Chương 71: (69) 2.22. A Hidden Village

Vin spat the latest insect out of his mouth as they made their way quickly yet carefully through the vast forest. The most noticeable thing about this fragment was the shockingly high concentration of bugs flying around, and it made moving fast rather unpleasant. In the short time they'd been running Vin had already encountered everything from giant swarms of gnats to large, bee-like insects the size of his fist, each with a nasty looking stinger that he wanted absolutely no part of.

The fact that he could see venom literally dripping from their giant stingers made that a rather easy decision. Despite the crisis they were currently facing, Vin couldn't help but feel another pang of disappointment when he realized he was no longer receiving experience notifications for discovering new animals and insects. It seemed his advancement to Magical Explorer really had removed anything that didn't involve magic from his experience gains.

Though seeing as the tradeoffs were more than worth it, he couldn't really complain. At this point, he was just happy that discovering new fragments still counted for whatever reason.

"Dear Gods, this place freaks me out," Scule called out from the forest ground, grimacing with a hand on his stomach as he shied away from a beetle nearly as large as Reginald.

"If this is what all forests are like, count me out for the next one."

"This is nothing, you should have seen Shia's Sacred Forest," Vin said, trying to fill the silence as they trekked and keep their morale up.

"I saw a centipede the size of my arm crawl up a tree, and I still have nightmares about it."

"That forest might have been vast, but it had nothing on a single one of the elder trees from my world," Alka called over her shoulder, busy paving the way for them.

"Slayers aren't even allowed to enter the canopies until their second prestige at a minimum, and even then they're only allowed access to the smaller ones. I've heard that some of the trees closer to the capital have canopies nearly a mile wide."

"That sounds like it shouldn't be physically possible," Vin said, trying to imagine just how strong the branches would have to be to support the ecosystem Alka claimed existed within the tree tops.

"So I guess magic must be involved?"

"I would assume," Alka shrugged, trying to swat at a few glowing bugs hovering around her face and scowling when her hand phased straight through them. The group continued on quietly, their occasional attempts at pushing back against the chilling silence with a comment about the bugs or a joke at one of their expense doing little to distract them from the invisible scythe dangling over all of their heads. After a while, Alka finally got serious.

Clearing her throat, the ghost hovered over next to him, falling in line beside him as he ran. The strange solidity of her form the ambient death mana had given her was gone, but Vin didn't have any problems making out the troubled look on the ghost's flickering face.

"Vin… I-""We're gonna be fine, Alka," Vin said, cutting her off with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"How many times have you seen me cheat certain death in the last two weeks? This is just an ordinary, vagabond Vin adventure!" He tried forcing a chuckle, and immediately regretted it when an unexpected spike of nausea made his stomach heave. Watching him clutch his hand over his mouth, Alka's expression only darkened.

"I've seen you scrape your way out of a lot of nasty situations, but nothing like this…" Alka reached out a tentative hand and placed her ethereal fingers on his shoulder as best she could. Vin couldn't feel anything other than a general sense of cold, but he still appreciated the sentiment.

"I'm no stranger to death… Hell, it was seeing my dad killed right in front of me as a kid that drove me to become a Slayer… But if the four of you die because of me…"

"We're not dead yet Alka, no need to get all mushy on me," Vin said.

"And even if the worst comes to pass, none of our deaths would be your fault, you know that."

"You only risked going through that fragment to try and find the divine user before their trail went cold," Alka snapped, glaring at him.

"Say what you want to try and make me feel better, but don't lie to me."

"Be that as it may, we all knew what we were getting into," Vin continued.

"It's not like you knew about the golems or the insane radiation. Hell, if anyone's to blame, it should be me. I'm the only one who even knows about radiation, I should have put two and two together when Shia mentioned the death mana and I saw the enormous sun in the sky."

"As long as we can all agree it's not my fault, I can die happy," Scule called out weakly, waving a hand at them. Vin's breath caught as he realized the petian was somehow both white as a sheet, while also looking like he was covered in a nasty sunburn. Glancing at Shia, he confirmed the elf looked even worse, her skin already turning a nasty shade of reddish-purple. A quick glance at his arm showed he was beginning to turn red as well.

"We're running out of time," he muttered, throwing caution to the wind as he picked up the pace. Avoiding monsters and dangerous animals didn't matter if it resulted in Shia dying before they got to the mysterious settlement. Strangely enough, the faster Vin traveled, the more he realized he was beginning to veer away from the direction Shia had originally pointed them in.

He didn't know if the radiation poisoning was affecting his sense of direction or what was going on, but if it weren't for his Mental Map, he was pretty certain he wouldn't have even been able to travel in a straight line. As they rushed through the forest, Alka went back to flying just ahead of them and acted as a lookout. To his relief, it wasn't long before she zipped back, a glimmer of hope in her eyes as she gave them the good news.

"It's a village!" She said, pointing eagerly forward.

"I don't know how she knew, but it's there!"

"Come on Scule, we're not dead yet," Vin grunted, fixing Shia's position over his shoulder and redoubling his efforts. At this point, it looked like the only thing keeping Scule in Reginald's saddle were the straps for his feet, but the petian still managed to muster a pathetic cheer, his face pressed hard against Reginald's fur as he struggled to stay conscious.

"Alka-""Way ahead of you," she said, shooting into his body and echoing him.

'Last thing we need is to freak out the village's medicine man or whatever they have.' Swatting aside one last giant grasshopper looking thing that tried jumping into his face, Vin broke out of the treeline, his heart racing as he took in the village standing before them. Completely surrounded on all sides by thick forest, the village was located within a massive clearing. Not much larger than Sakis, Vin guessed there couldn't be more than a few hundred people living here based on the small number of buildings.

Most of them looked rather similar, styled like simple wood cabins and clearly using the trees from the surrounding forest in their construction. There was only a single building significantly larger than the rest, far more elaborately designed and situated off on the edge of the village. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Vin could only pray that someone within the small settlement was a healer capable of helping them as he made his way across the clearing toward the nearest house. Next to the house was a small garden, inside which he spotted a woman on her hands and knees, yanking out weeds. Her back was to them and she seemed rather engrossed in her task, so she didn't even notice Vin approach until he reached the edge of the garden and called out.

"Excuse me, we need help!" Startled, the woman leapt to her feet, spinning around and staring at them with wide eyes. Vin could only imagine how they must have looked to the woman. A battered man missing part of his arm, a badly burned elf slung over his shoulder, and a miniature man feebly clinging to a rat down by his feet. Granted, the villager was a bit interesting to look at as well.

Vin hadn't noticed with her back to them, but now that he got a good look at her, it was very clear the middle aged woman wasn't human. Her skin was dark, almost like charcoal, with what looked like jagged red lines running all along the exposed parts of her body. Her eyes were black instead of white, with bands of soft, shimmering silver.

There were four small horns jutting out of her forehead, more nubs than anything, and she had long claws that she'd clearly been using in place of a trowel based on the dirt caked under them. Vin and the woman stared at one another for a few seconds, both in similar states of shock. But hearing a quiet moan of pain from Shia snapped him out of his stupor, and he nodded toward the woman.

"Please, my friends and I are really sick. It's not contagious, but I don't know how much longer we have. Does your village have a healer?"

"Yes… Yes, we do," the woman said, not taking her eyes off them as she wiped her dirty hands on her tunic. Unlike the rest of her, her outfit appeared rather normal, looking like something any gardener back on Earth would wear, if a bit more rustic.

"She's out in the forest at the moment, but I can bring you to her residence."

"Thank you," Vin said, his legs nearly giving out as a wave of relief washed over him. Despite everything he'd said to try and reassure Alka, the truth was he'd been absolutely terrified at their impending deaths. Hearing the village did indeed have some form of healer, he let himself feel hopeful for the first time since realizing what it was making them sick.

"Do you know when she'll be back? I really don't think my friend has very long."

"I'll let her apprentices know, one of them will go out and fetch her." Finally picking up on his urgency, the woman motioned for them to follow her as she began quickly walking. It didn't take long for Vin to realize they were heading away from the village proper toward the one unique building closer to the treeline. Before he could say anything, the woman glanced back at him. Her eyes locked onto Shia, and Vin swore her silver eyes seemed to shine.

"What is she?"

"Your world doesn't have elves?" Vin asked, checking to make sure Scule was still with them. It looked like the petian had finally passed out, but Reginald was right on his tail, carrying the unconscious Rogue without issue.

"No, I've never seen her kind before," the woman confirmed, her eyes continuing to scan over Shia as if taking in every inch of the unconscious elf.

"Granted, with our village hidden away as it is, we don't really see much of any of the other races, so that's not too surprising I suppose."

"You, uh… You're aware of what Edregon is and everything right? How you're not on your own world anymore?"

"Yes, we realized that rather quickly when the relocation occurred," the woman nodded, much to Vin's relief. It never got any easier telling people their old world was probably dead and gone.

"It's almost funny. Our hidden village hadn't seen any new faces in years, and yet after the relocation, we've actually received quite a handful of visitors these past few months. Even after all these weeks I suppose I'm still not used to strangers surprising me in my garden like you did."

"Sorry about that… And for staring. Like your world and elves, my world doesn't have…"

"Infernals," the woman chuckled, her laugh sounding harsh, like the crackling of embers.

"And before you work yourself into a tizzy, yes we are distantly related to demons. That's not going to be a problem, is it?"

"No, no problem at all!" Vin hurriedly said, glad that Scule was unconscious for this bit. The petian hadn't actually talked about demons all that much, but Vin had heard him use variations of 'demon' as curses more than once.

"Glad to hear. The last traveler that came through here a few days back was some sort of divine crusader," the woman snorted, shaking her head.

"Idiot had the bright idea of trying to smite us down just because of our race I suppose. Just wanted to make sure you weren't going to act the same."

"Wait, what?" Vin asked, completely forgetting about their current condition for a second as he honed in on what she'd just said. Based on the shifting cold within his core, Alka was focused as well.

"Someone with divinity came through here recently?"

"Oh yeah, big tough guy, looking to start all sorts of trouble. You can ask Madam Trebella all about him if you want, she was the one that sent that troublemaker packing with his sword between his legs if you catch my meaning." Vin's mind swirled as they stepped up to the large building that looked like a miniaturized mansion. He'd been so focused on survival, he'd completely forgotten about the divine warrior they were chasing in the first place.

Before he could ask more about it, the infernal knocked on the large doors. After a brief pause, one of the doors swung open, revealing a much younger looking infernal. A teenage boy in a light grey robe with similar small horns and black eyes opened the door, staring at their group with curiosity. Vin started as he realized unlike their impromptu guide, the boy's eyes were brilliant rings of gold rather than silver.

"Hello Aunt Agne, how can I help you?" Despite his young appearance, the boy's voice was far deeper than Vin would have expected, almost like each word had an underlying echo to it.

"Greetings, Young Master Malzer," Agne said, briefly touching the tip of one of her horns before gesturing to Vin and his friends.

"These folks just stumbled out of the forest and surprised me in my garden. Nearly gave me a heart attack they did. They appear to be in dire straits. Any chance you could go fetch your master and ask her to take a look at them?"

"Are they able to pay Madam Trebella's fee?" Malzer asked, squinting at the three of them. Vin was about to promise to pay whatever the mysterious Madam Trebella wanted when Agne suddenly stepped forward, grabbing the largest of the boy's horns and yanking him close.

"Malzer. Pesylvo. Arizes," Agne said, yanking on the boy's horn and making him wince with every word.

"These folks have been nothing but polite since they appeared, and in case those golden eyes of yours aren't working right, let me tell you that they seem to be in a lot of pain. You go fetch your master right this minute young man, or I'm going to have some choice words for your mother later." Before she'd even finished with her demands, the poor teenage infernal was holding up his hands and cowering under the older woman's might.

"Of course Auntie, I'm sorry!" Malzer begged, cringing as he realized Vin was staring at him.

"Not in front of Madam Trebella's guests!"

"Hmph!" Agne grunted, finally releasing the boy's horn and turning to smile warmly at Vin.

"You folk make yourself comfortable while Young Master Malzer here fetches Madam Trebella. He won't be very long. Will you?" She turned, directing the question at the boy. Jumping under her sudden stare, he hurriedly shook his head. At this point he looked willing to agree to anything she said, lest she start grabbing his horns again.

"Good. Come see me once you're all better. I'll make you folk a dinner that will blow your socks off!" Patting Vin on the back, Agne turned and began walking back the way she'd come, humming to herself. Staring at the woman's back for a few seconds, Vin slowly turned back to the boy who was busy rubbing his horn and grumbling to himself. Sighing, Malzer held the door open wider, motioning for them to come in.

"Well don't just stand there," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Hurry up and get in here before Aunt Agne comes back and tries to rip my other horns out."