It had been more than half a day since Cheese and his party arrived outside Vale, and although the camping place last night was not much away from Vale, due to the loss of horses and the need to slow down the march for the sake of the wounded, the original journey of less than half a day took a long time. And when they came to the vicinity of Valley City along the Dragon's Blood Creek, they also found the camp left by the Dragon's Blood Creek by the Kingdom Knights as a matter of course.

"This is the camp of the Kingdom Knights, and the leader should be the second head of the Knights, Blood Lion Leon. Heather came to this conclusion after just looking at it, each commander has different personal habits when setting up a camp, and after being familiar with these personal habits, it is not difficult to judge who built the camp. Of course, having said that, if it weren't for the fact that she had worked with Leon a few times before, the female knight captain couldn't be so sure.

With that, Heather led the way into the improvised camp, which, judging by the traces of the campfire, should still be in use, at least for the last few days. Cheese wasn't interested in finding clues from the camp, as he didn't know much about it, and second, the mage was now more interested in studying the two captured protonezumi than the whereabouts of the Knights.

In order to obtain information, Cheese had tried to communicate with the two nezumi separately, but the results were not satisfactory, these unstable nezumi did not seem to have the ability to communicate directly, even the gray-haired nezumi could not speak like Gloria, and their emotions were so unstable that the mage could not get them to cooperate with the communication by all means. Cheese had tried to bring them back to their senses, but it turned out that he couldn't easily stabilize the plague without the help of the necessary equipment and materials in the lab. But if you don't do it now, it doesn't mean you won't be able to do it later, as long as you give the mage a stable and safe environment, Cheese can open the portal back to the Gray Tower, so that he can try to stabilize the lesions of the two nezumi, and also find out why they are different from other people of the same kind. So when Heather wanted to kill the two rat-men because it was too much trouble to carry them, Cheese was vehemently opposed. Although the mage finally convinced the knights not to kill the two nezumi for the time being, this also changed the attitude of the hammer knights, including Heather, towards cheese, and in any case, the sneak attack of the two nezumi led to the death of five knights last night.

The mage himself didn't care about this, in his opinion, the value of these two living specimens full of research value far exceeded that of the old rat people he had seen before, after all, this was the first time that such an alienated individual had been found among the original rat people, and there were as many as two at once. And the three people from the Frost Guardian naturally have no opinion on Cheese's opinion, their mission is to protect the mage, and even whether or not they can solve the crisis of this plague will be after this, so no matter what Cheese does, they will not stand on the opposite side of the mage because of this. The three of them naturally noticed the change in the attitude of the Hammer Knights, with the boss lady as the center, Mona and Jack did not participate in the search for the Kingdom Knights' camp, and they stood around Cheese intentionally or unintentionally from the time they were marching, separating the mage from the Hammer Knights.

In fact, it doesn't matter if the three Northlanders joined the search, they are all knights, although they belong to different groups, but the knights of the hammer quickly got the clues they needed from the details of this camp, and these clues were reported to Heather and then sorted out an answer by the knight chief. After listening to the report of his subordinates, Heather sorted out the details and the corresponding situation in his mind, walked over to Cheese and said.

"These Kingdom Knights should be about the same number as us, and they can reach Vale City in a day when they enter the county from the south. I think they want to wait until they join us before they go into town. It's just that they were attacked by the rat people that night. ”

"You mean, these Kingdom knights were wiped out by the nezumi?" Cheese frowned, if he wanted to say that he was suddenly attacked by the proto-nezumi and suffered heavy casualties, but this entire camp let alone the living, the dead did not see a single one, the dignified Kingdom Knights, and it was led by the famous Blood Lion himself, it was impossible for him to end up like this because of one or two attacks.

"Not really, in terms of the quality of the soldiers, I'm afraid that the knights of the Kingdom Knights are still above us. Judging from the traces in the camp, they should have experienced two or three such attacks, but they did not cause much casualties, probably because there were no special individuals among the nezumi who attacked them. In short, the troops of these Kingdom Knights should be in better condition than ours. Heather chuckled and said.

"In that case, they should still be waiting for me here, why is there no one in this camp now?" asked Mona, the warrioress, confused.

"If there are no large casualties, it doesn't mean that you can hold here, you see around this camp, not to mention the rejection of horses, there is not even a trench, since they want to hold on, they will definitely dig fortifications. This situation means that the knights of the kingdom chose to leave the camp with complete autonomy. I think the situation here may be that Leon is overwhelmed by the attacks on the rat people, or that he has to abandon the camp due to some other threat that we don't know yet. The chief knight spoke her guess.

"The threat of forcing a group of Kingdom knights to abandon the camp...... Forget it, this is not a problem we need to consider for the time being, our priority now is to find these knights, and as long as they are found, the question of why they abandoned the camp will naturally have an answer. Cheese frowned and thought about the possibility that Heather had raised, but shook his head and said.

"I agree with you, the question now is, where did these knights of the kingdom go, where did they go?" said Heather.

"Hmm...... You, too, as a knight chief, can't you judge by the traces in the camp? You know, just like you did when you got this information before. Elsa asked.

"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, it's been a while since they've left the camp, and the footprints on the ground are hard to tell, and if I had to say it, I'd have to make inferences. and does not give an accurate answer. The chief knight shrugged her shoulders and signaled that there was nothing she could do.

The mage thought for a moment, and took out a wooden stick of different lengths from his bosom, these sticks were supposed to be made of different kinds of trees, judging by their smooth surface and some strange patterns carved on them, the purpose of these sticks should not be as simple as they seem. Cheese looked up at the sun in the sky, as if determining its location.

"Month, day, time, place......" With a few words, the mage picked out three of the sticks according to a certain pattern, and he gave two of the three sticks to Elsa and Heather.

"What I'm going to do now is to use a way to divinate the direction in which these knights of the kingdom have left, this method of divination I have only tried a few times before, and although the results obtained are not very accurate, it can only be done in this way when the known conditions are so scarce. Anyway, I count one, two, three, and the three of us throw the sticks in our hands at the same time, and I will interpret them from their positions. ”

As he spoke, Cheese stood in an equilateral triangle with the proprietress and the chief knightess, and as he gave the order, the other two threw out their sticks, although they still had a great deal of distrust in this method. With a soft sound, the three sticks collided with each other and fell to the ground. The mage crouched down and carefully watched the position of the three sticks, as if he was still reading something.

"I said, is this really divination?, I've heard that mages can get revelations in some ways, but there's no such thing, is it?" Jack asked Mona in a whisper, and the warriorwoman said she couldn't answer the question, because to everyone present, the mage's actions seemed to be no different from throwing shoes into the sky.

"I don't think there's any child's play in this method of divination, when three of the twenty-six wood species are selected according to the geographical location and the time of day, and three of them, which symbolize the seven gods of fate, are divined. Cheese, who had already received the answer, picked up the sticks on the ground and put them away, and said to Jack.

"Well, what's the conclusion of your divination anyway?" Despite her participation, the proprietress still had no confidence in the cheese's divination, at least she didn't feel like she was being guided by some god when she threw the stick. Although Heather did not speak, she could see in the eyes of the female knight that she was confused about the mage's behavior, but out of politeness and respect, she did not open her mouth to question the mage.

"Judging from the results of the divination, those Kingdom knights should have entered Valley City, so I propose that we also find a way to enter the city and find a covered place to spend the night before dark. ”

Cheese said lightly, and decided the next course of action. Although they were not satisfied with the mage's somewhat rash decision, seeing that another dusk was approaching, the group really didn't want to risk being attacked by the native nezumi and set up camp outside. At least the walls of Vale can keep out the hungry rats that roam the outside. Thinking so, the group approved Cheese's suggestion.