As we couldn’t use drones inside the woods, we were very careful about our way forward. From what we experienced, the danger during the day was way below that of the night, but we had adopted the same carefulness as the village hunters. Finding our way with a giant beacon of water as a guide wasn’t hard though, which let us arrive on our targeted spot with a little bit over an hour of advance.

We then waited at the end of the road.

Rik arrived earlier than expected and as expected with his bow in hand. He did hesitate a bit when seeing us wait there, but ultimately decided to continue walking towards us.

“You two. You got yourselves some new gear, I see. What is with those weird patterns on your clothes? And the helmet?” He didn’t look really interested in being answered, he was forcing himself to say something to control his rage, that much was pretty obvious, but I still decided to answer him.

“It’s a fashion choice, and the helmet is in case you shot at us before talking.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “Nielle right?” I nodded. He continued with renewed anger. “You don’t shoot arrows at somebody’s head. It rarely sticks.” He didn’t believe me, and he was right not to, even though I hadn’t lied about the helmet. “You may have weapons…” He pursued. “…but unless you pick them up and attack me, I won’t kill you. I do not want a cold-blooded murderer skill.”

My sister raised her eyebrows, clearly interested in the new information. He missed her surprise as he was only staring at me.

“Well, that is good to know.” I nodded in appreciation.

“I hope you didn’t come here to try to mend your relationship with the village. Anna cursed you, and Henry has demanded that you two be captured. He was thwarted by the elders. As long as you stay away, they considered banishment a suitable result of your actions, but if you come back, you are his by law.”

I grimaced. “No, we did not show ourselves to you to be friends. I felt responsible and empathetic with your plight…”

He snorted in mockery.

I didn’t let myself be distracted. “…and me and my sister decided that we wanted to repay you with…something a bit better than just money and riches. Those don’t bring the dead back.”

“Nothing brings back the dead, woman.” Rik spew back.

“No, nothing does.” The hand in mine would never be real. I knew that. To me it was, and that was all it mattered, but I was aware it was all in my brain.

His expression softened slightly, as if he had heard something too dark in my voice to be able to take it anything but seriously.

“But we thought preventing the death of this village would be a start. A way for me to feel a bit better about the events that occurred.”

My sister cut in; she had activated her translation skill silently.

“Now, Nielle feels bad about what happened. I don’t. We are not responsible in any way for the choices of Grognar, nor did we expect a monster in the abandoned lair.”

“Elle…” I began.

Rik growled in anger.

“But that doesn’t mean I’ll let innocent people just get eaten by a giant bird if I can do something about it. And we can do something about it.”

That got his attention, and he lowered his bow in surprise. “You want to kill the [Dark Crow]?”

“We got very close, actually.” I told him.

He scoffed. “Please, you two? You have no classes and are under level one hundred. You’re children, barely twenty.”

My sister had a contradicted expression. “Not that I dislike being told I look young, me and bro…sister are closer to thirty than we are twenty.”

“…Then you two lived very sheltered lives. And there is no way two exiled noble ladies would ever have come close…”

“Sheltered…” I started laughing maniacally.

He visibly tensed up.

My sister gave me a look while going back to Rik. “Sheltered…maybe that could have described me a few months ago. Still, we’re not here to convince you of our power or our trap-making ability but…”

He raised an eyebrow at that.

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“Wait, are you trying to use the [Trapping] notification to your advantage?”

My sister and I shared a gaze of incomprehension. “What?” I finally asked.

“You’re trying to tell me that you are the ones that broke the [Trapping] standard is that it? Because that’s the only way you would ever be ‘close’ to killing the [Dark Crow]?” His voice was full of disdain. “How gullible do you think I am?”

“…And how exactly do you know about the [Trapping]? We weren’t even going to say anything about that.” My sister asked. I grimaced, she basically told him he was right, that we had been the ones who had set up the world-record trap.

“Because I lost eight levels in the skill. And you’re trying to pretend that you made a hunting trap so perfect it broke the previous record by eight whole levels. Really?” He seemed more and more furious.

This was going nowhere.

“That doesn’t matter.” I broke the argument. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

“You being liars isn’t exactly something that doesn’t matter, girl, it could very well mean that you lied about everything before. And looking at the equipment that keeps popping on you…”

“I’m not asking you to trust us.” I countered.

“Then why are you two here, exactly? If it’s not to mend your relationship with the village, nor to boast about a [Trapping] record you didn’t set?”

I sighed. “I want you to check the Ascensus’ tower at night, try to catch the [Dark Crow] exiting the nest on top.” I laid it all down as simply as I could.

“You…you…what!? What madness is that?” He was screaming now.

“I’m not asking you to believe us, but when we saw the [Dark Crow], I spotted shackles, and he acted like a tamed beast, not a monster.”

He sputtered, looking crazed. “You…What are you trying to accomplish here…”

“To kill the [Dark Crow].”

“…What is the point of it all? Why come to me?” He didn’t listen.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” My sister walked towards him, and he immediately backed off, pulling up his bow. “Stay back!”

“Rik! Think about it. Is there anything weird about the victims? Did they anger Henry beforehand, where they enemies…political opponents, anything?” She questioned him as she stopped moving. He was listening now.

The elf started laughing. “Please! One of the first victims was Henry’s wife!”

That made my sister pause for a moment. “Oh really? It’s true, Henry seemed such a stellar husband to me, not the kind of man who would ever murder his own wife.” The end of the sentence dripped with sarcasm.

“You…you…” But Rik fell deep in thoughts. “She wanted to divorce him. For an Ascensus especially, it is a very shameful affair, but to simply kill Madam Meredith because of it? No…”

“Rik.” I asked him. “Rik!”

“You’re still lying to me, aren’t you…you…”

“Rik! We’re not asking you to trust us. I told you that.”

“Then what did you come here to do?”

“We want to kill the [Dark Crow]. And if it’s tamed, we want to kill its tamer as well. We want to get to the tower and blow up the nest. For that, we need someone on the inside who knows all the things we don’t, because it’s true, we are inexperienced, as well as a person who can give us access to the top of the tower so we can blow it up.”

“Blow it up? And how would you do that?”

“That is our problem.”

“I see.” He seemed to think about it now.

“We’ll be back here tomorrow, check the tower, see if we lie for yourself and…”

“Three days.” He interrupted me. “If what you’re saying is true, IF, it is true, then spotting the [Dark Crow] won’t be easy. I’ll need time.”

“That’s fine with us.” Me and my sister nodded at each other.

“If you lied to me…this would have been a very cruel joke.”

“I don’t really see what the point of that would be.” My sister answered very matter-of-factly as she raised an eyebrow.

That seemed to strike him, as he groaned in anger. “I fucking believe you. For now. And it does not please me at all. You better hope I won’t come back here with the full guard on ambush.”

“Wouldn’t be an ambush if you warned us about it.” My sister pointed out with a smile.

Rik didn’t seem to like the joke. He spat on the ground, and walked away, deeper into the forest, going north.

I watched him leave, then me and my sister went back east, towards the cliff.

When we arrived there, my sister justly remarked: “We should build stairs. Or bring a ladder.”

“I guess we’ve got three days.” I nodded.

“Now that we’ve got our emergency escape back online, I also propose some levelling up.” She told me.

“Bait and bomb?” I asked.

“Exactly!”

“It feels wrong.”

I eyed my sister with a bit of annoyance. We were currently in our cover looking at our brand-new trap, it was night, and talking wasn’t the safest of activities.

I understood that it was boring though.

“What is?” I whispered back.

“Like…the meat? We bought it in a store? What about the life of adventure, the hunt?”

“Do you want to kill the cute furballs next time?”

“No…”

“Then we buy meat at a butcher and try it like that.”

I wasn’t exactly sure of the effectiveness of our alternative to hunting. The meat was obviously beef, which most likely didn’t exist in this world, and the large pieces of meat were attracting more insects than they had been monsters. Which wasn’t hard to do because it had attracted zero monsters.

We put another spotlight as well, just in case the [Dark Crow] decided to change his mind or stop listening to his master. And maybe it would attract another [Tooth-Bear] as well, we were pretty much still experimenting. The night felt right though, clear skies, a slight wind to carry the smell of meat. Not that it smelled much.

“I think we should cook it. Less insects, more smell.” I broke the silence myself this time.

“Yeah, it’s been hours, and nothing is happening. Let’s do this and try that for the rest of the night. Hooray for improving constitution though, those sleepless nights aren’t great, and feeling sleepy brings back bad memories, but without constitution I would be hammered right now.”

I didn’t say anything back to her but kept an ear out for any movement. I was expecting the largest [Tooth-Bear] ever to appear right when we got out of our cover.

This time though, nothing bad occurred, and after quickly sizzling the meat in the kitchen on the space station, we put our trap back.

Despite our efforts that night, it was a complete failure, with the meat now smelling disgusting, and we were going to need to plan another trip to a butcher on Earth the next day. With the time difference, that would mean in eight? Seven hours? I stopped trying, I was too tired for maths.

“Maybe it’s the plateau? There can’t be an infinite number of big carnivores in such a little space. Maybe we should try down there tomorrow.” My sister proposed.

I nodded weakly. “Sure, but first, sleep.”