My Harem of Dangerous and Crazy Women as a Reincarnated Necromancer-Chapter 89: Hot on the Trail

The sun was barely beginning to peek over the horizon when Hod and her team rode into the forest on horseback.

She rode at the center of the formation with her eyes fixed on the path and one firm hand on the reins.

’This forest is too quiet,’ the white-haired woman thought, frowning slightly as she glanced between the trees. ’Since we entered I haven’t heard a single bird...’

And that unnatural silence bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

Then the sound of a horse approaching from behind made her turn her head. Looking back she saw the same young man with brown hair who had woken her in the early hours of the morning coming up on her right side.

"Captain," the young man said in a low tone. "May I ask you something?"

"Say it straight."

"...Doesn’t it seem strange to you?" he said, looking from side to side. "We’ve been pushing deep into the forest for a while now and we still haven’t run into a single semi-human."

Hod didn’t respond, but he could tell by the way she frowned slightly that she was listening to every word.

"Even though the people in the village warned us these semi-humans are absurdly territorial, and we’ve already been going for..." the young man paused to calculate. "How long? Two and a half hours? Three?... And we haven’t seen absolutely anything... this isn’t normal."

"You’re right," she said finally, turning her head slightly toward him. "I find the whole thing strange too."

The young man seemed to relax somewhat at hearing her answer.

"I’ve been thinking about it since we crossed the first stretch," Hod continued. "A forest this hostile doesn’t go quiet without a reason, something happened here, and honestly I don’t like not knowing what it is."

"Then... should we—?"

"No," Hod cut him off before he could finish. "We don’t have time to stop and dwell on these things."

"But Captain, if something—"

"Listen carefully," Hod said, turning her head fully toward him. "Whether the semi-humans are fleeing, hiding, or simply absent, that doesn’t change our priority."

The young man looked at her in silence.

"And our priority right now is one thing only," she said in a serious tone. "Reaching the point where Grand Inquisitor Alice’s magical signature was registered, nothing more. Understood?"

"...Understood, Captain."

The young man dipped his head slightly in a gesture of respect and pulled his reins back a little to return to his position in the formation.

’The kid isn’t wrong... but given the current situation we can’t afford to get distracted,’ she thought, letting out a sigh.

She had barely finished that thought when a voice rang out from the head of the formation.

"Captain, I found something!" shouted a middle-aged man, waving his hand. "You should come see this!"

Hod didn’t hesitate for a second and quickened her pace until she reached the spot where the senior inquisitor was waiting.

Upon arriving she quickly dismounted her horse, and then she saw the reason for the commotion.

’...What the hell happened here.’

Before her eyes stretched what had once been a semi-human camp.

Though the word "camp" didn’t quite cover it, because what remained of it looked more like a demolition zone.

Tattered tents scattered everywhere, campfires stomped out, weapons spread across the ground as if someone had thrown them carelessly, and as the cherry on top, a mountain of bodies piled up right in the center of the camp.

Hod stood before the scene for several seconds without saying anything.

The other inquisitors, who had finished dismounting, approached one by one, and the reactions came quickly.

"This is..." said a young woman with brown hair. "This is a massacre."

"A massacre?" said another from further back. "This goes way beyond a massacre, this was a goddamn extermination."

"I count at least fifty bodies in the pile," said the senior inquisitor who had found the location. "And there are probably more underneath."

The conversation went back and forth among them, each one throwing out a question or a theory that the others quickly dismissed.

Until finally one of them, a man with a deep voice who had been quiet until that moment — spoke up.

"What are you all so surprised about?" he said, crossing his arms. "It’s pretty clear to me that Grand Inquisitor Alice did this, there’s no other explanation."

"You’re right," another agreed, nodding firmly. "Who else could do something like this?"

"That also explains why we haven’t run into any semi-humans on the way," a third added. "She’s probably been clearing them as she went, that’s why everything is so quiet."

Hod listened without saying anything, her eyes still fixed on the pile of bodies. While her subordinates’ theory was reasonable, something wasn’t sitting right with her.

"...why go to all that trouble?"

"Captain Hod, come look at this!" a female voice called out, pulling the white-haired woman from her thoughts.

Hod quickly made her way to where the group’s tracker was waiting.

"What is it?"

"Look here, they’re human footprints," she said, pointing at the ground. "They still look fresh, no more than a day old."

"Can you tell how many people?"

"Hmm, I’d say about eight people," she replied, running her finger above several marks in the dirt without quite touching them.

Hod studied the footprints carefully without saying anything, causing the tracker to look at her with confusion.

"Captain?"

"...We’re moving out."

"Huh? Wouldn’t it be better to investi—"

"I said we’re moving out," Hod replied sharply.

"...Understood, Captain, my apologies," the tracker said, lowering her gaze.

’Things are getting stranger and stranger with every passing second...’

Hod turned toward her subordinates and raised her voice.

"Everyone, prepare to move out!" she said in a firm tone that made the inquisitors straighten up instantly. "We’re pushing forward immediately."

"Yes, Captain!" they all replied in unison.

"The footprints our tracker found tell us we’re heading in the right direction," she continued as she mounted her horse. "We’re almost at the point where the signature was registered, so there’s no time to waste."

The inquisitors nodded and began moving quickly toward their mounts.

The tracker lingered a second longer examining the footprints before committing them to memory and getting up to head to her own horse.

"Move out!" Hod said, gently pulling her reins.