Chapter 188: Think about it yourself, dummy

When Vlad came out of the bathroom after taking a bath, he found Raphael, Alisha, and Hugo also present in the mushroom house, sitting around the dining table. The packed food cans were already spread across the table, waiting for the kettle to pour in the boiling water.

Vlad took the empty chair between Raphael and Seraphina. "So, what I found—"

"Shh! Have dinner first," Seraphina cut him off mid-sentence in a calm tone, handing him the spoon. "We can discuss the details later."

Alisha poured the boiling water into everyone’s cans, and soon the table was filled with their brief conversations as the warm food went down their throats.

For a moment, Vlad felt as if he was no longer on a dangerous mission but entertaining guests in his own home. Perhaps because it was, in truth, Seraphina’s camp, she didn’t feel like a guest but rather like a member of his family.

He didn’t even realise that he kept stealing glances at Seraphina throughout the meal.

Obviously, Seraphina, sitting beside him, was oblivious to his glances, but Alisha and Hugo noticed every single one, elbowing each other whenever he looked at her.

Once dinner was finished, Raphael and Hugo cleaned up the table, and Seraphina spread the map across it.

"Could you zoom in on the location of the first troll?" Vlad asked her.

She nodded, magnifying the map to the location of the first troll. Vlad marked a small dot there before dragging his fingers and moving the map to the location of the next troll. Once he had marked all three locations of the trolls he had found before meeting up with Raphael, he explained, zooming out, "Do you find something strange about their positions?"

All of them except Raphael shook their heads. They seemed like random marks on the map.

"Doesn’t it seem like they are circling a specific area?" Vlad explained further, his brows furrowed.

After a brief thought, all of them shook their heads again. Even if they were to connect the first mark to the second and the second to the third, it would barely even form an arc.

For a moment, Vlad thought that he was overestimating their intelligence, but he soon realised that it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t see what Vlad had seen when the third troll settled into its position. After all, only he could sense the presence of the Umbra element.

He marked the remaining two locations of the trolls as well and asked, "Now can you see it?"

All of them nodded in unison, their eyes widening.

The five locations of the trolls, if connected together, formed an almost regular pentagon.

"They are surrounding an area," Seraphina murmured, an evident hint of mild shock and excitement laced in her voice. "Almost as if they are guarding something inside."

"Exactly, Lady Seraphina!" Vlad sighed now that they had finally realised. An immediate frown appeared on Seraphina’s face at his choice of words.

He placed his palm at the centre of the pentagon and declared, "This might be the place we are looking for. Whether it is the Genesis Artifact or something else causing even Rank Three monsters to act as mere guards, something exists here."

A ripple of gasps escaped from the team, slowly but surely, their faces blooming into smiles.

"Th-this is a huge lead in our quest," Seraphina exclaimed, losing her composure for a moment. She immediately pulled herself together before continuing, "But we should not get too excited. The area they are surrounding is about thirty square kilometres. If they were the final monsters guarding the Genesis Artifact, they should have been staying closer to it. We cannot overlook the possibility of a Peak Rank Three or even Rank Four monster protecting the artifact. If it is true, the difficulty of the quest will be almost doubled."

A heavy silence fell inside the hall, the team’s expressions turning grim.

"We can only find out after going there," Seraphina declared in a confident tone.

"Talk like the true leader, Lady Seraphina," Alisha exclaimed, giving her a thumbs-up.

"Haha! For a moment, I was worried that you might decide to abandon the mission," Hugo added, releasing a sigh of relief.

None of them were afraid of finding a Peak Rank Three or Rank Four monster. Their grim expressions were because they were worried that Seraphina might classify the quest as too dangerous for their team and decide to turn back.

Now that their worry was gone, there was still one question on everyone’s mind.

How did Vlad find out the location of the remaining two trolls?

It was all thanks to his sensitivity to Umbra Mana. After following the trolls, he realised that the intensity of Umbra remained the same along their route. Just to confirm his suspicion, he moved a few hundred metres deeper and an equal distance in the opposite direction from where the last troll was staying.

What he learned was that the presence of Umbra was higher in the deeper areas and gradually decreased as he moved away.

All he had to do was follow the path where the intensity of Umbra remained the same, which naturally led him to find the locations of the remaining trolls as well.

However, it was quite complicated to explain it all to the team. He told them that he had simply predicted the locations of the last two trolls based on the discovered locations of the other trolls.

The team spent the next couple of hours discussing their plans before taking their leave, leaving Vlad and Seraphina alone in the house.

Strangely, Vlad felt the entire atmosphere within the house completely change the moment they left.

For the next whole minute, he and Seraphina remained seated around the dining table in awkward silence. He couldn’t help but notice that Seraphina was avoiding eye contact with him, and she even seemed... a bit angry?

"Sera... what have I done this time?" he asked, feeling slightly nervous.

"Hmph! Figure it out yourself, dummy," she retorted, rising from her chair and walking inside the bathroom. The door slammed shut behind her, causing Vlad to flinch in his seat.