Me, the Weakest Member of the Hero’s Party? I’m the Villain Though? - Chapter 118
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The moment Kyle opened his eyes, the first thing he did was look for Lysian. He had fallen asleep right beside him the night before, but when he woke up, Lysian was nowhere to be seen.
There was clearly a trace showing that a large man had been lying there, but Lysian himself was nowhere in sight, not even a strand of hair.
Because his hair was long, he was usually easy to spot. But seeing him completely gone like this gave Kyle a bad feeling.
“Kakaros, not yet?”
Unable to withstand Kyle’s urging, Kakaros was tracking the traces Lysian had left behind. Gerard spoke toward the back of Kyle’s head, which looked unusually tense.
“Calm down, Kyle. He’s probably nearby. He couldn’t have gone far.”
“That’s right, don’t worry too much.”
Lately, Elonen had been thinking that Kyle was worrying about Lysian too much.
Kyle had always been the one who took the most care of the group, but this was the first time he had worried this much about one person in particular. It was as if he were treating Lysian like a child left near a river.
“With a build that big, where could he possibly hide?”
Although Gerard said that, he was also searching for Lysian quite actively. While Kakaros followed the traces, Gerard sat with his eyes closed and cast a tracking spell.
“Is it just me? There’s no trace of him inside this forest.”
“The trail Kakaros found ends here as well.”
But Kakaros and Gerard both gave up at the same time.
Kyle carefully examined the area where Kakaros had found Lysian’s last traces.
“These look like Lysian’s footprints, right? He ran here in a hurry, then lingered around this area. And since the trail stops right here…”
“He was captured by someone.”
Gerard muttered with certainty. The problem was that there was absolutely no trace left by whoever had taken him.
“A professional assassin? How could there be no traces at all?”
It wasn’t exactly appropriate for the situation, but Kyle couldn’t help being impressed. There were no footprints, and not even the slightest trace that a human would normally leave behind.
And if he couldn’t be tracked within the forest, then either he had vanished into thin air, or…
“He was taken somewhere that blocks tracking magic.”
At Gerard’s conclusion, Kyle pressed a hand to his forehead. Not knowing what had happened to Lysian made his anxiety burn inside him.
“What should we do, Kakaros? Is there really no way to track him?”
Kyle clung to Kakaros as if holding onto his last hope. Kakaros calmly examined the footprints left on the ground.
“Actually… Kakaros has a guess.”
“What? Did you see something? What did you find? Do you know where he went?”
Kakaros had only said a few words, but Kyle became excited and pressed him.
“……Forest fairies can move without leaving traces in the forest.”
At the sudden unfamiliar term, Kyle frowned. Before he could respond, Elonen asked the question instead.
“Weren’t the forest fairies scattered?”
When the hero’s party had gone to find the forest fairies after hearing about the Black Flame Dragon, only Kakaros had remained.
When the forest fairies fled the burning World Tree to evacuate to safety, Kakaros alone had stayed behind until the very end. Kyle had persuaded him and brought him into the party.
“Some of them said they were heading east to a safe place. I didn’t know it would be here.”
So this forest was the refuge where Kakaros’s people had fled to escape danger.
“Why would they take Lysian?”
“Kakaros doesn’t know either. They may have thought he was a threat that followed them.”
It was only Kakaros’s guess, but there was no other reasonable explanation.
“Then we just need to find them and convince them that Lysian isn’t dangerous, right?”
Kyle said with a brighter expression, as if he had finally found a way to handle the situation. But Kakaros’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it grew darker.
“The forest fairies are aggressive and hostile toward humans. They won’t listen to our persuasion.”
