Chapter 137: Long Time

Perseus POV

"I'm gonna need a bit of time to think, that's a long time. The war between humans and demons isn't far away, the heroes are gonna grow a lot stronger and catch up, and I need to up my star, enchanting is a very slow method, but I'm gonna need it..."

"Well it's easier to start now." Ulrich drank his tea "Training all the other things are much easier. Just fight a lot, besides, our watchers aren't that bad, we're just little in numbers, and if it wasn't for your chief a couple while back, we would have had an easy win, we at least can easily get in the top 20 every year, top 10 if we don't give up right after to hide our potential."

"By the way, what's behind the giant blanket and I thought that there'd be a bit over a thousand people, why are there more than a quarter less? Heck, Leilah said that she sensed about half of what the reported population was."

"Well that's what we're trying to solve." he sighs

"Well, there's no way people can just up and vanish overnight, everything has an answer to it, just gotta approach it from the right angle."

I'm currently avoiding the subject of the fallen star for now since it'll make me look greedy, I plan to stay here for a couple days and ask a bit later down the week so that I won't sound selfish, I am, but I don't want to come off that way, need to have good traits shown off for the ladies.

"Oh we found them alright." he replied "Dead under mysterious circumstances."

"I have a lady of death right here plus another lady who cause a lot of deaths to achieve her title, they're practically experts."

"Well I wouldn't even go in that tunnel if I were you, one day, all of a sudden, a mist started to form around the residences, it was weird, but it wasn't malicious magic or poison we can detect, even until now with magic." he explained "And before long people started to experience severe symptoms, many of us barely survived if it weren't for our healers' efforts, and it took about 100 people too late to realize the mist is the cause."

This sounds familiar somehow, now where have I heard about this before? It was something about a village suddenly dropping dead all of a sudden.

"Can't you just use magic to clear it?" I asked for more details

"We did, for a long while, we continuously did it as we move back, but it just keeps coming back, we now use mages to keep a barrier to contain it at all times." he answered with a sad face "We shouldn't have moved back, we lost too many good people."

"Say, can you describe the symptoms at first, like before it got really bad?"

"Headaches, rapid breathing, muscle twitches, quick heartbeats, occasional mood swings and fatigue, some even started to hallucinate." he answered honestly

"And what happened when it got really bad? When you got back."

"People started feeling the same thing mostly, but with an addition of nausea, vomiting...and severe coughing." he tried to recount "Well you'd have to ask the healers for more details. Why are you interested?"

"Leilah, you know any of this?" Ruka asked

"I can know the cause of death if I have direct contact with the corpse." Leilah shrugged "But Perseus seems to be thinking of something, so I'll let him do his thing."

All of it is now rushing into my head, it was a case of people living in a super rural village where amore than 1000 people died all of a sudden, and also have a nearby lake...I remember watching a documentary about this once, there was also a case of people experiencing the same thing before this particular incident, but it went unsolved until the latter incident of hundreds of people dropping dead.

People thought it was the works of the supernatural, but...

"Did any of the people say that they feel their eyes burning, breathing hurts since it feels like their lungs are on fire?"

"You know what happened?" Ulrich's face is now that of curiosity "Can you stop it?"

"This village is rumored to know the location of the fallen star that was supposedly caused by the rage of the sun goddess, right? Do you know of it or at least know someone who know of it?"

"I'd fit both description." he answered

The cause of death is the same, but the cause of the phenomenon itself is similar...one was due to some nearby volcanic activity and this one...

"One last question, is the lake the location of the fallen star?"

"If I answer...yes, would that solve the mystery?" he hesitantly replied

"Oh man, I feel like a detective, I solved the case, oh man, carbon dioxide poisoning, magic can't detect that as poison since you guys probably checked the mist when it's at low levels, and the fallen star is some asteroid that contain high levels of it mixed with other gases...but...you should be living here for about a few centuries, why now...?"

Oh.

"How recent did this happen?"

"I won't say it's recent." he answered "It's been quite long, about 2 years maybe?"

Oh thank the gods, I thought that the temple becoming a golem may have caused some earthquakes or something that triggers an event that helped released the gas and so getting Buddy may have been an indirect caused and this village would have to prosecute me for killing like half their population.

But still, they live in an underground cavern, the gas should build up a long time ago, why did the clouds of carbon dioxide start forming now? Well gonna have to risk going in there and find it out myself, and hope that this asteroid is something that can be turned into good materials.

It should give me some more time to think of whether I want to spend most of my time for the next year and a half here or not as I explore the thing.