1.36 What happened
★★-- Somewhere in the same Forest --★★
Two men were walking in the deepest part forest. One of them was tall but thin while the other was short but fat. The tall man was wearing a black suit and a tall black hat. He was rotating a walking stick in his right hand and singing a "du-du-doo du-du-doo" tone. The short man who was walking next to him was wearing Joker-like clothes and was carrying a colorful umbrella.
After walking for the while, the short man looked towards the tall man and asked, "Boss, was it a good thing to release a cursed seal here? I mean, what you do is always right, but I am not sure why this puny little village."
The man stopped walking and pointed the stick he was rotating towards the little man, "This stupid, common thinking is the reason why you haven't become one of the bosses yet Joker. What do you think, knights wouldn't notice if we did that in bigger cities? It's better to invest in a market with no competitors."
"Y-yes boss but the village is not big enough to revive him fully. The number of souls won't be enough," said the short man looking towards the stick that was pointed in front of him.
"Well, he will have to find his food himself then," replied the tall man. He pulled his stick back and they both started walking again.
"But, wouldn't he be angry if we revive him like this. Last time when he was revived incompletely he killed all of our men before almost destroying the whole country," said the short man with a serious look in his face. Even though he was making a serious face, nobody would say that at a glance. It was because of his painted face and red nose.
"Well, that is why we are running away. Don't you see?" said the tall man in a casual tone.
"Oh well. You are the boss who is paying me so I will just follow the orders. I hope your plan will be successful," said the little man acting as if the result doesn't concern him. This was often how low ranked employees acted when they hear that the company had invested in a new project.
"Even if it fails, It doesn't matter. This is just another experiment to connect the dots for the grand finale," said the tall man with a creepy looking grin.
"Well yeah, but what will the other bosses think if we failed. How will we even be able to show them our faces?" replied the short man with a worried expression contrary to what he just said earlier.
"Meh, this is another reason you are not a boss yet. You worry too much about what others think. Let them think what they want and enjoy the game," replied the tall man and started singing his tune again.
The short man realized that the tall man won't respond to him anymore so he didn't say anything and just kept on walking.
★★-- Back to where others are --★★
Note: Nara's POV
"I am not sure where to start. My family has lived in this village for generations, nobody had ever even imagined a disaster like this would fall on us. I am not even sure if I should be happy that my family survived or be sad that this happened to my village," said the man after raising himself.
"Then, why don't we sit down and start with the introduction? The dinner will be ready soon," replied Ronald.
We sat on the ground which was full of dry leaves. Nina had started preparing dinner and Princess Anna and Sistina were helping her. Emma was talking to her mother and telling her the things that happened in her own way.
"So, this is Miss Lilith our teacher, Nara, Nina, Marina, Sistina, Anna, Eliane, Arica and I am Ronald. We came to this village taking a quest posted at Adventurer guild," said Ronald pointing his hand towards everyone whose name he said. He purposefully skipped the 'Princess' part because that would make the talk unnecessarily complicated.
"Yes. You already know my daughter Emma. I am Dale and that is my wife Elly," said the man looking towards his wife and daughter.
"So, why don't we start from why you decided to hire adventurers," said Ronald looking towards Dale.
"Unusual things started happening a month ago. The monsters who had always lived in the forest started coming towards our farms and villages. We defended our village against them but soon things started getting out of hand. So, we collected some money from all the houses in the village to hire adventurers," replied Dale looking at his hand.
"That explains why these kids were hired but forest monsters don't eat people's souls. What actually happened after that?" Miss Lilith asked after Dale stopped.
Dale looked towards her and continued, "Yes, soon things started changing. Monsters stopped coming, instead some small flies started appearing. Whoever got bit by the fly started getting sick. First, it was just one or two cases that could be easily treated using holy magic, but it soon spread. Before we knew it more than half of the village was suffering from the same disease."
"This is strange, was it some kind of disease spread by flies?," Princess Eliane asked looking confused after hearing what happened.
"I don't know, but people whom we had known for a long time started acting strangely to us. Around four days ago, it had already gotten dark by the time we finished the work at the farm. When we reached the village, some villagers suddenly started chasing us for no reason. We had no idea what was going on but it didn't look like they were sane. We ran towards the forest and barely managed to escape them but our daughter was still in the village."
The man stopped there and looked towards Emma and continued, "We were helpless so we stayed there for the night. As soon as it was morning, I told Elly to wait there and went towards the village. Fortunately, Emma was safe. I then realized that the village's monster warding light that we had kept in our house kept us safe from those flies. I carried Emma and the monster warding light and started walking towards the forest. After we got inside the forest, I told Emma to wait there and went to bring Elly back. But when Elly and I came back, Emma wasn't there. We looked everywhere around for her but we couldn't find her. We were still searching, when we saw a light far away so we started walking towards it. That is how we managed to find you all here."
The dinner was ready by the time Dale finished explaining what had happened. It looked like they hadn't eaten anything for days so we had the dinner before deciding what to do next. After dinner, we prepared our tents. Elly took Emma inside one of the tents to put her to sleep while the rest of us gathered outside to discuss what to do next.
"Miss Lilith what should we do next?" I asked since the situation here looked above our paygrade.
"Well, under normal circumstances we could just return to the city. But, I have a feeling that if we let this continue things will get worse so we need to find the cause of this and deal with it. It's probably hiding in the village so the first move should be to deal with the bodies during the day and wait for it to show up during the night," said Miss Lilith looking towards the direction of the village.
"But is it just a demon? I mean Nara and I fought a demon, but nothing like this happened during the attack back then," said Ronald looking towards Miss Lilith.
"Whatever it is, it's not attacking directly which means it's still weak. If we attack before it finishes consuming the souls it sucked, we may still be able to beat it," replied Miss Lilith.
After that, we discussed our plan for tomorrow and divided the watch duty. It was already late by the time we finished discussing everything so we left the ones on watch duty outside and went inside our tents to sleep.
Next Chapter: The Cause