Gather Divine Coins and Gacha! - Chapter 199

 Reports from the northern and southern bases, as well as this town, had all been concluded.

"Alright, let's hear from Alexio. Did you find anything of note?"

"Yes. First, take a look at this."

Alex spread something on the table, probably the map we had seen earlier in the room.

I wanted to see it too.

"Alright..."

I lifted myself to look at the table. Besides the map, there were a few other documents. Judging by the illustrations and accompanying text, it seemed to be a map showing the distribution of monsters. There were also marks directly written on the map.

"Let me explain... The recent attack involved an overwhelming number of monsters, almost three times the usual amount if the previous records are accurate. And then..."

He paused and placed game pieces on the map. The locations he chose corresponded to large rocks and river branches marked on the map, forming a rough semicircle centered around Lortul, encompassing both the northern and southern bases.

"That's a pretty wide area to cover in just two days," Liesel remarked, clearly impressed. The radius seemed to be around 30-40 kilometers. Given that Jighalt had mentioned running around a lot, it made sense.

"We used horses. It's generally not advisable to use horses in the Great Forest, but fortunately or unfortunately, there are no monsters around right now... We investigated up to the points marked with the pieces and found no trace of monsters within that area or beyond."

Alex then spread out more documents.

"Here are the details of the monsters we defeated. There were no stronger higher-tier species, and except for the boss bear, they were all species that inhabit the forest edges."

The documents listed the number of each type of monster defeated. I had only taken down wolves and goblins, but there were also boars, and a few deer and bats.

We hadn't seen bats during the day, but all these creatures were common in the forest.

"The figure of 600 monsters isn't entirely impossible. If you include the other side of the mountain, it easily surpasses that. However, it's unusual for so many monsters to gather from such a wide area."

"Is it uncommon for them to gather from a wide area?"

"No, it's possible, but usually it would require multiple boss monsters. Alternatively, a single boss of a demonic species leading its direct subordinates could do it. Having just one magical beast boss leading them, like this time, is highly irregular. Though not impossible..."

"You seem to have a theory," Liesel suggested.

"Yes. Look here."

Alex pointed to several places near the northern and southern bases marked with red crosses on the map. There were none around Lortul, but what could they mean?

"While it’s rare in the allied eastern continent, mercenaries in the west often use monster repellents. There are several types, but the kind mixed into bonfires leaves traces at these marked locations."

Monster repellent... I'd never heard of that. It sounded useful, but it wasn't used around here.

"I've heard about such things from my teachers..." Jighalt started, but Alex responded first.

"In this area, monsters are generally treated as prey. Using repellents makes them flee, which is counterproductive for adventurers who need to hunt them and for knights who need to defeat them. Unlike the west, where monster density is higher, using repellents here could inadvertently trigger a monster attack. That's why alchemists and apothecaries rarely make them," Jighalt explained.

Seeing Fiora nodding in agreement confirmed it.

"So they used repellents to drive the monsters away and gather such a large number. But could they really control the monsters so effectively?"

"They probably aimed for this time of year, but whether it succeeded or not didn't matter. This time it worked, but if such a large number of monsters had gathered, they would have eventually overflowed and attacked the town anyway."

It was quite a roundabout method, showing just how much they wanted to harass us.

...Now that I think about it, we're pretty hated, aren't we?