Long Wind Prairie, overcast and cloudy.
As its name suggested, this prairie was a wilderness where strong winds howled in every season.
This vibrant grassland teemed with beasts and monsters. They ranged from slimes hiding inconspicuously in the cracks between roadside stones to trolls several meters tall, all living and breeding here.
Even beneath the surface, there was a vast world invisible to the naked eye.
Ankhegs burrowed underground. Their massive jaws could easily crush rocks as they carved tunnels through the soil, forming a vast subterranean network.
Kobolds and Molemen, meanwhile, claimed the relatively fertile land beneath the grasslands, where they hid and built three-dimensional nests of their own. Their species' rule of survival was to avoid conflict with too many powerful enemies unless absolutely necessary.
Besides monsters, this land naturally attracted adventurers and merchants as well.
"Sorry, big brother. I messed up."
On the prairie, a group of adventurers sat on horseback, watching figures streak away in the distance. One of them turned to the man at the head of the group and spoke in shame.
Compared with an ordinary adventuring party, their group of more than a dozen was unusually large, though it still fell short of being an adventuring company.
"Forget it. We'll pick another target."
The long-haired man in the lead shook his head.
"Now that the centaurs have been alerted, it'll be several times harder to go after them."
What else could he say at this point?
They had secretly accepted a high-paying commission from a group of merchants and come to capture centaurs for them. They had spent nearly a month preparing for it.
The lassos, nets, and various sedatives they had bought specifically for capturing centaurs had been a considerable investment.
But if they managed to capture some centaurs and exchange them