The so-called Black Tide was a natural phenomenon that occurred during particularly harsh late winters and early springs, when Magical Creatures in the Silent Forest lost their minds to hunger and surged toward Beta Town in search of food and other ways out. Because those creatures formed a vast, black mass like a rolling tide, wizards called it the Black Tide.
There was, of course, another explanation. Whenever the Black Tide surged, it would disturb those "Wild Hunters" lost Deep within the Silent Forest. They were wizards obsessed with hunting demons, lost in darkness, walking with the mist and keeping death for company as they pursued prey they could never catch, pouring from the forest like a tide of darkness.
By common experience, the Black Tide usually erupted in February or March each year, and never later than April.
It was already early June, and this year's Black Tide had already erupted. In theory, there should not have been another one.
Yet after hearing her subordinate's report, Colmar did not doubt it in the slightest.
Because on all of Puji Island—or rather, in the entire Wizarding World—the group most sensitive to the Black Tide was the street magicians who had lived in Beta Town North District for generations.
When the great figures of the Wizard Alliance studied the Black Tide, they either relied on alchemical instruments fixed to trees and rocks, Divination Magic such as Crystal Balls and Tarot Cards, or firsthand accounts and memories extracted from the dead. They rarely faced those filthy, dangerous creatures directly.
But every bit of the North District street magicians' understanding of the Black Tide was built on life itself.
Many street magicians had to venture deep into the Silent Forest, risking their lives to gather herbs and collect Magic materials in exchange for