"Calm down and explain slowly, start from the beginning" asked Milleral as he waved his hands downward to try and calm the old man down.
"Alright, I was driving my carriage, it was late at night, I was in the middle of nowhere, pretty much the furthest point from the two closest villages, okay?" started calmly explaining the man as he pointed at the nearby road.
"It was night but it was a full moon or something, there was some moon light and I see a man on the side of the road, at first, I am a bit worried, thinking that it was some sort of bandit ambush but it was extremely cold outside, there was even a think layer of snow, nothing compared to what we have now!" the snake hero didn't stop the old man even when it seemed he was going off topic.
"But you see, he seemed extremely sickly and wasn't dressed properly considering the cold, so I stopped and offered him help, not like my horses are fast enough to drag the carriage if we were attacked, they wouldn't care even if I was getting murdered, ungrateful bastards..."
"The man spoke and he sounded weird, sick weird but not anything too alarming, I offered him my hand to help him get on and when I grabbed it, he suddenly held on to it with an iron grip and started telling me all of the good things the 'Great One' could do for me if I worshipped him!"
"Clearly, I had fallen into a must worse ambush than bloodthirsty bandits, it was a missionary! And by the gods, he had one hell of a grip, he probably could have shattered my poor little hand had he slightly held on harder..."
"What was I saying again? Ah yes, the man was strong and a religious zealot but that's not even the worst thing, as he held on to me, I felt small legs starting to step on my skin, there were insects and bugs everywhere! They were coming from the man himself!"
"I thought I was going to be sacrificed to some creepy critter deity when he let go of me and told me to think about his offer, I certainly am not going to pray to the bug god any time soon!"
"Well, thank you for telling me your story sir, I'll go on my way then" Milleral excused himself as he walked up to a small woman that was sitting not so far away.
"The same story again and this one said it happened two days ago, we're closing in on him" spoke the hero to Bilam, who simply kept on inspecting the dark bug as she nodded her head.
"These bugs are quite something, they all seem to be typical species found just about everywhere with simply a darker shade, however, their diet seem to make them unkillable as long as they have some of that food in their stomach!" she nerded out as she put the cockroach-like one she was holding back into the jar, where a dozen of these insects were, despite the fact that a few had died after her experiments, the others wouldn't even try to take a bite, it seems like they only ate one thing.
"And from what I see, their diet is human flesh but even when I put some skin tissue of humans, they don't eat it, so it seems like they are deeply linked to our target" she added afterwards.
"All of those bugs have the lingering scent of a lesser sin on them, an undocumented one it seems since there was no such venial sin during the battle" remarkd Milleral as they both started walking, following the direction the bugs seemed to be meaning to go toward.
"Though, I still believe it is a bad idea, Heilig is supposed to be an ally of the 'New Undead Empire' or whatever they call themselves, so don't go attacking him if he doesn't attack first" Bilam reminded the hero, she was mostly here for bug curiosity and also to see if that lesser sin would be willing to tell her where the iron necromancer was.
The dark bugs were only pointing toward a direction at all thanks to her input after all, when she wasn't suggesting them anything, they would just stand around until death, even though they seemed to be innately capable of finding their 'nest'.
"I need to show these to Theli" she said as she looked at the various bugs in the jar, they were all so cool and interesting! To her at least.
Milleral ignored her whispering to herself and soon enough they found themselves before a suspicious cave entrance.
Suspicious was understating it, it was just a tall but shallow cavity in the side of the mountain, it was only a small room with a high ceiling, they could see clearly what was happening inside, some guy wearing baggy robes and a large cloak was just flailing around and yelling.
As he rolled on the ground and threw himself around, dark bugs flew around, indicating that it was who they were looking for, his aura could have told them that also, but the man was hiding it expertly, he really just looked like a filthy madman without anything more.
The man suddenly stopped, right before he was about to jump up, he raised a palm toward them but stopped as he noticed the half halfling.
Instead, he rubbed his hands awkwardly and walked up to them in a strange, side stepping way, suddenly quivering as if gust of cold winds suddenly assailed his body.
"How may I help you?" he asked in a rough tone of voice, caused by the fact that his friendly bugs had the brilliant idea of bitting his vocals cords the moment he tried speaking.
Milleral hadn't actually been expecting him to not attack on sight, which was bummer, he was still meaning to carve some sins up, especially those lesser sins that seemed completely unable to not act unreasonably.
Just the other day, Occult had razed another village the ground and Sacrilege had prevented priests from using their holy magic caused various churches to fall to shambles as most people only funded them because of the healing capabilities of holy magic.
The hero didn't have time to say anything as the sin just started spouting things about his god out of nowhere, while Bilam just hit him with bugs related questions.
The snake hero just sat down and bid his time, it didn't matter much, his snake knew the scent of the sin in specific now.