Chương 68: Back to town

By the time the two of us left the mountain, the sun had set. Having to support Kamarti while navigating a downhill forest path was utterly exhausting. A line of bright torches awaited us on the road back to town. Standing at the front were Lealia and Thenos. This was also one of the reasons I had decided not to bring the ghoul's head down with me. I wanted to investigate the root of the problem before throwing the entire town into chaos and alerting whoever was responsible for the ghouls appearing here.

If in previous loops, the Hero candidates had managed to leave this place safely, then the amount of time I had probably wasn't all that limited. When they saw us approaching, everyone looked horrified. I understood why: the water I'd brought wasn't enough to wash the blood from my face, and my clothes were stained a dark, reddish-black. There was no helping it; a ghoul's circulatory system is hyperactive, and the blood spray had been excessive.

"Ash-Asher, what happened to you…? So much blood!" Lealia stammered. I replied, "It's not mine, don't worry. I'm not hurt, but Kamarti sprained his ankle. If Iris has any mana left, ask her to heal him." It wasn't until two other church soldiers hurried over to take Kamarti off my hands that my miserable back regained some semblance of feeling. The man was over six feet tall and burly, while I'm not even five-foot-seven! I turned to Thenos.

"I told you not to report anything unless we weren't back by tomorrow morning." Thenos wiped sweat from his brow.

"By Halunar, Lady Lealia was so worried I couldn't stop her. If you'd been any later, she would have charged up that mountain herself." Noticing a large crowd gathering, I took the opportunity to address them.

"I encountered... a large beast on the mountain. It's very dangerous, so everyone should go home, lock your doors tight, and avoid going out at night. Even if you hear loud noises, do not open your doors." Ignoring the uneasy whispers, I headed toward the inn. Lealia gripped my arm, her eyebrows knitted in concern.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?"

"I'm sure. Right now, I just want to bathe. Can you have someone bring me two barrels of well water? Actually, make it three."

"Of course, of course." I hadn't bathed that thoroughly in ten years. Only after the three barrels were drained did I finally stop smelling the foul stench of ghoul blood. The dinner the others had saved for me was still just grilled meat and bread; it seemed they were still avoiding well water for cooking. Fortunately, there were some fruits, or I would have choked on those two bone-dry staples. The Hero Candidates waited patiently for me to finish before they began their barrage of questions.

"What exactly happened on the mountain? Did you two fall?"

"Did you find anything unusual?"

"You told the people you met a beast? A wolf? A bear?"

"Where did all that blood come from?" Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. I thought for a moment, then decided to tell the truth.

"I encountered a ghoul." Iris asked with utter disbelief, "You met a what?"

"A ghoul. The frenzied form of someone heavily infected by Miasma. We all studied this at the academy, didn't we?" A ten-second silence fell over the room before Iris's voice went up an octave.

"It's impossible for there to be a ghoul here. This isn't even Marbour. How could a peninsula so far from the Demon King's territory have Miasma?" Edgar added, "Is it possible you mistook a lost traveler for one?" I glanced at him.

"Are you suggesting I murdered someone and called them a ghoul to cover my tracks?" He flustered.

"No… I mean, it was getting dark, maybe you just misidentified them..."

"You can go ask Kamarti; he saw it too. If you don't believe him either, follow me up the mountain tomorrow to see it with your own eyes." The others exchanged looks as if trying to gauge if I'd gone mad. I continued calmly:"The patients' symptoms are identical to early-stage Miasma poisoning. Lealia and I suspected this early on, but we lacked concrete proof. Today's encounter confirms it. The spring on the northeast mountain is contaminated with Miasma." The others clearly needed time to process this.

I didn't expect them to believe me instantly; everything would be clear once we went up the mountain tomorrow. I left the table.

"I'm going to sleep. Whoever wants to go up the mountain tomorrow, wake up early." Though exhausted after a physically demanding afternoon, I couldn't sleep. After tossing and turning for an hour, I decided to walk in the courtyard to organize the chaotic thoughts in my head. Henry had said Grasiva might be where the Church was experimenting with Miasma, but at the time, I was so shocked by the news that I was the "true" Hero in my first life that I hadn't asked for details.

Moreover, he said "might be," not "certainly," proving he hadn't investigated it thoroughly himself. I had unintentionally downplayed the issue, and now I regretted it. Iris was right about one thing: Grasiva was isolated and far from the Demon King's lands. Miasma couldn't spread here naturally. Based on the current situation, it was certain that someone was tampering with Miasma and had accidentally let it leak.

But there was one thing that had been puzzled me from the start: if the Church knew Miasma experiments were happening here, why send Candidates at all? Initially, I hypothesized that the leak was under control, so they sent healing Candidates to gain experience. But if I were the Church, knowing the "plague" was linked to my own black ops, I wouldn't send inexperienced Candidates with unproven loyalty. Sending a few loyal priests would be far safer.

Unless the Church actually doesn't know about the leak and truly thinks this is just a strange plague. If so, the problem we faced was far more serious. There were only two possibilities: either the Miasma wasn't from a Church experiment, or the information was being hidden from the Church's high command. Either way, it implied a third party was involved. The Church is a tight-knit organization, and a Miasma experiment is too big to hide. There's no way it could go wrong without the higher-ups knowing.

But in my first life, I never heard the name Grasiva. Even Iris, who had been here, never mentioned it during our later adventures. Even Henry mentioned it recently as if it were a minor footnote. So, I can tentatively guess that in previous loops, the Grasiva incident was resolved "quietly." The sick were cured, or a few unlucky ones died, but the cause was never found. The leak was handled and hushed up, even for the participating Candidates. Or perhaps the Candidates left before things got truly bad.

Given Iris's tendency to dodge hard work while craving fame, she likely made a hasty conclusion about the plague, gave a bold assurance, and slipped away. Furthermore, meeting that ghoul today triggered a memory I had tried to bury as a psychological defense mechanism—the first time I faced a ghoul. It was a mission that Jullius and the combat-heavy Candidates participated in. A major city near the capital was besieged by a ghoul horde. The battle lasted a week with staggering casualties.

To this day, it remains in my top three memories I never want to revisit. My stomach still churns thinking of the piles of corpses and ghouls stacked in city corners. A ghoul has three times the strength of a trained soldier. Facing an army of nearly a thousand ghouls without modern weapons? Even Hollywood wouldn't write a script that hopeless. Ultimately, they stopped the horde from reaching the capital, but the fear haunted the Kingdom.

Before that battle, the "Rise of the Demon King" was a distant fairy tale to commoners. Afterward, the Kingdom entered a dark age of terror. The Church concluded the horde was created by a cult. They claimed to have wiped the cult out after the battle. But thinking about it now... to create a legion of ghouls, you needed to infect thousands of people. How and when did that cult poison thousands of people? That was never explained.

And I had a gut feeling that the future ghoul attack and what was happening here in Grasiva were connected.