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Searching the mountains was a hard task; every meter traversed drained a great deal of strength. Not to mention that the militiamen had abandoned their own farm work to search the mountains, and when they came up empty-handed, it was their wives, children, and elderly who toiled in the fields. Thus, the longer the delay, the more their wills wavered.
To stop searching the mountains, or to force the militiamen to continue?
The former Lieutenant Montaigne only needed to follow orders, but the current Garrison Officer Montaigne had to make his own decisions.
Winters gathered the village chiefs of five villages and said, "As long as the search continues, we can definitely find the man-eating bear. But the manpower from each of the villages is already exhausted and cannot continue the search. Now the only option is to wait for that giant bear to attack again."
What he did not say outright was that there had been no attacks in a week; the bear was probably starving by now.