The group of three carried on. Instead of going right to Gastat, they decided to take a detour after talking to Sarbat a bit more. In a short debate, they concluded that the forest massive to the east of the road they were on was the most fitting candidate for a criminal hideout, and such, they hopped off the carriage and spent the rest of the night walking towards the forest. It was day time now, the group had plenty of rest in these fields, which felt quite homely after spending around two days among this tall, yellow grass. The edge of the forest grew closer and simultaneously bigger. Before they knew it, their legs had already walked a hundred steps in those dense woods.

"This definitely feels like prime free land for a camp." Rurik said, stabbing the ground in front of him with a stick he picked up on the way, while Luka and Neoklipt followed behind. Luka was enjoying the refreshing and damp air of the forest far more than the other two members of their squad. "It would certainly be pointless to try and search for someone or something in such a huge and dense forest with just three people." Neoklipt nodded to himself as his raspy voice sunk into the natural insulation, "But, I suppose you have some crimson dust left over, isn't it right?" He went on as the young man sighed slightly before shoving the stick into the ground and going through the vials on his chest. With the rustling of fabric carrying on for another couple of seconds, Rurik raised the vial that contained a small amount of blood-coloured powder. 

The young man let the vial lay in his hand, looking at it with burdened eyes. "All I hope is that we find someone with this... And if we do, I hope they have at least a mediocre mage among them, otherwise this'll be the last of my powder." He took a full breath of air, and in a swift motion, Rurik pulled out the cork of the vial and both of those to Luka, while himself reaching for another vial with some sort of sap. He opened the vial and reached into it with his finger, getting a bit of the sap out and spreading it onto the entire area of his right hand and fingers, from the palm to the tips of his digits. After finishing up the entire ordeal, he gave the second vial to his sister as well. 

Rurik looked at Luka, extending his right hand towards her with a sorrowful expression, prompting her to pour the entire contents of the first vial onto its surface. He glanced at Luka one more time, and had a short look at Neoklipt, both of them stood there in wait for the action that was soon to transpire,  "Now, it's a question of whether they are close enough or not." He said quietly, closing his eyes and squeezing the powder hard in his fist with hopes that it wouldn’t be one of the many wastes that they had to experience... A thin string of very opaque and thick smoke began to spill from his hand, drifting down through the stagnant and moist air of the forest, reaching for the overgrown ground like a ghostly tendril. They watched the smoke in bored anticipation; their eyes widened when the smoke suddenly sprinted across the thick greenery in a thin line.

"Looks like we have a lead!" Luka delightedly chirped, reaching for the hilt of her sword, which hung in the scabbard on the left side of her hip. Meanwhile, the masked man had more of a practical reaction, leaning closer and speaking with a lower volume, "Rurik, what did you ask the dust?" Rurik took a step, not wishing to waste time like they waste money, and so he began following the smoke that dripped from his hand, humming audibly before replying. "I asked to search for people who aren't us. Asking for bandits or runaway convicts would be too direct, this thing is so finicky...” 

Rurik clicked his tongue, but with the way that this had to be operated — one could understand his frustration. “I wish we had a proper search tool, but even the most basic apparatus like the handheld area scan cost an arm and a leg with some extra. That are the prices in the Usurbruk countdom, by the way, elsewhere the situation is double or triple as bad." The young man waved his left hand to signal for the others to follow, and they did, trying to not trip on the protruding roots and fallen branches. "So we have to keep doing that awful thing to get crimson dust?" Luka pinched her nose, the memories of one awful experiment vivid in her mind. "Obviously, that's the best we can get, and practically for zero cost, too! Besides, it's always curious to do.” Luka recoiled from that admission, but Rurik, unaware of his sister’s reaction, carried on with his elaboration, “I like tinkering with the formula and ratios during the treatment." While Luka was busy groaning with exasperation, and Rurik busy with his spiralling monologue. But, Neoklipt paid no mind to the main topic again, resorting to asking his own questions: "Did you set a contact radius?" This made the young man let out a scoff. "Do I look like an idiot to you? It's about eighty meters, enough for detection to work, but far away enough for some criminals not to notice."

Luka followed that line of thought with her own smug remark. "You really need to drop this habit of always assuming that our adversaries are braindead." However, Rurik did not fall for the provocation, settling for a snug retort instead: "I'll do that when you stop assuming that they are weaker than us every time." Though he clenched the smoking fist harder, again, he had far too many memories to ignore her words outright... "My journal..." Someone patted his shoulder; it was obviously Neoklipt, who showed much needed compassion to the young man. But even with this gift of gentleness, Rurik turned sour still, "It's easy for you to console, Neoklipt, you've never even lost anything because of my dumb sister." He mumbled, shoving some lush branches away from his face but almost tripping right after. Luka didn't laugh at the clumsiness of her brother, although she did pay closer attention to the ground after witnessing his mishap. 

Walking over the branch that Rurik almost tripped on just now, with extra carefulness, of course, Luka spoke:"What's the maximum distance that the crimson dust can search for something, again?" She asked, which made Rurik grind his teeth a bit. "It really depends on the formula and ratios you're using, in this case it should be around two and a half kilometres." Luka expressed some minor awe at the revelation, "That's far~! I thought it was no more than eight-hundred or so meters." Rurik got a little pride stuck in his cortex, and so he snarked about his special knowledge. "I got a hold of some good words from a witch all the way back in Blade Vale~" The reaction he solicited did not take long to arrive — "Blade Vale?! Witch?! How come you didn't tell us that you met a fucking Witch?!" Luka screamed, even Neoklipt felt a minor twitch, lifting his eyes from the forest floor to look at the young man in the back, "I really hope you aren't bullshitting us right now, because that is a huge deal that you've just dropped onto us." Luka kept talking with considerable fervor, trying to catch her breath, the group thanking the forest for such good sound insulation. While fanning her face with the hand that was previously on the hilt of her longsword, Luka managed to shut up. "I was going crazy there, too." Rurik genuinely giggled, prompting his sister to side-eye him from the back, "I was so scared and excited while talking to her that I almost fainted. A routine leisure in the Blade Vale turned into a full-blown conversation with a Witch, can you imagine? Otherworldly, I tell you." A smug smirk static on the face of that young man.

"When'd you meet her, even?" — "Not too long before my journal burned up." Oh, that made it all the more guilt-ridden of a situation. Luka sucked in her lips, stopping in her tracks, but Rurik didn't change in expression. But still the other two slowed down and looked at Luka, Rurik reaching his left hand to rub his forehead. "I'm not mad. I am not.” He said, pointing to his sister, as their best interest was not in standing still and lamenting on things that aren’t currently relevant, “Now stop standing in place and help me with clearing these damn bushes!" 

The deeper they ventured into the forest, the denser the greenery got, to the point where it felt like there were actual walls made of live grass and leaves in some places. "Gosh, I bloody hate woods like these... Reminds me of the jungles in Zatlanem, disgusting.” Rurik caught a shiver down his spine, and Neoklipt seemed quite natural in this enviroment, “I hope that there aren't any elves here, at least." Luka finally took out her shiny sword with a fancy guard and some engravings on the blade, the younger brother shook his head in minor disagreement, “As much as I hate those long-eared nuisances — foul insects are much more of a concern in these kinds of places...” 

Rurik quickly rolled his head along his shoulders soon after those words, a stir of discomfort at the nearby critters and something that went undetected at the back of his head. "Well, since I can say for sure that we aren't even in the lands of our world, I can vouch for the chance that there aren't any elves at all!" Rurik said while his sister cut through the branches and collections of green whatever, and though his words were as outlandish as one would have imagined them to sound, Luka didn’t seem to react all that intensely.

"That's a bold claim, care to elaborate?" Neoklipt also chimed in, after Luka made that very remark. "I had a hunch, but I wouldn't mind hearing what you deduced from the mere two days that we spent here." The young man cleared his throat and went through between the cut branches, thinking of a concise reply to give to the masked individual. "First: the transport stages. They can only work within a set distance of around one thousand kilometres, and besides the stage in Eirpejn, there are no more destinations in the east, only the island, which means that we already moved somewhere where we weren't supposed to. Second: the transport stage here, next to the shore, was completely bare. Only the stage, not a single vendor stand, not even roads leading away from the stage. Third: the impodium of the magic here is different, while the apogee and direction are the same. That is the most obvious giveaway, but there is more. The last point: The soil here is unlike any of the islands." The rest of the group made sense of the first three points, Luka being the one who had a more panicked expression. 

"The soil?" The cloaked man asked, tugging at the bottom nip of his mask like one would a chin when thinking. "Yeah, I did a quick breakdown of the soil when we were waiting for a carriage yesterday, "I didn't even notice." Neoklipt added, "It's far less obvious, I only checked the main components of the soil compound, it's a minute's worth of effort. Most importantly, the soil had the polar opposite properties of our regional soils in the island ring. Far less fertile than any soil on Ranesairan, besides the north, of course. The sand content was very high even a considerable distance away from the shore, plus extra mineral content, that's not the case on Ranesairan or both neighbouring islands." Neoklipt nodded. With all that smart talk, even the brash one of the group decided to add her own bit to the conversation: “I’d think that the impodium being different is much more of a dead giveaway than the bloody dirt being a different kind!” Though she was thoroughly ignored.

But even in this ignoring silence between the three, Luka still had a question in her mind. "Why'd the transport stage work, then?" With this new idea tossed in the oven, the young man took some time to bake a thought, stopping himself from following the smoke. "The stages work both as anchors and leads, accounting for the rotation of the planet and its general movement in the solar system, and all the other factors.” Rurik stated as he waved around with the index finger of his free hand, “It also tracks its relative coordinates on the ground using the Blade Vale as a constant reference, keeping it stationary. I suppose that it also accounted for complete world transmigration as well, what a feat of engineering and magical prowess!" The black cloak pushed on to clear some bushes from the way. "That means that we got really lucky that the stage had its coordinates within the borders of a rather low shoreline. We could've been transported to the middle of the ocean for all I know, or better: Inside a cliff." Rurik shrugged his shoulders, walking past Neoklipt and after the smoke on the cleared path. "What happened — happened, we were fortunate enough, that's all."