"What could possibly have caused this?" Kain was puzzled. Spiritual plants were much more resilient than the plants from Earth, so diseases were practically unheard of. Additionally, he didn't see any bugs or holes in the leaves to indicate anything like the Desolaphid infestation.
Kain released a mist around the spiritual plants to see if Bea could detect any lurking creatures that may explain this.
However, after Bea's splits had covered every inch of the clearing, no other signs of life were detected.
As a last ditch effort, he released Queen. Her intelligence is greater than her guards, so she may be able to detect something they can't.
Surprisingly, while Queen didn't detect anything, Kain did receive some feedback from Eve.
Based on what the information he could sense from her, there was something that was draining the life force of the spiritual plants. However, she could provide no more information on what it was or where this mysterious life sucker was located.
However, if something was killing the spiritual plants in the forest, that would explain the increased frequency of beast tides and the increased aggression of the beasts they came across.
Since the resources of the forest are running out at a faster rate, out of desperation more creatures will attack humans. Although not the typical food source for most spiritual creatures, humans, and especially powerful beast-tamers, can serve as practically a tonic for many species.
"According to my contract something is draining the life of all spiritual plants in the vicinity. I have no idea how wide its area of influence is though. But regardless, our target won't be here, all the plants are dead or close to it. Let's keep heading to the lake." Kain said.
The others didn't look too shocked by this news. There are all kinds of spiritual creatures, one that likes to drain the life of plants isn't too surprising.
"Hopefully we find the Astral Stag by the lake. If all the plants in this region really are dead then we may need to travel quite far before we find where they may have migrated to for food," said Fiona with a worried look on her face.
However, against all of their hopes, there was no sign of their target around the lake. In fact, there wasn't much evidence of any life surrounding the lake.
"It's weird that there's no sign of any life around the lake. Check around the shore for any footprints you think would match the Astral Stag, if they'd been here recently there'd be evidence in the wet mud around the lake. I will investigate the lake itself." Nobody questioned his task distribution and split up to investigate.
Kain released Bea into the lake and pretty quickly her splits had covered a large portion of the water.
Before Bea evolves she is unable to give detailed feedback to him on the environment under the water, however Kain did get a piece of valuable information through her.
After her splits had covered a large portion of the lake, and then were even carried to cover majority of lake, Bea still did not receive any indication that had successfully hunted an aquatic creature.
Typically, by now Bea's splits should have come into contact with most of the creatures in the lake. However, it was completely empty.
"Any signs of our target?" Kain called out to the others.
"Nope…actually there's no evidence of anything coming here for water in a while."
Kain also shared his findings to the rest of the group once they regathered.
"Could the lake be poisoned?" Finn questioned.
"I don't think so… I had one of my Vespirae guards drink the water and she was fine. It could be a similar issue to the dead spiritual plants. Maybe the fish migrated due to a lack of food in this lake? Or they could also all be dead themselves, my contract is only able to detect creatures that are alive." Giving a brief and vague explanation for Bea's investigative abilities.
The others seemed shocked that he'd risk one of his only two guards to see if it was poisoned, but they didn't know that he actually had 12 guards.
"What do we do now then?" Aria asked looking distraught. A task they thought they'd be able to complete quickly now may not even be finished by the deadline.
"It looks like most of the creatures migrated to a different region. Those that didn't are probably are starving which is why they attacked us. We need to figure out where they may have migrated to." Finn said.
Kain nodded in agreement, "we need to expand our search from just looking for Astral Stag tracks, to looking for any recent footprints, preferably herbivores since they seem the most likely to migrate first due to the lack of spiritual plants here. We can then hopefully follow the tracks to an area not affected by whatever is causing all of this."
They then began to expand their search from around the lake and looked for any tracks they felt would meet the criteria.
"Here!" Aria called out and the rest all rushed over.
They looked like the hoofprints similar to the Astral Stag, but much larger. Maybe the creature more closely resembles a moose?
"Do any of you know what kind of creature made these prints?" Kain asked the others.
Everyone looked clueless, except for Fiona who was hesitating to speak.
"Fiona? If you have any ideas, please share them even if they're wrong. After all, we currently have no leads."
"Umm… the prints look like a large hoof, but the center of the hoof has the faint outline of a leaf."
"Does that mean anything? I thought it just stepped on a leaf."
"No Fiona is right…the leaf is the exact same and perfectly in the center of all 4 hoofprints, that's unlikely to be purely due to coincidence."
Fiona nodded, "I had heard about a Bronze-quality spiritual creature called the Meadow Moose that was pretty common in the woods back in my hometown that has that characteristic. They're very gentle, and similar to the Astral Stag the almost exclusively eat spiritual plants."
"Great! Let's follow these prints. Hopefully, it'd migrate to a similar area as our target." With their hopes of successfully completing the mission renewed, they quickly set off again.