"Thanks, buddy. I'll stop by again soon and bring you some of your favorite food."
"Good, I look forward to it."
Tigran said before he turned around and was gone in a split second.
Amon couldn't help but grin as his good old friend sauced away.
"Amon, I think we should start this slowly. Earlier, when we were still in the guild, it seemed like you already knew those two."
Jeanne was aware that from now on she would be racing with Amon. A race between magicians.
"Well, I will tell you something about them, at least the information I have from that time."
Amon explained to Jeanne that the orc brothers were both blessed by the same god. Ruknar, the orc father. Gunnar was the older and by far the stronger of the two. He was 250 cm tall and did not differ in appearance from an orc. His younger brother, Leif, was only 188 cm tall. Which was still tall, but in comparison to his brother, was that still puny? Gunnar was the strong barbarian who always charged forward, and Leif always attacked from blind spots, using his brother as a distraction. Even with his strength, he still went far beyond that of a human man.
"And back then, I and Leon created a tactic with which we won against them back then."
Amon used the tactic, and Jeanne finally understood why she was here in the first place.
"That's good. But it will get hard. But I will stick with it. But remember, this was already a few years ago. If they made countermeasures against this. Then we are digging our own grave."
"You are right, but we can still try. So come now and take the map with you. The area Tigran marked is easy to remember."
After this, both of them made a plan about who searched in which area and then separated in order to look for the power feather and begin their search.
Amon's body became pitch-black, and Amon jumped in the air and landed right into an area in the Syldran woods.
Amon looked around him; he was surrounded by trees and shrubs. The tree corms had grown so close together that the sunlight only reached the ground in certain places. Many would detest this fact, but for Amon, who just used the shadow step, this was heaven on earth.
Amon crept through the forest without making a single sound. Not even the birds looking in the trees noticed him; he was just a silent shadow that moved around as he pleaded.
Amon increased the tempo to investigate his area faster. He had to hurry because night was falling, and if there was one thing he learned, it was that the orc brothers were much stronger at night. Amon searched the whole area he made himself responsible for. He moved at a fast pace and worked his way through the woods.
Jeanne worked her way through the woods the same way Amon did. Her side of the woods was brighter and radiated beauty everywhere. The trees had leaves in all colors of the rainbow, and the trees and plants had enough space to grow. Jeanne could see rare plants and animals, along with some monsters that she either killed before they made even a single sound or ignored. But a power figure was nowhere to be seen, and before she even noticed it, she had already looked around all of the woods.
From where did she know that? It was simple: Amon and Jeanne planned the areas where they explored the woods. In the way so that they would meet again at a small clearing in the woods.
Amon was already there; he hid himself in the darkness of the woods behind him and came out the moment he saw Jeanne. They both then walked to a cave Amon found on his way through the woods. They wanted to talk about everything they saw, heard, and felt while examining the entire woods.
"I assume that you found nothing too wrong, Jeanne?" Amon asked.
"You are right. I have checked the entire light page and found nothing. Neither the item nor any of the Ork brothers." Jeanne answered.
The Syldran woods were divided into a light side to the south and a shadow side to the north. Amon and Jeanne worked their way in a spiral from the outside to the inside. The clearing where they met earlier was in the exact center of the woods.
"I saw them on the north side of the woods. It was a pretty close call, but they just thought that I was an animal. Which means we can't stay here for long; they will come here sooner or later."
Amon saw how they inspected the woods. They were slow, but they took more notice of the details. Amon knew that the item was somewhere here in these woods, but he couldn't think of any more places.
"Wait, Jeanne, let's get back to the roots. Where does the power feather come from?" Amon asked.
Jeanne thought for a while and then answered.
"As far as Personia told me, the article comes from the feathers of the bird of the gods. A mighty mana beast. The beast distributes a few of its feathers in different places from time to time and then flies on."
Jeanne did not know what Amon wanted with this information, but she was bewildered by this situation, and if it helped, she would gladly give him any information he needed.
"It is said that the bird of the gods never loses his feathers by accident. He always places them at places he picks out for himself. We don't have to search for the feather. We have to search for a place the god of the birds finds worthy of receiving one of his feathers."
Jeanne got what Amon meant; the mana beast was said to be gigantic, but when he placed his feather in a place, it found worty. It shrank and placed the feather there.
"Which place could be big enough for a gigantic brid to land and then shrink? When the stories about him are true, he always ends up in his full size first and only then shrinks. There's only one place that comes to mind, isn't there?"
Jeanne pulled the map out and looked at it—a place that was big enough for him to land and then shrink. Her gaze wandered around the whole map until she realized it. The only place the bird could land was, "the center, the clearing in the center of the woods. It has to be there, and he probably hid it with some kind of magic."
Jeanne saw how Amon nodded at her realization. It was the only place, but the problem was that it was also the only place they couldn't hide. When the Ork brothers decided to search there, they would see them without any doubt.
"Let's think about what was there in the clearing in the woods, and then go and search there."
Amon tried to bring the exact image of the clearing inside of his head; he remembered a rock, a huge amount of white leaves that lay in an area on the ground, and a tree stump with a huge diameter.
"Amon, if you ask me, the power feather must be either with the pile of leaves or the tree stump. How about this: one of us checks one of the two places, and if it's not there, it must be the stone."
Amon thought briefly about it and then agreed. They couldn't waste any more time and had to get to work before the orc brothers reached the clearing.
Without hesitation, the two then sprinted off and reached the clearing. Amon immediately dashed to the pile of white leaves. Amon searched the entire pile but found nothing but leaves. For Jeanne, the result was no different. It had been a normal tree stump, and the rock was just bare and had nothing on it.
"Amon Halon, it's been a while."
Gunnar and Leif have already spotted the two. Gunnar clenched his huge fist and leapt into the air on a collision course with Amon.
Amon backed away, and Gunnar's mighty punch hit the earth. The ground beneath him began to shake, and before anyone could suspect it, the ground beneath Amon, Jeanne, Gunnar, and Leif cracked. An abyss opened and sent them all tumbling into the depths.