When the arachne reached the central building, she found nothing but footprints on the dirt patches. That indicated they had been there, but not where her prey had gone, or if she was in hiding.

Dozens of small spiders scattered throughout the area, searching as they were doing in the rest of the city, but found nothing. It wasn’t until after a couple of hours that a figure entered the ruins, and headed straight for the arachne. It stopped in front of her.

“If I find her, we’ll split fifty-fifty,” the opossum-woman proposed as soon as she arrived.

She had been observing the situation from a distance, and had even skirted the city to look for traces. However, the only ones she had found entered, none left.

The problem was that, if they were inside, they should have been discovered by the arachne and her small scouts. Something was happening there that was beyond the arachne’s capabilities, but she didn’t seem willing to give up. As the opossum-woman couldn’t take her by surprise, or reduce her either, her only option was to join forces with her rival if she didn’t want to miss her chance.

The arachne looked at her for a moment. She had lost track and was feeling frustrated, not sure what to do. This tracker was an opportunity, even if she had to split the bounty. After all, half was much more than nothing.

So, without delay, they signed the contract, the copy of which was automatically and magically sent to the headquarters. Even if one of the two died, the other would only get half. The other half would be sent to the deceased’s relatives, if there were any. The guild would keep it if not.

The tracker circled the area a couple of times, before stopping in front of some huge roots that disappeared into the ground.

“The trail ends here. It’s strange, these roots have moved. Look at the marks on the bark, on the ground,” she explained.

“Do you mean that they have moved to let her pass, that she is hidden under there?”

“I’m not sure. Wait.”

She poured the contents of a wineskin, towards the seemingly empty area. It was strange not seeing the ground. Her small rounded ears perked up and listened intently, as they were catching the slightest sound.

The arachne, after realizing what she was doing, not only held her breath, but she ordered her scout spiders to stop. Meanwhile, the water slid between the roots and fell into the void, to crash against the clay bottom.

The tracker raised her head, wide-eyed. She was visibly surprised by what her keen hearing senses had discovered.

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“There is a very deep hole. She must have escaped there.”

“It won’t be easy to break through. Those roots won’t burn,” lamented the arachne.

“There were signs of other holes around, although they were blocked. Can you send your spiders to search? It’s possible that there’re some hidden and functional,” the tracker asked her partner.

“Consider it done.”

The spiders had been searching for living beings of a certain size, but now they began to search for holes in an area of many thousands of square meters. They were soon reinforced by those that had been searching around the rest of the city.

It wasn’t difficult for them to get into the rubble, under the remains of domes or columns, or among the plants. Within half an hour, they had found a forgotten passage, which had been protected from the elements and debris by a huge fragment of what had been a stone from the dome.

It wasn’t only big, but it weighed several tons. However, those two bounty hunters were close to level 70, so breaking an already cracked piece of stone wasn’t too difficult for them.

After a couple of hours, they had broken most of it in smaller chunks, and pushed them aside. It was enough to reveal a circular hole ten meters in diameter, through which a small stone staircase spiraled downward. It was slippery, but not a problem for the arachne’s eight legs, or the tracker’s ability.

They soon found a tunnel, which led to other holes, in which tons of debris and earth accumulated. It had fallen through those holes for centuries, but didn’t completely block the passage.

“They’ve been here, these are their footprints. They’re at least four hours ahead of us,” the tracker deduced.

Immediately, they started the chase, while using magic lamps to illuminate the tunnel. They were part of the basic equipment of anyone who entered a forest on their own, and were attached to the clothing.

They followed the trail with ease. Although later the ground was made of stone, there weren’t many paths to choose from. In fact, there was only one, a wide tunnel that, in the past, had been used to transport all kinds of goods from one place to another.

Meanwhile, small spiders worked tirelessly on the cloth that the tracker had placed to hide the hole. They covered it with fine earth, which was enough to disguise the fabric itself, but without adding too much weight.

They wanted to disguise the hole, so minimizing the chances that other bounty hunters would find it, and decide to take a look. The hunters had placed some stones, but it was impossible to completely cover the hole if they had to enter at the same time. Therefore, they had decided on that method.

Other spiders were in charge of erasing the traces of the surroundings, to make it even more difficult for anyone to follow them.

In fact, when others followed the trail to the ruined city and found none more, they believed that they had been misled, that someone had created false trails to hide the real one, or simply to laugh at them.

Enraged, they turned back, to look for any other clue that would lead them in another direction. At the same time, they vowed to kill whoever had mocked them.

Therefore, due to frustration and anger, there was more than one confrontation that on other occasions would have been avoided. Thus, several of them had to abandon the search, injured, and one of them was even killed by a colleague. They hated each other, and he had taken the opportunity to finish him off, though he hadn’t been unscathed either.

Between the wounded and the lack of clues, the search gradually cooled off. After a few days, there were none of them left in the area, and the elf seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth.

Nobody gave importance to the missing bounty hunters, as they could be anywhere else, or stalking their prey.