Tensei Youjo wa Akiramenai - Vol. 7 Ch. 36.1

[_idiot]

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing that asshole fail his mission just because he couldn't be bothered to hold a squirming baby/toddler for a little bit. What a dumbass.

 

[Justking14]

Are we supposed to know who the second kidnapper is?

don’t think so. Pretty sure they’ll just be waiting at the capital when they get there

 

[TheBigMonk]

Thanks for the chapter!
Please let the arc end after this. I have had quite enough of this.

 

[NotALewdGuy]

Amazing! Mission complete.
That right there is why you're the best, Boss.
The one and only!

But Boss, they're just kids!

 

[dashen]

Suspension of disbelief lets me ignore that they left the kidnap target unattended and that they cant see the baby on the grass, but i assumed the magic field that repels the ghosts was visible and shiny? Maybe its just drawn for clarity but isnt visible and i just forgot, idk.

 

[piratesgoyarrrr]

They wouldn't have failed if they didn't toss the baby.

Don't toss the baby!

 

[rabidvats]

She couldn't hide if it weren't for her knowledge of her previous life allowing her to be strategic, combined with the visual barrier preventing them from seeing her. No one expects a toddler to pull what she has, let alone be capable of doing so.

Nobody expects a toddler to be this clever, but only someone who has never dealt with a toddler wouldn't know how easily you can lose track of them as soon as you stop paying attention to them.

Suspension of disbelief lets me ignore that they left the kidnap target unattended and that they cant see the baby on the grass, but i assumed the magic field that repels the ghosts was visible and shiny? Maybe its just drawn for clarity but isnt visible and i just forgot, idk.

They've established that the ability to see the magic field directly is rare and limited basically to the Albans (pp. 14–16), and the kidnappers don't even have magical ability. So, no, they can't see the field.

OTOH, the hallows gathering around Lia/Ria to attack should have been a giveaway.

 

[Amariithynar]

Nobody expects a toddler to be this clever, but only someone who has never dealt with a toddler wouldn't know how easily you can lose track of them as soon as you stop paying attention to them.

None of them are people that deal with toddlers, since they're just mercs, so thanks for supporting my point? XD

They've established that the ability to see the magic field directly is rare and limited basically to the Albans (pp. 14–16), and the kidnappers don't even have magical ability. So, no, they can't see the field.

OTOH, the hallows gathering around Lia/Ria to attack should have been a giveaway.

It's still the dark of night with no light sources to prevent anyone seeing their faces; as readers we get magical vision to see things, but it's meant to be much darker than it is to us, which is why the leader signalled a retreat before their faces could be seen in the soon-to-come dawn light.

 

[Serathe7]

I really hope she totally gets away from this group to cut down on kidnapping in a kidnapping in a... I dunno, how many deep are we now??

 

[rabidvats]

None of them are people that deal with toddlers, since they're just mercs, so thanks for supporting my point? XD

Mercs don't ever have families now? I don't recall any evidence that any of those mercs had no such experience. (Well. except for the fact that they did put down a toddler expecting it to stay put.)

But I wasn't actually arguing against your conclusion, here—just your reasoning.

It's still the dark of night with no light sources to prevent anyone seeing their faces; as readers we get magical vision to see things, but it's meant to be much darker than it is to us, which is why the leader signalled a retreat before their faces could be seen in the soon-to-come dawn light.

Is this intended as a response to me? You put it right after my response to dashen, but neither of us were talking about seeing faces at all; we were talking about the visibility of the hollow-repelling field and (on my part) the hollows themselves.

Note that it's clearly established that the hollows were visible—most notably by the fact that the approaching kidnappers were spotted because of their effect on the hollows' movement.

 

[daallday]

Nobody would expect a toddler to be able to outsmart her kidnappers, so I find it believable that they were so careless with her that they let her escape. It'll only work once tho. Let's hope she doesn't end up in their grasp again, cause next time they'll definitely bring a chain

 

[Amariithynar]

Mercs don't ever have families now? I don't recall any evidence that any of those mercs had no such experience. (Well. except for the fact that they did put down a toddler expecting it to stay put.)

But I wasn't actually arguing against your conclusion, here—just your reasoning.

Unless they're in very specific circumstances, ie. they take in unwanted children and raise them, mercs typically only have one interaction with children: at swordpoint. Even for those who have families, they wouldn't really be interacting with their own kids, since they're constantly out working or looking for work, meaning that they rarely see their own kids.

Is this intended as a response to me? You put it right after my response to dashen, but neither of us were talking about seeing faces at all; we were talking about the visibility of the hollow-repelling field and (on my part) the hollows themselves.

Note that it's clearly established that the hollows were visible—most notably by the fact that the approaching kidnappers were spotted because of their effect on the hollows' movement.

I noted that as the reason none of this group, as per their own statements, run any form of lights, drastically lowering visibility. Hollows are only partly visible in the moonlight and starlight like any living being would be; there's never been any occasion where they've been noted as being luminescent that I am aware, so they would be notable for crowding around her like they are, sure, but they'd have to be seen by the mercs in the first place, with the darkness and tall grass inhibiting their vision.

 

[rabidvats]

Unless they're in very specific circumstances, ie. they take in unwanted children and raise them, mercs typically only have one interaction with children: at swordpoint. Even for those who have families, they wouldn't really be interacting with their own kids, since they're constantly out working or looking for work, meaning that they rarely see their own kids.

Do you have any actual evidence to back this up? Especially with respect to this world? Because it seems to me that you are just imagining one particular way for mercenaries to work and assuming that these ones conform to that.

How long have these people been mercenaries? What did they do before? Do they only work as mercenaries, or do switch between several jobs? How much looking do they have to do for work in this world? Do they have camp followers? There are a lot of options that would allow them to have more experience with young children.

I noted that as the reason none of this group, as per their own statements, run any form of lights, drastically lowering visibility. Hollows are only partly visible in the moonlight and starlight like any living being would be; there's never been any occasion where they've been noted as being luminescent that I am aware, so they would be notable for crowding around her like they are, sure, but they'd have to be seen by the mercs in the first place, with the darkness and tall grass inhibiting their vision.

At this point it is getting light enough that their faces will soon be recognizable, yet when they attacked much earlier—when it was much darker and at a much larger distance than Lia is to them now—their presence was given away by the motion of the hollows being driven away from the field.

It really doesn't matter whether hollows are luminescent or not. We have a clear demonstration that in significantly worse conditions the hollows are still visible enough to give away the location of someone near them by their motions. This shouldn't be surprising, seeing that they are adult-sized, numerous, and float in away that reduces the effect of ground cover; recognizing a specific person's face—which is much smaller and requiring much more detail—is inherently much, much harder, so it doesn't make a good point of comparison.

 

[Amariithynar]

Do you have any actual evidence to back this up? Especially with respect to this world? Because it seems to me that you are just imagining one particular way for mercenaries to work and assuming that these ones conform to that.

How long have these people been mercenaries? What did they do before? Do they only work as mercenaries, or do switch between several jobs? How much looking do they have to do for work in this world? Do they have camp followers? There are a lot of options that would allow them to have more experience with young children.

Historical accounts of how mercenaries operated, of which there are many. The only time they would be available to be at home would be between contracts, and that's when they would be most desperate for securing further work, so unlikely to return unless they were retiring. It's well-documented that the large majority of mercenaries stretching all the way back to the classical era would be away from their homes for years on end during their contracts and while between them looking for further work, as well. Even if they have children with camp followers, they wouldn't generally be involved in the child's upbringing unless they were pairing off with that given person, and it wasn't just an unlucky prostitute or washerwoman who ended up having to deal with being with child when the merc spurned her, which was more common amongst the mercenaries due to their generally foreign origins.

The term for a mercenary that switches jobs most typically is "bandit". Unless they aren't mercenaries and are instead something like a noble's personal guard (which there is no implication that they are at all), generally they'd be looking for work constantly, taking whatever contracts they can get to make ends meet, hoping to land either a very lucrative one, or a very stable one, depending on the type of merc they are (personal profit is always the biggest motivator, but some prefer long-term employment over short, high-paying but exceptionally dangerous contracts; eg. mercenary guard vs. being hired to actively participate in a war).

At this point it is getting light enough that their faces will soon be recognizable, yet when they attacked much earlier—when it was much darker and at a much larger distance than Lia is to them now—their presence was given away by the motion of the hollows being driven away from the field.

It really doesn't matter whether hollows are luminescent or not. We have a clear demonstration that in significantly worse conditions the hollows are still visible enough to give away the location of someone near them by their motions. This shouldn't be surprising, seeing that they are adult-sized, numerous, and float in away that reduces the effect of ground cover; recognizing a specific person's face—which is much smaller and requiring much more detail—is inherently much, much harder, so it doesn't make a good point of comparison.

Page 13, chapter 34. They're using portable light sources to illuminate the nearby area around the cabin to detect motion and get some visibility. That is not a significantly worse condition. Furthermore, the mercs were marching forward and repelling the hollows directly nearby before being detected, with all four groups of mercs barely beyond sword's range in the time it took for the guards to call out that there were enemy groups in each direction, as shown with page 28, same chapter. Hollows gathering around a spot would not itself be a giveaway so long as it's not visible enough (and as they have no physical presence, they don't interact with the material world and thus would not affect the tall grass, either).

I don't blame you for not remembering these details, considering that was five months ago that that chapter was posted, so these more recent chapters aren't well-connected, unless read or re-read recently (I usually make it a point to re-read a previous chapter or two when a series gets picked up awhile later and I can't recall the details while reading a new chapter, which is what I did when tonikaku picked this up).

If you want further confirmation about hollows and their not projecting light, Chapter 5 has the death and chapter 6 the appearance of Hannah and the Rag Dragon's hollows, with several others appearing as little more than murky shadows (and in Ch. 5 when she's woken up by the hunter group prior to the hollow attack, she mentions it being "so bwight", which implies they're carrying a light source as well, or that dawn has already broken, as it does on page 14 of 36.1, while they're all actively looking away and at a distance from her actual position, and is when the leader states that they aren't going to search further because their faces were at risk of being seen; he, if anything, seems like he's not a typical merc, and is tied to a higher power in some way, like a competing noble of Wester).

 

[rabidvats]

Historical accounts of how mercenaries operated, of which there are many. The only time they would be available to be at home would be between contracts, and that's when they would be most desperate for securing further work, so unlikely to return unless they were retiring.

[...]an unlucky prostitute or washerwoman who ended up having to deal with being with child when the merc spurned her, which was more common amongst the mercenaries due to their generally foreign origins.

The term for a mercenary that switches jobs most typically is "bandit".

In other words, you are thinking of "mercenary" as a full-time professional soldier for hire. This is specifically contradicted by the story, though. Manga ch. 36.1 p.8:

Soldier: Your highness, these are no ordinary bandits.
Hubert: Yes, I can tell by the way they move.
Hubert (thought): The ones that came from the rear... They showed nowhere near that level of coordination. They're just a bunch of uncouth rogues...probably hired mercenaries.
Hubert (thought): Those from the front however... From the way they handle their swords it's clear that they received advanced training.

In other words, in this world mercenaries are riff-raff hired to bulk out a fighting force; they are not skilled and likely not experienced. Vice versa, the ones who are skilled probably aren't mercenaries by Prince Hubert's assessment, so there's no reason to think they would have the full-time mercenary life you are suggesting.

Of course, he could be wrong, but he's presented as quite skilled and knowledgable about military matters and the area, so probably not.

Note that the leader and the ones with him when he put down Lia and ignored her are probably in the skilled group, since they are directly involved in the kidnapping part.

Unless they aren't mercenaries and are instead something like a noble's personal guard (which there is no implication that they are at all)[...]

See above. That's exactly the sort of thing being implied. The fact that the leader is concerned about their faces being revealed, not to mention that a noble is implicated as being behind it, is also clue toward that.

FYI, "bandit" is not what you would call a part-time mercenary. Bandits are defined by outlaw behavior; mercenaries are defined by soldiering for hire; neither has to do with frequency. One can be a bandit, a merc, neither, or both, and any of those can be part-time or full-time.

Page 13, chapter 34. They're using portable light sources to illuminate the nearby area around the cabin to detect motion and get some visibility. That is not a significantly worse condition.

Actually, it is. The attackers were spotted at the tree line where they exited the forest. The light sources are being placed 10m away from where Hubert was standing, but the last panel in that chapter shows that the tree line was at least 30m away and that the approach of the group he spotted was at such an angle that they had to have come out at least twice as far (60m).

In other words, they were at least 50m away from the nearest light source while Hubert was 10 and were thus getting only 1/25th as much light as Hubert—light that will be fouling up his night vision. And that's without accounting for extra shadows from the trees and scrub.

Compare to Lia's escape:

It was almost dawn before she escaped. In that time, the kidnappers decide to and do signal to withdraw, Lia takes careful stock of the situation and environment and plans an escape, she backs out slowly, is noticed and then runs, starts making misleading grass movements to draw the kidnappers toward the cabins, then hides and starts sneak-crawling in the opposite direction.

At this point we get the last good shot of her and the kidnappers, putting her only 3m away but needing to pass by them. They notice they are having trouble and Lia notes that they are searching only toward the cabin, but looking at an angle that shows that they are not that far behind her. Then she plans the future with a diagram (unfortunately useless for estimating distance[*]). Then the hollows appear and at least five gather around floating over her. We get a shot of the kidnappers looking like it's from her POV (camera is low in the grass) where it appears to be maybe 15m away from the camera's POV.

Then the recalled attackers arrive, are asked if they saw Lia, and the sun rises.

OK, if Lia is 15m away, she is 4x closer (meaning 16x in visual area) in equal light to the kidnappers than Hubert was at a 25x light disadvantage. Hubert also spotted one lone adult-sized hollow while Lia is surrounded by 5. That is a 2000x advantage for the kidnappers, but lets say 1000x since the hollows might overlap from the kidnapper's POV and thus take less area. In order for it to be as hard to spot the hollows for the kidnappers as it was for Hubert, Lia needs to be 15m*√1000 = 475m away.

So if we assume that the shot that I got 15m from was not from Lia's POV, she and the kidnappers still had to separate from when they were within 3m of each other and needing to pass by, with both moving slowly (Lia crawling slowly to avoid disturbing plants and the kidnappers moving slowly to spot a toddler in tall grass under somewhat poor lighting conditions), in the time between almost dawn and dawn and only part of that. It's not reasonable that they could have gotten half a km away from each other in that time.

Furthermore, the mercs were marching forward and repelling the hollows directly nearby before being detected, with all four groups of mercs barely beyond sword's range in the time it took for the guards to call out that there were enemy groups in each direction, as shown with page 28, same chapter.

Time is difficult to measure in comics, but as noted above, there is more direct evidence of the distances involved.

Hollows gathering around a spot would not itself be a giveaway so long as it's not visible enough (and as they have no physical presence, they don't interact with the material world and thus would not affect the tall grass, either).

The hollows interaction with the world isn't relevant. They themselves cluster around victims; it's that behavior that itself points out Lia's presence.

I don't blame you for not remembering these details, considering that was five months ago that that chapter was posted[...]

I hadn't heard of this comic 5 months ago. I started reading it after following the same post that pointed the translator to it. Nor did I forget these details; I was already aware that the lighting favored my argument, but I was hoping to avoid getting into the weeds over them. (Oh well...)

If you want further confirmation about hollows and their not projecting light[...]

I don't think they project light, either; setting up lights to see them at night would be counterproductive if they did.

I will take back one thing I said: It does matter if they project light, because if they did, it would wipe out the disadvantage that Hubert was at due to the lighting drop-off. So them glowing would actually weaken my argument.

[The leader], if anything, seems like he's not a typical merc, and is tied to a higher power in some way, like a competing noble of Wester).

Yes, we agree on that. (See above.)


NB: I didn't go into detail about how I produced the measurements, but they are based mostly on perspective comparisons on the sizes of different objects in the same panel to estimate distances, taking an adult as 2m high (close enough for estimation).

[*] The diagram not only shows future planned positions, but is clearly not-to-scale—Lia is not nearly as big as a mountain.

 

[Amariithynar]

In other words, you are thinking of "mercenary" as a full-time professional soldier for hire. This is specifically contradicted by the story, though. Manga ch. 36.1 p.8:

In other words, in this world mercenaries are riff-raff hired to bulk out a fighting force; they are not skilled and likely not experienced. Vice versa, the ones who are skilled probably aren't mercenaries by Prince Hubert's assessment, so there's no reason to think they would have the full-time mercenary life you are suggesting.

Of course, he could be wrong, but he's presented as quite skilled and knowledgable about military matters and the area, so probably not.

Note that the leader and the ones with him when he put down Lia and ignored her are probably in the skilled group, since they are directly involved in the kidnapping part.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about with them not being implied to be more than mercenaries- All that implies is that they have better martial skill than a common mercenary, similar to the hunters; or, in short, they're professional soldiers-for-hire, rather than rabble sellswords, like they took on to pad out their ranks and engage the people in the back, who just had to be stopped from coming to support the front lines long enough that they could break through and capture Lia.

They're definitely in league with someone or someones who are more than meet the eye, but at this moment there's nothing beyond the leader shown as being apart from the men, ie. not a merc himself but a knight in service to a noble, or a higher-ranking minion of some cult, perhaps (considering that they had four large-sized barrier boxes themselves, there definitely is a lot of magical power behind them, but there's little likelihood it has anything to do with the Kingdom, so it's some great magic power holder or holders outside the bounds of the Kingdom that are likely behind it (and given the leader has golden eyes Lia can see in the dark, he's likely one, though not a noble given his simple orders and understanding of them in ch. 36), which is where the concept that it may be a cult comes from; Not likely a noble of Wester either, since they'd just be sabotaging their own situation, unless they have an illogically strong hate boner for the royal family and would rather see everything burn rather than Wester get better for everyone, including the royals). We can see that the elites with the leader have different clothing too, in ch. 35 and 36.1, dressed in robes that look black and more refined (as when we see the leader's outfit), versus the ones already fighting in lighter colours.

See above. That's exactly the sort of thing being implied. The fact that the leader is concerned about their faces being revealed, not to mention that a noble is implicated as being behind it, is also clue toward that.

See above; all that is implied is that they are very skilled, not your common merc nor a noble's personal guard. The leader is concerned about being revealed and being able to be tracked down, since they're attacking royalty and high-ranking nobles with the intent to kidnap; they cannot risk being known, obviously, as that would severely impact their efforts, as they would be able to spread the word to villages and such that they pass by, including guard posts, who can spread the word throughout the kingdom, and cause significant trouble for anyone seen and anyone in their company, too.

FYI, "bandit" is not what you would call a part-time mercenary. Bandits are defined by outlaw behavior; mercenaries are defined by soldiering for hire; neither has to do with frequency. One can be a bandit, a merc, neither, or both, and any of those can be part-time or full-time.

Yes, it is. Mercenaries fought for coin, and when they could not find work, they lacked coin to survive, so turned to banditry to survive until they could get a contract again, or made the switch full-time if they discovered banditry was more profitable; sometimes individually, sometimes working in bands. Again, this is very well-documented historically, and is why mercenaries were so well-paid, and were usually the first to be paid, as well; local soldiers, loyal or otherwise, wouldn't ruin their own homeland, but foreign mercenaries would pillage without a care.

Actually, it is. The attackers were spotted at the tree line where they exited the forest. The light sources are being placed 10m away from where Hubert was standing, but the last panel in that chapter shows that the tree line was at least 30m away and that the approach of the group he spotted was at such an angle that they had to have come out at least twice as far (60m).

In other words, they were at least 50m away from the nearest light source while Hubert was 10 and were thus getting only 1/25th as much light as Hubert—light that will be fouling up his night vision. And that's without accounting for extra shadows from the trees and scrub.

Sorry, but your distance measurements are all just conjecture, especially when we can look at page 13 and 14 of ch. 34 and see how completely wonky the distances that each of the servants placing the light boxes are being drawn at compared to the result; it's no good to use as a basis of measurement. The one placing one for the people to the rear is just a few feet away from the one closest in shot, while the one in the far right front is little smaller than the prince himself, yet is positioned like he's meant to be next to the cabin.

The very next page shows the cabins with the barrier boxes and five people standing nearby, all approx. 90 pixels tall from the same bird's eye angle, so there's no or little perspective skewing going on here; we can get a decent-ish (since it's still at the mercy of the artist drawing proportionately) comparison here. The distance from center cabin to the right is 340 pixels, which would translate to 3.7 times the height of an average man, and since this is a Japanese manga, the average would be 5'7.2", or 1.70688 meters; that means there's about 6.315456 meters between center and right cabins; from the left cabin to the center is 267~270 (lets round to 270 for ease of math) which would be 5.12064 meters. All told, they could at most be 10 meters away from each other if placed equidistant from the cabin in general, but nowhere near 10m away from the cabin itself, as you were suggesting. Furthermore, from page 24, we can also see that the cabin isn't that far from the forest line, given that from that position we can't even see the cabin to the right (from the bird's eye view looking at the doors) of the one that they are at (we might if the textbox wasn't covering that area, but there aren't any lines going beyond it, so either the artist didn't draw it at all, or it's further to the right, from this perspective). At most they're like 10-15 meters away from the treeline, not 50.

The lights also seem to be something like a faerie fire light that illuminates a wide area softly (and would make sense for long-lasting magic lights, since a bright light would require a larger stone for more charge to last the timeframe, and more magic is not something they have in plentiful supply in Wester, as has been set up in the story earlier), so I don't think that the light is affecting his night vision as much as you're suggesting, either; it's not bright enough to give away faces, at least, or else the leader would have been concerned about that when they attacked, after all. Furthermore, when the leader is standing by the doorway looking inside, if the lights were bright enough to ruin night vision, as you suggest, he wouldn't remark that it's too dark inside, given the windows (we can see two blocked off on the front right on pages 3 and 4 of ch. 35, and we can clearly see one through the doorway on page 29) and the open doorway, as well.

Hollows also create a crackly static noise when they're around, so hearing it be pushed to the side by the mercenaries seems to be more what he's detecting, rather than seeing it; it changes from a "vu...." to a "vun...." sound, so it seems to be a detectable change in quality. In ch. 35 on page 10, we further get confirmation that it's not visual recognition of the hollows but audible recognition, as they detect the hollows are being repelled by the sound they make against the barrier, long before they see the rag dragons coming in. It's also not until they leave the cover of the forest and enter the clearing that the Prince notes that they're here and confirms that they have a barrier box (which means he couldn't see), and then the guard on his left notes they're coming from the left too. Since it's the same bushes we saw on page 24, just seen from the front, we can definitively note that they aren't being seen all that far off at all, either.

Compare to Lia's escape:

It was almost dawn before she escaped. In that time, the kidnappers decide to and do signal to withdraw, Lia takes careful stock of the situation and environment and plans an escape, she backs out slowly, is noticed and then runs, starts making misleading grass movements to draw the kidnappers toward the cabins, then hides and starts sneak-crawling in the opposite direction.

At this point we get the last good shot of her and the kidnappers, putting her only 3m away but needing to pass by them. They notice they are having trouble and Lia notes that they are searching only toward the cabin, but looking at an angle that shows that they are not that far behind her. Then she plans the future with a diagram (unfortunately useless for estimating distance[*]). Then the hollows appear and at least five gather around floating over her. We get a shot of the kidnappers looking like it's from her POV (camera is low in the grass) where it appears to be maybe 15m away from the camera's POV.

Then the recalled attackers arrive, are asked if they saw Lia, and the sun rises.

OK, if Lia is 15m away, she is 4x closer (meaning 16x in visual area) in equal light to the kidnappers than Hubert was at a 25x light disadvantage. Hubert also spotted one lone adult-sized hollow while Lia is surrounded by 5. That is a 2000x advantage for the kidnappers, but lets say 1000x since the hollows might overlap from the kidnapper's POV and thus take less area. In order for it to be as hard to spot the hollows for the kidnappers as it was for Hubert, Lia needs to be 15m*√1000 = 475m away.

So if we assume that the shot that I got 15m from was not from Lia's POV, she and the kidnappers still had to separate from when they were within 3m of each other and needing to pass by, with both moving slowly (Lia crawling slowly to avoid disturbing plants and the kidnappers moving slowly to spot a toddler in tall grass under somewhat poor lighting conditions), in the time between almost dawn and dawn and only part of that. It's not reasonable that they could have gotten half a km away from each other in that time.

Time is difficult to measure in comics, but as noted above, there is more direct evidence of the distances involved.

She backs out slowly, and page 8 shows she's already a significant distance away from them compared to how she was right behind them on page 7, before she makes the rustling and they turn to notice her, at which point she gets up, barriers up, and dashes back into the tall grass, where they lose sight of her entirely. Page 11 shows that they think she's heading to the seaside side of the clearing, and then turn around and head back towards the cabins in page 12, thinking, due to the rustling she did deliberately, that she's trying to get back to them through the shortest route possible, looping around them in the grass and heading straight back.

She's looking over her shoulder at them turned away, notes that they're all paying attention in the direction of the cabins, too, before the hollows even appear, let alone start crowding around her. While the diagram on page 12 is not to scale, it is still approximate, in that the kidnappers are at the northern edge of the glade through the section of forest that separates it from the cabins, while Lia is at the south-eastern edge of the glade, and the hollows don't appear until she's right at the forest's edge, as well. Again, you are weirdly estimating distances. Continuing on, the squad that was attacking the front and had been called by whistle to retreat arrives shortly after the hollows start gathering, just as the sun cracks the horizon, and they then notice immediately that the hunters are hot on their trail; no one really had any time to pay attention to something happening in the shadows of the forest at the far end of the glade that still wasn't lit even by the crack of dawn (given that the leader had to look over his shoulder to see the light peeking over the mountain peak).

As for it being "from Lia's POV", as you suggest, while I couldn't have confirmed or denied this previously too conclusively (other than the LOS not being in line with her head being so low to the ground), ch. 63.2 does in fact confirm that Lia could not see what they were doing at all thanks to the tall grass, and can only faintly hear the hunters yelling at the northern edge of the clearing, so it is a lot more distance than you have been thinking.

The hollows interaction with the world isn't relevant. They themselves cluster around victims; it's that behavior that itself points out Lia's presence.

Yes, it is, as they do not cause any further rustling and with their forms passing through solid matter, they become far less visible at a distance, beyond the fuzzy fading they have beyond close distances, as previously noted, or their translucency. If they had looked back and noticed the telltale signs of hollows, it would have clued them in, but it would not be an easy feat to do so, is the point.

I don't think they project light, either; setting up lights to see them at night would be counterproductive if they did.

I will take back one thing I said: It does matter if they project light, because if they did, it would wipe out the disadvantage that Hubert was at due to the lighting drop-off. So them glowing would actually weaken my argument.

The only way that they could see them as you suggested at those distances would have been if the hollows glowed, so I don't see how you think that them glowing would weaken your argument and them not glowing would strengthen it.

 

[whermit]

Why were they just standing there?? And why'd they let her go? Broooo smh

 

[welcome2atlantis]

lol kid you're too smart for your own good

 

[Goldenzeal]

To be fair they can't spread too far or they risk being killed by spooky ghosts. They also likely fought/remain in the dark to avoid the prince group being able to just chase after any light source they put up/see their face.

Ria got away because not only was she able to make her own barrier (something nobody has done before) but she's also got the reincarnator mindset to do that fakeout.

Yeah nobody would have expected the fake-out and shield.
But the fact they were so careless to leave her unguarded even for a moment was monumentally stupid.
But its not a huge leap of imagination and only breaks the immersion a little bit.

They still supposedly needed to bring her body back.
So the fact they just left her on the ground like that is what probably triggers alot of people.

 

[Seinvolf]

Thank u always for ur great work...
^^...

They got played like a thumb...
XD...