It was a few days after they had headed west, following Signard’s directions.

After leaving the village of the wandering elves, they hadn’t run into anything particularly troublesome. They had encountered a few monsters and discovered traces of nearby tribes, but they hadn’t run into any of the natives.

“...Ah,” Eugene let out a gasp.

He felt ‘movement’ coming from the leaf of the world tree that he had stored in his chest pocket. It wasn’t just an illusion. Most of Eugene’s senses had been focused on this dried leaf during these past few days of travel, and Eugene wasn’t foolish enough to make such a mistake no matter how eagerly he had been waiting for a response.

Eugene immediately pulled the leaf out of his pocket. He stilled the wind that was blowing towards them and then stared at the leaf as he held it in the palm of his hand.

The leaf began to move once more. Having come over to his side at some point, Kristina’s face brightened as she saw this.

The leaf in Eugene’s palm moved slowly. While constantly shifting ever so slightly, the leaf was moving forward in a certain direction.

“It’s like a compass,” Eugene muttered as he placed it back inside his pocket.

“Why are you putting it back?” Kristina asked.

“It’s cumbersome to keep holding it in my hand as we travel. In any case, even if I keep it in my pocket, I can still feel where it’s trying to head,” Eugene explained.

This direction was… just slightly off from due west. It looked like Signard’s memory wasn’t wrong, so for him to have failed to find the elven territory even with that, there had to be another reason that had kept him from doing so. While feeling his heart pound with excitement, Eugene hurried his steps.

As they went in the direction that it was indicating, the leaf’s reaction grew stronger. At first it would only wriggle slightly to show they were going in the right direction, but now it was practically oscillating as if it was trying to climb out of his pocket.

As the leaf’s reaction grew stronger, Eugene’s...