Chapter 12: Village of the Dead
Ruri and the others traveled to the village rumored to be brought back to life after inexplicably being wiped out. They knew the location thanks to Arman, who had received reports from Amarna.
Out of all the villages they visited, this village settled closest to Mt. Ulawoon. The nearer you approached the sanctified ground of Mt. Ulawoon, the sparser traffic became. There was little interaction with others here.
The news that all the residents of that village had been wiped out came to Arman after a few months had already passed. Considering it was only discovered because of merchants, who would only visit the village once every few years, you could say that the discovery was made rather quickly.
The merchants testified that there were no survivors and that the disease was possibly still spreading through the village. Once Arman received the news, he decided not to send any of his soldiers out because of the danger of infection. He instead barred access into the village.
It seemed that would be the end of it, but after a few years’ time, the village was said to be alive again. It was as if the entire concept of the villagers dying had been a lie from the beginning.
Ruri and the others touched down outside of the isolated settlement at the foot of the mountain. They stood amidst the dead silence around the area. It was so devoid of human presence, devoid of even sound, that it was doubtful anyone was still here.
Ruri figured that they might as well head inside and start their investigation. She took a step forward—that was when it happened. She felt the strange, startling sensation of passing through a thin film of some sort. The surprise caused her to trip over her feet and tumble to the ground.
“Whoa! Yowch!” Ruri screamed. She managed to avoid colliding face-first with the ground by her snapping her hands out to catch her fall—in exchange for scraping her palms and knees. Blots of blood started to seep from the skinned areas. “Ah, I’m bleeding.”
“Hey, c’mon. What’re you doing?” asked Joshua.
“But just now...something was there and it...”
Joshua sighed as he stepped toward Ruri, thinking she had tripped over nothing. But he soon stopped in his tracks and knit his eyebrows as he stared at something in front of him. He patted down the air, almost as if he were pantomiming a wall being there.
Ewan looked on in confusion. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“...It’s a barrier. There’s a barrier here,” Joshua said.
Ewan squinted at where Joshua was touching and after a short pause muttered, “Hey, you’re right.”
You couldn’t tell with just a glance, but once you focused your sights, you could see that there was definitely a magic wall in place, cutting off the outside world.
“Oww,” Ruri said as she stood up, brushing off the grit on her hands and legs. Kotaro, Rin, and the other spirits all came rushing in.
“Are you all right, Ruri?”
“You got all hurt.”
“Any pain?”
Ruri looked toward the group of smaller spirits and replied, “Yeah, I’m fine. But anyway, this is a barrier?”
“Yeah, and not just any old barrier either,” Joshua said. Then he crossed the barrier and touched it from inside. “You can get in from the outside, but you can’t get out from the inside. That’s how it’s set up, and it’s in place all over the village.”
Ruri agreed that it was a barrier. She had experienced that sensation of passing through a thin layer of film before with the barrier posted around Chelsie’s house. That barrier was meant to defend against trespassers coming in, but this one seemed to be set up to keep people from going out.
“Then we can’t walk out?” Ruri asked.
“No, as long as your mana is higher than the person who put it up, you can walk out just fine,” Joshua explained, proving it by going in and out of the invisible barrier himself.
If Joshua could go through it, then Ruri, with her mana on par with Jade, could as well. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“Still, we’ve got folks who can’t get out, so I’d better break this sucker down,” Joshua stated. He swiftly kicked at the barrier, and with a loud glass-like crash, the barrier dissipated all too easily.
“That should do it.” After destroying the barrier, Joshua went over to Ruri, poured water over her wounds, and applied some basic first aid.
“But why was there a barrier here in the first place?” Ruri pondered. “I could understand it being used to ward off entry, but preventing an exit?”
“Yeah, it’s almost like they’re trying to keep something bottled up,” Joshua replied.
“Something like what?” Ruri asked.
“Well, logically, it’d be the villagers since they’re the only ones here, but...” Joshua trailed off, wondering what the need would be to erect such a barrier. “Anyway, let’s search the village. Asking the villagers is our best bet.”
Feeling a tad uneasy, the group entered the village proper. Just to err on the side of caution, they kept Ruri and Celestine in the center of the pack for protection.
The village was frighteningly silent despite it being the middle of the day. The suspense was growing, and it sent shivers down everyone’s spine.
The village wasn’t very big, so they reached the center in no time. With as many people as they had coming into town, they should have noticed someone around by now, but there was nary a face to be seen.
“Excuuuse us! Is there anyone arooound?!” Ruri cried, her words echoing throughout the silent streets. Right after, a clatter resounded from a nearby house. The soldiers raised their guard.
As they all intently focused their attention on the house, a single man silently walked out from the opposite side. Everyone jumped in surprise.
“Oh, it’s a person. Excuse us, sir! Could you spare us a moment?” Ruri called in a cheerful tone, no wariness toward the stranger.
It seemed as though the villagers were alive after all, but something definitely seemed off.
Since merchants seldom came to this village, Ruri didn’t expect anyone to be wearing the latest and most fashionable attire. It only made sense considering the people in the other villages donned worn-out attire. Be that as it may, the man before her was practically dressed in rags. He was filthy as well. He was so covered in grime that it was a wonder he had ever washed his body at all. Not only that, but he was horrendously emaciated. His limbs were skin and bones, like a pauper who couldn’t even feed himself for the day.
The man’s lifeless, deep-set eyes stared vacantly at Ruri and the others as he walked over on shaky legs.
Seeing how radically different he was from any villager she saw up until this point, an indescribable sense of worry came over Ruri as she addressed the man she assumed was a resident.
“Um, are you okay, sir? Maybe you’re not feeling too well?”
However, the blank-eyed man simply snarled at her.
“Hngaaaah!!”
“Huh?!” Ruri exclaimed.
“Ruri!” Ewan yelled.
The man came charging at Ruri, letting out a bizarre cry. Ruri could only stare in bewilderment.
Ewan quickly moved in front of Ruri while Joshua landed a clean hook on the man. The man went flying and tumbled to the ground.
Because it was such a snap decision, Joshua wasn’t able to hold back. He assumed the absolute worst for the man he just dusted. After all, he just took a dragonkin’s punch at full force. He probably wasn’t dead, but he likely wouldn’t be able to move for a while. A little harder and it might’ve been fatal.
That was supposed to be the case, at least. However, not even the force of a dragonkin hook was enough to flatten the man. He quickly rose up from the strike—a feat that not even Joshua could contain his shock over. The man didn’t so much as look at Joshua, though. He immediately set his sights on Ruri and headed toward her again. This time, Ewan delivered a merciless kick that sent him to the ground. But in similar fashion, he stood right back up.
While all of their attention was focused on the emaciated man before them, several people staggered out of the house they initially heard activity from. Then scores of people started flooding out of all the houses in the area.
Were they residents of this village? Their stares were also blank and lifeless. Letting out cries akin to a beast, they all came rushing toward the group. For whatever reason, they paid no mind to Joshua and the others and came after one target and one target only—Ruri.
“Hngaaaah!!”
“Why me?!” Ruri cried.
“Crap! Hey, protect Ruri!!” Joshua yelled, prompting the dragonkin soldiers to rush to her aid.
They were completely surrounded. The soldiers pushed Ruri and Celestine as close to the center as possible. They dealt with the supposed villagers without weapons, so as to not take their lives, but no matter how much punching and kicking they did, the people continued to stand back up and charge at them. Joshua and the others were finding it harder to hold themselves back.
While the dragonkin soldiers dealt with that, the soldiers of the Nation of the Beast King, composed of members of races with weaker combat abilities, were finally forced to draw their swords. Orders not to kill were no longer an option now. If this kept up, their lives could be in jeopardy.
“Hngaaaah!!”
One of the soldiers thrust their gleaming sword deep into the chest of a would-be attacker.
“Eek!” yelped Ruri, clenching her eyes shut.
The soldier stabbed the person right through the chest, a fatal blow under normal circumstances. However, this was anything but. The villager let out an unearthly cry and thrashed about as if they didn’t care that a sword was sticking out of their chest.
“W-What’s with this guy?!” the soldier exclaimed.
“This one too!” exclaimed another. Other soldiers inflicted what they thought were fatal wounds, but despite felling them over and over, they repeatedly stood back up—as if the concept of “death” didn’t exist.
“What is this?! Are they humans?! Zombies?!” Ruri exclaimed. She was under the protection of Kotaro and the others, but she was unable to keep her cool after seeing everyone stand despite their mortal wounds.
Standing by her side, Celestine was equally shocked, and her face turned pale.
“Lady Beloveds, please stand back!” said a soldier as he sliced the head of an attacker clean off. “How’s that for size?” The soldier assumed that the person would cease moving if he separated the head from the body. Not even dragonkin and their amazing restorative abilities could avoid death if their head was lopped off their shoulders.
As the body collapsed in place, the head flew through the air, landed on the ground, and tumbled its way over to Ruri and Celestine’s feet. That alone was enough to make them shriek for dear life, but the severed head—a head that shouldn’t be able to move—looked over to them curled their lips into a smile. Then the headless body began to twitch, and it slowly crawled toward Ruri and Celestine as if searching for its head.
“Eeeeeeek!!”
“GAAAAAAH!!”
Unable to contain themselves, the two girls screamed with such intensity that their voices would surely be hoarse later. Incidentally, the dainty, feminine scream came from Celestine, while the primal war cry was courtesy of Ruri’s vocal cords.
“They’re coming this way!!” warned Ruri.
“Eeeeek!!” cried Celestine.
Panicked and flustered, the two turned and tried to run away from the severed head, but another headless body lay in their immediate path, so they immediately froze.
“Gaaah! Over here too!!” They turned the other way, but that was back the way they came, where the crawling body still remained.
“Eek!”
“Urghh! This way’s no good either!” Ruri’s face tensed, and Celestine’s face lost its color. They looked for ways out, but terror and panic overcame them. They moved here and there—left and right—restless and confused.
“Lady Beloveds, please remain where you are!”
“That’s easier said than done!” cried Ruri.
With all their pacing around, it probably made it harder for the soldiers to protect them, but faced with this horde of people, there was no way they could keep themselves still. Plus, they were all targeting Ruri for some odd reason. Even Celestine couldn’t help but panic at full force, completely dropping her usual refined and composed demeanor.
The soldiers were fighting to keep Ruri and Celestine safe in the center of their circle, so they were surrounded on all sides by these mysterious undying humans. There was no way out.
The headless body was drawing near. Ruri shot a look over at Joshua and his crew for help, but they seemed to have their hands full with matters of their own. Given the situation, Ruri and Celestine needed to handle this one on their own.
As they stood terror-stricken by the headless body, the spirits around them chattered.
“Whoa, it’s got no head, but it’s moving!”
“Yikes. That’s amazing. What’s with them?”
“They’re zombies. I’ve seen ’em in movies before.” The spirit that mentioned “movies” was one that had crossed over to this world with Ruri.
“Wow, this is somethin’ else!” added Chi. He even sounded somewhat amused—but maybe that was a figment of Ruri’s frightened imagination.
“A hole! Guys, dig a hole and drop the body in it!” Ruri yelled. She figured if their movements couldn’t be stopped, then dropping them down a hole was the next best option.
“Okay!” responded the spirits in unison.
The ground collapsed under the headless body, and it plummeted into the abyss and out of sight, much to the relief of Ruri and Celestine.
Just as holes were forming elsewhere, the ground started to open large and wide, creating a hole so massive and deep that no amount of people could climb out of it. The creator of this gigantic chasm was the Spirit of Earth himself, Chi.
“Hey, you guys! If you can’t beat ’em, chuck ’em into here!”
“Chi, good job!”
The soldiers locked in battle with the undying people caught on to Chi’s advice and started throwing them down the hole, one by one. They kicked, threw, and even pushed them down the hole, reducing their numbers steadily. Kotaro even used his wind powers to blow them away into the pit.
The villagers didn’t seem to be very capable fighters despite their inability to die, so they offered little resistance. They all plunged into the depths. Some tried to wriggle back up, but the hole proved to be far too deep and they simply scratched at the soil, unable to climb the distance.
Once every last one was down the hole, Ruri and the soldiers alike breathed a sigh of relief.
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