a problem for me to kill all of these beasts with the power that the town possessed, but that wouldn't solve the underlying problem. I needed his help in finding who it was that was targeting our town.
"I thought that we were going to operate separately from now on. You're coming to me quite soon, aren't you?" Faust said in a teasing tone, but I just ignored it.
Instead, I said, "If it wasn't for your expertise, I wouldn't have called you. I don't want to make a mistake, so I need your help."
I didn't answer when he asked this, I just said, "Are you coming or not?"
"Give me a bit of time. I have to arrange a few things here before I come. You should know how busy we are because of the whole situation with the Abel Kingdom."
"Don't take too long."
"Alright, let's see what we have here."
It was the middle of the night as Faust and I made our way across the open wilderness.
Since we had the reports from Vanessa, we knew exactly where the beast stampede currently was.
When we arrived, we could see that this certainly wasn't a small stampede.
It even seemed like the estimates that they had made were actually underestimating this beast stampede.
But looking closely, we could see that there were more and more beasts that were gathering.
Once we arrived at a safe distance, I waited for Faust to do his thing.
He didn't actually do anything as he just stood there, but I knew that he had released his mana sense to check out this beast stampede.
What he was doing was seeing if there were any spells that had been cast on these beasts to control them.
That was one of the ways to make the beasts defy their instincts and attack the territory of a stronger beast . Though it wasn't the only way, it was certainly the most common method since it was easy to use magic in this world.
The other ways were much harder to get one's hands on and to control.
That was why it was unlikely that they used other methods.
I couldn't help knitting my brows when I heard this, but I still asked, "Do you have any idea what it is then?"
"I have an idea, but I'm surprised that you didn't notice it."
"What?" I was confused when I heard this, but I still looked closely at the beasts that were gathered in front of us.
It was just that no matter how I looked at them, I couldn't figure out what he meant by this. Even if Faust said that it was obvious, it wasn't that obvious to me since I had no idea what he was referring to.
"Is your sharp nose really just for show?"
When he said this, I couldn't help knitting my brows even more.
However, I still followed this clue that he gave me and took a deep sniff.
What I smelled was a strange scent.
It was very faint, so faint that I didn't notice it until now when I focused on finding it.
But I could tell that this smell was only coming from certain parts of the beasts in front of us. It was as if whatever was causing this smell was only coming from certain beasts in the group.
Looking closely, I could see that it was the alphas of the different beast groups that had been gathered that released this smell.