“You’re already too late”
The words rang out in her mind continuously, disallowing her to think of anything else. Too late? Too late for what?
The words made Ruyue painfully aware that she had screwed up at some point, but she couldn’t figure out when exactly that was.
‘What is happening to me?’
Ever since she arrived in this forest, she had felt like she wasn’t being herself. Still, she went along with it because she enjoyed the way it made her feel.
Free and unfettered.
But she realized she was wrong.
‘I have to get to the village.’
It was the only solution she could think of. That was the place she had chosen to protect in the first place, so if there was any place to be while trying to figure out what kind of trap she had fallen for, it was there.
She ran towards the cave entrance but found it blocked by rubble from her previous attack. Luckily, she hadn’t spent much energy during the previous fight and was able to blast it apart with a smaller variant of the flame lotus she used to kill the burly man.
Immediately after the cave entrance was unsealed, she rushed out and was greeted by a calm moonlight
‘What?’
She could have sworn that she was only in the cave for an hour at most, so how did it reach the point where the moon was so high in the sky? At most, the sun should have just recently set.
The discrepancies continued to pile up even though it had only been minutes since she felt that sinking feeling in her chest. She was already starting to panic.
‘Right, the messaging talisman.’
If the burly man was nothing but an illusion, the rest of the crew might be the same. Ruyue had to warn Damien, who was most likely chasing after them the same way she did with the man.
She rushed through the lush ecosystem of the forest once more, but her heart was no longer peaceful. She was burning in trepidation, injecting her mana into the talisman to contact Damien.
However…
‘Why won’t you pick up?’
Regardless of how many times she tried to call him, she received no response.
‘You were the one who told me to keep in contact in case of danger, so how can you be silent at such a critical time?’
She felt slightly betrayed but pushed the feeling down. There had to be a reason he wasn’t answering. He must be in trouble right now.
She continued running in a linear path, making her way back to the village, but the distance was too far to reach in a short period of time. She was many kilometers away.
But still, she wasn’t a 3rd class existence for nothing. Let alone the power boost she received from the moon at nighttime due to her affinity, she also had the new flames she had just awakened.
Flames shot out of her feet like a jet engine and her speed increased manifold. She zoomed through the forest while leaving a trail of permafrost in her wake.
And after 10 minutes of fierce sprinting without care for mana consumption, she finally saw light in the distance.
‘It’s there!’
She sped up once again, reaching the village in half the time it would have taken her at her previous speed. But when she arrived, she noticed that it was oddly quiet.
It shouldn’t have felt odd considering how it was late at night at the moment, but there was an eerie atmosphere hanging in the air that she couldn’t ignore.
She slowed down her pace as she entered the wooden gates of the village, heightening her senses and maintaining her wariness towards the surroundings.
Looking side to side, she noticed that most of the houses were still filled with light, even though the silence indicated everywhere.
Ruyue frowned at the sight but continued moving forward. Since the village wasn’t large at all, it didn’t take her long to reach the center. But when she did, she almost regretted coming back in the first place.
The dirt ground surrounding the central huts where the village elder lived was stained in red. The pungent smell of blood invaded her nostrils as if wanting to force her to continue looking at the scene.
Strewn across the ground were various pieces of bloodied flesh, the largest pieces resembling human limbs. Although such violence wasn’t new to Ruyue, this particular scene made her want to vomit.
However, she suppressed her feelings once again and continued forward. The chunks of flesh slowly got larger, before entire upper bodies and heads entered her vision.
‘T-those are…!’
She was staring at a particular set of bodies. Their arms were intertwined as if they were hugging, but their heads were both missing. In fact, they were present only a slight distance away.
It was a young girl and boy, both with horror-stricken expressions. The tears that had streaked down their faces when they were still alive were still fresh.
It was Ling’er and Yan Chen that she and Damien had saved when they first arrived in the forest.
It wasn’t just them. Various members of the village and even some of the other children that had been a part of that first group could be seen, lifelessly laying on the ground.
Ruyue’s steps faltered, tears threatening to appear in her eyes. Even if she had only met them for a brief period, their innocence was something she admired. She felt like she had gained some sort of connection with them.
But she wasn’t going to stop here. She had to figure out what it was that caused this tragedy. She felt a burning flame ignite in her to avenge these innocent people who died today.
“Grrrrr…”
Suddenly, she heard a muffled growl coming from the opposite side of the shack next to her. To her, who wasn’t in the right state of mind at the moment, it sounded like the hungry growl of a beast.
Slowly but surely, she made her way around the shack, trying to keep her footsteps as light as possible.
She didn’t want to alert whatever beast was lurking around the corner until she had verified its strength.
But when she finally made it to the other side of the shack…
Two figures could be seen. One standing tall while the other being only up the other’s waist. The strange thing was, they were both humans.
The tall figure had his hand wrapped around the smaller one’s neck, evidently choking it.
“Grrr…”
Once again, the growl rang out, and it was clear it came from the taller figure. Ruyue concentrated her gaze on them, but she couldn’t see them in this darkness.
And as if responding to her wish, the moonlight shifted gradually, shining light on the scene in front of her.
Copious amounts of blood covered the figures of both individuals, to the point where it was obvious it wasn’t entirely their own.
The tall figure had elongated fingers that looked more like claws digging into the smaller one’s neck. Even more blood was pouring out of wounds on both of their bodies, with the smaller one being more injured.
With this level of gore, Ruyue could barely tell the identity of the two figures. That is, until the moonlight fully illuminated the area.
In front of her eyes was a man with an unforgettable pair of amethyst-red eyes and cross-shaped pupils, in the process of killing the kind Elder Baba she had met only a day prior.