The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

"Any clues?" Sylvia asked after seeing Leo close the diary in his hand.

"One thing." Leo nodded, and said: "The first point is that the disappearances don't just happen at night, but also during the day. The second point is that most of the missing people are responsible for taking care of the grapes and repairing the broken grape branches. The grapes that are not growing well are picked, so they need to go all over the plantation. The third point is that when the disappearance happened, it was when the work was the busiest and everyone else was concentrating on their work."

"Do you think this might not have been done by a monster?" Sylvia asked after thinking about it.

On the way here, the two of them made some guesses about what caused these disappearances. The answers they guessed most were monsters.

This place is different from the world of Vinylon. Although there are all kinds of monsters in the world of Vinylon, there are churches that hunt and kill unruly monsters on the bright side, and bounty hunters in the dark world will also hunt and kill monsters in exchange for bounties. The monsters in the Velen world either fled into special protected areas like the Black Forest and did not dare to come out again, becoming legends, or they hid in the darkness of the city and did not dare to show their heads.

However, the world is different now. According to the information they collected, it seems that the only organization in this world that specializes in hunting monsters is the Demon Hunters. As for the armies of various countries, although they sometimes surround and kill monsters, they are always caused by wrong methods. Not a small casualty.

Therefore, the armies of various countries turn a blind eye to the existence of these monsters, and they are unwilling to do it themselves. If they really encounter trouble, they will post tasks on the bulletin boards of the local villages and towns like ordinary people. There will be a demon hunter coming to take up the task soon, and if you are unlucky, maybe no one will pay attention to it for a few years.

Because of this, the world is flooded with dangerous monsters, and the chance of encountering monsters on the road even exceeds the chance of encountering ordinary beasts.

Therefore, when the disappearance happened, the vast majority of people, including Leo and Sylvia who had just learned about it, subconsciously thought it was the work of a monster.

However, judging from the information obtained in this diary now, the unknown existence who caused the disappearance is not worried about being discovered during the day, and knows how to find prey, specially selects those stray people, and knows how to seize the opportunity, knowing that everyone will be found The busiest, when there is no time for others to take care of, everything can be found that the unknown existence that caused the disappearance should be a kind of intelligent creature that knows how to think, not a monster dominated by primitive animal nature in the sense they understand.

"We know too little about the information here," Leo shook his head, and said, "There are many intelligent creatures here, and there are also many intelligent monsters. We cannot judge the monsters here based on our common sense."

"Isn't the demon hunter the monster encyclopedia of this world?" Sylvia smiled and said, "We may be able to get some desired information from him."

"The idea is very good, but you forgot that we don't have enough purple gold. As far as I know, demon hunters don't do things in vain," Leo put the question of funds aside temporarily, and asked Sylvia: "What about you? What did you find?"

"The workers here left in a hurry and left almost at the same time, and their luggage was packed completely without leaving any useful items behind. Someone should have organized it." Sylvia told her findings, and Guessed: "Organize all the workers to leave at once, let the vineyard be completely vacant, and also create the illusion that the situation here is irreparable, so that other workers dare not come here, it seems that the enemy of the Earl of Britta What a painstaking effort!"

Leo was not interested in the struggle for power among the nobles, but Sylvia's words brought an idea to his mind, and said, "Do you think there are human factors in these disappearances?"

Sylvia followed Leo's train of thought and said, "You mean that these missing knights were all done by the enemies of Count Britta. They first created the disappearance, and then made rumors to bring down the cloth Earl Rita's wine estate?"

"No, that would be too obvious. Others may not be able to find out, but the demon hunter will definitely be able to find out that these disappearances are not caused by monsters." Leo thought for a while and said, "But if some of the disappearances are caused by monsters Because, the other part of the disappearance was done by other people, so as long as it is properly arranged, even a demon hunter may have difficulty distinguishing it."

"It's possible." Sylvia nodded in agreement with Leo's deduction.

Neither Leo nor Sylvia has made an accurate conclusion on this matter, and they are also very clear that the inference they are making now looks like that, but if there is no more information, this inference can only stay in the guessing phase.

Feeling that there were no more clues to provide in these houses, Leo and Sylvia turned around and left, riding slowly around the perimeter of the plantation.

Although the area of ​​the Britta Manor is not very large, the area of ​​the entire grape plantation is very large. One-third of all the slopes at the foot of Gorgon Mountain that can be planted are the plantations of the Earl of Britta. It takes about an hour to run around. It took more than three hours for Leo and Sylvia to walk around the edge slowly. When they returned to the hut where the workers lived, it was almost It's noon.

Walking down this circle, they encountered some monsters, such as giant centipedes, such as a plant similar to piranhas, and some large bugs, etc., but Leo did not restrain himself. In the case of fluctuations in life energy, these monsters are all suppressed by life forms, and they instinctively choose to escape and retreat, and there is no real battle.

However, even this is enough for Leo and Silvia to have a little understanding of some basic information about the monsters in this world.

These monsters are still in the category of animals in essence, and do not possess any extraordinary power, so their behavior also follows the instinct of animals, and their domain awareness is also very strong.

These monsters all have their own fixed comprehension. Under normal circumstances, they will not leave their own domain. They will only attack living creatures that break into their own domain, and they will ignore living creatures outside their domain.

If it is a stranger like Leo and Sylvia, when they come to this manor for the first time, they will inevitably break into the area where these monsters are, and be attacked or even killed by monsters, but as a perennial plant in this area The workers working in the garden should be very familiar with the dangerous areas around the plantation. It is impossible for them to venture into these dangerous areas, so the disappearance here should not have much to do with the monsters wandering around the plantation. .

Even if there are monsters, they will only appear suddenly in the plantation and have not been discovered by the locals.

After returning to the worker's house, Geralt and the others had been waiting on the lawn outside the worker's house for a long time. Judging from the marks on their bodies, they should have experienced some battles.

When he saw Leo and the others riding over from a distance, Angulane couldn't wait to shout loudly: "Hey! Uncle Knight, Aunt Knight, we have completed the mission and found the monsters that caused the disappearance. Give them to Killed! You may have to come here for nothing!"

"Aunt Knight?" Sylvia couldn't help raising her eyebrows when she heard Angulane's address, and said with a cold tone from the helmet, "I don't like this little girl!"

Leo smiled and didn't say anything. Although he has acquired ordinary emotions and feelings not long ago, it doesn't mean that he is a fool of the world. The topic of women's age is taboo in any world.

"What's going on? Have you found the murderer of the missing case?" Lightly kicking his horse, he quickened his pace and came to Geralt and the others. After Leo got off his horse, he immediately asked.

"Yes, there is a hole in the cave that is used as an underground wine cellar in the manor, and that hole just leads to a Kizimo's lair." Geralt answered while scrubbing the stains on the armor with clean water from the pool. Leo's inquiry, while explaining what Qiqimo is.

At this time, Leo knew that the big bugs he and Sylvia encountered on the road were called Qiqimo, and their life forms were somewhat similar to ants. They were also the most common monsters in Toussaint forest. Rumors of being attacked by Qi Qimo.

Seeing that Geralt was too busy with the things in his hands, Regil signaled Geralt to do his own thing, and he added the following things.

It turned out that after they arrived at the manor, they carefully searched for clues. Later, Angulan found a piece of Qiqimo's shed nails in the underground wine cellar. After that, they found a way to Qi Qimo's entrance, this entrance was sealed by Qi Qimo with clay. Because of the remote location and the dim surroundings, it was difficult to be found.

After entering the lair, they found some traces of humans walking through here, and after going a little deeper, they found Qi Qimo's lair. After that, they fought with Qi Qimo and killed Qi Qimo in this lair. , inspected the nest, and found some human bones and broken clothes after being eaten. Judging from the style of the clothes, they should be plantation workers.

So they believed that at the beginning, a servant of a farm accidentally broke into Qi Qimo's lair, and was attacked and eaten by Qi Qimo. Workers, ultimately caused the current consequences.

After listening to Regil's narration, Leo was silent for a while, and then asked: "Have you cleaned up the bones? Are there as many bones as a dozen people?"

Hearing Leo's question, everyone at the scene looked at each other in blank dismay and fell silent without answering.

As Leo said, after seeing a pile of scattered bones, they thought that these were victims and that the task had been completed, like Cassirer was a soldier of the Nilfgaardian Empire, with honor Feeling disdainful to rummage through the corpses, Angulane, Milva, and Dandelion all instinctively resisted the dirty corpses. Regal didn't need to touch corpses, especially those that were highly decomposed. As for the only Geralt who didn't mind cleaning up the corpse, his mind was all on Ciri's affairs, and he also had the mentality of completing this mission as soon as possible, so after seeing the corpse, he subconsciously thought that the matter was over. .

Now, after listening to Leo's words, they feel that something is wrong, because although the pile of corpses they found seems to be a lot, but after careful calculation, they will find that there are only three or four corpses at most, not more than a dozen. There are so many individuals, which means that the disappearance of about ten people is not caused by these monsters.

"Your Excellency Leo, have you found anything?" Dandelion felt that the morale boosted by solving the case just now seemed to be affected by Leo's words, so he quickly changed the topic to Leo and asked.

Leo was not stingy with his discovery, so he found the diary of the missing worker, learned some characteristics of the missing person, discovered some characteristics of the monster here, and some speculations made by him and Sylvia about the missing person, etc.

After listening to Leo's analysis, everyone's faces became a little ugly. The nobles of Toussaint will definitely do what Leo said. In order to attack their opponents, they will not hesitate to use other people's lives as weapons. .

"Damn it! Those nobles should be damned!" Angulan, who had always been lively and cheerful, couldn't help cursing loudly with resentment on his face.

Milwa next to her seemed to know about Angulan's affairs, so he reached out and touched her head, hugged her in his arms, and comforted her a few times.

"What do you think we should do now?" Geralt was also tired of this kind of thing that might involve the nobles' infighting, but since he had already accepted the task but had to complete it, he wanted to ask his companions for advice.

"Don't worry about it!" Dandelion said first: "We have helped him solve the bug nest in the wine cellar and found the bones of the missing person, which is considered to have completed his task. Let's reward him like this!"

Cassirer shook his head and said, "What if there are still people missing in the future? We will become liars, witcher liars, and we will be unable to move an inch in Toussaint by then."

Dandelion opened his mouth to say something, but in the end he didn't speak.

Others also felt that they should not be involved in the nobles' internal strife, nor should they end the mission like this, and they were somewhat contradictory.

"Lord Leo, what do you think should be done?" Geralt couldn't make a decision, so he had to ask Leo, an outsider.

"I have the same opinion as yours. If you don't get involved in the battles of Taoist nobles, you can't just end the mission like this." Leo thought for a while and said, "We can actually stay here for a few days to see if there are any more." If there are other reasons for the disappearance of the workers, if there is, then you can think about it. If not, tell Count Britta about this speculation. If he doesn’t believe it, you only need to charge Count Britta for cleaning up the insect nest in the wine cellar. That’s fine, and we’ll find another way to get the Cavalier’s guarantee, if he believes it, the rest will be his own, and there’s no need for us to get involved.”