"Any clues?" Sylvia on the side asked after seeing Leo close the diary in his hand.

"One thing." Leo nodded and said: "The first point is that disappearances not only occur at night, but also during the day. The second point is that most of the missing people are responsible for taking care of grapes and repairing broken grape branches.

To pick the grapes that are not growing well, they need to travel throughout the plantation. The third point is that when the disappearance occurred, it was the busiest time at work and everyone else was concentrating on their work."

"Do you think this might not be done by a monster?" Sylvia thought for a while and asked.

On the way here, the two of them had made some guesses as to what caused these disappearances. The most common answer they guessed was monsters.

This is different from the Velen world. Although there are all kinds of monsters in the Velen world, on the surface there are churches that hunt down monsters that don't obey the rules, and secretly the bounty hunters in the dark world also hunt monsters in exchange for bounties, so

The monsters in Velen's world either fled into specially protected areas like the Black Forest and did not dare to come out again, becoming legends, or they hid in the darkness of the city and did not dare to show up.

However, the world is different now. According to the intelligence they collected, there seems to be only one organization in this world that specializes in hunting monsters, the Demon Hunters. As for the armies of various countries, although they sometimes hunt monsters, they always do so because of the wrong method.

There were quite a few casualties.

Therefore, the armies of various countries turn a blind eye to the existence of these monsters and are unwilling to do it themselves. If they really encounter trouble, they will post tasks on the bulletin boards of local villages and towns like ordinary people. If you are lucky,

A demon hunter will soon come to take over the mission. If you are unlucky, no one may pay attention to it for a few years.

Because of this, dangerous monsters are everywhere in this world, and the chance of encountering monsters on the road is even higher than the chance of encountering ordinary beasts.

Therefore, when the disappearance occurred, most people, including Leo and Sylvia who had just learned about this place, subconsciously believed that it was the work of a monster.

However, judging from the information obtained from the current diary, the unknown being who caused the disappearance is not worried about being discovered during the day, and knows how to find prey, specially selects those who are out of the group, and knows how to seize the opportunity and know where everyone is.

They start when they are busiest and have no time to think about. Everything can be discovered. The unknown existence that caused the disappearance should be an intelligent creature that knows how to think, not a monster whose behavior is dominated by primitive animality in the sense they understand.

"We know too little about the intelligence here," Leo shook his head and said, "There are many intelligent creatures here, and there are also many intelligent monsters. We cannot judge the monsters here based on our common sense."

"Isn't the Demon Hunter the complete collection of monsters in this world?" Sylvia smiled and said, "We may be able to get some of the information we want from him."

"It's a good idea, but you forgot that we don't have enough purple gold on us. As far as I know, demon hunters don't do things in vain," Leo put aside the issue of funds for the time being and asked Sylvia:

"What about you? What did you find?"

"The workers here left in a hurry, almost at the same time, and their luggage was packed completely without leaving any useful items. It must have been organized by someone." Sylvia told her findings, and

Guess: "All the workers were organized to leave at once, leaving the vineyard completely vacant. It also created the illusion that the situation here was irreversible, so that other workers did not dare to come here. It seems that this enemy of Count Britta

It’s really a lot of effort!”

Leo was not interested in the struggle for power among nobles, but Sylvia's words made an idea come to his mind, and he said: "Do you think there are human factors in these disappearances?"

Sylvia followed Leo's train of thought and said: "You mean these missing knights are the work of Count Britta's enemies. They first created the disappearances, and then created rumors to bring down the whole organization.

Count Rita’s wine estate?”

"No, that would be too obvious. Others may not be able to find it, but the demon hunters will definitely be able to find that these disappearances are not caused by monsters." Leo thought for a moment and said, "But if some of the disappearances are caused by monsters,

Because the other part of the disappearance is caused by other people, so as long as the arrangement is proper, even the demon hunter may not be able to distinguish it."

"It's possible." Sylvia nodded in agreement with Leo's inference.

Neither Leo nor Sylvia has made an accurate conclusion on this matter. They also know that the inference they are making now looks like that, but without more information, this inference can only stay at

Guessing stage.

Feeling that there were no more clues to provide in these houses, Leo and Sylvia turned around and left, riding their horses and walking slowly around the perimeter of the plantation.

Although the area of ​​Britta Manor is not very large, the area of ​​the entire grape plantation is very large. One-third of all the slopes that can be planted at the foot of Gaogong Mountain are the plantations of Count Britta.

It takes about an hour to run around. Leo and Sylvia slowly walked around the edge, taking more than three hours. When they returned to the hut where the workers lived, they were almost there.

It's noon.

As they walked around this circle, they encountered some monsters, such as giant centipedes, a plant similar to a piranha, and some very large bugs, etc. However, Leo did not restrain himself as a sixth-level psyker.

In the case of fluctuations in life energy, these monsters are suppressed by life forms and instinctively choose to escape and retreat, without a proper battle.

However, even this was enough for Leo and Sylvia to understand some basic information about the monsters in this world.

These monsters still belong to the category of animals in nature and do not possess any extraordinary power, so their behavior also follows the instinct of animals, and their domain awareness is also very strong.

These monsters all have their own fixed understanding. Under normal circumstances, they will not leave their own domain. They will only attack living creatures that break into their own domain, and they will not pay attention to living creatures outside their domain.

If they are strangers like Leo and Sylvia, when they first come to this manor, they will inevitably break into the area where these monsters are, and be attacked or even killed by the monsters, but as a person who has been planted in this area all year round

The workers working in the plantation should be very familiar with the dangerous areas around the plantation. It is impossible for them to break into these dangerous areas rashly, so the disappearances here should not have much to do with these monsters hanging around the plantation.

.

Even if there are monsters, they will only appear suddenly in the plantation and have not been discovered by the locals.

After returning to the worker's house, Geralt and the others had been waiting on the lawn outside the worker's house for a while. Judging from the marks on their bodies, they must have experienced some battles.

When he saw Leo and the others coming on horseback from a distance, Angoulin couldn't wait to shout: "Hey! Uncle Knight, Aunt Knight, we have completed the task and found the monsters who caused the disappearance. Give them to

Get rid of it! Your trip may have been in vain!"

"Aunt Knight?" Hearing the name Angoulin called her, Sylvia couldn't help but raise her eyebrows, and words with a cold tone came from the helmet, saying: "I don't like this little girl!"

Leo smiled and said nothing. Although he had gained ordinary human emotions and feelings for a short time, it did not mean that he was a worldly fool. Topics involving women's age were taboo in any world.

"What's going on? Have you found the murderer of the missing case?" He lightly hit his horse, quickened his pace and came to Geralt and others. Leo asked immediately after dismounting.

"Yes, there is a hole in the cave that is used as an underground wine cellar in the manor, and that hole leads to a Qi Qi Mo's lair." Geralt was using the water in the pool to wipe away the stains on his armor as he answered.

Leo asked while explaining what Qiqimo was.

At this time, Leo knew that the big bugs he and Sylvia encountered on the road were called Qiqimo. Their life forms were somewhat similar to ants. They were also the most common monsters in Toussaint's forest. They often appeared in Toussaint.

Rumors of being attacked by Qi Qimo.

Seeing that Geralt was a little overwhelmed with things at hand, Regier motioned Geralt to do his own thing, and he added the following things.

It turned out that after they arrived at the manor, they carefully searched for clues. Later, Angouleme discovered a piece of Chizimo's armor that had fallen off in the underground wine cellar. After that, they found a very secret place deep in the wine cellar leading to the door.

The entrance of Qi Qimo, this entrance was sealed by Qi Qimo with clay. Because of the remote location and the dark surroundings, it was difficult to be discovered.

After entering the nest, they found some traces of humans walking here. Going a little deeper, they found Qiqimo's lair. After that, they started a battle with Qiqimo and killed Qiqimo in this lair.

, inspecting the nest, they found some human bones and broken clothes that had been eaten. Judging from the style of the clothes, they should be plantation workers.

So they believe that at first, a servant of the farm accidentally broke into Qiqimo's lair and was attacked and eaten by Qiqimo. Later, Qiqimo, who cannibalized humans, also regarded humans as prey and kept attacking people in the plantation.

Workers ultimately caused the current consequences.

After listening to Regiel's narration, Leo was silent for a moment, and then asked: "Have you cleaned up the bones? Are there as many bones as a dozen people?"

Upon hearing Leo's question, everyone present looked at each other in silence and did not answer.

As Leo said, after seeing a pile of scattered bones, they thought these were victims and that the mission had been completed. For example, Cassirer was a warrior of the Nilfgaard Empire and had honor.

Feeling disdainful of rummaging through corpses, Angouleme, Milva and Dandelion all instinctively resisted dirty corpses. Regiel had no need and did not like to touch corpses, especially those that were highly decomposed. As for the only one who didn't mind

Geralt, who was cleaning up the corpse, was focused entirely on Ciri's affairs, and he had a mentality of completing this task as soon as possible, so after seeing the corpse, he subconsciously thought that the matter was over.

Now, after they listened to Leo's words, they felt that something was wrong, because although the pile of corpses they found seemed to be a lot, if they carefully estimated it, they would find that there were only three or four people in the pile of corpses, definitely not more than a dozen.

There are so many people, which means that the disappearance of about ten people is not caused by these monsters.

"Lord Leo, have you discovered anything?" Dandelion felt that everyone's morale, which had just been boosted by solving the case, seemed to be affected by Leo's words, and he quickly changed the topic to Leo and asked.

Leo was not stingy with his discoveries, so he discovered the diary of the missing worker, learned some characteristics of the missing person, discovered some characteristics of the monster here, and some speculations he and Sylvia made about the missing person, etc.

After listening to Leo's analysis, everyone's faces became a little ugly. The nobles of Toussaint would definitely do what Leo said. In order to attack their opponents, they would not hesitate to use other people's lives as weapons of attack.

.

"Damn it! Those nobles should be damned!" Angoulin, who had always been lively and cheerful, had a look of resentment on his face and couldn't help but curse loudly.

Milva who was next to her seemed to know what happened to Angouleme. She reached out and touched her head, held her in her arms and comforted her a few times.

"What do you think we should do now?" Geralt was also tired of this kind of thing that might involve infighting among the nobles, but since he had accepted the task but had to complete it, he wanted to ask his companions for advice.

"Don't worry about it!" Dandelion said first: "We have helped him solve the insect nest in the wine cellar and found the bones of the missing person. This can be regarded as completing his mission. Let's repay him like this!"

Cassirer shook his head and said: "What if there are still people missing in the future? We will become liars, witcher liars, and by then we will be unable to move in Toussaint."

Dandelion opened his mouth to say something, but in the end he didn't speak.

Others also felt that they should not get involved in the infighting among the nobles, nor should the mission end like this. They were all somewhat conflicted.

"Sir Leo, what do you think we should do?" Geralt couldn't make a decision, so he had to ask Leo, an outsider.

"I have the same opinion as you. We don't want to get involved in the fight between Tao nobles, but we can't end the mission like this." Leo thought for a while and said, "We can actually stay here for a few days to see if there is anything left.

If workers disappear due to other reasons, if so, think about it. If not, tell Count Britta this theory. If he doesn't believe it, you only need to charge Count Britta for the cost of cleaning out the insect nest in the wine cellar.
Chapter completed!