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A crow with glowing red eyes glided under the dark night and landed on Magician’s hand.

Magician removed a small paper from the crow’s leg before he released it.

[Deadmen’s Dent, Hollow Wood]

“Here? What’s Michel thinking?” Magician frowned and handed the paper to Angor.

Since Angor needed Magician to take him to the meeting, he decided to wait at Magician’s place. He had been at Magician’s place since eight in the evening.

Unfortunately, the message that announced the meeting place only arrived when it was almost midnight.

“Who’s Michel? Is that a real name?” Angor read the paper and didn’t recognize the name at all.

“I don’t know. He’s in charge of telling us the message this time. We use a different man for each meeting.”

“Won’t someone use this chance to set everyone else up?”

Magician shook his head. “No one will. To us, the meeting is our only chance of improving.”

Angor nodded. He assumed that these dabblers didn’t possess anything worth taking anyway. Being alive meant being useful.

“Let’s move. If not for you, I won’t be going to such a place,” Magician complained.

“Is there a problem?”

“No, but... rumor has it that the place is haunted. I once went there to check and didn’t find anything. It smelled terrible though.”

“Deadmen’s Dent... that doesn’t sound good to me.”

“Of course it doesn’t. That’s a huge graveyard! The Hollow Wood is among the Byzan Mountains, and the dent is where the rangers place corpses. Grave robbers, folks killed by beasts... They toss them all in there. The dent’s filled with filth after all the years,” Magician said as he scowled.

Angor thought about how Magician described the previous meetings, which all appeared as great feasts. Even if they wanted to stay low, they should at least choose somewhere like an ancient castle.

No wonder Magician looked so disgusted.

...

They left the city and headed for the Hollow Wood as fast as they could.

As they traveled, Angor began to notice that they were walking on the exact same path from where he came to Water Grasse, and when he finally saw the “Hollow Wood”, it proved his assumption.

These woods were what Angor went through after he left the ranger’s house. He still remembered that he sensed something strange when he traveled in there before. The dense trees covered most of the sunlight. It appeared dark even at the brightest noon. More importantly, Angor sensed a deathly aura among the trees.

He already assumed that there were many bodies buried under the trees, but now, he knew that his guess was mostly true.

“We’re here. The Deadmen’s Dent,” Magician said as he pointed to a dark tunnel entrance.

It was located between several lush trees, which were about five or six meters tall. Even though the inside was too dark for Angor to see further in, he could already smell something rotten.

“Well, the trees are growing so well thanks to this thing,” Magician said as he looked into the tunnel. He really didn’t want to go into that stench.

But when he thought about what Angor could possibly provide during the meeting, he still jumped inside, while pinching his nose.

Angor followed suit. He asked Toby to stay alert in case anything happened. Now that he witnessed the terrible gathering spot for real, he realized that something had to be wrong with whoever that made the choice.

“Oh f*ck that Michel. I’ll let him know how to make better choices later,” Magician murmured as he landed on solid ground. He then took out a small lighter.

“Wait!” Angor quickly dragged the man when he smelled rotten corpse smell as well as dangerous gas.

With a flicker of mind, he cast Light. Soon enough, the area was bright enough for them to see.

There were corpses everywhere. Some already turned to bones, while some were on their way there. Magician jumped a little when he saw a half-rotten corpse right beside his feet, where white maggots and black dung beetles were busy doing their jobs.

Magician kicked the corpse’s head away. “How could anyone even think about eating in this sh*thole? Is Michel trying to annoy us??”

Angor glanced at Magician. He’s still thinking about eating?

“So... we need to go in deeper?” Angor saw a path ahead which only led toward more darkness.

“Should be,” Magician said as he moved ahead. Meanwhile, Angor lowered his top hat to weaken his presence.

“It’s that ‘Light’ cantrip, right?” Magician asked. He sounded jealous as he continued, “Nice... you know way more spells than me.”

Angor smiled without answering.

At first, Magician attempted to press some information out of Angor to help him learn the cantrip, but since Angor insisted on staying quiet, he simply gave up in the end.

The silence continued until they reached the end of the path.

There was a door, which was already opened. A number of people were sitting around a round table inside where only one seat remained.

Everyone turned around to look at Magician while smiling.

“Come on, Magician. We’re all waiting on you.” A brown-haired young man on the main seat waved a hand.

Magician didn’t return the friendly gesture. He only yelled back, “What the actual f*ck, Michel?! Why here?”

Michel grinned. “You aren’t bored with food and drinks every time? Well, surprise!”

“Surprise my a*s!”

“Ohh, nice. It’s only half a year, and you learned how to cast Light?” Michel didn’t mind Magician’s anger at all. He left his seat and went to drag Magician inside with the same smile.

“It’s not—” Magician tried to introduce Angor, but when he turned around, he didn’t find anyone there. The Light cantrip was gone as well.

When Magician was pulled inside, he tried to look back at the door to find Angor, only to see Michel in his way.

“Stay for a while, since you already came.” Michel grinned in a strange way.

Magician quickly got a worse feeling upon seeing the weird expression on Michel. He looked around the room and saw everyone smiling at him in unnatural manners. It was as if they were forced to do so.

“What’s... going on here? Vennie? Chief? Long-Ear? Pluto?” Magician called their names but no one responded.

Next, Magician looked at someone with a wide-brimmed hat. “Shadow?”

This time, the man that he addressed made a gesture by removing his hat. “My my, it’s been pretty long.”

“What’s going on, Shadow?” Magician slowly stepped back from the others. He already sensed a terrible crisis approaching him.

But Michel was behind him to stop his track. Also, Michel was still carrying the same stiff smile. It was almost as if he were a stringed puppet.

“What do you mean? Come and join our meeting already. I’m going to tell you something really good today,” Shadow said as he pointed at the only vacant seat.

“N-no. I need to attend to something else outside,” Magician stuttered.

However, before he could turn around, the thick bronze door of the room shut close with a loud “Bam”.

Magician reached the door and pulled, only to find he couldn’t. Not without a key.

“What are you planning? To rob my stuff? I don’t have anything you need!” Magician remembered Mask’s words, that someone could use the meeting as a trap. And he just said it was impossible...

Wait, Mask! Where’s he? Did he notice the problem beforehand and hide somewhere nearby?

With that in mind, Magician quickly tried to call for help.

“Help—”

A small shadow suddenly came down on him and brushed past his face. Before Magician could react, the shadow pulled Magician’s shadow away and stuffed it into a small sack.

With a series of strange giggles, the small figure jumped onto Shadow’s shoulder and handed the sack to its master. Shadow then rubbed the figure’s tiny head as a compliment.

“What... was that?” Magician felt faint for a moment. Unlike the other shadowless victims, he did not lose consciousness right away.

“This, my friend,” Shadow said as he stroked the sack, “is my spoil.”

Spoil?

Magician quickly looked under himself.

“My shadow—so it was really you who’s been causing the ruckus in the city!”

“Oh my...” Shadow raised an eyebrow. “When did you find that out?”

Magician was beginning to breathe heavily. “Blond hair and blue eyes... Khabazar and... John... Junior...”

“Ohh, that. Well, I didn’t expect you to be the smart one around here. Let me see... to smart people goes the reward.”

Shadows stretched his hands. Several white strings were suddenly released from his ten fingers, and the strings rushed into the sack that contained Magician’s shadow.

A tiny human-shaped figure was dragged out of the sack.

The figure shared almost the same body features as Magician himself, just a lot smaller and... black.

Shadow used his strings to force the small figure to move on the table.

Meanwhile, Magician’s body followed the puppet’s example and slowly moved around while he carried the same “dumb” expression like everyone else.

A real, living puppet that was manipulated by Shadow.