Vivian and Lily recounted their discoveries and related speculations in full, and Hao Ren turned to Izax and Becky's group. "Did you two find anything?"
They had gone to the northern side of the mountains, where the Stone Giants were multiplying most rapidly. But as things stood, the greatest mystery in the Beinz Region seemed to lie elsewhere; the Stone Giants might be only a minor problem on the surface. Becky shook her head. "We didn't find much over there. There were indeed quite a lot of Stone Giants, many of them wandering through the mountains, with even some small groups gathering together. The knights also had a huge number of people deployed there. At the foot of the mountain stood a massive fortress quickly shaped with magic, probably with a high-ranking archmage stationed inside. Big Guy and I circled around the mountains a few times and nearly got spotted by the patrolling knights."
"The Stone Giants are only wandering around the mountains. They don't seem to have any intention of attacking for now," Izax added from the side. "But I think the fact that they aren't attacking is the greatest anomaly of all. They're a group of creatures with very little intelligence. They should act on instinct, and once they started moving, blindly attacking everything in sight would have been normal. Now they're lingering in the mountains without coming down. I suspect someone may be suppressing these monsters. There's a controller behind them, but clearly, the control isn't precise enough yet."
Izax and Becky had found something as well, but clearly, it wasn't any major intelligence. Seeing that everyone else had finished speaking, Hao Ren cleared his throat. "Ahem, now for my side of things. I ran into a group of heretics..."
Vivian and the others immediately held their