For almost half an hour, Shannen Jones observed the forest clearing, silently approaching the edge from different sides, long hesitant to stand at full height. The girl suspected a well-set trap. But even her vast experience in hunting and setting ambushes, including on people, was silent. However, after this experience had failed her once, and she only survived by violating her moral norms, Scully became "a scalded dog that dreads cold water."
When she, as if by miracle or the intervention of the gods, finally escaped the Wicked Woods, the girl immediately went to the nearest town to sell the trophies and buy new armor, as well as replenish her supply of potions. In that town, she saw a job offer to search for the killers of the sheriff of the nearest rural district. At first, Shannen ignored that job. She was little concerned with the problems of the local population, and she still hadn't recovered from her previous hunt for the Sidhe - an undoubtedly stupid venture, as she now realized. She probably would have left that town and set out in search of new adventures if it weren't for one detail…
While receiving an order in one of the shops, Shannen witnessed a conversation that made her suddenly realize that the main suspects in the murder of the district sheriff were familiar to her. More precisely, it was in their search that the local law enforcement servant went, and then his dead body was found recently in the nearby forest. The trio of earthlings that Scully once encountered was too colorful, and the names they took - Molly Moon, Pyotr Grotter, and Bushe George – were too memorable to quickly forget. From the description heard in the shop from a local guard buying potions before her, Scully precisely identified the main suspects as these earthlings. And this fact fundamentally changed the attitude of the former sergeant of the SWAT sniper squad of Melbourne City to the job request to search for and punish the sheriff's killers. Shannen Jones simply could not allow the locals to judge the earthlings in their typical manner: they grabbed the first person they came across without properly investigating what was happening and, at best, simply and unsophisticatedly, cut off the head. Moreover, if the earthlings did indeed kill the sheriff, they might have had their adequate motive for such an act. Perhaps the sheriff accused them of something and attacked immediately, and the earthlings were just defending themselves. And the fact that the law enforcement servant's body was found entirely bloodless could be explained by something other than a bloody ritual.
But if it turns out that the earthlings are indeed guilty, Scully would rather punish them herself and not leave this matter in the hands of the locals.
Three days of searching brought her to Katiyer this morning. According to the information she had gathered, this was precisely where the trio of earthlings she was looking for had headed. However, Scully didn't even have to enter the city gates. On the trade route, two kilometers from the city walls, she met a group of earthlings who told her that Molly Moon and her two henchmen had left Katiyer before dawn and were heading towards the southern forest.
Without wasting time, Scully immediately reconsidered her plans, especially since those she was seeking had ventured into the nearby forest. This pleased the girl who had spent all her childhood and adolescence in the wooded foothills of the Great Divide Range and felt at home in the woods.
As long as she could remember, Scully loved the forest, and it loved her back. Her father, the head of a ranger unit responsible for protecting the Royal National Park, began taking her into the woods when she was not even three years old. An excellent shooter and a skilled tracker, her father didn't mind that fate gave him a daughter, not a son. He simply raised the girl the way he was raised himself.
For nearly thirteen years, Shannen Jones was truly happy, disappearing into nature day and night, returning home only to sleep. At twelve, she became the district youth champion in archery. She also, on a bet, scored sixty out of sixty in the local pub, emptying the cylinder of her father's revolver by the time a napkin, tossed by the bartender, hit the floor. The girl enjoyed life and freedom until she was thirteen. Remote learning was easy for her, and the harsh lessons from her father were even enjoyable.
Unfortunately, happiness and peace never last forever. One ordinary and unremarkable day, her father was gone. He just didn't wake up, although he seemed still young and healthy. His sister, Aunt Estelle, a successful businessman's wife, with the permission of the guardianship authorities, took Shannen Jones to live with her. So, the girl found herself in an unfamiliar metropolis, and her life changed completely and forever from that moment.
Aunt Estelle was kind and wanted only the best, but the trouble was that her understanding of "the best" was fundamentally different from what a thirteen-year-old girl, who had spent more nights in nature than under a roof, really wanted. An elite school, tutors, archery training, then an expensive and prestigious college. It seemed her life, thanks to her aunt's care, was planned for many years ahead. But a car accident occurred, and the girl was alone again. However, by then, she was already eighteen and became the sole heiress of both Aunt Estelle and her husband.
The car crash that claimed the life of her father's sister, the person who had helped her so much during a difficult period of her life, occurred right before Shannen's eyes and immediately seemed strange and even staged to her. However, the police paid no attention to all the peculiarities and quickly closed the case. Although Shannen was one hundred percent sure that it was not an accident but a premeditated murder. But no one listened to her. They brushed off her words and testimonies. This was what caused Shannen Jones' life to take another drastic turn.
After graduating from college with honors, Shannen Jones suddenly enrolled in the police academy, which she also completed with distinction. The girl won all the prizes in shooting competitions and earned an excellent reputation. She even became a prizewinner in the world archery championship. But these were just the initial steps towards achieving the goal set - to figure out the deaths of Aunt Estelle and her husband.
Then followed the work as a regular patrol officer, then a transfer to SWAT, to an elite anti-terror group as a sniper. All this time, Shannen didn't stop "digging," and the more information she found, the more she became convinced that the car crash was not accidental. Her aunt's husband turned out to be involved in corruption schemes with money laundering, and according to the documents that Shannen uncovered, he was going to surrender to the police. But precisely a day before the scheduled meeting with the district prosecutor, that supposedly accidental crash occurred.
Shannen's personal investigation lasted for many years, and eventually, she got to the truth. And she didn't like that truth one bit. Because, as it turned out, the police were behind the killing of her relatives. More precisely, the Melbourne Police Pension Fund, the heads of which were not averse to corruption. Having discovered numerous details, Shannen came to an unequivocal conclusion that she didn't have enough evidence that the court would accept to resolve the issue legally. This truth almost broke the yet young and largely idealistic twenty-six-year-old girl.
It was at that time that an incident occurred that irrevocably changed Shannen Jones' life this time.
A group of migrants had raped a very young female student, a neighbor of Shannen, living on the same floor. Everyone knew the names of the assailants, it was well-known who committed this act, yet all the perpetrators were eventually released, with the main instigator getting off with a suspended sentence. This episode entirely shattered Shannen's faith in the police and the legal order to which she had devoted herself. Unable to change anything, she began visiting the rape victim, a young girl named Victoria. Almost every evening she spent in her apartment, fearing the girl might take her own life without supervision. They talked a lot and watched various movies and TV series. One of these series became the impetus that led Shannen Jones to choose a new path in life. It was the TV series "Dexter," about a maniac killer with his own code of honor, who killed only criminals. Having binge-watched the entire first season, Victoria turned to Shannen and said, "You are an excellent shooter, the best in Melbourne." The young girl said nothing more that evening, but Shannen understood her perfectly.
Less than a month passed, and the seven rapists were dead. Some - in a street shootout, some - in a car accident, some choked on food, and some simply fell out of a window. Another half a year later, the leadership of the Melbourne Police Pension Fund changed, and the reason for this change was straightforward. The previous leaders had suddenly disappeared. They went on an ocean fishing trip on a yacht and never returned. They were searched for over a year, but not even traces were found.
"I am a Punisher with my own code of honor," Shannen Jones thought to herself. For many years, she had been dedicated to ridding the city and its surrounding areas of those creatures that the law could not reach. Or those with whom the law, in Shannen's opinion, was overly humane. "I am a hunter of the urban jungle who cleanses the filth," the girl thought as she fell asleep, and a serene smile settled on her face.
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Shannen Jones was very careful, and over all the years and more than four dozen scums eliminated by her, no one could even think it was her doing.
She found herself. Her vocation. And she was, one might say, happy, if not for one "but"… She was catastrophically unlucky with men. All the guys she met and was ready to love turned out to be scum and lowlifes. Moreover, because of her "hobby," Shannen couldn't afford marriage and a normal family life. However, if she regretted this, it was not that strongly, and she would never trade her current life for marital bliss. Shannen Jones was the best human hunter in all of Australia and, deep down, was very proud of it. What inflated her pride even more was that no one knew about this fact, and even her colleagues had no idea about the girl's other side of life.
She was about to turn thirty-nine when suddenly everything in her life changed again, and she found herself in a completely different world. Not only was she relocated, but she was also given a young and healthy body, which Shannen couldn't help but rejoice at.
Adventures, hunting, new challenges – all of these made Shannen rejuvenate not just physically but spiritually as well. Moreover, this world was full of nearly unexplored gigantic forests where the girl felt at home. Besides, Shannen Jones was obsessed with hunting. It was more than just an entertainment for her. She derived a kind of pleasure from this activity that she couldn't get from anything else. Back on Earth, she had hunted virtually every significant trophy, even achieving the so-called "Big Five." Thanks to a substantial inheritance left by her aunt, she could afford it. And this new world, with its somewhat unfamiliar fauna, various monsters and beasts, posed a real challenge for Shannen. She dreamed of elevating to the Heroic Coil of the Spiral as soon as possible and going on hunts for Ain's legendary monsters like wyverns, burongs, and many others.
However, she fully understood that no hunt for a beast or monster, no matter how strong, could ever compare to tracking the most complicated prey – intelligent beings. But hunting them was limited by Scully herself, or rather, her internal code that allowed her to target criminals only. And Shannen didn't want to violate this code, even in another world. She didn't want to because she felt that if she didn't restrain herself, she would turn into a real monster. Only even more dangerous, cunning, and deadly than even the legendary monsters of Ain.
Due to her obsession with hunting and her excessive curiosity, even before reaching Wootz, let alone the Precious Coil of the Spiral, she dared to visit the Wicked Woods and see what kind of terrifying and eerie Sidhe resided there. Unfortunately, her search was successful, and that encounter almost cost her life. If she had listened to the locals, she would have understood that a person as weak as she had nothing to do near the Wicked Woods. But she ignored them and almost ended up rotting dead in this gigantic and - even by Scully's standards - rather creepy forest.
Shannen winced painfully at this memory. Even though the first point in her code was ensuring her own survival, the girl felt guilty. Due to her curiosity, her mistake, and her excessive confidence, another person died. She was supposed to perish, but in the end, he did. And he didn't die randomly but due to her direct actions, her deceit, and her setup.
Raven, that's what the person who unintentionally became Scully's pawn, allowing her to evade the Forest Guard, called himself. She promised to hold a service in his honor. However, several days had passed, and Scully had not fulfilled her promise, for which she sometimes reproached herself. Generally, Shannen Jones's conscience was quite "flexible," but in this case, a genuine guilt haunted her. She knew she had acted despicably, leading to the death of someone who tried to help her, someone she had deceived so lowly. But Shannen's life was at stake, and as she reassured herself, there was no other choice. Only by providing the Forest Guard with a new target could she have a chance of survival. And she did give them that target… Judging by the fact she was still alive, Raven proved even better than she thought, leading the Sidhe away long enough for her to escape.
For the third time in the past three days, the thought of her vileness wiped the smile off Shannen Jones's face, forcing the girl to shake her head vigorously, as if chasing away the rebukes of conscience.
One could say that by accepting the order to find the sheriff's killers, Scully was trying to redeem herself. She hoped to catch up with the earthlings, figure everything out, and explain to the locals that the earthlings were not guilty of the sheriff's death, thereby saving the trio of jesters from persecution.
To Shannen's great regret, she was too late. She found the trio of earthlings, but they were already dead. Someone had found them before her. Fearing an ambush, Scully hesitated to leave the forest. She watched, scrutinized, and identified suitable places where someone might be hiding. Only after being completely assured that it was safe ahead did she risk stepping into the clearing.
The sight before her would have frozen many others - less prepared and less experienced - with fear and revulsion. The earthlings were not just killed. The one who caught up with them didn't stop at that. Their heads, hands, and feet were severed and piled separately away from the mutilated bodies. A superficial inspection showed that this was done deliberately. Casting a glance at the neatly arranged severed parts once again, Shannen remembered a ballad sung by a bard in one of the taverns. The song, or rather the recitative, described that the hands and feet were cut off when there was a belief that the deceased might rise as a zombie or some other undead. Most likely, the one who caught up and killed the earthlings feared such a possibility and took precautions.
Exactly "the one who," not "those who." The trained and experienced eye of an elite police special forces fighter quickly tracked key details, clearly indicating that the attacker was alone. A more detailed examination of the clearing only confirmed this guess. There could be no doubt - the attacker was a lone wolf.
Two of the earthlings, presumably the ones named Pyotr Grotter and Bushe George, were killed swiftly. Likely, each received just one strike. But what a strike it was! Each landed directly in the heart. This was despite the fact that, judging by the traces, the earthlings were not only prepared for battle but also likely tried to lure their pursuer into a trap.
They lured him... to their own death.
Apparently, the pursuer was of the Precious coil of the Spiral or at least Wootz, given how easily he killed the earthlings.
Returning to the inspection, Scully realized that, unlike the guys, Molly Moon didn't die immediately. She was immobilized, her tendons severed with several blows, and then, most likely, interrogated with her back pressed against a large tree. After the interrogation – she was killed. Was it an execution without the slightest doubt or twinge of conscience?
Did this mean that the earthlings were indeed guilty of killing the district sheriff? After another three minutes, Scully answered this question affirmatively. Guilty. Because among their weapons, arranged in a strange sign, Shannen quickly recognized the sheriff's sword with a characteristic stamp and engraving. Of course, one could doubt and think that the earthlings found this sword by accident, but from her experience, Shannen Jones knew that such coincidences do not happen. The sheriff's personal amulet and his rather expensive silk scarf were also found among the items left by the unknown killer, or rather, the bounty hunter. Of course, there was always a chance that the killer, having dealt with the earthlings, planted these pieces of evidence himself. But, knowing the locals quite well by now, Scully decided they couldn't develop such a sophisticated "frame-up."
Another fifteen minutes of inspection, and Shannen Jones fully reconstructed the chronology of what happened. Apparently, Pyotr Grotter and Bushe George tried to lure the pursuer into a trap, not suspecting that he was prepared for this. And the outcome of the swift skirmish was evident.
There was one strange thing. The killer took only the money and left the rest untouched, even quite expensive trophies. Moreover, for some reason, he gathered all the potions of the killed and poured them into the fire. Why did he do this? This detail remained an unsolved mystery for Scully.
Being an experienced hunter, Shannen easily determined the direction in which the killer had gone and was, in principle, confident that she could catch up with him. But the lesson recently learned in the Wicked Woods stopped the girl, and she did not rush into a reckless pursuit. Who knows how strong and prepared the bounty hunter who found the earthlings before her is?
Scully's fingers involuntarily ran over the rope that served as her belt, pulled from her thoughts. This rope, indistinguishable from a common, cheap, thin cord at a glance, was actually a powerful artifact. She had stumbled upon it by accident. During her third week in Ain, Scully had been hunting wolves. When she found a predatory pack that had been frightening the local children, the wolves were digging something up from the ground. A minor earthquake had recently occurred, causing some ravines to crumble. The wolf pack was digging in one such collapse. After dispatching the predators, Scully couldn't resist and continued the excavation herself. She discovered what appeared to be an ancient burial site, from which only bone fragments, decayed clothes, and this seemingly freshly-made rope remained. This artifact had saved her life twice. "Actually, three times," Scully corrected herself, her thoughts returning to her encounter with Raven.
"Ghostly Hunter" was its name - a unique artifact even for its Mithril Rank. She didn't know its complete history, but thanks to a conversation with an old harpist, she learned that it was created in the times before the Fall, and the hand of Ishid himself had guided the master who made it – or so the part of the legend that the old harpist shared with Scully went.
The weapons of the slain earthlings were arranged on the ground in a sign unknown to the girl. No matter how hard she pushed her Auras, she couldn't detect any magic in it. A cautious touch with the "Ghostly Hunter" elicited no reaction either. Using a long stick, Scully disrupted the sign. She waited a few minutes, then collected all the weapons into her bag, wrapping each blade in cloth. She also put the evidence of the earthlings' deaths and all the clues pointing to them as the sheriff's murderers into a separate bag.
If the unknown bounty hunter didn't need the reward, well, that was his business. But Scully wouldn't turn it down...