A/N: Happy Labor Day!
E/N: HAPPY LABOR DAY :D
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That was close. As much as I wanted to die and go back home, the idea of dying at the hands of some Demon Worshipper who might do god-knows-what to me is not at all appealing.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I stepped out of the bus. The familiar Elgin forest is in front of me, but I have no idea where I am.
[Ding! The Host is in the Elgin Forest.]
Thank you. That was "helpful."
[Ding! The System thanks the Host for the compliment.]
I should stop using sarcasm. No matter what I try to do, insulting the System is impossible.
Also, why was that cultist guy so surprised by me?
[Ding! Park Hyun was surprised that the Host could smell the scent on his body.]
Just spray some perfume, it's not like it takes magic to maintain personal hygiene.
[Ding! Human beings cannot smell the scent on a Woke's body. However, elves and forest fairies can.]
If that's the case, then why can I smell it?
[Ding! All of the Host's senses were enhanced when the Host's soul merged with the System.]
Let's see, how far away is that bird in the sky?
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 2185.1 meters above the Host.]
Shadow Raven? Is that what that thing-
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 2096.2 meters above the Host.]
Wait. I didn't ask for the distance again.
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 1930.5 meters above the Host.]
Is this "deja vu"? That's no good
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 1607.3 meters above the Host.]
I lifted my head.
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 1024.7 meters above the Host.]
That thing- it's diving.
[Ding! The Shadow Raven is 283.9 meters above the Host.]
Well, I found death sooner than I thought. I sure hope this doesn't hurt that much…
Just as I thought about what I wanted my last words to be, the bird slammed into my forehead.
° ° ° ° °
When I regained consciousness, the first thing that greeted me was the smell of dirt and grass. Where am I? It felt like I was laying on a floor covered in needles, so definitely not a comfortable hospital bed…
"Meat!" So there's somebody here. Who are they? That sounded really, really close.
Then a sharp, needle-like object stabbed me in the forehead. "Ow!" The pain forced me to open my eyes.
Not accustomed to the darkness, I could only wave my hand in the voice's general direction. The same voice screeched again, "Meat, alive!"
I could barely make out a shadowy blob, which almost immediately merged with the darkness and disappeared. Did it fly away? What was that?
[Ding! That was a lone Shadow Raven. Shadow Ravens are common F-rank scavengers who feast on corpses with their murder. Although they are weak in physical combat, they can merge with each other using Dark Arts to escape danger. They store extra food in their shadows and often travel in murders. Their eyes and wings are their most vulnerable parts. Art element disadvantages are light, water, and ice.]
Do they travel with their murder? Isn't that one alone?
[Ding! Shadow Ravens will get banished from the flock if they fail to commit murder.]
I stood up and tried to dust myself off, then realized what an idiot I am after realizing I'm just spreading the wet mud around.
The System kept talking about Arts and how monsters have those weaknesses. What are Arts anyways? Are they like skills?
[Ding! Arts and Skills are two separate types of talents. Skills are obtained from birth and have ranks from F to S. Arts are obtained through Records -books encrypted with mana- and mana stones. Arts are grouped by their elements such as fire, water, earth, wind, ice, thunder, light, and dark. The Host doesn't have any Arts because he hadn't obtained any Records or mana stone.]
I wonder if that bird used an Art to merge with the shadow. While I am a bit jealous of Arts-y people, it's not like I can use the Arts anyways, seeing as how I barely have any mana.
Oh well. No use worrying about stuff I don't even have. What I do have are priorities: death, preferably as painless as possible.
Hey, System. Find me the closest place that I can die.
[Ding! If the Host turn-]
"Stop!" I yelled before the System could go any further.
With the directions the System gave me in the hardware store, I might as well be blind. I realized that I had no sense of direction. Can't the System just give me an arrow that points to my destination?
[Ding!]
Immediately, a blue see-through arrow appeared in front of me. It's pointed…
Behind me?
I turned around in confusion as a nauseous smell choked my lungs. Ahh, the smell of rotten eggs. Where have I smelled this before?
Before I could form another thought, I lost consciousness again. The last thing I saw before my vision faded was a pair of red eyes glaring at me through a familiar pair of glasses.
• • • • • • • • • • (P.O.V. change)
{Disclaimer, there will be gore}
Today was supposed to be Park Hyun's day off. He was just planning to take it easy, no murder, no supporting the Cult of Wokes, nothing like that.
He is a greedy person, but he didn't think of himself as evil. He wanted money, yes, but not much other than that. Unlike his fellow cult members, he didn't lust over power, fame, or immortality. Getting dragged around by those fanatics all day was getting really tiring, but as much as he hated this job, leaving the cult of Wokes was impossible if he wanted to survive.
He just wanted a break.
On his way to the casino, he met a peculiar teenager. The kid's bright green hair was basically screaming for attention. Anyone would look twice out of curiosity.
However, being a member of the Woke cult, Park Hyun knew that green hair is commonly found in elves. He also knew that the elves are a proud race, and would almost never try to blend in with humans.
To his surprise, the kid took the seat next to him, so he attempted to make some casual small talk. Almost immediately, his hypothesis was verified: the kid pinched his nose at him. No normal human would be able to smell the Woke's scent, and he knew this "kid" wasn't a kid. This creature sitting next to him could be an elf that's over a century old!
Park Hyun suspected that the kid had an artifact to hide his long ears and cover their musty nature scent. If he would go this far to hide his identity, he thought, this might prove to be problematic.
It was obvious that the kid knew (or at least suspected) his identity, so when he got off the bus in the middle of nowhere, Park Hyun decided to quickly and sneakily follow him. The last thing Park Hyun wanted was for his identity as a Woke to be revealed, and if the kid knew, he must be eliminated before he could tell anyone.
Although Park Hyun is confident in his scouting and tracking Skills he learned from the Cult of Wokes, he's not that confident about his strength in a fight, especially against an elf.
After following his target for some time, he realized the elf was acting very strangely: he was mumbling to himself, making strange facial expressions. What's more, he didn't look like he had a destination at all. Was he lost? Did he know he was being followed? Park hyun's mind was starting to fill with questions.
Elves are extremely sensitive to dark-elemental Arts. To avoid being potentially detected, Park Hyun decided to summon his familiar, a Shadow Raven that signed a life contract with him, to carry out the assassination. Normally, he would wait until night time for the attack, but frankly, he was tired and scared, and didn't care enough to waste his time on his day off.
To his surprise, the "elf" didn't run or attack Shadow Raven. In fact, he just stood there with a dumbfounded expression on his face, staring into the sky as the bird came in for the attack.
"How unlucky-" He heard the "elf" mutter a second before the impact. "Splat!"
The impact from the collision left a coin-sized hole on the elf's forehead. After shaking its beak free from the shattered skull, the raven began feasting on the corpse, starting from the head. Peeling off the skin with surgical precision, the scavenger revealed the tender facial muscles underneath. As the bits of meat disappeared into the bird's stomach, ivory-white bones surfaced from beneath the blood-stained, shredded skin. Instinctively, the raven started slamming its beak into the skull, trying to shatter what little bone structure it still had to get at the savory brain tissues underneath. Lumps of flesh and fat, mixed with blood and brain juices, oozed from the openings left from earlier: the ears, the eyes, the mouth, and the cheeks until the head looked nothing more than a mound of red, fleshy play-doh. The guts pushed the left eyeballs out of its socket, but it only distracted the raven for a second as it quickly snatched it up and swallowed it like a berry.
The smell was nauseating. Park Hyun never liked the smell of the forest in the first place, but a bloody mess mixed with wet mud is something he hoped to never smell again. It's only been about a minute, but already flies are swarming the corpse, and maggots can be seen wriggling behind shards of broken bones. As the raven finished what little was left of the head, it turned its attention to the body. Knowing the feasting habits of the Shadow Ravens, there's not going to be much left of the corpse after his familiar is done. Shadow Ravens are used by the Wokes because they are good for covering up evidence, but Park Hyun still turned away in disgust. This line of work did not suit him.
He was about to leave when out of his peripherals, something caught his eye. Turning around, he witnessed the most unforgettable sight of his life: what was left of the corpse, along with all the blood and guts on the raven, disappeared slowly like a pile of dust being blown away by a gust of wind. And then, just when he was rubbing his eyes and pinching his cheeks, another body appeared exactly where the corpse was. It was the same body of the elf boy, the same one that was being turned into a meat smoothie moments ago, but this time completely intact.
The "corpse" laid on the forest floor, as peacefully as a sleeping baby, almost like it never died in the first place.