"What do you mean, you don't know where she is?" Ruby couldn't hold back her emotions, instead they were let loose and exploded from the very beginning.

"She left our apartment few hours ago and she is nowhere to be found in your shop either. Could she go shopping somewhere else or something?" Ben was trying to get to the bottom of the case.

"No way, she doesn't have any money, everything she earned was used to feed Clara and keep her alive." She shook her head.

"I don't think she could get lost either, she knows her way quite well." Arath joined the conversation. "That leaves only one option.."

"Somebody abducted her." They all said in unison.

No more words had to be said, they all turned around and picked the best weapons that could be found in the shop. Having prepared equipment, Ruby and Arath pulled out a ragged map of the city. It was very general and in some places completely inaccurate, but it was the best they could do.

In the meantime, Ben walked out and used his special ability to try and track Anga by taking the same route she could have taken. About half way through, he finally found her traces which at some point suddenly stopped, got mixed with others and then suddenly turned right into a dark alleyway. 'Found' wasn't exactly what he did, thanks to his affinity with the Earth element and special ability he was able to spot non-physical traces of people and other creatures. It was a gut feeling more than anything genuinely convincing, but it has never failed him so far.

Arath, equipped with light armor made of tough skin of some strong creature, a small round shield and his usual sword, run out of the shop followed by Ruby, with a heavy crossbow and map in her hands. Fire was raging in their eyes and no passerby dared to even look at them the wrong way, their aura was filled with such intense bloodlust that it could even challenge the Face Stealer's one. Upon meeting with Ben, who carefully examined the place where Anga changed her direction, the group without wasting a single second more than neccessary, started the pursuit. Ben, at the front, looked for traces of the abducted girl, and led the rest of the team.

"It doesn't make much sense, it seems they were headed for the centre of the city. But all slave organisations I have heard of are located on the outskirts." Ruby, who constantly checked their position on the map, expressed her confusion. "By the way which devil abducts a little girl in the middle of the day on a busy street? He is certainly a brave one. Let's see if he is good enough to withstand my fury." She said with a cruel smirk.

After few turns they arrived at a well-kept plaza near to the aristocracts' district, there Beniamin looked around, visibly thrown off course. He nervously looked around and threw gazes at strangers walking by. His hands fidgeted and droplets of sweat appeared on his forehead.

"I don't know what is going on.." He finally uttered. "I am receiving very confusing signals, like she is right here but also went straight ahead, while also going right, moving upwards and appearing in various places all around me."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Arath and Ruby looked at him stupified as if they just saw a mentally sick person throwing a tantrum. They looked at each other with resignation and sighed heavily.

"That most probably means that she is hidden somewhere close, surrounded by dalactan. This can mean two things: they are very affluent and careful, and they are scared of counterattack and need to use methods like this." Arath started explaining. "From now on, we need to search manually, using the old-fashioned way. Any ideas where their hideout might be?"

"An old abandoned warehouse?" Ben suggested, recalling what he saw on TV shows in his previous world.

Hearing the suggestion the other two sighed once again.

"Did you even take a look at this city? It's so overpopulated words like 'abandoned' don't exist in it's dictionary. Give me a few minutes." Arath closed his eyes with the intention to use his Wandering Eye.

The feeling of being separated from his body was still weird and creepy, just like when he did it for the first time. He first flew towards a three-storeys high building with a steep slope and tiny glass windows, yet before he could reach it he felt his body being shaken and his friends panicking.

He looked around to check if his body was safe and sound, but instead discovered something very unsettling. His forehead was split into two and an eerie red eye was looking straight at him, following his every movement. He touched his face in order to check it and when he clumsily put his dirty finger in the eye he felt a sudden wave of unbearable pain. He returned to his body with a cry of agony almost immediately and moved his hands as if to cover it, but that creepy eye was already gone. Instead of being relieved, he still felt the immense pain, this time beneath his skin.

"Hey Arath, what the hell was that?" Ruby asked suspiciously.

"I have no idea. Let me try again." He used the ability again and the same result occured. "I used a technique I learned recently, but had no idea it looked like this."

"You look like some kind of demon, scary. Make sure to never use it publicly, no one noticed it yet because we covered you, but if someone actually saw it they would be sure to call for an exorcist." Ben shook his head and tried to get rid of that memory.

"I didn't understand half of the words you used there but sure, let's go somewhere more private."

Once again, Arath used his Wandering Eye, he first scanned his surroundings to check if anyone could see him and then flew straight towards the same building as before. On the first floor there was nothing out of the ordinary, a normal grocery shop like any other. The remaining rooms in the bulidng were just the same, normal. Some apartments, an attic and a little storage space.

He flew to the next building and the next, and after that the next one, and finally the next. Having finished surveilling the houses, he could only sigh. They were all normal, nothing was out of the place, not even for a moment was his ability being distorted by dalactan, not mentioning Anga.

'So we are back to square one.' He thought. 'Ben got confused on the plaza, let's see if I can find something out in there.'

Arath did as he had thought and arrived back at the spacious alley between two rows of buildings. He looked for anything looking even a tiny bit suspicious but it was a Sisyphean work.

'What to do? What can I do differently?' He was asking himself when he noticed a rather bulky person leaving one of the pitchblack alleyways.

What picked his attention, was the unusual behavior of this man, he kept looking around nervously for the most part but upon seeing any other person his expressions and gestures calmed down and he acted naturally once again.

'Got you?' Arath left the question floating and moved to that place.

In the alleyway all he could see was some garbage piling up against the wall one left, and rats feeding on the rotten food, but it was exactly what he came for. He wasn't looking for something he could see, rather what he could not see. The right wall was completely black, it wasn't just that the wall was painted in a dark color, the blackness and hollowness of this wall seemed to suck in any light around it. Dalactan.