The forest was eerily silent.

“We can’t be the only ones.”

Carinne said, turning back towards the starting point of the competition. As they reached the forest entrance, they found a gathering of people.

“We went around in circles and didn’t see anything.”

“Me neither. What’s going on?”

“We should have checked for prey first. Isn’t that basic? Tell the organizer to come out!”

The other participants in the hunting competition were complaining. They, like Carinne, were empty-handed. So, the forest was indeed empty. It was clear that the foolish Giles had started the hunting competition without even checking for prey.

“What’s that deer?”

Just then, a mumbling voice caught her attention.

A deer? Where?

Carinne craned her neck and looked beyond. Two deer lay dead under a tent. Someone must have brought them, but who? More importantly, the fact that the deer were dead…

‘There were deer in the forest?’

Even though she had searched high and low, she couldn’t even find a shadow of an animal, let alone a deer. How on earth did this person catch a deer?

While Carinne tilted her head in confusion, a commotion erupted at the entrance of the forest.

“Isn’t that a rabbit?”

“There’s a fox too!”

Two men on horseback were walking out of the forest. It was Giles and the man who was presumably his aide. What was unbelievable was that there were various animals, including rabbits and foxes, hanging from their saddles.

Carinne counted the animals in a daze.

Two rabbits, one fox, and two unnamed birds, for a total of five. It was quite a lot, considering that the sun had not yet set and there were two people.

“What are you all doing? Why are you all gathered here?”

Giles seemed a little surprised to see the people gathered. The people looked back and forth between the animals hanging from the saddles and Giles, and each said a word.

“There’s not a single prey in the forest!”

“How can we hunt if there’s nothing there!”

“No way. I have good eyesight. I just came out after catching them.”

As people protested, Giles patted the rabbit hanging from his saddle. He seemed to be saying, ‘Well, I think I did everything I learned.’

If there was no evidence, there was nothing they could say. The people who had been protesting closed their mouths with confused expressions.

Carinne was speechless, too. Just a moment ago, she was sure that the forest was empty. However, seeing the caught prey in front of her, her heart wavered. Maybe she was just unlucky today. Or maybe she wouldn’t have found any prey if she hadn’t left the forest early.

She bit her lip, feeling remorseful…

“…Let’s look harder tomorrow. Ahem, the deer over there is the one I caught, so don’t touch it.”

…Then, she came to her senses as she looked at the fussing Giles. Out of all these people, only Giles had succeeded in hunting. And not just one or two, but a total of seven? It was suspicious, very suspicious.

Her intuition screamed that something was fishy.

“Wait a minute. Something’s not right.”

“What do you mean something’s not right? Are you saying it’s strange that I hunted?”

Seeing him flare up, the suspicious feeling grew stronger. If he had hunted fairly, there would be no reason to get angry. Carinne spoke with conviction.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Out of all these people, only you, Sir Giles, have succeeded in hunting. I didn’t even see a single hair of an animal in the forest.”

Voices of agreement were heard from the side. Starting with ‘I didn’t see anything either’ to ‘Where did all those animals come from?’, people began to suspect Giles.

As the voices grew louder and the atmosphere became tense, Giles’ aide stepped forward.

“It hasn’t been long since winter ended, and the weather was quite chilly today. So, I guess they went into their burrows and hid.”

It had been months since winter ended, and he was still talking about winter?

Even if the weather was chilly, it was absurd to say that the animals went into their burrows and hid as if they had made a pact. And if the animals had gone into their burrows and hid, it would have been normal for everyone to fail in the hunt, not for one person to come back with a full bag of prey.

People looked unconvinced, and Carinne couldn’t hide her skepticism either.

“No need to make excuses. Let’s go.”

As Giles glared at his aide and turned away, his aide hushed the crowd as he disappeared.

“The competition has one more day, so let’s wait a little longer. And this is just between us, but Sir Giles was quite lucky today. He had a hard time hunting, so please don’t say anything too harsh.”

Giles’s aide was a man of sharper wit than Giles. He quelled the people’s discontent by claiming to have witnessed Giles’s arduous hunt.

Regardless of the truth of his words, the people had no choice but to remain silent. There was no evidence that Giles had cheated, and it was true that the competition had one day left. Perhaps they could catch prey tomorrow?

The grumbling people scattered with little hope, except for Carinne.

It didn’t make sense that Giles was the only one who had successfully hunted, no matter how she thought about it.

However, without evidence, there was nothing she could do, and it was awkward to stand out alone when the others were convinced by the aide’s words. If Archen were here, she would ask him what he thought. He had disappeared somewhere after they left the forest.

Carinne looked around and found him standing under a tent. The tent was empty, as Giles had taken the deer with him when he left.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s about the deer that was here. There was a piece of white bark stuck to the tip of its antler.”

It seemed as though he was examining the deer as she had wondered what he was doing. He opened his hand and showed her something that looked like a piece of white bark.

“Why is there bark on the antler?”

“Deer have a habit of rubbing their antlers against trees in the spring. When they rub their antlers, the bark peels off and sticks to the antlers.”

So, that was why the bark was left on the antlers. But what did that matter?

Archen glanced at Carinne’s face and continued.

“The only tree with white bark in this vicinity is the whitebark pine. But this is not a whitebark pine forest, is it?”

Aha.

Now, Carinne understood what Archen was trying to say. The dead deer was not from this forest. It was from the whitebark pine forest. He had caught a deer that lived in the whitebark pine forest and lied that it was caught in this forest.

Who? Giles. As expected, her intuition was right. Giles was the only one who caught prey, while everyone else in the village failed?

No way.

“He hid the prey separately?”

“It’s highly likely.”

“Then it’s settled! We’ll follow Giles tomorrow and expose his trickery.”

Carinne clapped her hands, then realized it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

“No, that’s not it. If I were Giles, I would keep quiet tomorrow. That way, I wouldn’t be suspected.”

Just because it was tomorrow, the animals that have disappeared won’t suddenly appear. People would fail to hunt again and grumble with discontent. If he were to catch prey alone again in such a situation, he would inevitably be suspected of cheating.

Giles may be a fool, but he’s not that much of a fool. And Giles had an aide who seemed to be quite intelligent.

Then, what about using the whitebark pine bark as evidence to corner Giles?

But as if reading Carinne’s mind, Archen threw the bark he was holding on the ground.

“This is useless. The deer, which is the actual evidence, is gone.”

That was true. No one would believe her if she just held up the bark. It would be difficult to find other evidence with the deer gone.

“There’s no way. What should we do? At this rate, Giles will win first place in the hunting competition.”

She didn’t want to see Giles swaggering around, let alone offering her prey. It was the same even if she refused the prey. The thought of seeing his greasy face acting smug made her stomach churn.

How could she expose Giles’s trickery and make him a laughingstock?

One thing was certain: Giles had cheated. And the only ones who knew that were her and Archen. The rest were just suspicious, but they couldn’t be sure without evidence. If only she could show everyone the evidence, then they would all be of one mind and corner him.

Oh, what about this? A good idea immediately came to mind. Carinne told Archen her plan, and he gave her a troubled look.

“That’s a bit…”

“Why?”

“Do we really have to do that?”

“Do you have a better way?”

In the end, he agreed with Carinne that there was no better way.

“Alright. We’ll need a magic… no, a magical tool.”

“Don’t even think about using magic.”

Magical tools were objects created by mages infusing them with magic, and even those without magic could easily use them if they knew how to operate them. The only drawback was that they were a bit expensive, but money was no problem for the princess of the Second Duchy.

“Let’s go to the city. We need to hurry if we want to get a magical tool.”

They would have to move quickly if they wanted to get a magical tool within a day. Just wait. She would expose his trickery and make him pay dearly. Moreover, she would make sure to flatten his nose so that he would never dare to flirt with her again.

Carinne spurred her horse and smiled meaningfully.

—