At this moment Lightning was flying somewhere across the Concealing Forest.
In her eyes, it seemed that the world had become smaller. As far as her eyes could see, all the details had faded, only a world made out of pure colors was left. Brown was the earth, gray were the mountains, green the forest and blue the river.
Yet it was this green which occupied an overwhelming majority of her field of view.
And not the bright green of the grass fields in Border Town, here the green was mixed with gray and black, turning it dark and condensed. Whether it was to the West or the North, everywhere she looked, she only saw a dark green, with no end to it in sight. Due to seeing it for such a long time, she slowly developed a feeling of falling. So, from time to time, Lightning had to look up at the sky, to disperse the ever-increasing feeling of discomfort.
Behind her, the overcast black clouds were flowing past very low, enclosing the Impassable Mountain Range and Border Town in rain and fog.
She was now flying over the forest trying to find the remains from four hundred fifty years ago, for her, this was undoubtedly a great adventure. Two weeks ago, when Roland had offered her this task, Lightning immediately accepted this mission. Furthermore, there was a big difference between Cara who thought of the ancient book as infallible and the Prince. His Highness repeatedly explained to her, that this drawing could only be used as a reference and that the most important part of the search was her safety, it wouldn’t matter if she could find the tower or not. This gave the young girl the impression that she would have a great time.
She knew that His Royal Highness was right, even in case that it was Border Town’s castle, over the period of more than four hundred years, the plants would have grown almost everywhere and gradually turned into a pile of dust. But she still wanted to find this place, to determine the location of the hexagonal star, it was the equal to determine the position of Taqila. Having heard the ins and outs of the matter, Lightning naturally understood what it meant for her to find Taqila.
That she was helping the Prince find the real cause of the outbreak of the war with the Devils, which the Church was trying to hide with all their might.
If she compared this with her father’s exciting explorations trying to find new sea routes, it was even more exciting!
For her search, Lightning used the chart method. She had separated the map into many small squares, and with keeping a constant speed and counting the time that she flew, she would know how far she had flown. At the same time, she consistently drew out the inside of one of the squares. Every time one of the squares was filled, she also knew that the area had already been searched through.
Now she had already filled half of these squares.
The stormy clouds behind her seemed to be approaching faster than Lightning had previously imagined, the young girl could even faintly hear the thunder rolling in the clouds. To be safe she lowered her height, dropping down towards the forest.
At this moment, a gray shadow flashed past her vision.
Shocking Lightning, who immediately stopped her forward flight. Instead she hovered in the air, looking back through the mass of green.
But she could find nothing.
Was it an illusion? Lightning thought, not believing it, she decided to search the area again.
But this time, she flew at a much lower height. The forest was no longer one solid block of green, instead turning into a collection of mottled tree trunks, bifurcated branches, and all kinds of different leaves… in front of Lightning’s eyes, the details of the world had emerged from a solid block of green.
After several scores of breaths, Lightning suddenly detected a small white stone tower hidden behind the tree branches. The complete upper part of the tower had been cut off, leading to the problem that the trees had grown higher than the tower and had covered it with a layer of green, making it nearly impossible to be seen from up in the sky. If not for her wish to avoid the rain-laden clouds, she would most likely have missed it.