Chapter 71: Chapter 67: Learning to Feel

Ophelia was splitting her attention, two of her bodies were out getting a lay of the land, while her third was tending to her younger daughters. Almost immediately after her conversion, she had obtained a Skill that allowed her to more easily divide her focus, and she was immensely thankful for it. Without it, she would be having a much harder time bringing out the full potential of her bodies. And, by the rate at which it was leveling up, it seemed that it saw near-constant usage.

Currently, her main objective was to determine what had happened to Ira’s monsters after Amelia left, and she had yet to come to a concrete conclusion. It wasn’t that she couldn’t find evidence of them, the area was absolutely filled with destruction they had left in their wake, but that she couldn’t determine what had happened to what.

There were no bodies or other signs of a major struggle, and she had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it meant that none of those powerful monsters were lost forever, but on the other, it meant that it was likely that one or more of them was still in the area. And, of course, it was her job to figure out which of them was still around. From her recollection, there had been six other monsters, a dragon, a griffin, a nightmare, an emperor lion, a manticore, and a phoenix.

Fortunately, most of those monsters had distinct signs that they had taken up residence in an area. Dragons had a tendency to use their breath weapons in hunting, leaving scorches everywhere, manticores left their spines embedded in the terrain, nightmares left “uneaten” corpses in their wake, and emperor lions left huge, unmistakable claw gouges near their nest or wherever they had hunted.

Griffins and phoenixes were a bit harder, though. Griffins tended to only leave marks when they landed or took off, and those marks were relatively small when compared to the other monsters on the list. Furthermore, griffins didn’t hunt often, so oftentimes their presence was felt by the lack of any other strong predator in the area. And, finally, the phoenix was the least of their worries; for monsters, phoenixes were extraordinarily docile, hunting only once every few months and preferring to avoid conflict where possible.

And, really, only one of those would end up sticking around the area. The only monsters on that list that weren’t highly territorial were the nightmare and the phoenix, and the phoenix being around was basically the same as not having a big monster in the area. If they were lucky, that was what would end up happening; they could work out a plan to convert the nightmare, and then they could take care of the phoenix at their leisure.

But that was just a hope, and given Ophelia’s luck, what was overwhelmingly probable is that they would end up with the worst outcome, the dragon taking up roost in the area, and that was much harder to get around. Admittedly, Amelia had shown that she was capable of handling the dragon if her abilities were unbound, but Ophelia didn’t think they could count on that. The activation window for her unbinding ability was frustratingly vague, and a person could only knowingly lie to themselves so many times before the lie started to lose its effect.

As for her current working theory…well, she couldn’t conclusively say much. Her two bodies were following the trail of the emperor lion and the manticore, and it seemed like they were leaving, as they were heading in different directions in basically straight lines, but Ophelia wouldn’t be satisfied until she had followed the trails for at least fifteen miles, or she came across conclusive evidence one way or the other.

And, after a few hours of tracking, her search came to an end. As the body that was tracking the manticore crested a ridge the surroundings grew darker, as if night had suddenly fallen. That was an unmistakable sign that the nightmare was close, and there was no way it would remain this close to the site of the battle after this long if it hadn’t taken up residence here.

Now all that was left was to do was locate it and determine if it was injured. So, she began walking back the body that had been tracking the emperor lion, put Anna down with her other, and allotted as much of her attention as possible to the body near the nightmare. She took a deep breath, activated her stealth Skills, and began to stalk forward.

Many would be tempted to light a torch or use magic to illuminate their surroundings, but Ophelia knew better; a nightmare’s darkness made such things less effective than normal, and they served more as a beacon for the nightmare than as a guide to their wielder. The more proper way to locate the nightmare was to move towards the darker areas, and use the level of light as an indicator for your location in proximity to the nightmare.

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