The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

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With the size of these two grade seven artifacts, Evelyn would never feel assured putting them on the bed as she had done with the 'Shadow Strike'. Who knew when Bree would think it looked edible and decide to put it in her mouth? 

Needless to say, this thing could only stay safe in her inventory until she was done explaining its purpose and dangers to the others, and even then, she would still have to be careful.

Evelyn shook her head as she moved on to the next item, hoping it would finally be a defensive artifact, but unfortunately, it turned out to be another strange object that she wouldn't have been able to guess the use of at all if not for her system.

-[ Hunter's Compass: Grade Five ]

— A mysterious object personally crafted by the 'Oracle'.

— It is able to hunt for all kinds of prey. The type of prey it will hunt for depends on the blood poured into it as fuel.

- Mode 1: Tracker

— When the owner of the blood being fed isn't within a hundred meter range (in living or corpse form), it will start tracking the objective if possible, otherwise switch to mode 2.

— Mode 1 has a limited range of ten thousand meters.

"Huh… so basically, as long as I'm able to get my hands on someone's blood, I should be able to track them down as long as they're not too far away from me, right? This could be useful… maybe?"

- Mode 2: Treasure Hunter

— When activated using beast blood, it is possible to unearth memories of treasures that the beast could have either protected or stumbled upon recently. 

— Will not work if the memory or blood is too old, or if the location in the memory is too far from the current location.

- Mode 3: Love Hunter

Evelyn's lips twitched immediately upon seeing the title. "I better keep this hidden well away from Cecilia."

Still, she couldn't contain her curiosity to check the description out.

— If fed once again with the blood of the owner after binding, the compass will activate in the third mode, once again accepting more blood. The owner's blood will be used to determine the compatibility of the future lover.

— The second feeding will determine the targets it will hunt for, and the owner should preferably use the blood of someone they consider as their ideal lover.

— A note from the Oracle: "Use at your own risk. I was half asleep while making this. But I did give you a 3% discount, so just be happy."

"Wait a minute… isn't 'Oracle' the title of the same person that created Amara's 'Arcane Archive'? Should I give it to Amara?"

Evelyn shook her head. "Well, whatever. It's good enough for me if it can occasionally help me find some treasure. Plus, the first mode could be very useful against super slippery enemies. I'll share it with Amara for now, it should be fine as long as she doesn't hand it over to Cecilia. And I can always take it back whenever heading out alone."

Thinking about how Craig had escaped that day, given how his leg had been cut off, having something like this would surely have allowed them to track him down shortly.

The difference between her 'Lotus Throne's Eternal Ripple' and the first mode of the 'Hunter's Compass' was the same as that between a short-range radar and a tracking bug.

"Ahh… how nice would it have been if he had dropped his spatial artifact while escaping, and we found this inside and used it to track him down? He would have probably died from anger."

Giggling to herself, Evelyn continued sifting through the rest of the contents of Craig's spatial artifact.

Unfortunately, there weren't any more higher grade treasures to be found, because most of the boxes seemed to contain either grade two or grade three defensive artifacts.

"I know I did ask for defensive artifacts, but is this stuff really the best he had? Considering that the bastard was able to resist even the clash between the 'Thousand Eyed God' and the two Sentinels, I assumed he must have at least something amazing…"

But it seemed like either he had used it all up, or maybe the main defensive items weren't being kept inside the spatial artifact at all.

Evelyn couldn't help but frown. "Does that mean I missed them and they're still in the Wonderland of Doom? Or did they get destroyed?"

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, the pink haired girl knew that just thinking about it wouldn't help. "Given how thoroughly I was scouring that area, I should have been able to notice something like that, but since the spatial artifact could be flung off so far away by the Tree Demon, it's possible that it also happened to the other stuff."

But even if that was so, Evelyn had no real way to find out. The most reliable way she could think of was to go back to hunt in that general area, and use the 'Hunter's Compass' with the blood of the beasts she hunted in hopes that it could lead her to whatever treasure they had spotted.

There was no telling if such a process would even work, however. Maybe if the beast never considered the thing it saw as a treasure, the compass wouldn't react, who knew? And while spirit beasts were just as if not smarter than humans, the same couldn't be said for the regular monsters at all.

Although some surely had a comparably high level of intelligence, the variation between different types of beasts was just far too great.

Just taking the Tree Demon as an example, Evelyn would never have been able to toy around with it as she did if not for its stupidity. Even if it had just started using its branches to sling debris at Evelyn, it could have proven to be quite a challenge.

"Now that I think about it… even if I were to assume that Craig got caught off guard or something, just how in the world did that beast manage to catch a senior professor like Dane? Were they both sleeping without a care in the world?"

Although it would mean that professor Dane was even dumber than the Tree Demon for being so careless, how else could it be explained? If not for having caught the senior professor while he was unconscious, the man could have easily burned the Tree Demon to death, no matter how weakened he had been.

"This whole thing is kinda fishy… don't tell me someone's trying to frame me for killing Craig?"

Well, it was true that she did kill him, but that wasn't important.

"I found them so easily while Aurora and the other pillars searched for so long but couldn't find any trace at all… isn't that absurd?" 

No matter how she thought about it, however, she couldn't think of how someone would be able to frame her in this case. No, who in the world would even be able to imagine that she could kill someone like professor Dane by herself?

Evelyn knew that she herself couldn't have imagined it, until it actually happened. "Either whoever is trying to frame me believes far more in my abilities than I do myself, or… this is really just a coincidence."

Someone who is capable enough to pull this kind of stunt, who also believes in her… only one name came to her mind. "I'll try to probe Aurora… just in case. She's sure to get annoyed, but she'll forgive me. Probably."

Evelyn shook her head after thinking about it for a while. "Anyway, I'm sure that there was no one else around, and I even got rid of Donna in the end. Even my friends don't know about it. Only Ruru and Bree know, and there's no way they're ever going to do anything to hurt me."

Sifting through the rest of the defensive artifacts, Evelyn couldn't help but smile. "At least whoever picked these had good taste. Most of them look pretty. Necklaces, pendants, rings, earrings… there's all sorts of variety here. Gosh… hm… wait a minute…!"

She'd already felt a little strange that most of the defensive artifacts in Craig's inventory seemed so feminine, but she just thought it didn't matter what it looked like if it served its purpose.

But when she recalled how the 'Seed of Rejuvenation' worked, another thought came to her mind. "Don't tell me all these belonged to the girls that married him and were sacrificed? Does he keep them as souvenirs or something? No wait, how old was Craig again? This has to be more than a few generations worth, right?"

In total, she had already sifted through at least three dozen of these defensive jewelry, and Evelyn didn't believe that Craig could have already married and sacrificed so many wives.

"No, even if he wanted to, the process has to be somewhat gradual, right? Given that the rooted seed can even be transferred to the child, it should take at least a year or longer to sprout! So what the heck is going on with all this jewelry? Did Craig like to cross-dress?"

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