In Terra, a Hunter and a Bad Woman

"Wuh?"

The puppy girl tilted her head.

"Nothing. Come with me."

Maria put away her weapon, silently took the girl's hand, and turned toward the depths of the darkness.

The puppy girl followed close behind.

Their figures slowly melted into the darkness...

Rip—rip—

Fine dust wriggled across the ground.

Grotesque corpses lay scattered over the earth, their lingering warmth not yet gone.

Yet the crackling bonfire gradually died out, and even its remaining sparks swiftly faded away.

No one knew how much time had passed before the dust on the ground seemed to notice those creatures.

After a brief pause, it immediately rose into the air and wrapped around the corpses.

In but an instant, the ground became smooth again.

The blood and corpses vanished along with it.

As if...

Nothing had happened.

Nothing at all...

The Secret of the Forest

Maria used to draw maps too.

Of course, Maria did not draw maps so she would not lose her way. She simply found them convenient for remembering places.

As mentioned before, Yharnam was a dream caught in an endless cycle.

Whenever the dream restarted, everything returned to its original place, including certain marvelous weapons and items.

To make it easier to retrieve those things later, Maria would draw maps of Yharnam.

Of course, that was only in the early days.

Later on, Maria could walk through Yharnam with her eyes closed, so drawing maps became completely unnecessary.

The point of saying all this was that Maria, this primitive woman, could understand simple maps. Even if much of it was vague, she could roughly grasp the meaning from the drawings.

But this map was simply too crude... Maria had spent quite a bit of effort just deciphering it.

By the time she found their camp, dawn was almost here.

The sun slowly rose, and the entire forest came back to life.

Yet the moment she arrived, Maria felt that something was wrong.

Nine parts wrong out of ten.

Judging from their clothing, those people looked like a bunch of rioters. Based on past experience, their camp should have been dirty and disorderly at the very least.

But this camp...

"Very clean. Very orderly."

Maria looked around before turning her gaze toward the several tents standing there.

"Wuh?"

"Get behind me first."

Maria spoke coldly. After drawing her weapon, she slowly lifted the tent flap.

As the tent was opened, its dust-covered interior appeared before Maria.

Hm?

Without saying anything more, Maria turned and opened the flaps of the remaining tents. Once she confirmed there was no one inside, she looked around again.

"It seems no one has come here in a long time... A lot of the supplies are covered in dust."

Very strange.

Judging by the state of the camp, no one seemed to have been here for a long time. Although much of the food had spoiled, quite a bit of it could be stored and eaten for a long time, along with other supplies...

"More and more questions."

Maria narrowed her eyes. After thinking for a moment, she made a decision.

"If that's the case, this will be our camp for now, Puppy... Puppy?"

Maria called to the puppy girl, but when she turned around, she froze instead.

As though she had discovered something, the puppy girl was frantically digging into the ground. Her rough movements left Maria momentarily stunned.

She had only just bathed, and now she was going to get dirty again...

With that thought, Maria did not stop the girl. Instead, she turned and began searching the camp herself.

"A little sugar, some flour. The meat and vegetables have spoiled beyond use. There's also some salt and... Forget it, we shouldn't drink this water either."

"There's quite a bit of firewood. If we use it sparingly, it should last us a week."

"And then there's... a diary?"

Maria picked up the battered notebook and turned her head again.

Of the three tents she had opened, one was clearly not meant for living in.

It was filled with instruments Maria did not recognize. It seemed the camp's owner had come here to conduct research.

After thinking for a moment, Maria decisively opened the diary in her hands.

[December 11, clear. Research topic: "The Relationship Between Great Beast Legends and the Forest."]

[December 12, cloudy. Followed the mercenary team into the outer edge of the forest. Everything is going well.]

[December 20, cloudy. Recent weather has delayed our progress considerably, but fortunately, aside from losing some food, the instruments and other supplies arrived safely at the destination. This is supposedly the safe zone mentioned by the locals... Though I believe there are better observation points, the mercenaries refused, so we can only set up camp here for now.]

[January 11, ■■, heavy rain. The research process has been far more troublesome than I expected. So far, we have received no useful information. Funding is almost exhausted, so I need to find a way to write back and ask the academy to approve more funds. There has been little to do recently, but those Sarkaz mercenaries have started acting strange. What they say has made the team uneasy. Next time, we need to send them out.]

[January 12. Today is the final deadline the locals warned us about, but... We have already spent so much. It would be far too embarrassing to accomplish nothing, so we can only continue the research.]

[January 25, ■■■■■■■. Something is wrong, very wrong. The supplies should have arrived a week ago, but even now ■■■■■■■. There has not been any rain lately, so it is unlikely to be a weather delay. Fortunately, the wolf howls from some time ago killed everyone's appetite, and we still have quite a bit of food left. I only hope those people hurry.]

[February 10, overcast. Food shortages have begun. Everyone has started consciously eating more, which will not do. The more dangerous things become, the more we need to control supplies... The search team has begun heading back to look for them. I hope no one in logistics has run into trouble. Some people have already left the team, and I do not know whether they made it out.]

[■■■■■■. There is less and less food. The gathering teams sent out to hunt are bringing back less and less. Many people are suffering from malnutrition. The search team returned today, but only one person came back. ■■■■■■■. The medical staff suspects he has been affected by some kind of mental Originium Arts.]

[Hunger has left everyone without the strength to conduct research, so the research can only be suspended for now. ■■■■■. We have been getting less and less food these past few days. Thankfully, there was that group of Sarkaz. ■■■■■. The atmosphere is becoming increasingly difficult.]

[This time, everyone heard the wolf howl. The forest seems to have come alive... ■■■■■■■]

[The Great Beast truly exists, I ■■■!]

[This forest is alive! We are going to be ■■■]

[■■■■■]

[Watch the moon.]

The strange words seeped from the book and entered Maria's mind bit by bit.

Although Maria had never learned this world's language, for some reason, she could understand the words written inside.

Though much of it had become tattered from wind and rain, Maria could still understand the general meaning.

"A group of researchers came into this forest, and in the end, they got lost and went mad?"

Maria frowned.

The diary recorded too many things. It would be difficult to sort out any useful information from it in a short time.

But one thing was certain: after prolonged hunger and endurance, the group had suffered an irreconcilable split... The rioters she had just seen were likely members of that group.

And those wolf howls...

"That may be my target this time... And the Great Beast it mentioned."

The more Maria thought, the more problems she felt she would have to face.

That left her in a long silence.

At that moment, the puppy girl beside her seemed to have dug something up and began working even harder.

Before long.

She pulled out a tall, strange axe...

"This is..."

Gentle Maria

"The scent of a beast..."

Maria stared intently at the great axe in the puppy girl's hands. Her face remained calm, but countless emotions suddenly surged through her heart.

Then, seeing the puppy girl clutch the axe excitedly, she fell silent again.

Maria recognized that expression.

It was...

A reunion with something lost!

This belonged to the puppy girl. She had merely found it once again.

That made Maria stop what she was doing.

There was no doubt that she could sense the aura of a beast from this weapon... Maria herself did not know how to explain the feeling. It was like how people feared snakes, scorpions, and centipedes—a nearly instinctive, primal reaction.

She had always been exceptionally sensitive to such things.

So when the puppy girl unearthed the weapon, Maria's first reaction had been that she had to get rid of it.

But...

The puppy girl was overjoyed by the weapon.

That left Maria silent.

"This child... is she connected to beasts?"

"Is she a child of the gods?"

After pausing for a moment, Maria silently raised a black-gloved hand and pressed it to her forehead.

"Am I thinking like a beast too, relying on instinct...?"

After mocking herself a few times, Maria silently stood up.

Once she reached the puppy girl's side, she took the axe from her hands without explanation.

This immediately panicked the puppy girl.

On one hand, she wanted to take her belongings back.

On the other, she was afraid of Maria's strength.

Caught between those conflicting emotions, she could only stand beside Maria with tears in her eyes, blankly staring at the axe in Maria's hands.

But Maria had no interest in snatching things from a child.

After carefully examining the weapon, she lowered her head in silence.

"This thing must have been buried here for a long time..."