Under the cover of night, Eagle Cape Village was unnaturally quiet.
There was no sound of fighting from outside—there was not even the chirping of insects or the cries of birds.
But this was clearly unreasonable.
Iver had noticed something strange about it long ago.
Normally, in a rural area like this, there should have been plenty of insects, snakes, birds, and beasts.
Unlike Glass Island, where the Bureau of Supervision often came to inspect sanitation and various pest-control companies and Rodent Control Company handed out flyers on the streets, a village like Eagle Cape Village, nestled deep in the forest, could normally expect even wild wolves to wander through the streets in the middle of the night... It would not have been unusual to wake up and find a snake in one's bed.
Not to mention all the little insects.
Even if chirping insects were inactive in winter... after spending several days in Eagle Cape Village, Iver had not seen even a ladybug, spider, slug, or anything of the sort.
There was no howling, no meowing, and not even the sound of birds flapping their wings.
"Don't you have any hunters in your village?"
Iver asked Hai Na.
Hai Na hesitated for a moment. "Well... maybe we do, maybe we don't."
"That is the most outrageous answer I've heard this month."
Sherlock complained, "Either you have them or you don't. How can there be a 'maybe'?"
"This is Mubay County, you know."
Hai Na, who had been pacing around the room, answered with her hands on her hips. "If you want meat, you have to find a herder. There are huge stretches of people raising sheep and cattle here. Although there is occasionally game in the village, it might have been bought from Bagpipe Town, or traded in from