The Divine Hunter

s sure the river was free of drowners.

On the other hand, Huckle heaved a sigh of relief.
If there were no drowners around, that meant his son could still be alive.
But if it’s not monsters, then why did he go missing?

“Did you find the rod here?” Roy gave it some thought.
“That means he was taken away when he was fishing.” There wasn’t any cover at the riverbank, so ambushing Berschel on the rock was unlikely.
Roy looked back at the dense bushes not far from them.
It was a remote place, so if the culprit ambushed Berschel from the bushes, they could’ve covered their tracks and saved a lot of time.

“Did you search the bushes yesterday?”

“Yes.” Huckle hesitated for a moment.
“But not thoroughly, since I had to post the request this morning.
I was going to come this afternoon.”

“I see.” They spent half an hour going through every single bush.
Thanks to his perception, Roy picked up a faint scent of urine from a shrub.
Ah, that’s a clue.
“Huckle, does anyone else fish in this river? Any women who wash their clothes here?”

“No, as far as I’m concerned.” Huckle shook his head.
“They live in the north, near the temple.
The swamp is in the south, so nobody ever goes there.
Only Berschel comes here, most of the time.”

So Berschel probably peed here.
Or Huckle’s friends.
Roy looked in the direction of the scent and expanded his range.
He parted every shrub with his hand and checked the ground.
Thanks to his hard work, Roy finally found some dried blood an hour later.
It seemed the blood had been splattered instead of bled out naturally.
It was as if something caused it to spurt.

He knew how the blood of nekkers, drowners, leshens, and humans smelled like.
Even though he wasn’t as strong as a witcher, he was slightly confident that it was human blood.
And probably spilled around three days ago or less.
That’s when Berschel vanished.
This must be a clue.

***

“Did you find something, Roy?” Huckle parted a shrub and hunkered down beside Roy.
He looked to where the boy was touching and saw the blood, much to his shock.
“B-blood? I-is my son dead?”

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“Calm down,” Roy told him without even turning around.
“We don’t know whose blood this is yet.” But he was sure Berschel was attacked by something when he peed in the bush.
That something was too fast for Berschel to defend against.

“Come with me.” They followed the trail of the blood and noticed a blob of white that was cotton-like.
Roy picked it up to take a whiff, but it was odorless.
He pushed it together and pulled back, and the ball turned into sticky strings.

“This is mixed in with the blood.
What is this, anyway?” Roy had a feeling the ball of sticky item was a clue to what the culprit was.
Is it a monster? Can’t really remember which monster produces this.

They kept following the trail of blood.
Roy and Huckle noticed some dried blood after covering some distance.
The trail led them deeper into the forest, and eventually, the trail became thinner and thinner.

Finally, they stopped at a clearing in the far east of Ellander, where shrubs grew wild.
The faint scent of flowers wafted across the air, while turnips surrounded them.
There wasn’t anyone around, so the turnips weren’t taken.
Roy and Huckle looked ahead and noticed a deep hole in the field ahead of them.