"Hey, you two, come take a look at this. Someone was struggling here. Hard."

Near the edge of the lake, the three men sent by the Elder were pacing around the muddy banks. The leader of the bunch had found skid marks on the ground that led out to the water.

He then looked out toward the center of the lake and saw a faint, dark smudge of crimson still lingered in the depths, refusing to dissipate entirely.

"There’s blood out there. A lot of it. What the hell happened here? Whose blood is that?"

"Maybe the fish monsters dragged the woman’s dead body out after being killed by an infected?" another man muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.

"But there’s no clothes. No hair. Just... nothing."

Further up the bank, near the edge of the flower field, the two women were moving through the tall grass.

"Nothing unusual here. Just a few picked flowers. That’s what the F-ranks came for, isn’t it?"

Her companion, who was searching nearby, crossed her arms. "It doesn’t make sense. Why would an infected attack them? There were three of them in total, no? The one eye, the maid, and the fancy looking lady. Those who are turned... they’re rabid, yes, but they’re usually like stalkers. They attack when someone is alone. They’re like wolves."

"Maybe it got spotted?" the first woman suggested.

"Don’t be an idiot. Even if it were spotted, it would’ve bolted the moment it thought something was fishy. Those things are fast. Nobody in that group should have had the speed to catch up to him, especially not some F-rank adventurers here to pick weeds. Something is wrong."

"Hey! Over here!" one of the men called to them. "We think we found something!" 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The women sprinted over to the lake where the men were huddled around a patch of dirt that looked recently dug. One of them was frantically digging bare hands, and with a final heave, he uncovered a shallow pit.

Inside, there were no bones. No clothes. Just a thick, grey mound of fine ash.

"Ashes?" the woman whispered as she leaned in. "Whose ashes are these?"

"None of this makes sense! The one eye is infected, the fancy woman is dead, there’s blood in the middle of the lake and now ashes lay in the dirt!? I say we just go back and interrogate the maid!"

The leader of the group stared at the ashes for a long time. He looked back toward the village, then toward the dark, deep forest. Then came to a decision.

"We aren’t going back yet. We need to check the swamp. We need to ask the mystery man in the dark hood if he knows what’s happening."

"Are you crazy!?" one of the men yelled. "The hooded man said only the Elder is allowed to meet him! If he catches us there, he’ll turn us into feed for those fucking centipede monsters! Or worse, he’ll turn us into the infected! We should go back and tell the Elder what we found!"

"The Elder is busy with the one eye and maid! He trusted us with this. I’m worried other strangers might come by and notice what’s happening here. Time is of the essence, and this is important. We find the hooded man and let him handle this mess."

Without saying another word, the others looked at one another and nodded reluctantly. They all turned and sprinted into the thickening gloom of the forest.

....

From a high branch of an ancient tree, Ayako watched them go. She had heard every word with her sharpened hearing sense of wind magic she had woven around the clearing.

"A mystery man in a hood," she murmured to herself. "Is he the cause of these "infected"? It seems Eldoria’s backyard is quite filthy. Oh, how I bet Ryuuji would’ve loved to see this."

She leaped from one branch to another as she silently followed the group further into the forest. As she moved deeper into the woods, she began to see the aftermath of a one-sided massacre.

Scattered throughout the brush were the corpses of Giant Centipedes. Dozens of them. Shells were smashed and many legs twisted and broken.

The villagers ran right past them, ignoring the carnage as if it were a common sight, but Ayako slowed down just enough to inspect one.

’Hmm. I sense the faint residue of dark magic.’, she noted, seeing the blunt-force trauma on a shattered head. ’Someone fought through here with raw, desperate strength.’

She leapt back up and continued her pursuit. Soon, the air around her began to change, growing heavy and thick with the cloying scent of stagnant water and rotting vegetation.

The forest gave way to a sunless swamp, where the trees were draped in grey moss and the water was a murky, toxic green.

The villagers stopped at the edge of the mire and Ayako stood on a high branch directly above them.

Each villager pulled a small vial of pungent green liquid from their belts and began rubbing it onto their skin and clothes.

’Goodness. I can smell it from up here. That stench reeks. ’ Ayako covered her nose as she watched them. ’Why would they...’

She looked ahead and saw why. All across the swamp, resting on mossy hillocks and half-submerged logs, were hundreds of Giant Centipedes. They were enormous, their bodies pulsing with a slow breath. They were sleeping.

’Ahh, a repellent? Or something to mask their scent?’

The villagers, now coated in the green muck, walked directly into the swamp. Just as Ayako half deduced, the monsters didn’t even stir.

She stayed to the very edge of the swamp, moving through the high branches where the air was a bit clearer. As she bypassed a particularly large cluster of monsters, her eyes caught something on the ground below – something that wasn’t a centipede.

She dropped down and landed silently beside a slumped figure. It was a man, but he was dead. His skull had been completely caved in, and lying just inches from his hand was a heavy, blood-stained stone.

With nothing else to see here, she leaped back into the high trees and saw the villagers reach a clearing. Her heart began to race with a mixture of excitement and caution.

In the center of the swamp stood a large, lopsided wooden house.

Then, she saw "them". Walking aimlessly around the perimeter were several people. Their movements were disjointed and jerky. Their eyes were vacant, their flesh was pale and rotten, and their mouths hung open with yellowish foam as they wandered in circles with no apparent purpose.

’Those symptoms... They’re the same as the one who had attacked Rossana-sama.’

The five villagers walked straight to the front door of the house and knocked.

After waiting for a while, the door creaked open, and the group shuffled inside.

Ayako landed on the broken branch a few yards away. She looked at the wandering husks, then at the house.

’I could return to Rossana-sama and Isabel’, she thought. ’Or I could end this here.’

But the curiosity was too strong to ignore. She wanted – no – she needed to know.

She gathered her mana and her body shimmered as she dissolved into a flurry of sakura petals. She reappeared directly in front of the rotting door. She didn’t sneak in nor did she hide. She wanted the "hooded man" to see her.

She steadied her heart, wore a polite smile and raised her hand to knock firmly on the wooden door.

After a long, agonizing silence, the door finally opened.

Ayako’s hand went to the hilt of her katana as her body coiled like a spring. But when the door swung wide, she didn’t see one of the infected, or any of the villagers that had just entered, and she certainly didn’t see a dark-hooded person.

Standing there was a boy. He looked to be around her age, perhaps a year or two younger. He had messy brown hair that fell over his forehead, and his face was dotted with light freckles. He was dressed in a clean white apron and a starched white scrub hat, looking more like a laboratory assistant than a swamp-dwelling villain.

He stared at Ayako and his eyes widened in immediate, shocking recognition.

"... What the fuck? Why is Ayako-tan here?"

"A-Ayako-tan? Excuse me?"

.

..

...

- Back at the stone house –

"Master Rossana!" Isabel threw herself toward him and hovered her hands over his leg.

Kurt was hunched over, gripping his thigh hard as he bared his teeth. Isabel watched, the horrific purple veins that had been snaking toward his knee began to recede.

The dark, oily blackness in the wound was being pushed out by the glowing blue liquid, bubbling away like acid – the likely cause of his pain. The redness of the bite marks also began to fade into a dull, manageable pink.

When it was over, Kurt let out a long, shaky breath. He looked down at his ankle and saw that the infection had been completely neutralised.

"It... it worked. It actually worked. Master, you’re cured!"

"What?" The man on the floor looked confused. "How’d it heal so fast–"

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

"LIAM! IS IT OVER?! DID YOU DEAL WITH THEM?!"

"Shit! It’s the village Elder! You all need to hide!"