The Ghost Village
Outside the village.
The next morning.
After tending to Sophia, who had stayed up all night talking with Noah until she finally collapsed, we finished our preparations to depart.
All that was left now was to squeeze into the merchant caravan and go.
The cargo wagon that had arrived at the village half-empty was now packed to bursting with monster byproducts—finding even a sliver of free space had become a genuine challenge.
"So we're really leaving, huh..."
"It has been quite an eventful stay, hasn't it."
Leaving behind a village we had lived in for months, a place we had come to love, left a hollow ache in my chest.
Truly, it had been sheer luck that Sophia was the first person I'd met after escaping the laboratory.
If I had wandered into another village or city knowing nothing, I had no idea how I would have been treated.
Neighhh—
The muscular horses, still hitched to the wagons, let out rough, restless snorts.
Fortunately, these horses had been selectively bred with monster blood in their lines, which seemed to leave them relatively resistant to the Blood Moon's influence.
Granted, their temperaments had turned somewhat ferocious... but the drivers placated them with appetizing feed, and they quickly settled down.
Time to depart for real, then.
We exchanged farewells with everyone we'd come to know.
"Come back anytime—next time you visit, this will be a proper, respectable village."
"Boss! Next time, I'm heading to the Guild myself!"
"Don't go getting beaten up out there!"
"Thank you, everyone—!"
We'd had all night at the banquet to talk our fill, so the goodbyes were blessedly brief.
The heavily laden wagons moved sluggishly at first, but once they picked up speed, they rolled straight through the palisade gate and out of the village.
Unlike when we'd fled the laboratory, a pleasant sense of anticipation wrapped around me.
I wondered what kind of adventures awaited.
···
"...I'm bored."
If there was one thing I had forgotten, it was the simple fact that the pioneer village we'd lived in sat in the absolute middle of nowhere.
The journey to Bolston would take a full two weeks.
Fresh scenery was all well and good for the first day or two, but by the time a week had crawled past, I was writhing in boredom.
Lovrick, naturally, couldn't understand me at all.
"You don't get it, do you? Nothing happening is the best possible outcome. We've got a contract to escort the caravan anyway... think of it as getting paid to relax."
"That's true enough... but hasn't it been a week of literally nothing? At this point, I'd almost welcome a monster ambush."
"Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single monster around here even if I washed my eyes out looking. No people, either."
Lovrick pulled out his artifact and showed it to me.
Within a radius of several kilometers, the only living creatures of any significance were us.
But just as he was lying back down to catch some sleep, Lovrick froze and looked at the artifact again.
"Hm? Hold on. There should be a village around here somewhere..."
"A pioneer village?"
"No, just an ordinary one. Tsk tsk... looks like it met with misfortune. And here I'd been lamenting my own luck on the way here."
Lovrick's prediction proved exactly right.
Before long, we spotted a village ringed by a wooden palisade.
But the place exuded nothing but a desolate, wintry gloom—not a trace of human presence to be felt.
The merchants gathered for a heated debate over whether to stop here.
"Wouldn't it be better to just spend the night here?"
"I'm against it. Sleep in a ghost town like this? That's practically begging for bad luck."
"True... anyone can see at a glance that something happened here. Sleeping in this place would be pushing it."
"Then let's rest briefly and keep moving."
Noah, Lovrick, and I decided to search the village interior in case some unseen danger lurked within.
His artifact showed no monsters on it, but there was always the chance it had missed something.
"In the end, what you've got to trust is your own gut. You can't rely on these gadgets a hundred percent of the time."
"Agreed. Although... we did get hit pretty thoroughly this time."
"You can say that again. Bloodstains everywhere. They were probably swept away wholesale by a monster swarm."
We combed through every corner of the village, searching the interior thoroughly, but all we found were houses on the verge of collapse and dried bloodstains.
No matter where we looked, there wasn't the faintest trace of survivors.
"The palisade here was far too low. I know it's technically a safe zone, but... well, come to think of it, even a tall palisade is useless without weapons."
Just as Lovrick said, this village's palisade stood a mere four meters tall.
Short enough that even horned wolves could climb over by clambering on top of one another.
If they had grown complacent about their defenses, they wouldn't have been able to hold back even a swarm of low-grade monsters.
"No monsters, and no survivors either, it seems... let's head back."
"..."
Lovrick declared the search over and turned to leave.
But I suddenly stopped in my tracks, struck by a strange sensation.
It felt like someone was tugging at the hair on the back of my head.
What is this?
"What's wrong?"
"Jun? Are you okay?"
"It's... hard to describe. Something feels... off? I can't really explain it either."
This was unmistakably the feeling of Beast's Senses activating—and yet?
But this was something entirely different from the five senses that had served me so well all this time.
If I had to classify it... a sixth sense?
Having heard me out, Lovrick nodded sagely and played along.
"Hmm... a sixth sense, eh. They say Awakened ones with heightened senses sometimes get feelings like that. We've got plenty of time to spare, so follow your instincts if you like."
"Okay... first, it's... this way."
A faint sixth sense unlike anything I'd ever felt before.
Afraid of losing the sensation, I moved with my eyes shut entirely.
And so, after some twenty minutes of walking with my hand in Noah's, my steps finally halted—in front of the ruins of a building at the very center of the village.
"Fancy materials for a rural settlement. The village chief's house, I'd wager. This is the place?"
"More specifically... I believe it's underneath."
"A hidden chamber or something? How on earth are we supposed to find it?"
"Allow me."
Thud! Thud!
Creeeak!
Noah rolled up her sleeves and began flipping aside the building's wreckage.
Even the thick support beams of the house, once in Noah's grip, were lifted aside like mere tree branches.
Lovrick covered his mouth against the swirling dust, unable to contain his admiration.
"Whew... got giant blood running in you, do you? That strength is just absurd. You'd make a killing as a prizefighter."
"I feel like one solid hit from you would kill me, actually."
Ever since equipping the Glacier Bracelet, Noah's durability had skyrocketed, and she now displayed even greater brute strength than before.
All this time, she'd likely been holding back out of concern for the strain on her body.
It took Noah—now practically a human forklift—all of five minutes to clear away the building's wreckage.
And then... we found it: a hidden door set into the floor of what appeared to be a storage room.
Screeeech—
The hidden chamber was surprisingly cramped.
Fifteen square meters at most?
For a moment I wondered if there might be treasure inside, but that hope evaporated the instant I spotted the small figure collapsed in the corner.
"...A kid?"
"Their breathing is faint, but present. However, they are on the verge of death. That is why the artifact failed to detect them."
"Let's move them, quickly!"
···
The child, who looked to be middle-school-aged, regained consciousness almost immediately.
Thankfully, there were no serious injuries—only hunger and thirst.
With Noah's healing on top of that, it didn't take long for the child to recover enough to speak.
But then the kid said something that left us all bewildered.
"It wasn't monsters?"
"*Sob*... No. The monsters were few, so we were okay... but a few days ago, the men who came as guests, they suddenly—"
"Suddenly? Did they kill the villagers?"
"*Hic*... WAAAAAAH!"
"Hey, don't cry, I'm—"
"Lovrick. Allow me. You're interrogating a child like she's a criminal suspect."
Noah, unable to watch any longer, stepped in and calmed the child with a tasty snack.
After sobbing in Noah's arms for a good long while, the girl finally settled down and spoke again.
"...*Sniffle*! The men... they had strange tattoos on their faces."
"Tattoos? You let suspicious men like that into the village as guests?"
"They looked completely normal at first, I swear! But then one night they suddenly changed, and...!"
Summarizing the girl's account, this was what had happened.
The outsiders who had banded together to hold off the monsters driven mad by the Blood Moon had suddenly begun running amok themselves.
After repelling several monster assaults, they had attacked the relieved villagers in the dead of night.
"They didn't kill anyone?"
"No... they just knocked everyone out and dragged them off somewhere... I got lucky and hid... *hic*... Mom..."
"There, there. Crying again, are we? Miss Noah, comfort the child, would you? She survived alone—she's earned a good cry."
"Of course."
Once the girl's testimony was heard, the crowd gathered into knots, chattering every theory under the sun.
Some claimed bandits, others insisted the monsters had shapeshifted into humans.
But when Lovrick finally offered his hard-won conclusion, the group grew even more agitated.
"A group with matching tattoos on their faces... my guess is that they were cultists."
"The Evil Cult!!"
"Only monsters like that would pull something like this."
Cultists?
What's that?
Even Granny Ryu had never taught me that word.
But before my curiosity could be satisfied, the caravan's decision-making proceeded at a terrifying pace.
"We're leaving, now! Their base could be somewhere nearby!"
"We need to report this to the Guild as soon as possible. Someone fetch the horses, quickly!!"
"No... no! Please save my mom and dad! I'm begging you!"
"I'm sorry, little one. But they'll be long gone by now."
"They can't be..."
The girl, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation, worked herself into a fit and clung to the adults.
But the caravan's overseer peeled her off with a coldness that bordered on cruel, offering his advice in a measured voice.
"You survived against all odds—the best thing you can do is stay far away from anything connected to those people. We'll take you as far as Bolston. Try to find some relatives there. If you know no one, I suppose I could look after you for a time."
"I don't want that! Forget all that—please save our villagers! A-aren't you strong people?! I remember! You said you were definitely from the Guild—!"
"Goodness, when did you pick that up? Sorry, but we're in the middle of a contract. It's a matter of trust, you see."
"Um... wouldn't a brief detour be all right?"
The girl latched onto Lovrick, who was being jostled from all sides.
He seemed well practiced at this sort of thing, deftly parrying her pleas with rehearsed refusals... but then someone who had quietly kept to the background this whole time cut through his objections and stepped forward.
The Guild technician dispatched to repair the Suppression Device.
What was his name again...?
"Harrington. You seem to be laboring under a misunderstanding. It's not that I lack sympathy—but we have an existing contract, and one of its terms, if you'll recall, is your escort."
"...Cult subjugation is one of the Guild's highest-priority commissions. Even with a prior contract... if the parties involved consent, the subjugation takes precedence."
"If they consent, that is."
Right.
Harrington—that was his name.
Just as I was finally recalling the technician's name, Lovrick and Harrington continued their exchange under a tension so thick you could taste it.
"Cults tend to operate in the vicinity of their bases. The village can't have fallen more than a few days ago, so there's a high probability of traces remaining."
"What exactly are you getting at?"
"The chance to root out a cult early—before they can relocate their base—is a rare one indeed. This would be a major achievement. Massive bonus points toward a promotion, too."
"That's only if we actually manage to subdue them. We have no idea what the enemy's strength is."
"If they're reduced to night raids because they can't even assault a backwater hamlet like this head-on, their forces can't be all that large."
"Hmm... aren't you getting a bit ahead of yourself?"
Despite his negative words, Lovrick seemed to have caught the spark of interest.
This was a man who frequently lamented being stuck at Rank 7 for an eternity—apparently he couldn't bear to let such an opportunity slip through his fingers.
Harrington then turned to the rest of the group and began laying out the rewards of a cult subjugation for everyone to hear.