"..."
Refugees forced to flee their homeland because of fear and torment? The tree spirit's corpse had no value left, and the item description did not offer much information.
But that single line of description
was enough to make Linsey frown.
Under the cave's bonfire, the night gradually deepened.
The injured Female Hunter was also running out of strength and, like Alan, fell into a deep sleep.
Linsey sat alone, staring at the bonfire before him.
The flickering firelight reflected in his pupils, and more thoughts ignited amid its wavering glow.
The Hidden Borderlands was a very small world.
At an ordinary person's pace, it took roughly a month to travel from the town near the edge of the world to the world rift where the Black Mountain World lay.
If it had been three years ago,
then in such a small region, if something extremely dangerous had emerged—something that could even force a "powerhouse" like a tree spirit to flee—
there was no way Border Town could have avoided being affected by it or noticing some sign of it.
But in reality,
Border Town had remained peaceful for the past three years.
The town had even organized Distant Hunts, yet aside from the steadily falling temperature, there had been no changes in the Hidden Borderlands.
Then there was the condition of this vine tree spirit.
It had set an ambush in advance, leaving three of Linsey's group of four injured. The entire extermination had been perilous from start to finish.
But even if no one had been hurt by its traps and they had simply encountered it head-on, this vine tree spirit's strength would still have made a fierce battle unavoidable.
So the question was,
what kind of strength did the thing that had forced this creature to flee