Chapter 186: Following the trolls

Vlad moved from one tree to another, producing only minimal sounds despite wearing heavy armor. He kept a consistent distance of about fifty meters from the trolls to make sure he did not alert them.

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous. These creatures were every bit as intimidating as one could imagine. Their sheer size alone was enough to make even a seasoned warrior cower in fear.

However, beneath that nervousness, there was a strange surge of excitement within Vlad. He wasn’t a battle maniac, yet he couldn’t help but imagine different methods to defeat them. Each scenario sent a strange surge of dopamine through his entire body.

Nonetheless, he was aware of his priorities. The mission was more important than his thrill of battle.

"Here should be fine," Vlad murmured as he carved a small X into the bark of the tree using the tip of his blade. He had been marking the trees every few meters, leaving a trail for the rest of the team to follow.

For three days and nights, Vlad followed the trolls without rest, moving deeper and deeper into the forest. The branches of the trees were so dense here that the sky was completely hidden beyond them. There wasn’t much snow on the ground either, as most of it was stopped by the trees themselves. Vlad couldn’t even tell the difference between day and night, since the dense canopy blocked whatever sunlight might have passed through the leaves.

Sheets of ice still covered the ground, though, the moisture having frozen in the cold.

The trolls only stopped once or twice a day to hunt and eat other monsters. Even a hundred meters away, Vlad could feel the reverberations produced by their weapons when they killed their prey.

Not a single monster attacked them. They would either try to run for their lives or become the meal of these terrifying creatures.

It made Vlad wonder how far the stench of orc blood had spread due to Alisha’s spell, allowing it to attract the attention of these trolls, and how quickly they must have traveled to cover such a vast distance within a day of the array’s activation.

"If our seniors hadn’t cleaned the Forest of Death three weeks ago, hundreds of monsters might have swarmed in to get a taste of the orcs’ blood," Vlad muttered, shaking his head.

"If that happened, we might have already abandoned the mission and returned to the academy by now."

In the early morning of the fourth day, the trolls finally stopped, even though there wasn’t a single monster around them to hunt.

Vlad didn’t notice any significant change in the scenery, despite what he had expected. The same towering trees stretched in whichever direction he looked. He could sense no presence of any Genesis Artifact either. According to Seraphina, if the artifact was close enough, even humans could sense the mana it radiated. So either the artifact was still far from there, or it didn’t exist altogether.

However, there was one noticeable difference that only Vlad could sense. The presence of the Umbra Element had increased severalfold here.

It wasn’t just darkness. There was something far more ominous mixed within it that made Vlad’s skin crawl.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart as he shifted his focus back to the trolls.

One of them settled there, taking a seat beside a tree. The rest continued on their journey, but separately. Two of them moved to the left while the other two moved to the right.

"I need to find out where the rest are going," Vlad murmured as he looked back and forth between the two paths, unsure which one to follow. "I will take the path on the right."

He decided randomly. He carved a message into the bark of the tree to let the rest of the team know and began following the trolls on the right.

After a couple of hours, one of them also stopped, while the last one continued for a few more hours before taking up a position beside a tree as well.

Although the forest was like a maze, looking nearly identical in every direction and making it impossible to remember which direction one was traveling in, Vlad still managed to notice that wherever the trolls settled, the presence of the Umbra Element remained the same.

A suspicion arose in his mind, but he decided not to jump to any hasty conclusions. He needed to team up with his party to discuss their further course of action.

---

"Lady Seraphina, the trail has ended nine hundred meters to the north," Raphael revealed as he returned from his scouting.

Seraphina, Alisha, and Hugo were mounted on their beasts, following the marks left by Vlad. Shadow was also walking with them, staying a few meters behind the group.

"I scouted a troll around a hundred meters away from the last mark left by Vlad," Raphael revealed what he had found.

"What about him?" Seraphina asked, referring to Vlad, her voice laced with worry.

"He was not there," Raphael replied in a calm tone. "But I already have an idea where he might be."

He took out a piece of paper from his storage ring and gathered the team around him. "This was the message left by Vlad in his last mark," he revealed, showing them the message he had copied from the bark of the tree.

It was a Y symbol. A circle was drawn at the intersection, with two circles marked along the left path and two along the right. There was also a V symbol on the right path.

"The circles must represent the trolls," Seraphina explained, understanding the message at a glance. "They separated from the point where he left this message. Two of them took the left path, and the other two took the right while one of them stayed there. The V symbol is him. He is following the trolls on the right."

Her brows twitched with anger for only a moment before returning to normal.

"We will set up camp here," she ordered, her tone firm. "Raphael, go to the location where he left the message and wait for him there."

"I understand," Raphael replied before taking his leave on foot. He avoided mounting his griffin so as not to alert the troll.

Once he left, Seraphina dismounted from her Qilin and set up her capsule camp.

However, she didn’t go inside. She sat beside Ammy, her back leaning against the Qilin’s warm body, her eyes never leaving the path ahead.

"Lady Seraphina, don’t worry," Alisha’s gentle voice came from the side, pulling her out of her thoughts. "Vlad will be fine."