“Where is the manal figure?”

“Oh, I have it. What about it?”

“…Nothing. Just keep holding onto it. We might need it”

"For what?” asked Mikhail with obvious contempt in his tone.

Amanda raised her head and knitted her eyebrows at Mikhail. She opened her mouth but sighed and shamefully shook her head.  

“I don’t know. There could be animas that can harm us! Maybe it'll cause the Faranhiet disease again. So just keep an eye on it, okay?”.

Mikhail raised an eyebrow but ultimately answered “Okay”.  She timidly wrapped the map into a roll and put it in her bag.

“Alright let’s move it people” Amanda said and headed towards the door. 

They went outside into the burning sunlight and the waving wind.

Amanda closed the gate of the garden and locked it with the keys. While she was busy doing that Mikhail closed in on Bold from behind and poked him on the shoulder.

“What?”

“Shush. Just take this” whispered Mikhail

Seeing the manal figure in his hand Bold’s eyes almost bulged out of its sockets.

“Y-you, wha-“

“Be quiet and just take it” whispered Mikhail.

“But-“

Mikhail had a playful smile on his face. Even if Bold had absolutely no idea what the mad man had planned he still took the figure and plunged it into his bag. After Amanda was finished she turned around and spoke: 

"After each team finishes searching they will have to head back here to our house immediately, got it?" said Amanda as she eyed everyone. 

The others nodded and quickly split into two teams and headed towards opposite directions.

Mikhail, Amanda, Diego and Gabi walked around the outskirts of the city and within an hour of traveling they entered into the forest. With a click on the button on his shoulder, Mikhail opened up his menu and started to type on it. 

“What are you doing?” asked Amanda with a bit of annoyance in her voice.

“Sending a message to the others through the team chat. That we're fine and dandy and are arriving close to the gem spawning area” answered Mikhail.

"Well, good" said Amanda.  

The woods and barks in front of them began to disperse in quantity. And soon they were out in the open in a wide plain with rocky ruins.

“So, this is the place, huh?” said Diego.

“I’m only now noticing. The gem has to be above the ground, right? If it’s under the ground we could be searching for quite a while” said Gabi.

“Search first. Whine later” said Amanda.

They followed her wise words but strangely enough, Amanda was not the one to follow her own words. After a minute of attempted investigation, she sat on one of the rocks and looked at them with absent eyes. Mikhail indeed searched for the gem but soon he couldn’t help but despise Amanda’s strange behavior. The hopelessness in her face, the laziness. Something was not right. 

“Mmm, found nothing” said Gabi.

“Yeah. You think it could be under these ruins?” asked Diego.

“That would be terrible. But this is a wide area and the gem itself should be pretty small. I mean, it should be the same size as the gem that I swallowed, right?”

“The size of a person’s thumb, yes. Which is quite unfortunate” complained Diego.  

Ignoring their chit chat Mikhail sat next to Amanda.

“Why aren’t you searching for the gems?” Amanda asked.

“Why aren’t YOU searching for it. It’s strange. The way you were so in a hurry to get here. And all of a sudden you seem to be drained when effort actually should count. What happened?” asked Mikhail.  

“I dunno. A woman’s mood changes like the wind, they say”

Mikhail giggled and threw the rock sitting next to him aimlessly.

“Perhaps it was wrong of me to try to make sense of the illogical. But do tell Amanda. The map…”

“What about the map?” asked Amanda with a quick jolt.  

“It was hand-drawn.” said Mikhail.  

“Yeah…so what?”.

“Maybe I am a fool to ask. Maybe I am just overthinking. But…I never actually saw a hand-drawn map provided by the virtual world. The posters scattered around the world. The user menu, everything. With the same font and computer text. Only that map. It was beautifully drawn but regardless of its beauty, it was hand-drawn. Even the map sort of thing that Vlad kept from the chest we found in the dungeon quest was not hand-drawn”.

“Oh yeah. That is strange indeed” she said with a drowsy tone.