The light lasted for a few seconds before slowly fading away. There was black dust floating in the air as an aftermath and not a single undead in sight!
Rastel, still shocked, had to force himself to close his mouth and rush towards the house to see if Myra was still okay.
"Myra! Myra!!" he splashed through the water and quickly reached the other side. He didn't get far before he saw Amba walking through the doorway while carrying a limp Myra in his arms.
"Amba, is she okay!?" he asked hurriedly.
The golem nodded solemnly as he gave a simple explanation to Rastel through their link. Rastel sighed in relief when he heard that she had just passed out.
'She released that burst of light? Must have been a very powerful spell' he thought as he reached them and checked on her condition.
He wasn't a healer so he wasn't sure what to do or what her situation was, all he did was cast Insta heal on her a few times as it was the only healing spell he had. Her brows which were furrowed seemed to relax after this and he breathed a sigh of relief, at least there was a positive reaction.
"Let's go back Amba, she needs to rest." He motioned as he started walking slowly in the direction of the settlement.
He had left the game for a few hours and something this serious had already happened. If he knew this place had such latent problems then he wouldn't have chosen for them to spend the night here. The entire situation frustrated him greatly!
'Where did such a large amount of undead come from?' this was the most important question. Now that the problem had been revealed and damage had been done, he wasn't willing to let it go. There were situations where he just couldn't forgive, he wanted to find the source of the undead and clear it out!
"H-hero?" a tiny weak voice called out from behind him.
"Myra" he turned back to see Myra struggling feebly to open her eyes while within Amba's hold. He frowned at the sight but quickly composed his face as he moved towards her.
"Close your eyes and sleep, you must have strained yourself a lot. We will take you back to the inn safely, don't worry" he smiled reassuringly as he felt her forehead. She seemed to be burning up from a high fever all of a sudden!
Not knowing what to do, he cast Insta heal a few more times.
"H-hero…... the house…. my friend…. save them… please…." At her last words, tears started pouring out of her eyes. Rastel's heart broke instantly at the scene and moved to clean her tears.
"Don't worry Myra, I will save them I promise." He whispered to her while slowly rubbing her hair and she slowly calmed down before seemingly falling asleep.
Rastel looked at her figure for a while before looking up at Amba who also seemed disturbed. Amba looked at him with hesitant eyes and seemed to be about to apologize when Rastel suddenly spoke up.
"You did really well Amba, thank you" Amba seemed to shrink down in size after hearing his words and nodded silently.
'Wait, shrink down?' Rastel wanted to open his mouth to ask Amba as he clearly saw the golem reduce in size just now but ultimately decided to hold in his thoughts, this was not the time.
"Take her back to the inn Amba, I will go back to check the house" Rastel started walking back slowly to the house.
Amba also wanted to call out to Rastel and tell him what he had found out but he also decided to let it be. It would be better if he went and saw it himself. But the truth was, while Amba was fighting the undead, he had seen bodies of the residents of the house in a corner. They were already dead!
The golem turned around and moved, quickly disappeared through the forest.
Rastel soon reached the house and closely inspected the scene. There were pieces of weaponry all over the place and the whole floor was blanketed with black dust. The broken down house seemed eerie now in that environment like some haunted house.
He walked to the door and looked at a big hole near the roof that looked like something crashed through and then at the numerous tinier holes created by the hacking of the undead and sighed. The fight must have been really hard and scary. He imagined himself surrounded by so many undead and frowned slightly, it wouldn't be a nice experience.
He walked through the doorway and looked around. There was broken furniture and houseware all over the place, broken weapons, blood and…
"They really are dead huh?" he muttered under his breath as she saw the dead bodies that silently laid at a corner of the house.
It was near the small fire place that occupied a side of the building. There was an upturned chair there and a woman with black hair was laying motionlessly face down over it with a large pan in her hand. There was blood dripping down the legs of the chair that made a small pool underneath it.
And not far from there against the wall of the edge of the house, the huge figure of a man lay with his eyes upturned and the fingers of his right hand still gripping tightly a large axe. He had left a long trail of blood from the center of the living room like he had dragged his body there.
Rastel's face scrunched up in a grimace at the scene and quickly turned his face away. He gagged a bit with his face down before calming down and regaining his composure.
Even though the game toned down such gruesome scenes a bit for the players, it was still not easy on his mind at all. And knowing that they were just innocent people trying to live their lives made it even more unbearable to him. At that moment, Rastel renewed his resolve to get down to the bottom of the matter. He felt his peace of mind would be greatly disturbed if he didn't see it through to the end.
He was just about to leave the house and catch up with Amba when he noticed something odd. Why did the man drag his body all the way over there from the center of the room? To be with his wife?
'That may be so' Rastel nodded his head and was about to leave again when he thought about something else.
'Myra asked me to save her friend. It couldn't be she was talking about the man and his wife, was she? Is there someone else? A child maybe?' this made him pause as he looked around the house again.
There was a small kitchen in another corner, a corridor that led to two rooms and a small store by the side that housed some tools. Rastel thoroughly searched all of them but still found nothing. When he came back to the living room, he turned and looked suspiciously at where the man lay with his upturned eyes and hand still gripping an axe and hesitated slightly.
Deciding that there was nothing bad about been sure, he moved to the body and seriously inspected the corner. It didn't take more than a second before he noticed the door frame. There was a small latch door hidden underneath the body.
Whispering his forgiveness and blessings, he gently shifted the man's body to the side and found the handle. He pulled the door open and his eyes landed on the small figure of a girl who seemed to be unconscious. The hole underneath was neither deep nor wide. Just about a meter deep and 3 meters wide in each direction. There were a couple of boxes, sacks and such around and the girl was laying quietly on a particularly big sack.
Rastel went down into the hole and gently lifted the girl out. He closed the door after that and checked on the girl. Seeing she had no serious injuries apart from some scrapes and bruises, he cast Insta heal on her before getting her on his back and gently walking out of the house. He now had two patients to deal with.
'It really seems like I have just been babysitting since I started playing seriously' he thought about what Natsu had told him after school and smiled wryly.
After a long and slow trek through the forest, Rastel finally reached the settlement only to see a crowd outside the inn.
"Eh! What is that monster really?"
"I am telling you, the old man said it just starting knocking on his door! How scary!"
"But what about the…you know what. What happened to them?"
"Look at the size of that thing!"
"That poor girl, I hope she is alright. That thing must be a forest guardian, right?"
There was a huge crowed holding torches and lanterns standing outside the inn and he could see Amba's confused huge form towering over the crowd.
'Of course!' Rastel mentally slapped himself as he witnessed the scene. He had forgotten that Amba was supposed to be a secret and had him waltzing to the inn, the people would obviously be unsettled.
Amba who already knew he was back through their link turned around to look in his direction.
"Hey! Isn't that the muan that came in with the girl? Hey you!" someone who had noticed the golem's movements and saw him called out.
Rastel walked towards the group who stared at him whispering to themselves and it wasn't until they saw the girl on his back that they reacted.
"Dear gods! isn't that the miller's daughter!?"
"Lana!"
Some women came forward to collect her off his hands while some of the men were already looking at him with an accusing glare. Rastel was just about to explain himself when a croaked old voice echoed from behind the crowd.
"What's goin' on 'ere!? Move away from my inn yer idiots! Give way!" it was the voice of the old man who ran the inn.
"It is the muan sir! We saw him coming out of the forest with the miller's daughter and she is unconscious!" a man with a goatee reported the situation.
"Did I ask yer to tell me that idiot!" the old man stared him down and the man turned his eyes to the ground and kept quiet.
Rastel was quite amused at the scene but kept his face straight as he hurriedly told the man. "Do you have a healer around? The girl is unconscious, and where is the girl I came with, Myra?"
The old man looked at him with squinted eyes for a second before waving at him. "Come inside and see for yerself. And someone should bring young Lana in too." The man shambled back to the door.
Rastel looked at Amba who nodded and instantly transformed into a golem core which landed in his hand which drew gasps of surprise from the crowd and a suspicious glare from the old man but he didn't mind, there was no need to hide Amba now.
He walked into the inn and found Myra laying down asleep on a makeshift bed of sheets on the inn floor and there was someone attending to her. It was the gloomy woman they had met when they first came to the settlement.