“Why is it impossible?” asked Crockta.0

The man looked up at the sky and replied, “Because there’s no way.”6

“What…”0

The man placed the manticore’s hide and heart in his sack. Then he ripped apart the manticore's wing joints to extract their bloody membranes. He harvested various parts of the manticore’s body for purposes unknown to Crockta and Tiyo before turning around and heading back to where he had come from.0

Crockta and Tiyo stared blankly behind him.0

The man suddenly stopped and said, “Follow me.”0

Then he continued walking. Crockta and Tiyo exchanged wary looks but ultimately followed the man.0

“The area will become noisy again now that the manticore is dead,” stated the man in an accusing tone, as if attributing the cause to Crockta and Tiyo.0

Tiyo grumbled, “Hmph, then you shouldn’t have helped us and instead just left us to our own devices.”0

“That’s what I wanted to do...” the man replied while glancing at Tiyo with emotionless and cold eyes that made the latter flinch. “But Schola kept whining.”1

“Schola? Who’s that?” asked Tiyo.0

The man didn’t respond.0

They headed to the hunter’s fort. The scenery was different from earlier even though they were walking the same path, and even the distance seemed to have increased. They hadn’t walked this much earlier, but they retraced their steps for a while. Crockta double-checked the compass to make sure the direction hadn’t changed. The compass was pointing in the same ...0