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RAY VAN CAMARO

The only people heading to Lalatina to investigate the nearby rune were the Camaro unit (plus Tank), the Clegane unit, and Chris—who was acting as our guide.

Port Town was a well-known target of attacks. If word got out that the brigadier in charge had taken a leave, the smugglers and pirates that were being kept at bay would leap at the opportunity to turn the city to ruin.

So in the cover of darkness, our party of soldiers marched onto one of the ships dragging behind a line of chained and hooded prisoners. The prisoners were actually my Dolls, Czeslaw, and Chris. It was a precaution to make sure they weren't spotted.

In his absence, Czeslaw instructed his most iron-fisted subordinate to take care of Port Town. None of the city's soldiers knew about this retreat.

We sailed the ship through the estuary and down the Mizu River. The town of Lalatina was two days along the river. During this time, we instructed Czeslaw not to go on deck. If he was spotted, news of the brigadier of Port Town on a ship heading away from the city would travel fast.

"This is more boring than I thought," Czeslaw complained as he paced back and forth in the great cabin of the ship. "There's nothing to do down here."

Hendrik, Doria, Rudolf, Gama, and Chris were on the floor studying the spread pages from the cookbook that made the map. Kaiser, Czeslaw's men, and several of my dolls wearing military uniforms treaded on deck.

"You guys know we drew the map, right?" Czeslaw said to them. "You don't have to keep organizing a spread every time you want to check it out."

"We know," Hendrik said. "But there might've been something we missed. We've already confirmed that they're hiding something within this book. It's not out of the question for them to hide multiple things."

"Ray's really lucky he put you on his unit. You're very thorough with paperwork and research."

"That's the work he doesn't like so he just piles them on my desk."

Doria groaned. "There's no way that this only hides a map. There has to be something hiding under our noses."

The cabin remained silent for a while but was broken by Rudolf's loud sneeze. It caused the pages he was sitting in front of to scatter.

Gama, who was the closest to him, held as many of the pages down as he could. "Cover your mouth, you idiot!"

"I'm allergic to cats!" Rudolf said, rubbing his reddened nose. "I'm sorry, Chris. It's not that I don't like you. My body doesn't. The sneeze comes out of nowhere and I'm not fast enough to cover my mouth."

"Then at least turn your head the other way!" Gama began rearranging the pages. "Your snot is all over the place."

"It's okay. It's not something you can control," Chris said. "I'll help fix this and head up to the deck."

Czeslaw got off his chair and collected the pages that had flown across the room. "Now we have to reconstruct this thing? Most of these pages don't have lines or anything. You can't even tell which side is right side up." He sighed. "Whatever, putting this puzzle back together at least keeps me busy."

I bent over and picked up a page that was by my feet, studying both sides of the paper.

Both sides of the paper...

I laughed. "Rudolf, you red-nosed idiot. You figured it out."

He scratched his head. "I did?"

"How many sides are there on a piece of paper?"

"Two."

"Yup. Hendrik, you're right that there's a hidden message on this map. The only mistake we've made is that we've been staring at the wrong side."

Doria chuckled. "Right under our nose."

"Reconstruct the map and flip everything over," I ordered.

Everyone, except for Chris who was sitting in the corner, began putting the map back together. Once we were done, we flipped each page to find...

"Nothing, it's completely blank!" Gama complained.

"No, it's not," I said. "Look at the symbols. The way they are spread out is... inorganic."

I grabbed the ink and quill on the captain's desk and began connecting the symbols. It made a giant circle with a hexagon in the middle and the symbols were on each point.

"That's..." Chris said. "That's an incantation circle!"

"It very much is."

"What does it do?" Czeslaw asked.

I shrugged. "I've never seen it before. Chris?"

The cat woman shrugged as well. "Nope."

"Can you test it out for us?"

"Why me? You're a State Jynxist, Colonel Ray Van Camaro."

"Because I made a contract with myself that limits my jynx. The only jynx I can perform is summoning and contracts. And even with that, I can only summon my Dolls. The limitations make them strong."

She sighed. "Fine."

Once the sun came back out, we anchored in the middle of the river and surrounded Chris, who stood in the middle of the deck with a glove that had the incantation circle drawn on it. She tried for about half an hour but wasn't able to squeeze out a spell.

"It's not working," she pouted.

"Do you feel something starting, though?"

"Nothing at all."

"Perhaps it's because she doesn't know how the spell works?" Kaiser suggested.

"No, that shouldn't matter if a circle is used."
"Maybe her gates aren't strong enough."

"No, her gates a very strong."

Chris cleared her throat. "Excuse me, Sir. I almost passed the State Jynxist Exam this year. Don't you dare say I have weak gates."

Kaiser raised his hands in defence. "I apologize."

I ran back inside the cabin and returned with a bucket of paint and brush, drawing the incantation circle on the deck.

"Maybe the size of the circle matters," I theorized. "Usually, the more powerful the spell, the bigger the circle."

She stepped in the middle and aimed her palm towards the riverbanks. The circle began to glow and the sky just above us began swirling in a familiar hue of different colours. After a while, a light began building in the middle of the storm's eye before exploding into a downward beam.

The squirrels sitting on the log where Chris was aiming were engulfed by the light. And when the beam faded away, they were gone.

Doria's eyes widened. "Th-that's the beam! That's what hit Gilead. L-l-l-look! The squirrels disappeared just like us!"

"Only not as big," I said. "But if multiple of these spells were used at the same time, then..."

"It'd be big enough to cover all of Gilead. That's why it happened at noon. It's easy to coordinate this when the sun is at its highest."

"So that means Abel—" Gama said.

"When Pops' men found him, he was paralyzed. His gates were on the verge of breaking." I turned to Chris. "Do you feel anything?"

The cat woman shook her head. "Nope. I feel great."

When I focused mana into my eyes, her gates were indeed completely fine. But about five minutes after she cast the spell, she collapsed and was unable to move.

"I-I-I can't move my body."

When I checked her gates this time, they were on the verge of breaking. Just like Abel's.

"So this wasn't naturally occurring," I said. "This wasn't an accident. The beam of light was set to target Gilead."

Chris was completely paralyzed until we arrived in Lalatina. She regained her ability to move once we landed.

Most beastfolk villages were completely secluded and their only inhabitants were beast people. The town of Lalatina was a mix of the other races, though beast people were still the majority. It was probably because this place was right by the river and business was always high wherever there was water.

Once we got off the ship, we dropped by the Adventurer's Guild to request for any number of jynxists to accompany us to wherever this rune was. We would be paying each jynxist ten silver coins.

The teleportation spell was something we still had little understanding of. We needed to experiment with how it worked.

As we walked around town, I noticed a group of people chopping wood and preparing meals at a nearby tavern. They were Gilead villagers that were found nearby. They had been working to earn enough money to travel back home.

"Colonel Camaro has come to bring us back to Gilead!" they cheered when they saw us.

"I'm glad you're all safe," I said as I received heartwarming embraces. "We'll escort you back home soon, just sit tight for now."

The reassurance that people who got teleported were safe filled me with a sense of hope I had been drained of ever since I walked into my empty village.

We arrived at Chris' family's place and they were kind enough to let all twelve of us and Tank stay at their home. After some much-needed rest on solid ground, we gathered at the guild the next morning and found thirty-three jynxists waiting for us. We didn't put a cap on how many could come and we put a warning stating that any jynxist that showed up must perform a spell that would temporarily paralyze them for a couple of days.

Despite all the prerequisites and warnings, many still came in attendance. Ten silver coins was something one on the road couldn't just ignore.

Some of the jynxists were familiar with Chris. Surprisingly, some had taken the State Jynxist Exam with her.

Our expedition hiked for a couple of hours until we found the area the rune was supposed to be in. However, nothing was there except an open field. The closest sort of foliage was a league away.

This time, everyone knew better than to say this was a dead end. We split up and searched the area to look for whatever this rune could be. Some of the jynxists that could hover even went up as high as they could to get a bird's eye view of the place.

All that to find nothing.

Then while warming up lunch, Chris came upon a thought.

"When I took this year's exam, I made it to the final phase," she went on. "The last phase involved a one-on-one fight. I lost to an idiot kid who got disqualified right after."

"What does this have to do with anything?" Czeslaw asked. He was wearing a hooded cloak and a mask to hide his identity.

"Shush! That was the hook to my statement which is—the idiot kid beat me because he turned the ground into quagmire and hid inside the ground. What I'm saying is maybe the thing we're looking for is inside the ground as well."

"Chris, you genius," Rudolf congratulated before sneezing violently.

Sadly, none of us predicted that what we would be looking for was going to be underground. No shovels were brought. The earth mages did most of the labour by digging with jynx while the others and my dolls were digging with what they could. Chris was bent over with her protracted claws scratching away at the dirt.

It didn't take long to find something hidden in the ground. We turned the surrounding ground into quagmire and had jynxists levitate the foreign object as much as they could. We tied it with a rope and attached it to Tank, who was pulling with all his might while the regular people and my dolls helped pull on the rope.

The object turned out to be a monolith. Carved into it was the familiar rune on the map.

"I have a feeling that I know exactly what this thing is for," Czeslaw said. "Let's start the experiments."

We each had the thirty-three jynxists that came with us use the incantation circle to summon a beam of light onto one of my dolls. One out of five times, the dolls would be transported near the rune rock, which glowed blue every time the spell was cast. The rest of the dolls were nowhere to be found the other four times.

The size of the beam was about five meters in diameter. We then had jynxists summon the spell in synchrony and what we discover was that the spell stacked. If five jynxists were to summon the beam of light, the beam would be five times as big as opposed to if one summoned it.

When the experiment concluded, we headed back to Lalatina and dropped the jynxists off at their inns with instructions to the inn workers that they'd be paralyzed for the next couple of days.

Our party gathered back at Chris' place where we made sure no one was hearing our conversation.

"They're waypoints," Czeslaw pointed out. "Every time that beam of light engulfs a living thing, it teleports them there. The runes on the map are where the waypoints are, so those other runes are where your other dolls must be teleporting to. I can't believe waypoints actually exist. I thought they were legends."

I nodded. "The question is, why are the villagers of Gilead being found everywhere but these waypoints."

"We also have to talk about the fact the spell increases in size when more jynxists perform it," Hendrik said. "To consume Gilead, there would have to have been at least two hundred and fifty jynxists using this circle."

"That's a lot," Czeslaw said. "But why? If they wanted to take over Gilead, two hundred and fifty jynxists would've been more than enough."

"Maybe they were trying to mask this as some sort of mana incident," Doria suggested. "I mean, Colonel, you thought that too."

Nodding my head, I took a sip of tea. "Yeah. It's a good mask."

"Maybe whoever is behind this thing didn't want to anger a certain someone. If General Clegane were to find out that a group of jynxists were attacking Gilead, how do you think the Warden of the West would react? A leader so fierce that the entire western region is more loyal to him than the king. A region of soldiers nicknamed the Bad Company for the way they acted separately from the rest of the country. General Clegane would start a war over something like this, won't he?"

"A conspiracy has been unmasked," I told them. "Questions will lead to answers. Those answers will lead to more questions. But in the end, we will find out the truth behind all of this."