With at least some idea what to look for, Anthony went off to do his job with Sarah tagging along. Meanwhile, Rose was tasked with supervising the three boys left at the camp. There wasn't too much for her to do. Manda found some solid ground and was working out, while Drake and Peter tried to spar with each other which resulted in limited success.
They couldn't properly fight each other due to Peter having an overwhelming superiority in just about every attribute. Instead they tried to develop their styles of combat independently. For Drake this meant using his only combat related ability he earned recently.
[Forged Feathers LV1: The user's feathers harden, making them unusable for flight but granting them durability equal to the combined value of the user's END and MGC attributes.]
[Current durability: 1.10]
It was probably meant to be a defensive ability and it would be useful some time in the future, but that still required a lot of work. On a positive note he could detach his feathers and throw them around.
He could do that even before getting the ability, there just wasn't much of a point to it. Even now it was the equivalent of throwing moderately heavy pebbles, but it was certainly an improvement.
The other side of the coin was Peter, who was stronger than Drake but still not strong enough to properly lift his own weapon. He found success in using it two handed but he would have preferred to use it with only one.
Aside from practicing how to move with the lamp he also tried out its ability.
[Night Star LV 1: The Asteri absorbs light around it, creating an artificial night and feeding its own flame. The artificial night activates Heart of Night. The flame of Asteri can be moved outside of the lantern.]
The night effect wasn't the strongest and it barely had a six-meter diameter but it did result in him getting a five percent attribute bonus and the flame inside was gradually getting bigger and hotter. He even managed to move it with his thought which made him so happy that he lost concentration and burned his own hands.
While that was going on, Rose approached Manda. She still didn't know her new companions too much, especially the tattooed boy who didn't even live with them. So she thought this was the perfect opportunity to get to know him better.
"Whenever I see you, you are always training. I get that you guys get a lot out of it but you seem to be a lot more enthusiastic about it. Is there any reason why that is?"
Manda was in the middle of doing upside down sit-up hanging from the side of the van and kept doing so while answering.
"Believe it or not, I get benefits from both my strengthening ability and my path. They did tell you what those are right?"
"Yes they did. So you do it just for more strength like the others?"
"In the beginning yes, that was the case. Over time however, I actually started to enjoy it. I don't know how to explain it accurately, but it feels good to be tired. Now that you mentioned it..."
He suddenly got off of the vehicle and went over to the other two.
"Hey Peter. Wanna fight with me?"
"Sure. I don't see why not."
[Health: 63%]
[Stamina: 42%]
I took little less than five minutes for Peter to get beaten. Because Manda didn't want to seriously injure his friend he only damaged Peter superficially. This was a good thing as otherwise Peter would have ended up in a hospital, similar to how his fight with Gregory ended.
"And now train!"
Came the command from the still unharmed boy. Peter couldn't really protest so he painfully got up and did as he was told for another fifteen minutes. After which he passed out.
[Health: 61%]
[Stamina: 19%]
[Achievement unlocked: Get below 25% stamina.]
[Reward: STA +0.15]
[Achievement unlocked: Endurance training 1/3]
[Reward: END +0.1]
Even though the two onlookers knew what Manda's goal was with the rather extreme training session, they still felt that it was a bit too much. Especially Drake who started to train by himself just so he wouldn't meet the same fate.
[Achievement unlocked: Get below 50% stamina.]
[Reward: STA +0.1]
With half of the team passed out in the sand there were even fewer things to do, so Manda went back to his routine and Rose just sat down, thinking about stuff. Eventually she asked a question, directed at no one in particular.
"I wonder how the investigation is going?"
As it turned out, not too great. Finding the claws wasn't even as much of a blessing as they thought because there were actually a bunch of them all over the place, mostly in trash cans. After a few hours of asking around they managed to get some information about the past attacks.
The first one happened around the end of last summer and they have been increasing in frequency ever since. Nowadays there was someone disappearing every other day. Whatever was the cause behind this could be repelled by open flames but the most recent incident was the first time it didn't work.
That last statement was actually false. The entire village was littered with standing torches which would be lit for the night. On closer inspection they noticed that the one closest to the night's attack was slightly wet. Someone either put it out by accident or someone wanted more attacks to happen and extinguished it deliberately.
Finding any more evidence proved to be a challenge as the mysterious attacker was incredibly good at covering its tracks. Aside from the blood stains and the occasional claw, it never left any evidence behind. With the help of some past weather reports, it turned out that the frequency of the attacks was correlated to the increasingly powerful winds in the area, meaning that the trails of blood being obscured by sand was very much intentional.
They also learned that no one powerful has been attacked before. A trend which didn't seem to break as the most recent victim was most likely drunk and not in the best condition to fight back.
After some more walking, Sarah suddenly stopped. Anthony didn't pay much attention at first as she had a habit of wandering off, mainly to look at some roadkill. But his attitude immediately changed when she made it very clear what caught her attention.
"I think I found him."
"Are you absolutely certain he's there?"
"Not necessarily him, but without a doubt there's a fresh corpse inside."
Sarah and Anthony were looking at an old, abandoned building and trying to think about their next course of action. They didn't expect to find an exact location so soon and especially not this close to them.
"Is it possible for it to be an animal?"
"No. I'm sure it's a human. Should we tell the others?"
"Rose could come inside if she doesn't mind getting more injuries. There is no way I'm letting anyone else in though. And before you get any ideas that also includes you, young lady."
With that the two of them headed back to the rest of the group, only to find half of them slowly being buried by the desert winds. After being filled in on what happened they sat down to share their findings and what might be their best lead.
"So, do you want to come and help out?"
"Sure. I was actually thinking that you could bury me once we get back home. Getting injured is not really a problem."
Thus, the two of them left after everyone other than Rose shared some bewildered looks. After waiting a few minutes for the adults to get out of hearing range, Sarah finally got the opportunity to go after them.
"Sorry that I'm leaving you alone but I really want to see what happens."
"No problem. Just try to get back in one piece."
They shared a high-five and Sarah took off after the two adults.
[You have received the blessing of the serpent.]
[Effect: All physical attributes +1.00]
[Time left: 59:59]
Anthony and Rose were walking at a leisurely pace. They were going to look at an inanimate corpse so there was no use in hurrying and running would have just caused unnecessary commotion. It also didn't help that Rose was pretty much incapable of going faster without the use of her ability.
With the moderately long distance between them and their destination, there was more than enough time for Anthony to clear up a question that only arose a few minutes ago but getting an answer for it was very crucial for future plans.
"About that being buried thing. How exactly did that come up, and why now of all times?"
"I'm not that familiar with how things go around you but as far as I can tell, my healing problem is going to be permanent. If nothing changes I will look more like a corpse than Sarah, with the added problem of becoming even less mobile than I already am.
My shadow form on the other hand is in perfect condition and is almost indestructible. I just thought that we might as well do it now while there is something left to bury."
"I won't argue about that, but you definitely should discuss the matter with someone else."
"Like the kids?"
"Like a therapist. I get that we are not exactly normal but discarding your body so easily cannot be healthy."
They didn't talk after that. The immortal and the shadow walked towards the abandoned building in complete silence while failing to notice that they were being followed.
When they arrived, they had to face an unexpected challenge presented by the weathered door of the aging house. It was stuck completely and wouldn't budge unless the visitors wanted to break it as well, which wasn't the best choice considering they have been trying to remain inconspicuous so far. In the end the least destructive method of entry they found was to break only the rusty hinges of the door and carefully lift the whole thing out of the doorway.
The anteroom was pretty much what they expected. A thick layer of dust and sand covered everything and the spider webs were so dense that Anthony broke one of his bone swords in the process of getting to the next door. Fortunately, the rest of the building had fewer obstacles even though it was still in a terrible shape.
The inside of the building was deceptively large so it took a while for just two people to search through, it also didn't help that they decided to stick together in spite of them being the least likely people to be in danger. Eventually, they did find something noteworthy, which was a trail of footprints.
The footprints were left by a large shoe which either had a really unique design or was somehow forced onto the paw of a tiger as there was an identical set of scratch marks in front of every step. Another notable observation was that the trail didn't have a proper origin, it started in the middle of a random corridor.
It took a while to figure out what happened to the rest of the trail but in the end Anthony managed to find the solution. The rest of the trail did exist, it was just on the ceiling. There were deep cuts in the wood tiles of the ceiling, in an identical shape to the scratches on the floor. The two investigators followed the new trail all the way to a small room where it split in two.
More specifically, they have been following the split so far. The other half was made up of two sets of cuts one of which was facing the other direction, most likely leading outside of the building. They were a lot deeper than what they have been following, suggesting that whatever left them was using the same cuts to climb through the ceiling. This idea reinforced what they previously thought of the murderer's intelligence and added considerable dexterity to its presumed capabilities.
The room where the trails led was nothing special. It contained a bed, a nightstand and a broken window which was probably used in place of the actual entrance, explaining why the front door was in such a bad shape.
At that point, Rose was starting to get tired of the search for clues. From her point of view, they found an obvious lead to the target and immediately went in the opposite direction.
"From what I can see, the direction we came from doesn't have a path leading outside so we might as well go back since our culprit is most likely still there. Please tell me why we had to come all the way here and make the whole thing more complicated than it was?"
"You're right, we didn't have to. I just wanted to know more about what we were dealing with."
"We'll find out anyway when we can look at it. There's no point in being cautious, since neither of us are in actual danger."
With nothing else to discuss and arguing being pointless, they made their way back to where they came from and continued to follow the footprints in the proper direction. The path led to the second floor of the building and into another room. There they found what they were looking for and more. Two human corpses instead of one.
One corpse was dried out and propped up against the wall under a window and the other was seemingly still fresh and lying in a corner. The problem was that based on the locals' description, the dry one was supposed to be last night's victim.