In the afternoon, while everyone was eating and resting, the witcher called Roy. The two made an excuse to temporarily leave the convoy and got into the bushes beside the road.
"Do you smell..."
Roy nodded.
The convoy carrying a large amount of goods left Shier Village for less than half a day, and before they had gone far, an unusual smell of blood wafted from the side of the road.
"It doesn't belong to humans, it smells like insect biopheromone."
Letho turned on the witcher's senses, and after walking for about five minutes across several crooked-neck trees looking for scent particles, he opened a clover and suddenly stopped.
"Hey—" Roy couldn't help taking a deep breath when he looked at the scene in front of him. Surrounded by waist-deep bushes, a dozen corpses were piled up into hills, and the faint stench and smell of blood kept flowing towards the surroundings. spill.
From a distance, they are gray-brown, like an arachnid arthropod with a magnified hundreds of times.
The temperature in winter is not high, and the corpse looks particularly fresh.
Roy and Leto didn't approach in a hurry, but took their weapons, kept vigilance and slowly moved over, and then Leto used an Alpha Seal to blow the hill-like corpse upside down, confirming the monster in front of him. All lost their attack power.
"How come there are so many monster corpses in the wilderness? They have been gathered together. This is not like the behavior of monsters and beasts without wisdom."
At Leto's suggestion, Roy crouched down and began to examine a nearby corpse.
The corpse was almost as high as a human knee.
"Spindle-shaped body covered with downy... and four chitinous carapaces... No clear demarcation line between chest and abdomen... Four limbs grow on both sides... Small head, barely visible facial features... "
"The Enderegger bug?" The witcher said tentatively beside him.
Roy shook his head, "Want to mislead me? This guy doesn't have the iconic scorpion tail and cheliped feet, it's clearly Qi Qimo..."
Anderegg and Chichimo are both worm-like creatures created after the confluence of the celestial spheres, usually living in groups in the wild, attacking other beasts and even passing humans.
It is also quite dangerous for witchers.
With that said, Roy turned over the small bucket in front of him again. Different from the back covered with thick gray soft armor, the belly under Qi Qimo's body was soft and pale yellow, making it extremely fragile.
"Fatal wound... in the abdomen, half torn apart by sharp weapons or... claws." The smelly, green organs flowed all over the floor, and the four worm feet were covered with mud.
"It's almost conceivable that it struggled violently before dying."
Roy reached out and touched the edge of the wound on Qi Qimo's stomach without disdain, and his eyes showed a dignified look.
A corpse was replaced, and he continued to examine.
"The hard back carapace is covered with claw marks, and there are multiple sprains on the body... It can be judged that the killer's strength is extremely amazing... It was almost torn in half."
"Several head-sized holes were opened in the abdomen. The shape of the wound is similar to the bite mark of some kind of beast. The center of the bite mark is relatively flat, but there are zigzag tear wounds on the edge... It should be caused by canine teeth."
"Huh? There is another one that is not completely dead, and the life force of insects is really tenacious."
"puff-"
"Kill Qiqimo, experience +30."
"Yes, only two magical creatures are missing."
Roy retracted the green blood-stained arrow from the monster's petite brain, tore off a handful of weeds covered in light dew, and wiped his hands.
"Have you come to a conclusion?" The witcher looked scrutinized.
"A total of thirteen corpses, which is almost the standard number of a Qiqimo ethnic group. That is to say, the murderer directly destroyed a nest of Qiqimo people." Roy's eyebrows were knitted tightly, his face was full of fear, "It has Claws as sharp as a dagger, four deadly canine teeth..."
"Is it possible that it is a leopard, a wild dog, or a little fog demon?" The witcher asked, while investigating.
"The leopard and the wild dog don't have that much strength to tear up Qi Qimo so neatly, and the little fog demon's teeth don't match, besides—"
Roy's eyes swept across the flat ground full of corpses and green blood.
"Intuition tells me that there is only one murderer! This open space is obviously not the first scene. It is full of weeds and hardly any suspicious footprints can be found."
The witcher didn't ask about his murderer any more. "According to what you said, you can kill a Qiqimo clan alone. The fighting power is definitely not inferior to the witchers in their heyday... Do you want to continue?"
Roy wondered, "I'm afraid it's up to us. The slow-moving convoy may be attacked by this monster at any time, and we will suffer at that time. The investigation has to be carried out, at least to find out what the thing is and do a good job of targeting it. defense."
After speaking, Roy knelt down on one knee and put his index and middle fingers together to pick up a bunch of weeds covered with suspicious blood. Not the green of Chichimore, but the bright red blood of mammals.
"I have to go back and say hello to Aaron first, so they don't have to wait. Let's leave the blood tracking to a professional witcher."
…
After being separated from Roy, the witcher dragged his injured leg, limped with a cane and walked on the way he came for about five minutes, reaching the source of the smell of blood.
A patch of sand surrounded by a few bare tung trees was full of messy footprints and pits of different shades.
Among the round hole-shaped and disorganized footprints of Qi Qimo, several huge footprints with three toes were extremely striking.
In the center of the sand there are some unique things - fist-sized balls, compacted into a pile like frog eggs, with some black and red blood vessel-like scratches mixed in the whole green body.
But now, they're brutally broken open to flow out mounds of sticky amniotic fluid, and formless Chichimo juveniles.
"Tsk tsk, kill them all without leaving future troubles." Lesuo rubbed a sloping tung tree nearby. On the bark of the tung tree, he didn't know if the murderer was intentional or not, but left a neat row. And striking claw marks.
Leto's eyes lit up.
…
When the witcher returned to the convoy, everyone in the sea scorpion was impatient, and Aaron came over to negotiate.
"The next time Master goes out, please don't delay for so long. After all, everyone has been waiting. There is one more thing. Originally, both of them have rich experience in wild survival. I don't need to say more, but I think it is necessary. As a reminder, it’s only during the day, and don’t leave the camp at night.”
After getting the assurances from the two of them over and over again, Aaron left with confidence.
"How is it, how is the harvest?"
"After you left, I went back to the corpse to check again, and found something interesting." The witcher stared into the distance, where he was heading back to Shire Village.
"Qikimore's lair is not far from Shire Village, and there are traces of frequent activity between the two places."
Roy pondered, "What do you mean?"
"There are still undigested poultry bones in the belly of those dead Qiqimo. In addition, I found a piece of human torn clothing."
The young man's expression changed, "According to this, the village chief's guess was wrong! It is not the little dwarfs who are harassing Xiaer Village, but this group of Qi Qimo."
Then he was full of doubts, "The murderer killed this group of Qiqimo, but killed the people? This is too unreasonable."