News from the distant east naturally could not reach the Tusk Tribe's ears at once;
Even the hunter team that had vanished in the Finae region only made the Carnivores fret for a while. Beyond that, it failed to stir up much of a ripple.
After all, casualties among hunter teams were a risk that had to be borne during hunts.
The Black Forest was, of course, populated mostly by ordinary animals. But every now and then, some unlucky hunter team would indeed run headlong into a powerful Magic Beast—or a whole pack of them—and suffer grievous losses.
A situation like this one, where the entire team vanished without a trace, was rare, but not impossible.
In short, for one reason or another, the Tusk Tribe did not investigate this accident too deeply. They merely designated that direction as a dangerous area for the near future and instructed the Trolls who went out to avoid it whenever possible.
The Carnivores at Headquarters had even begun discussing the next direction of expansion and decided to push eastward along the Black River basin.
It was only because there were too many newly incorporated "people" that Headquarters needed time to organize and train its forces, as well as test the operating model for hunting outposts, delaying the march.
During the reorganization, with the addition of more than eight hundred adolescent and prime-age laborers, the old hunting teams were broken up and thoroughly mixed together with the two incoming tribes;
This gave the tribe a total of over one hundred and fifty hunting squads that had yet to work together smoothly. They were assigned to Nomen Outpost, Finae Outpost, and Headquarters at a ratio of 1:2:3, where they began handling hunts in the hunting grounds of their respective territories.
In addition, Blade Tusk took