They found their second dead body on day three.

  And their third.

  Leo stood there, staring down at the pair of dead gem holders as he felt a twinge of pain in his heart. Based on how they leaned on one another against a large stump and had their hands clasped together even in death, it was clear these two were a couple. Similar to how his own father and mother must have explored together before he’d been born.

  “No wounds on them either,” Taylor said, finishing her check of the bodies as she got to her feet. Frowning at him, she shook her head. “No clue how they died.”

  “Just like the woman up in the tree,” he muttered, an icy chill going down his back as he realized the other thing the two scenes had in common. “Someone took their packs too, just like they did with her.”

  “So they’re after the gear?” Taylor asked, tilting her head as she looked at the dead couple. “But why?”

  “I don’t know… But at the very least, this pretty much confirms that there’s at least one bad actor roaming this plane,” Leo said, turning and scanning the surrounding forest. These two had set up camp in the center of a large clearing, no doubt to allow them to see any potential threats long before they reached them. Of course, that plan clearly didn’t pan out, as something… or more likely, someone… managed to do them in any way.

  “How are they finding these people? The plane is colossal,” Taylor asked, her brow furrowing. “Miles upon miles of giant forest. And what, a few hundred people?”

  “If that,” Leo nodded. “The news of the plane was only announced something like two weeks ago. While plenty of gem holders would be eager to flock to a brand-new colossal plane, prepping for a journey like that takes time. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the two of us ended up being within the first hundred people to ever set foot in here. Whoever is killing people has to have some sort of high-Grade tracking skill. It’s a tier 22 plane, which means they’ve got plenty of options. The real question is, is this the act of some random gem-holding serial killer who heard of this plane and jumped at the opportunity to go wild? Or something worse?”

  “The Planar Lords? You think they’re doing this?”

  “I don’t know… I still don’t understand why my dad told me to seek out a colossal plane in the first place when a gargantuan plane would probably do just fine, but maybe the Planar Lords know what he was trying to do. Maybe the plan requires a certain number of gem holders to be within the plane, and so they’re trimming the herd to keep that threshold from being reached.”

  “But if that’s the case, why let people into the plane at all?” Taylor asked, scrunching up her face in thought. “There’s only one known rift leading to it. They could just set up a small army around the rift. Stop anyone from entering.”

  “I don’t know. There’s too much we don’t know,” Leo sighed, looking back down at the dead couple. “Any more creepy, hidden messages to be found with these two?”

  “No words… just a weird mark in the ground,” Taylor said, pointing at what Leo had thought was a natural scuff in the dirt. “Looks sort of like an arrow.”

  “Huh…” Crouching down, Leo looked at the mark closer, quickly realizing what Taylor meant. Almost perfectly between the two corpses was what could be a poorly-made arrow pointing off into the forest. Without Taylor’s keen senses, he never would have noticed. “...Why an arrow? It’s just aimed at the forest.”

  “Maybe it’s pointing toward something inside the forest?”

  “Maybe…” Leo froze, quickly going for his bag as he was struck by a sudden thought. Yanking out his journal, he flipped to the last page he’d been working on. Slowly, he turned, aligning himself with the sun and pointing with his finger toward the only landmark of any real importance in this brand-new plane.

  The rift leading out of it.

  “It’s the same,” Taylor said, her eyes bouncing between the arrow in the dirt and his outstretched hand. “They pointed to the rift?”

  “And the woman we found in the tree was only a few hours away from the rift as well,” Leo said, feeling more chills go down his back as they found something else potentially connecting the two scenes. “I think… that both these two and the first woman… were trying to make their way out of the plane. But someone killed them before they could escape.”

  “But there were plenty of people in that base camp who had ventured into here and then left,” Taylor pointed out. “Why weren’t they killed?”

  “Those people were all heavily injured,” Leo said, shaking his head as the pieces slowly began to fall into place. “They couldn’t have made it too far into the new plane before having to turn back. These three… they must have found something. Something that they weren’t supposed to.”

  “So they stumbled across something, tried to leave the plane to tell others, and were killed for it?” Taylor surmised, crossing her arms as she stared hard down at the corpses. Pursing her lips, she shook her head. “...What did they find?”

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  “No idea. But that’s probably why whoever did this keeps taking their gear,” Leo said, tapping his journal. “No self-respecting Cartographer goes anywhere without a journal to jot down their discoveries and sketch a map of the plane so they don’t get lost. The killer must have taken it to ensure that whatever they wrote down about what they found wasn’t discovered.”

  “But they left the bodies,” Taylor pointed out. “Seems… stupid?”

  “Maybe… but there’s nothing all that strange about stumbling upon dead bodies in an unexplored plane. Especially not a colossal one filled with so many different types of magical beasts. What do you think most people would do if they kept finding dead bodies the further out they went?”

  “Assume there’s a powerful magical beast and stick closer to the rift so they could make a quick escape if needed,” she said, realizing what he was getting at. “And if they do that…”

  “...Then they won’t risk discovering whatever it is within this plane the killer is trying to keep hidden,” Leo finished.

  They each stood there in silence for a moment, staring down at the dead bodies. For a split second, Leo imagined it was the two of them lying there dead on the ground, and he shook his head, trying to rid himself of the thought. He and Taylor might be under ranked for this plane, but now that the two of them knew what was happening, it would be much harder to catch them off guard.

  “So what should we do?” he asked, finally tearing his eyes off the couple as he looked at his partner. “Exploring the plane further might be dangerous. We could leave. Or even just stick around the rift as we continue to strengthen our souls.”

  “Circling the rift over and over again sounds boring. And you need to ensure this plane is safe, right? Doesn’t sound very safe with a random killer running around.”

  “You want to purposefully draw the killer after us?” Leo asked, not sure why he was surprised in the slightest by the feral grin on Taylor’s face. “That just seems a bit reckless, even for us. It would be safer to slowly hunt magical beasts around the rift for the next week or two until we hit a soul rank of 20. Then I can actually open the box my dad left me and hopefully figure out what crazy plan he and mom managed to cook up.”

  “Might not be safe for us anymore regardless,” Taylor pointed out with a shrug. “The killer might suspect we’re onto them and come for us. They might even be watching us right now.”

  “A scrying skill? That would certainly explain how they manage to keep track of everyone,” Leo muttered. He was impressed Taylor had actually remembered that those even existed. He’d run her through some of the more dangerous skills they’d need to look out for after revealing that the Planar Lords were after him, but that had been weeks ago. “If they do have a scrying skill, we have no way of knowing when the killer is watching us. The only real restriction is those skills only work within the same plane, and are a rather high Grade, which means they’d have little space left over within their soul for any sort of dangerous skill to go with it. They could very well have listened to everything we just said these past few minutes.”

  “Well we can’t not talk about our plan,” Taylor pointed out.

  “Gah, this is the worst!” Leo said, rubbing his eyes as he tried to decide on the best course of action. “If they know we’re onto them, we won’t be safe even near the rift. And if we go farther, we’re guaranteed to draw their attention when we finally stumble upon whatever these three people did. It’s a risk either way. Playing it safe would be far less risky-”

  “But much more boring,” Taylor grinned. “I say we keep going. Finish learning about the different magical beasts in this plane, grow stronger on the move, and find whatever secret is out there.”

  “Of course you’d vote for the plan that all but guarantees the killer will come for us,” Leo chuckled. “Though you have a good point. I need to ensure this plane is safe, and to do that, I need to both deal with this murderer, and keep exploring the plane. I don’t suppose your… special technique has finished yet, has it?”

  Leo barely caught himself before revealing Taylor’s soul was weird compared to normal gem holders. If someone truly was scrying them right then and there, no sense in giving away any of their trump cards.

  “Not yet,” she said, nodding slightly as she picked up on what he was doing. “Like I said, it takes longer sometimes. It's only been two full days.”

  “Let me know as soon as you finish. That information might be just what we need to save our hides.”

  Worst-case scenario, if the killer had the one known exit tightly secured, the two of them could always flee through another rift. Of course, that would put them even farther from the known planarverse, but it would be preferable to dying at the killer’s hand.

  While the number of rifts in any given plane grew with the size, finding them only became more and more difficult with each category. While a diminutive plane that was only two to three miles long would have somewhere between two and five rifts, a colossal plane that was more than thirty miles long, would only have twenty or more. It was connected to many more planes, but there was also a lot more space to search through in order to actually find any of them. It was for reasons like that that so many rifts, and therefore entire planes, went undiscovered for sometimes years at a time. The odds that anyone had actually managed to stumble upon any of the other rifts in this plane in only the past week or two were low…

  But Taylor could pinpoint their exact locations with her open-soul technique.

  Worst-case scenario, we end up fleeing further into the unknown and pray that we manage to find a connecting plane that holds an undiscovered rift to somewhere in the explored planarverse. Best case scenario…

  We turn the tables on this mysterious assassin and kill the killer ourselves.

  “Alright, let’s stick to what we’ve been doing all this time,” Leo decided, rolling his eyes at Taylor’s excited grin, but still chuckling despite himself. “We’ll just have to remain even more alert than we already have been. Keep your eyes open, and shout the moment you sense anything strange approaching.”

  “Easy enough. What kind of secret do you think the killer is trying to hide?”

  “I don’t know,” Leo admitted, hefting his pack and turning his back on the dead couple as he began walking farther into the unknown forest. “But I have a feeling we’ll find out soon enough.”

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