The Destiny's Path after My Reincarnation

Clank!

Clank!

Clank!

A bunch of footsteps filled the already-loud forest with its clanking sound of iron armors, Carfeld and his expedition group is still searching for the mithril cave, they've been stuck here for the past 2 days now and at last their effort had finally showed some progress after Carfeld accidentally saw one of the clue that is written on the low-quality map he got.

After what seems to be a 5 minutes of walking..

"Over there!"

One of the normal knight shouted at something infront of him, he pointed his finger upwards, telling everyone else to look at the thing he was pointing at.

"Is that..."

"W- what kind of..."

"Hey– Isn't that a little bit too big?.."

What the knights saw was the tree that had a red claw mark at it's trunk, the tree itself is more than 5 meters wide, and the claw mark on it are also massive, if it were estimated, the creature that made the mark could be atleast more than 10 meters, this mark left the expedition group feeling confused as they have no idea if a monster with that kind of claw even exist in this forest, but it was no time for question, they could just be witnessing an unknown monster that have yet to be found in this place, and it is not that surprising considering that the inner forest of Monoghriad is pretty much a mystery.

"According to the map on my hand, this mark is apparently one of the checkpoints that will guide us to the cave location— In the map it says that after we found the marked tree, we'll need to move from infront of the mark and go Northwest." Carfeld said.

He looked up to the claw mark and realized that he is already standing infront of it, so he only thing needed to do now is go to the northwest direction and hope that the next checkpoint will be there.

"Carfeld, what kind of monster does this mark belong to?" Davira asked.

"Most likely a Chimera, although i never seen one with a claw that is as big as this one."

"Could this be the Ruler that you're talking about?"

Carfeld then went quiet for a few seconds, his eyebrows furrowed when he tried to think about that moment 3 years ago.

"...Maybe– Alright let's move on, we need to be quick or else the sun will be gone."

"Wait- but atleast tell me what it is!"

Davira tried to grab Carfeld's shoulder but his walk was way too fast, her hand slipped from Carfeld's shoulder, making her almost fall, at that moment Davira gave up on persuading him, she began following Carfeld with a slight frown on her face.

'Why does he not want to tell us about that ruler, if it really exist like he said, shouldn't it be a common sense to tell us about it so that we can prepare and have some idea about what it looks like?' She thought.

The group moved yet again, following Carfeld's lead, on their way there, they encountered a group of spider type monster named Shadow Weaver, it is a spider that has a black body with 8 red eyes, a Shadow Weaver is able to produce magical webs that has blinding effect to those who touched it, disrupting their vision temporarily, it also had poisonous bite that would be fatal for humans.

SLASH!

"This is the last spider!" Said one of the special knight.

"Good work, no one seems injured– Lets continue!"

Thankfully the expedition group was able to defeat the Shadow Weavers pretty quickly, mostly thanks to its weakness against fire, just like the Great Treant, since it doesn't have any spells or particularly strong abilities, fighting them was not that different from the orcs, this monster would probably be pretty deadly if it weren't for the fact that many of the special knights are specialized with fire element.

A few minutes later...

"Oh? Captain, what's that?!"

A knight pointed his finger to something infront of the group, soon, everyone also started to notice, including Carfeld.

"I guess the map is not lying to us."

They arrived at another checkpoint, this time it's a tree stem with a symbol engraved at the top of it, the rest of the tree had been cut off by someone and it looks like whoever did it is quite skilled with their work, however one thing remained unknown, and that is how did the person that does this moved the massive tree to another location, from the size of the stem, it was clear that this tree had grown for a long time and its height must be tall too, moving an object that big, even with strengthening buff from aura, would be extremely difficult.

Carfeld jumped over to the top and analyzed the symbol that were engraved in the stem, at first glance, the symbol looks like a magic circle that had a few deformation, the shape of that magic circle wasn't a perfect circle, it tried to be, but ultimately failed and the result of that is similar to how a child would draw magic circle on paper.

'What does this mean— A magic spell? no, the shape is way too off, it wont work as a magic circle, but— All im seeing here is just a failed drawing attempt of a magic circle— Is there anything else that could mean anything about this?'

"You two! the mages in the back! do you sense any mana from this symbol?" Carfeld said, asking Lyra and the other mage from the mercenary group.

"Huh!? N- no? I don't think so.." Said Lyra.

"Yeah, i also don't feel any mana around here."

"Hmm, alright."

Thunk!

Carfeld jumped down from the stem.

"You found something?" Rezio asked.

"No, atleast from my knowledge, its not a magic circle or something similar, there is also no mana that can be detected from it, so i guess im just overthinking it."

After the quick analyzing and finding out that the symbol means nothing, Carfeld opened his map again, and sure enough, that strange symbol engraved at the top of a tree stem is also one of the checkpoint for the cave location.

"We're almost there!– Just a little bit more!"

"Where should we go next?" Davira asked.

"Hey! can we rest for a little bit! Someone in my team need to take a shit!"

From behind the group, Deter suddenly screamed, telling everybody that they should rest for a while, his friend, Artha, is seen holding his stomach with strong grip, his belly have been aching for a while, and right now he couldn't hold it in much longer.

Carfeld and every other knights chuckled at the odd situation, but they eventually allow it.

"Haha, sure, i forgot that we've been walking for quite some time now, you all can rest for 15 minutes."

Walking just a few steps to the North this time, they found a plant that is similar to the one that they used for temporary resting place, its giant leaves provide some privacy for Artha, while the others waited outside, Artha went behind the leaves to release his inner demon.