Chapter Eighty-Seven
 
Brakes and safety were practically erased from her dictionary.
 
Yuri was literally slamming her foot on the accelerator throughout the journey. Just a while ago, her brother, Hyuk-Jun, informed the three of them that the headquarters had received an emergency call from Yoona and played the recording of her call to them.
 
“Help… Save Sooyoung…”
 
This was the only message Yoona left before the call went dead. Her voice was unusually hoarse and weak in the call. She sounded as though she was in pain and was struggling to speak when she activated the emergency call.
 
Yuri took a quick glance at her GPS. The device showed that she was still about half an hour away from her destination.
 
“Damn it!” The hunter cursed loudly. She was already at her fastest speed, but Yoona and Sooyoung’s location was still so far away from her!
 
The communication team said Yoona could not be reached no matter how many times they tried to contact her. The lack of response from Yoona only signified the kind of danger Sooyoung and Yoona were facing, and––
 
Yuri flinched and ducked slightly when her car landed on the ground with a loud impact after she ran over a hump. 
 
And Yuri didn’t dare to imagine what could have happened to them. She was not ready to lose another comrade when she just lost Tiffany. It was disheartening enough for her when Tiffany chose to leave them, she didn’t want to go through a similar kind of pain again.
 
She didn’t want their home to lose any more warmth.
 
When Yuri finally arrived at the scene, she spotted their car easily as it was the only object along the empty road. Without a second thought, Yuri got out of her car and ran to the stationary vehicle. At the same time, another car was driving towards her from the opposite direction and it stopped right in front of her friend’s car.
 
The glary headlights stung Yuri’s eyes. Yuri lifted her arm in reflex and blocked her eyes from them. She only put it down when she heard the engine had stopped running.
 
“Unnie?” Yuri was surprised to see Victoria and Amber here. From what she understood, they were also sent to patrol the suspicious area.
 
“Mr. Headmaster had informed us about Yoona. He wanted us to come over since we are the nearest to them.” Victoria answered Yuri’s query without waiting for the latter to ask. She glanced at the car which was sitting quietly beside them, “Is this their car?”
 
“Yes.” Her vision was getting blurry out of the sudden. Yuri quickly blinked several times, hoping that the little action would make her tears go away. “Unnie, did you see anyone when you’re on your way here?” She couldn’t cry yet. If she cried now, it would only mean she had lost her faith in them.
 
“No, the road was empty.”
 
It was an expected answer, but it did not stop Yuri from getting even more disappointed.
 
Suddenly, the sound of a car engine buzzed noisily through this quiet path. The three hunters turned to the source of the noise and spotted a familiar car running towards them from a faraway distance.
 
“That’s…” Victoria remembered seeing that car in Aurales, but she had forgotten who drove it for a moment. “Woo… young and Junho?” Somehow, she managed to recognize the two people who were behind the windscreen.
 
Yuri said nothing, but nodded to her as a form of acknowledgement. She began to walk away from the duo and started to explore their surroundings. Seeing this, Amber decided that she should look around the place too and assist Yuri.
 
“Hey!” Junho greeted the present hunters as soon as he alighted. “What’s the situation?”
 
“Missing.” Victoria answered the question on behalf of the other two when she noticed Yuri was looking out for footprints and Amber was some distance away from them, kneeling on the ground, looking at something. She shrugged and pointed at the car which was besides the three of them. “Their car is here though––” 
 
“They might be up there.” The tomboyish hunter interrupted their conservation. She swiped the sands away from her knees and got up from the ground. Then, she turned to the remaining hunters and showed them her closed palm.
 
Junho was confused, “Umm?”
 
Amber snorted and revealed the item in her hand.
 
It was a communication device.
 
“That’s… Yoona’s device!” Words came out of automatically when she saw the device. However, Yuri wasn’t sure if that device really belonged to Yoona, but even if it wasn’t Yoona’s, it could only be Sooyoung’s device.
 
Amber threw the device to Yuri and turned to the hill behind them. She looked up and squinted at the steep slope which was occupied by trees.
 
“I have a feeling that the device rolled down the hill after Yoona made the call.”
 
Wooyoung happened to get out of his car when he heard Amber’s statement. He stepped forward and observed the hill as well. The little nature smelled nothing but danger to him, and it was giving out a sense of eeriness.
 
His hunter’s instinct told him there was something wrong up there.
 
“We have to check it out.”
 
*
 
Jonghyun was always given the simplest task whenever they had a job to do. For instance, he was instructed by Sunny to guard their base while the three of them were away. He wasn’t even told about the situation. He only knew it was something urgent because the three of them just ran away without bidding goodbye to him.
 
It hurt him sometimes to know that his elder brother and sisters still saw him as a kid. There were many times whereby he had the urge to scream and inform them that he was more than a hundred years old, he was not a child anymore, but he gave up that thought because he knew they would never listen to him.
 
He was still that playful young teenager who escaped the village with them in their eyes.
 
Jonghyun should be sleeping now. Even though the elder sorcerers wanted him to look after their base, he doubted they actually meant what they said. He was always instructed to guard their base, but nothing happened since the first day they moved into this place.
 
The lonely sorcerer teleported to the hill where the others usually hung out for a drink.
 
Most of the time, he would be left out by the others. But occasionally, he would join them too because Taeyeon was around. She was probably the only one that would invite him, but ironically, she was also the one who appeared the least.
 
Speaking of which, he hadn’t seen Taeyeon for quite some times. The last thing he heard was that she had gone back to Tiffany. Apparently, according to what Sunny said, Taeyeon couldn’t fulfill what she proposed. She was supposed to kill Tiffany, but she realized she loved her too much that she couldn’t bring herself to harm her.
 
Sunny was unsure what exactly happened to the both of them (because she wasn’t at the scene when they left), but she assumed the two of them had gotten back together since she couldn’t find any of them, not even their clothes, when she returned to Taeyeon’s house. She did try to contact Taeyeon, but the signal never went through. It seemed to them that she had decided to abandon them and leave with Tiffany.
 
Jonghyun thought they would be angry, but he was wrong. He witnessed how they wished Taeyeon to be happier when they learnt about the news.
 
Perhaps, they already knew this was going to happen.
 
Leaning against the rock on the hill, Jonghyun rested one of his arms under his head and looked at the sky. The weather looked bad. He could hardly see the moon with those clouds covering it. There were no stars either. He could basically see nothing at all.
 
“Looks like it’s going to rain soon…” Jonghyun mumbled to himself.
 
Releasing a sigh, Jonghyun got up from the ground. He decided that he should return to their base now in case his prediction of the rain came true.
 
However, before he was able to teleport to the foot of the hill, the ground started to shake tremendously. It was as though an earthquake was going on. Jonghyun swore he would have rolled down the hill if he hadn’t grabbed onto the large rock behind him in the nick of time.
 
The earthquake continued for the next five minutes. It wasn’t particularly long, but it was more than enough to drain half of Jonghyun’s energy away.
 
“What the hell was that?”
 
Jonghyun dropped to the ground as soon as the shaking of the ground stopped. He had lived on this island for about three years, but this was his first time experiencing an earthquake…which was weird! He’d never heard of any earthquake which occurred around this area!
 
“Whatever, I should go back now.”
 
Just as the sorcerer thought this was the end, the island started to glow. It scared Jonghyun initially, but he realized it wasn’t the island that was glowing. There was something in the inner part of the island which caused the sudden brightness.
 
Jonghyun squinted at the direction of the glow and his pupils dilated when he realized what was at the end of the glow.
 
“The ruins!”
 
*
 
The hunters managed to climb to the top of the hill one by one with the help of the trees on the slope. Junho was the first in line. He would assist the ladies even though they could make it to the top on their own, while Wooyoung stayed last in line, ensuring all the ladies had reached the top before he made his way up.
 
“Wooyoung! We’re left with you!”
 
Wooyoung heard his partner calling for him. Indeed, as he looked up, he saw Junho had stretched out his arm and was trying to reach for him.
 
There was a certain distance between them, and Wooyoung would never be able to hold his partner’s hand if he stayed in the same position. Looking around, Wooyoung spotted a large rock that was within his reach.
 
“Coming!” Wooyoung said to his partner as he reached for the rock, trying to push himself further up the hill.
 
The rock seemed sturdy enough to hold Wooyoung’s weight, but it gave way from the soil unexpectedly when Wooyoung enforced his palm on it.
 
Wooyoung was obviously unprepared for this situation. His body slipped along with the rock down the hill. But fortunately for him, a tree was in the direction when he glided down the slope. Wooyoung threw his arms around the bark quickly, preventing himself from rolling down to the bottom of the hill instead.
 
“Yah! Wooyoung!” Junho shrieked in shock. The hill wasn’t that high, but there were too many trees around. Who knew what would happen if Wooyoung didn’t hold on to that tree in the nick of time? He could have hit them instead and break his bones.
 
“I’m fine!” Wooyoung shouted to his partner. It might hurt a little when he threw his body at the tree trunk, but the impact was not strong enough to break his body. “I’ll come up there in a minute!” Wooyoung looked around his surroundings again as he searched for a support that could assist him in climbing the hill, however at the same time, his gaze caught a mysterious lump hanging around the roots of a tree a few feet away from him.
 
The night was dark, and it didn’t help at all when the leaves blocked the moonlight from brightening the slope of this hill.
 
“Hey Wooyoung! What’s wrong?”
 
Wooyoung heard his partner again, but his brain automatically filtered the voice out as it placed all his attention on the mysterious lump.
 
“Yah! Wooyoung!”
 
The hunter ignored his partner’s call and made his way towards the lump carefully. He would look for the trees near to him and threw himself at them, allowing them to bring him closer to his target which was still hanging motionlessly around that particular tree.
 
Soon, Wooyoung made it to his destination without putting himself into any danger again. He was, however, astonished at the scene which had just unfolded in front of him.
 
“Junho! Get down here now!” An unusual panic could be felt in his voice. It was a little shaky as well, which was a strange sight because Wooyoung was a very calm person in regards to most of the matters. He seldom revealed a different personality unless Tiffany was involved and obviously, this had nothing got to do with that missing hunter.
 
Junho didn’t dare to delay any further. When Wooyoung asked for help, it was most likely for an emergency matter.
 
“Junho, what’s going on?”
 
The three female hunters were exploring their surroundings when they heard Junho’s scream. They ran back to the hunter immediately and overheard Wooyoung’s instruction to him.
 
“I have no idea. But I think Wooyoung found something down there.” Junho did try to find out what was happening on the slope, but he had trouble even in finding Wooyoung’s position. “I’m going to get down there first. Wait for us here!” With that, he leaped into the darkness before them.
 
Wooyoung was some distance away from the peak. Junho only found him after he descended about a quarter of the hill. Still, Wooyoung was away from their original route and was squatting next to a tree. Junho almost missed him if Wooyoung didn’t call for him again.
 
“Hey buddy! What’s up with you?” Junho asked as soon as he reached Wooyoung’s side.
 
Wooyoung did not answer him. Junho could see him struggling to stand up with his back bent low, as if there was something in his arms which pulled him down.
 
“Hey, you okay?”
 
“I found her.”
 
The silent hunter finally turned around to face Junho. An unconscious figure could be seen lying motionlessly in his arms.
 
“Who is––”
 
Junho was about to ask Wooyoung who that person was when the moonlight suddenly fought its way through the tree branches and its leaves, trailing to the person’s face. His eyes widened in shock when he recognized her identity.
 
“Yoona!”