The Search

Alex walked through the outskirts of the city with uneasy steps.

He had found out very quickly that this mission he had chosen would not be as easy as he thought.

'Is there not one useful person in this city!?'

The only piece of useful information that Alex had obtained was that the Sleeper killed by invading people's minds while they slept and prevented them from being able to wake up, causing them to die of dehydration after days had passed.

The problem for Alex was not the danger the Sleeper posed to him, but the utter lack of information about it. The only people who could remotely know anything about it were the victims, but they were all dead!

What made things even harder was the fact that the Sleeper didn't even have to physically attack its victims, meaning it could be hiding away in some remote place while it attacked from far away.

Two days passed as Alex trudged his way through the city streets, with no progress gained on his mission.

Over the last few days the nervousness and tension surrounding the attack of the Galephant had died down.

This was due to the presence of a the person the city lord had invited over to fend it off.

A B rank adventurer, he had a B tier soul core!

Naturally all worry died down when he arrived.

Alex kept going around the most crowded area, the marketplace and asked people for several days.

By now, most people were already telling him that they knew nothing before he even asked any questions.

The people wished they could help. The Sleeper was a much bigger problem for them than it was for Alex, but they simply knew nothing.

Constantly getting turned down definitely impacted Alex's motivation to carry on, but he knew he had to keep up the investigation.

If he did end up giving up on the mission, then he would have to pay the cancellation fee—25% of the mission reward.

He definitely couldn't afford this, his total net worth in this place was a resounding zero,

Other adventurers occasionally passed by him, some showed pity at his situation, others simply threw ridiculing glances at this first timer.

But, Alex never reacted to the ridicule.

He just kept up the monotonous searching and asking.

Two weeks after Alex started searching, small changes took place.

Due to Alex not having a single penny to his name, he had to resort to hunting for small animals in the forest outside of the city for food, which took even more time away from searching for the Sleeper.

He was safe do so, as only a day after he had arrived, the B rank adventurer took down the Galephant when it suddenly attacked the city walls that morning. However due to the level of power the adventurer and the Galephant held, no one other than those two were present for the battle, so the people just took the adventurer's word for it when he said the beast was dead.

Naturally a celebration was held city wide and the adventurer was thanked profusely before he had to leave.

Alex was still focused on the hunt for the Sleeper during that time though.

Alex had gone past the point of asking questions to the people of the outskirts, he simply gave them quick glances as he passed them and they returned with a nod, signalling that they still knew nothing.

On top of that, the ridicule from other adventurers had stopped.

They saw how he was unaffected by their words or sneers and actually gained a faint sense of respect for him. He at least had a stronger will than the other newbie adventurers they had seen.

One of the biggest changes though was that there were another two people who had fallen victim to the Sleeper.

Alex naturally rushed over to their locations when he heard of it, but still there were no traces of the beast.

With no luck in his current method of doing things, he had to change methods.

***

Another three days passed for Alex, and his routine had changed drastically during this time.

He no longer strolled around the streets during the day, asking for information from the people—he decided to go searching for the information himself.

He started sleeping during the day and became much more active at night. This was the most likely time the Sleeper would strike, and Alex was a little mad at himself for not thinking of it sooner.

But he couldn't really blame himself, he was still an amateur at this whole Primordial Expanse thing.

'Today is the 17th day of searching, nothing again.'

Alex wrote down his thoughts in a little notebook he had found laying on the ground when he went out to hunt one day.

He resumed his search of walking through the streets, investigating any little movement he noticed.

Most of the time it was just a rat or the occasional drunkard stumbling back home after a night at the tavern.

With nothing of note again today, Alex simply sighed as he looked up at the pitch black sky, lit up by the stars.

It had just reached midnight and the moon was glaring high in the sky. 

'So even this place has a moon, huh.'

Looking up at the sky was Alex's coping mechanism for dealing with the lack of motivation to carry on. It reminded him of his days back in the mining colony.

Only, today would be different from all the other days.

"Strange for birds to be so active at this time, don't you think?"

Alex heard a sudden voice come from somewhere behind him.

"Huh? Ah, sure I guess it is."

Alex responded absentmindedly, before turning around to look at who was speaking to him.

Strangely though, nobody was there.

Nervousness slowly creeped its way into Alex. He was a hundred percent sure he heard someone speak to him just now.

He had even responded back to them!

Alex frantically searched his surroundings for the source of the voice and yet even after thirty minutes of searching, he found nothing.

He had to force himself to give up and instead focus his attention on something else.

'Birds? Why would the voice suddenly start a conversation about birds with me?'

Instinctively, he looked up at the sky, and noticed a lone black bird circling the area, occasionally overlapping with the silhouette of the moon.

"Now that I think about it, it is strange for birds to be active at night, unless…."

The moment he spoke his thoughts out loud, it was as if something clicked in his brain.

'The Sleeper! Only a beast like the Sleeper would be active at night!'

After three weeks of searching, Alex had finally found what he suspected to be the Sleeper!

'I don't know who you are, but I appreciate the help!'

Alex excitedly thanked the empty air repeatedly before he darted off towards the area where the bird, or the Sleeper was circling above.

He knocked on one of the houses the Sleeper frequently flew over.

When he received no answer after a few minutes of knocking, he brazenly stepped back and proceeded to kick the door down.

Now, whoever occupied this house should definitely be awake.

He searched through all the rooms before reaching the bedroom, where a middle aged man was sleeping with a peaceful look on his face.

Alex was disturbed, but secretly excited though when no matter how hard he shook him, the man wouldn't wake up.

This confirmed it!