"Y-you-you... How could you fire an SOS Flare?!" Tala glared at Kral, stumbling over her words.
Ms. Nadia had sounded so serious earlier. From what she had said, the moment an SOS Flare rose, the entire city would go into lockdown. This was no laughing matter!
The two of them had been walking one behind the other toward the evacuation point. Nothing unusual had happened in the forest, but then Tala heard a sudden whoosh behind her. She turned and saw Kral fire a yellow SOS Flare into the sky.
Grom-Baum's alarms must already be ringing and the city descending into chaos... but Tala's mind was in even greater turmoil.
Her first thought upon seeing the flare had naturally been that something was wrong. After anxiously scanning the area, however, she found the forest perfectly calm. Nothing had happened at all.
How could anyone raise a false alarm like this?!
Tala wanted to rush over, grab Kral by the neck, and shout, "Look what you've done!!!"
Kral pushed up his glasses. Light reflected from the lenses, hiding his expression.
He did not explain himself immediately. Instead, as though guarding against a thief, he pulled the pouch containing his notes and map around from his waist and hugged it tightly against his chest.
Only then did he whisper, "A leaf... One of the falling leaves never reached the ground. It disappeared."
"What did you say?" Tala asked, her thoughts still in disarray.
"Shh, keep your voice down." Kral tugged Tala over to a giant tree, and the two of them took cover with their backs pressed against its trunk.
The trunk was several meters wide, and its tangled roots rose above the ground like a wall, shielding their backs from any surprise attack.
Seeing how serious and cautious Kral had become, Tala calmed down a little. He certainly did not look as though he were joking.
She continued sweeping her gaze across their surroundings and asked in a low voice, "Explain. What do you mean, a leaf disappeared before it reached the ground?"
Kral gave her a troubled look that seemed to say, "You don't understand something this simple?" Then he said, "Gravity makes leaves fall to the ground. You understand that much, right?"
"..."
"Are you messing with me?"
Seeing the girl's expression darken, Kral hurriedly continued, "Falling leaves are supposed to land on the ground, right? I just saw one vanish in midair before it reached the ground. Do you think that's normal? Oh, you don't know yet, but the target we're searching for is Chameleos, an Elder Dragon that can turn invisible. Do you understand now?"
"You mean... Chameleos is nearby, and the leaf landed on its body and turned invisible along with it?"
"Exactly!"
Tala took the Light Bowgun from her back and held it at the ready, narrowing her eyes as she carefully surveyed the area.
She had great confidence in her eyesight. The instructor at the training camp had praised her sharp eyes more than once. Yet to someone raised in the jungle, falling leaves were as unremarkable as dust drifting through the air, mere clutter that her mind normally filtered out.
Deliberately watching for them, of course, was another matter.
Without blinking, she watched the leaves fluttering through the forest for several dozen seconds, but not one of them vanished as Kral had described.
Rubbing her aching eyes, Tala turned toward him. "No. They all reached the ground. Are you sure you didn't imagine it?"
"Absolutely!" Kral shook his head firmly. "Good eyesight is my only strong point. I wouldn't make that kind of mistake."
Despite his confident words, Kral was beginning to feel uneasy. He did not believe he had been mistaken, but the creature secretly watching them might already have left. He had no way to prove what he had seen.
"Is there any way to see through its invisibility besides watching with your eyes?" Tala pressed.
"There is. Attacking it can reveal it, especially with the high-temperature flames, lightning, and Dragon Element energy it hates. Or... Hmm, bright light? A sudden change in the light can expose a flaw in its camouflage. Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"
Kral pulled a Flash Bomb from his pocket, removed the pin, and tossed it.
Only after letting go did he remember to shout, "Close your eyes!"
Tala reacted quickly enough to duck her head and cover her eyes, narrowly avoiding being blinded by the Flash Bomb her companion had thrown.
Neither of them noticed that, at the instant of the blinding flash, light traced the hazy outline of a coiled figure atop the very tree against which they were sheltering.
It was a bizarre-looking dragon with dark-purple hide, bulging eyes that pointed in different directions, an enormous head out of all proportion to its body, and a swollen tail shaped almost like a second head.
Overall, it resembled a grotesquely misshapen winged lizard, without any of the majesty or might one might expect from an Elder Dragon.
Yet the truly startling part was not its appearance, but its reaction when Kral threw the Flash Bomb.
The moment Kral shouted, "Close your eyes!" the strange dragon turned its head away and shut its eyes as well, sparing itself from being blinded and stunned by the intense light.
By the time the flash faded and Kral and Tala opened their eyes and looked up, the creature whose outline the light had exposed for only a few seconds had already vanished from sight again...
"There's nothing here at all." Tala scanned the area once more, then pouted at Kral.
Kral scratched his head. "Maybe the Flash Bomb startled it and it slipped away?"
"Then what are we supposed to do about Grom-Baum? It's less than an hour from here, so they definitely saw the SOS Flare you fired. Should we tell them to keep the lockdown in place or lift it?"
"Well... I don't know either. Why don't we ask Ms. Nadia what she thinks?" Kral took another SOS Flare from his pack. "I'll send them a signal–"
Tala hurriedly grabbed his hand. "Don't fire another one! They'll already be on their way after seeing the first flare! If you keep firing SOS Flares, everyone in Grom-Baum will panic!"
Before she had even finished speaking, a figure bounded nimbly through the branches and landed in front of them in the blink of an eye.
"What happened?"
The newcomer was Nadia. Just as Tala had expected, the High Rank Hunters had rushed over at full speed the moment they saw the signal.
Nadia was the fastest. Even Tala, who had grown up in the jungle, could not come close to matching the technique with which she leaped between the branches.
Altaïr could not move through the trees like that, but sprinting at full speed in Demon Mode made him almost as fast. He arrived close behind Nadia.
Isis would need a little longer. The jungle's tangled terrain prevented her from using Blast Dash repeatedly for travel, forcing her to fall back on plain old running. She was probably only halfway there.
After hearing Kral and Tala recount what had happened, Nadia frowned in thought.
She would not dismiss Kral's discovery as a mistake simply because that was the reassuring possibility. If he had truly seen the leaf disappear, then while they were searching for signs of Chameleos, the Elder Dragon was likely watching them in return...
"Watching us from close by, huh?" Altaïr murmured. He lowered his head as though gathering himself for something.
"Chameleos must be very confident in its ability to hide. A creature like that won't leave so easi–"
"ROAR!!!"
Before he had even finished, Altaïr unleashed an explosive roar. Pitch-black fighting spirit erupted around him, carrying an aura of savage violence that seemed ready to tear everything apart.
Tala jumped in fright, and Kral shuddered as well.
Altaïr and Nadia, however, looked up at exactly the same moment, toward the crown of the giant tree at Tala and Kral's backs.
Nothing appeared to be there, but the sounds from the branches and trunk did not lie.
A creature almost twenty meters long and weighing dozens of tons could not shift even slightly without making some noise.
The jungle was filled with overlapping sounds, and that faint disturbance was quieter than the wind rustling through the canopy.
Yet Altaïr's senses, heightened by the Psychoserum, and Nadia's naturally keen perception caught it all the same.
Blood-red light surged in Altaïr's eyes as he fixed his gaze on the invisible enemy above and drew his sword.
"Found you."