'And now, it's time for the fun part of the job,' Leon thought, gripping his short spear. He held back his breath to ensure he wouldn't produce even the tiniest sound.
For the next few moments, Leon only moved along with the wind, following the manner in which the moving leaves changed the pattern of the shadows within the forest.
And just like that, the entire search party that went after him... passed right by his position, unable to stop him even when he remained only a few inches away from some of them.
Leon waited for two more moments until all of his pursuers dissapeared deeper into the forest, all eager to find out where he was.
'You wish,' Leon thought, raising up from the ground and slowly climbing up a tree. Yet, as soon as he managed to hid amidst the lush branch system of the tree, some of the deserters returned.
'Are they hoping to flush me out?' Leon wondered.
It was an old and proven tactic. First, pass by an area without even trying to find someone's location. Then, once you pass by them and give them enough confidence, return to catch them as they change their position to a better one.
'And to think they almost got me...' Leon thought, his mood worsening right away.
It was the oldest trick in the book. And he nearly fell for it. Or did he...?
The people that returned... didn't bother to look around the area to ensure no one moved since they left. Instead, they continued back to the camp before leaving the forest.
'Are they... annoyed?' Leon attempted to guess from the expression of the people before they moved beyond his line of sight.
And then it dawned on him.
'They weren't trying to trick me. They simply gave up!'
The momentary annoyance with his own gullibility vanished, replaced by a fair dose of amusement.
'Well, I was supposed to look for conscripts. It would be weird to expect them to know their way around the woodlands,' he thought, nearly slapping his own face as retribution over his own idiocy.
Some of his pursuers left, but that didn't mean Leon was out of trouble yet. And so, just in case the one skilled hunter within the camp would actually try to figure his tricks out, Leon started to sink deeper into the forest.
He moved slowly, often taking stops just to listen to the area around him. Yet, his ears didn't pick up on anything weird nor did the circle of active mana that he still kept around.
And so, Leon continued to track his pursuers all the way to the point where he finally caught up with them.
'Huh?' he nearly uttered a small moan of surprise when he laid down on the moist ground and observed his clueless pursuers.
But the girl that looked like his crush from his original world... wasn't anywhere to be seen.
'Did they split up?' Leon guessed, taking a little longer to confirm this theory.
And soon, he had no other choice but to accept just how easy his task was.
'Even if they have enough courage to get into the forest, they are still just some random villagers that escaped conscription,' he thought. 'There is no way they could move as fast as that girl.'
Now that Leon confirmed the situation, he took his sweet time to crawl back out of the area of perception of his pursues.
"You won't hide for long!" a shout then reached his ears from somewhere even deeper in the forest. Its high pitch indicated that the girl Leon noticed was the voice's owner.
Yet, rather than pressuring him, her shout only ended up reassuring the man.
'She's too deep to hear me now,' he realized, standing up and then walking the rest of his way back to the edge of the forest.
Leon then took a moment to remove all the dirt and filth from his clothes, dusting them off before strolling out right into the open area just a fewteen meters away from the camp.
And just as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do, Leon casually strolled into the camp.
He moved between the tents and nodded his head to some of the locals that took notice of him.
And the funniest part about it was how no one seemed to be any wiser!
'Confidence works best,' Leon thought, stopping himself from rolling his eyes as he made sure to absorb every tiniest detail of the camp.
Rather than fighting with the deserters all so that he could question them, he could learn most of the things he wanted to know just from observing the camp.
And soon, he saw enough to figure out the answer to the one question that stood at the bottom of his mission.
'They are just random villagers. It looks like they were brough here before whoever was responsible for them simply left into the forest,' Leon concluded after only a few minutes of observation.
The tents were cheap, most of them reaching the limits of what they could hold. The food was scarce, its supply relying mostly on the meat the girl procured from the forest.
And most importantly, there was no sign of any wagons of any kind that could hold the secondary type of supplies like spare clothes, weapons, or even ammunition.
"Hey!" someone shouted right when Leon came to a stop and simply stood motionless in a place. "Who the hell are you?!"
Leon slowly turned his head to the owner of the voice.
"I'm someone who left all of your bravest in the forest to see what this camp is all about," he replied, keeping his hand behind his back.
For the deserter that called him out, it had to look like an act of putting on airs. In reality, though, Leon simply brought his hand behind his back to keep his short spear hidden from their view.
"A spy!" the man then shouted from the bottom of his lungs. "We have a spy!"
The commotion quickly spread throughout the entire camp. And before long, some people appeared to attempt to take Leon down.
'Are you for real?' Leon raised one of his eyebrows while taking a step to the side to avoid a makeshift spear that someone threw at him. He then took returned to his former position only to take a step to the back, dodging a wide slash of someone's sword.
"Guys, stop it," he requested in a tired voice. He then jumped over a sweeping slash of a spear aimed at the back of his knees. "You try to attack me once again and I will return the favor," he warned...
Only for another spear to come his way.
'At least they have some weapons,' he thought, releasing his hands from behind his back and swinging them to the front. 'Well, let's start with something flashy,' he then decided, striking the blade of the approaching spear with the handle of his own weapon.
And in the single instant when the two weapons clashed, Leon infused a tiny bit of his active mana from the air before directing it to a specific imprint on his spear's handle.
BOOM!
A shockwave of condensed air threw not only the spear away but also its owner and the three nearest tents.
On its own, Leon's attack was pretty harmless. It simply accelerated and condensed the air around his weapon for a short moment before releasing it back to the world.
Yet, it was the bait that finally drew out the people from the forest... and the one girl that Leon was interested in among them.
Leon's former pursuers rushed out from beyond the trees, all armed and ready to join in the fight to avenge their fallen friends...
"Stop!" the girl then shouted. She ran faster than any of the men who followed her, allowing her to reach the camp at the very front of the group. And then, she dug her feet into the ground and raised her hand, stopping her fellows from throwing their lives away by fighting Leon.
"Just like I thought," the bloodmancer then muttered while putting a thoughtful expression on his face. Then, he looked towards the girl and leaned his head over his shoulder while moving his hands behind his back. "Why do you act like someone responsible for leading all those conscripts away..."
"When you are here just to help them out?"