This simply might be a case of "well, the areas aren't really developed yet" but I'll bring it up. West of the city and south of the shrine you can go a little ways. There are cases of there being a ! like something was alerted to your presence but...there's nothing there. The critters also can't be fought - it goes to auto win immediately. Is this just (more or less) placeholder until you get to the areas more or this is a bug?