"How long is he going to sit up there?" Tom asked as he looked towards the crow's nest of their ship, where one of their companions had been spending an unreasonable amount of time. The vessel was currently sailing up the Rhine River towards the Black Forest, carrying them on a scouting mission to inspect the mine and the road leading to it. Their task was to ensure that nothing had changed in the surrounding forest and to determine whether anyone had attempted to interfere with the pathway. Considering the importance of the mine and the forest surrounding it, none of them wanted to discover that someone had made alterations without their knowledge.
The Sonnenbergs were not merely a family that happened to own land in the forest, but a Ranger family whose traditions were closely tied to protecting and understanding nature. They had accepted the responsibility of creating a pathway through the Black Forest, and that decision had been made with the forest's balance in mind rather than the convenience of every passing traveller. Anyone who tried to alter their plans without consulting them was effectively challenging their professional judgement and centuries of accumulated experience. The family was especially unwilling to tolerate such interference from people who had no real understanding of the forest or the dangers their decisions could create.
"Oh, that will be over soon," Bill replied with a shrug, showing very little concern about the situation. Unlike Tom, he did not seem particularly interested in how long their companion intended to remain in the crow's nest, nor did he feel any need to encourage him to come down. As far as Bill was concerned, the mission itself was straightforward enough, and they would soon have more important things to worry about than someone's strange behaviour. In fact, he considered the current assignment considerably more pleasant than dealing with the political disputes that had been causing trouble back at home.
"At least this time, he isn't angry about the mission," Bill added with a smile. "He's more than happy to shoot some idiot through the head if they've been foolish enough to interfere with the road." His expression suggested that he would not object if their investigation uncovered someone who deserved a particularly forceful lesson. After all, protecting the forest was part of their responsibility, and Bill had little sympathy for people who deliberately endangered it because they thought they knew better than the family. However, his cheerful attitude only made Tom more curious about what had actually upset their companion.
"Then what is he angry about?" Lilian asked, her interest clearly visible in her voice. She had been selected for this mission because of her particular expertise in stealth, which made her well suited to examining the condition of the wildlife without disturbing the surrounding area. If someone had decided to create a more direct route through the forest, she would be able to investigate the consequences while remaining difficult to detect. The damage might not always be immediately visible to an ordinary observer, but an experienced Ranger could recognise changes in animal behaviour, disturbed habitats, and other signs that something had gone wrong.
"That, I don't know," Bill answered, turning towards Bertho in the hope that he would provide a more satisfying explanation. Bertho was usually the person who knew what was happening, especially when the matter concerned the family's internal discussions or the strange events surrounding Arin. He had a habit of learning things that other people only discovered much later, and he was often involved in conversations that the rest of them had never even heard about. If anyone aboard the ship could explain why their companion was so irritated, Bertho was their best chance of finding out.
"Oh, what he's angry about is quite interesting," Bertho said with a smile when he noticed that everyone was looking at him. He seemed delighted to have an audience, particularly because the matter involved one of the more unusual developments within the family. Rather than immediately explaining himself, he allowed the others a moment to become even more curious, clearly enjoying the attention. Given the expressions on their faces, he knew that he would not be allowed to keep the information to himself for very long.
"He's angry because Karl managed to pass through his senses two days ago without him noticing," Bertho finally explained. The revelation was particularly amusing to him because Arin's ability to detect his surroundings had become one of the most reliable advantages he possessed. Under ordinary circumstances, approaching Arin without being noticed was extremely difficult, and the family had spent considerable time discussing whether there was any practical way to overcome that ability. Yet Karl had somehow succeeded, and the fact that he had done so without immediately explaining how had left Arin with a mystery that he was determined to solve.
The incident had also ruined an opportunity for the elders to organise a proper betting pool on how long Arin would remain away from the family before being found again. Before they could arrange the details and begin collecting bets, Karl had already caught him, bringing the entire affair to an abrupt end. According to Bertho, the elders' reactions had been remarkable, as though someone had broken into their homes and stolen their most valuable possessions. Their disappointment had been so obvious that it had become a source of amusement for everyone who had witnessed it, particularly those who had been hoping to profit from the wager.
"And you actually know how he did it?" Tom asked, his curiosity growing as he considered the implications. He wanted to understand how someone could approach Arin without triggering the young Ranger's senses, because doing so would make their usual training exercises considerably more interesting. Arin rarely used his abilities to their full extent during practice, but outside those sessions, his awareness was almost always active. That had made it increasingly difficult to surprise him, and the old tricks that once worked on him had gradually lost their effectiveness.
For Tom, the problem was not merely that Arin could detect an approaching person, but that the ability had made certain forms of harmless mischief almost impossible. Sneaking up behind him, startling him unexpectedly, or appearing somewhere he did not anticipate had once been entertaining ways to pass the time. Now, those attempts usually ended with Arin noticing them long before they came close enough to succeed. If Karl had discovered a reliable way to bypass that awareness, Tom wanted to learn it as well, even if only to make their future interactions less predictable.
"Yes, I took part in the discussions about how it could be done," Bertho replied proudly. He straightened slightly, clearly pleased that his involvement in the family's deliberations had finally become relevant to someone else. The others immediately turned their attention towards him, expecting an explanation that would reveal the secret behind Karl's success. Bertho opened his mouth to continue, but before he could get another word out, someone appeared beside him with considerably less patience for his dramatic presentation.
"Oh, come on, just tell us!" Arin demanded, poking Bertho in the ribs to stop him from bragging and force him to get to the point. His sudden appearance caused Bertho to flinch, and the latter immediately realised that his audience had acquired a particularly impatient listener. Arin had clearly been close enough to hear the discussion, and his expression made it obvious that he had no intention of waiting through an unnecessarily long explanation. Whatever pride Bertho had taken in revealing his knowledge, he now had to deliver the answer before Arin decided to continue poking him.
"Ow! All right, I get it! Stop poking me, and I'll tell you," Bertho complained, looking at the madness in Arin's eyes. He raised his hands slightly in surrender, deciding that continuing to tease his cousin would only make the situation worse. Once he was certain that Arin would let him speak, he took a moment to organise his explanation into something that might actually be useful. The answer, as it turned out, was closely connected to the very thing that had made Arin's abilities so unusual in the first place.
"It's simple," Bertho began. "Whatever you did that day resonated with the forest, and it gave several members of the family inspiration for improving our breathing methods." He explained that Arin's experience had helped them understand how their connection to nature might be developed beyond what they had previously considered possible. The discovery had not immediately granted everyone the same abilities as Arin, but it had provided a direction for their own training. By adjusting their breathing methods and learning to interact with mana outside their bodies more effectively, they had begun to establish a connection with the forest of their own.
"They can finally connect with the forest in a way similar to you, Arin," Bertho continued, making sure that the distinction was clear. "Of course, their abilities aren't nearly as powerful as yours, and their field of view within the forest is only about five metres." Even so, that limited awareness was a considerable improvement, because it allowed them to perceive their surroundings through a connection that went beyond their ordinary senses. They were no longer relying entirely on what they could see, hear, or otherwise detect directly, and that gave them a new method of understanding what was happening around them.
"Grandpa Karl used that connection to blend himself into the forest," Bertho explained, "so that he appeared as nothing more than background noise on your radar." The trick had not involved overpowering Arin's senses or somehow making himself invisible in the conventional sense. Instead, Karl had used his understanding of the forest and the family's newly developed breathing method to make his presence difficult for Arin to distinguish from the surrounding environment. By matching himself to the natural background that Arin was already sensing, Karl had managed to approach without standing out as something that required his attention.
Bertho admitted that he had not completely understood every technical detail discussed during the meeting. The elders had gone through the theory at length, examining how the new abilities could be used alongside their breathing methods and how mana outside the body could be controlled more effectively. However, the explanation had been complicated enough that Bertho could only confidently describe the general principle. He understood that the method relied on using their connection to the forest and their improved handling of external mana, but he was not prepared to claim that he could reproduce Karl's technique perfectly himself.
"That's interesting," Arin said as he finally stopped bothering Bertho and sat down on the deck. The ship continued moving steadily up the Rhine River, its progress maintained by twenty men whose full-time occupation was rowing vessels along the waterway. They worked as part of a transport service that operated like a bus network, carrying passengers between the cities and settlements connected by the river. Although the system was less convenient than the transportation methods people had once taken for granted, it provided a dependable way to travel through regions where modern technology could no longer be trusted.
The ordinary riverboats stopped at multiple locations along their routes, allowing passengers to board or leave wherever the service permitted. However, the Sonnenbergs had paid for a more expensive arrangement that would take them directly to their destination without unnecessary delays. Every city along the Rhine had three such boats available, with crews prepared to depart and replacement rowers ready to take over whenever a vessel reached a scheduled stop. The arrangement made the service surprisingly reliable, especially for travellers who needed to reach a particular location quickly and could not afford to waste time waiting for other passengers.
The company responsible for the ordinary river buses also operated this more specialised service, and its prices were not particularly high considering the convenience it offered. Their journey had cost twenty silver coins, which was a substantial amount for an ordinary traveller but not an unreasonable expense for a family conducting an important scouting mission. Even so, the fee was unlikely to cover the full cost of maintaining boats and crews that had to remain available throughout the day. Most people understood that the company was not operating the service purely for immediate profit, but was also trying to earn the favour of influential people who regularly made use of it.
"To think that it can be done that way," Arin murmured, turning Bertho's explanation over in his mind. The idea that someone could use a connection to the forest to disappear into the background of his awareness was both fascinating and frustrating, particularly because it had been demonstrated by Karl rather than merely suggested in theory. Arin began considering how he might adapt his own senses to recognise someone using the same technique, although he knew that finding a countermeasure would not necessarily be simple. If the method relied on the forest itself becoming part of the disguise, he would need to understand the interaction far more thoroughly before he could hope to detect it consistently.
He looked around at the others and asked, "But I take it that you're all proficient enough to contact the forest now, right?" His question was partly a request for confirmation and partly a warning that they should take the new ability seriously. If everyone aboard had developed at least a basic connection, then they would need to understand its limitations before entering the Black Forest. Their upcoming mission required them to remain alert, and an incomplete understanding of their own abilities could become a liability when dealing with unfamiliar conditions.
The others nodded in confirmation, reassuring Arin that they had all managed to establish the connection to some degree. He considered their answers for a moment before explaining that not every forest would respond to them in the same way. Their ancestral forest was exceptionally kind to him, allowing him to maintain a field of awareness that extended more than one hundred and fifty metres through its trees. In an unfamiliar forest, however, his range shrank to around fifty metres, and even maintaining that distance required him to push himself considerably harder.
"Keep that in mind when we reach the Black Forest," Arin warned them. "Our ancestral forest is unusually accommodating to us, so don't assume that every forest will offer the same level of support." He wanted the others to understand that their new abilities were useful, but they were not universal solutions that would work equally well in every environment. The difference between a familiar forest and an unfamiliar one could determine whether they noticed a threat in time, especially if someone had deliberately altered the surroundings or concealed evidence of their activities.
Having finished his warning, Arin settled into a comfortable position on the deck and began meditating as he considered possible countermeasures. He was not trying to cultivate, since doing so in the open under their current circumstances would be inefficient and would distract him from the problem he wanted to solve. Instead, he focused on understanding how Karl had blended into the forest and what changes he could make to his own awareness to prevent a similar trick from working again. Seeing him begin to concentrate, the others followed his example, using the quiet journey to reflect on their abilities before they reached their destination.
Meanwhile, the captain stood nearby checking the timetable and ensuring that their vessel remained on schedule. His first mate watched the passengers for a while, clearly curious about the unusual group that had booked the more expensive service. Eventually, he leaned towards the captain and asked quietly, "Are they really that important?" The question was understandable, given the way the crew had been instructed to accommodate the passengers and avoid unnecessary delays throughout the journey.
"Yes," Captain Mero answered without looking away from the timetable. "They're on the list of people we should never annoy if we happen to encounter them." His matter-of-fact response made it clear that the warning was not something he intended to discuss casually with the crew. The Sonnenbergs might have appeared to be a group of travellers heading into the forest, but their family name carried enough influence that even a seemingly insignificant act of disrespect could create problems. Mero therefore intended to provide the service they had paid for, deliver them to their destination on time, and ensure that neither he nor his crew gave them any reason to remember the journey for the wrong reasons.