After a while of walking, I saw a glimpse of light at the entrance of the cave. It was surely night, and a cold wind blew toward us from the outside.
I saw no guards or anyone at the entrance of the cave. Did they not think about anyone escaping?
But when I walked toward the entrance of the cave, I saw a few men lying on the ground, sleeping. Around them on the ground, there were a few half-eaten foods.
"She did more than I asked for," the skinshaper said as he walked toward the sleeping men on the ground and picked up a few tools that had fallen from their hands.
He handed one of them to the goblin and threw a wooden club toward me.
Standing outside of the cave, I could see a large amount of light a bit far away from me. From those lights, the brightness illuminated the houses and structures in the area.
"That must be the village of those guys," I muttered to myself.
"It's probably midnight. Those guys won't come here until morning. Until then, we have time to get out of here,"
Saying that, skinshaper turned around and looked toward the area behind the cave, where they could see the forest far away there.
"Let's go," he said to the goblin and me as he walked toward that direction. But even though the goblin followed him, I did not.
Noticing my halt, he looked at me with a questioning gaze.
"Why, did you not wish to go back to the forest again?" he asked.
"No, I have some things to retrieve from the village," I said.
"Then this is where we part," said the man as he nodded toward me. I nodded back politely, and after that, he and the goblin continued on their way toward the forest, illuminated by the moonlight in the distance.
After they walked away, I also turned back and moved toward the village.
Maybe because it's midnight, there aren't many people in the village that I can see from the outside. So it's easy for me to sneak through the houses and enter the village.
Once inside, I found a nice and quiet alley situated behind a few houses and waited there with the club in my hands, contemplating what to do next.
After thinking for a moment, I stood up again with determination. Walking in the alley, I noticed a house with a slightly open window. I slowly approached it and observed it for a bit, seeing that it was large enough for me to jump inside.
Holding onto the window, I gathered momentum and moved up, successfully placing one of my legs on the other side of the window. But in that moment, when I was halfway into the house...
I heard another footstep from the alley. Hearing them, I hurriedly moved and jumped into the house. After a few minutes passed since I jumped into the house, the footsteps walked past the house. The figure to whom those steps belonged was also humming as they went.
Listening to the humming of that figure, I suddenly felt a familiar sense in them.
Hurriedly standing up, I looked at the dark figure walking away in the alley. Changing what I had originally planned, I quickly jumped out from the window to the alley again and began to follow that figure.
He walked for a while through the dark alleys in the village until he came to a larger house compared to others in the village and walked toward it.
Following him, I noticed a window on one side of the house that was open at the moment, with a light visible in the room it belonged to. Similar to what I had done before, the man jumped from the window to the inside of the room.
Curious, I slowly walked toward that window and peeked inside discreetly. Brightened by the fire lamp in the room, I saw the figures of the man and a woman, and the two of them were the couple I had seen at the lake.
I recognized him immediately; no one could moan like a cow except for that bastard, and the lying woman was also here.
"Did anyone see you?" the girl, whose name I recalled as Reika, asked the man as she got closer to him.
"Don't worry, I made sure not to get noticed by anyone," the man reassured her as he hugged her.
The two of them hugged tightly, warmly, and romantically, with the man even taking a sniff from her neck.
"I was scared. If not for that monster, I don't know what I'm going to tell my father," Reika confessed.
"If it comes to that, I will take you and run away. I know nobody in our village has the strength to stop me. My only concern is, would you come with me if I do that?" the man asked Reika as he looked into her eyes.
"I will. Wherever you go, I will be there with you," Reika assured the man, placing her head on his chest.
"Oh, I want to show you something," Reika suddenly lifted her head as she walked toward a table in her room and took something from the drawer.
"Huh?" i became really surprised because the thing she took from the drawer was my bag. It seemed luck was finally giving me a chance.
"This thing is with that monster, but nobody is able to open it. Could you give it a try, since you're so strong?" Reika teased as she handed the bag to the man.
Taking it, the man looked at it for a second and tried to open it forcefully. But no matter how hard he tried, the bag never budged.
"What the hell, what kind of bag is this? It's useless if you can't open it," the man exclaimed in frustration, giving up after a few tries and tossing the bag away.
"Hey, I took it from someone else, promising I'll find a method to open it," Reika said, trying to walk away and retrieve the bag, but the man held her by the waist.
"Does the daughter of our village chief have some doubt about my strength?" he asked, giving Reika a teasing look as he suddenly lifted her off the ground.
"Is your father asleep?" he inquired, to which the girl replied with a hum.
"Would you allow me to demonstrate my strength to you in another way then?" he said as he walked toward the poorly built bed in the corner of the room.
The young girl giggled, "You're going to wake up my father," she said, though there was no fear in her voice.
The man placed her in bed and began to undress her slowly.
As they were doing that, my attention was drawn to the bag the man had tossed aside, which fell a few steps away from the window I was peering through.
"Is today my lucky day or what?" I muttered to myself as I glanced once more at the couple, who seemed completely focused on each other. In the next moment, I slowly stood up, grasped the window frame, and lifted one leg over to the other side, quietly slipping into the room.
"Mmm... Mmch..."
I heard the sound of kissing coming from the couple's bed.
Without making a sound, I took a step forward, and my bag was just a few steps away from me. In the next moment, I glanced at the couple and saw that they had no clue I was there, so I took the next step forward.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
But suddenly, a loud banging sound echoed from the house, startling both me and the couple in the bed.
"Urgh!"
After that, I heard the sound of a man waking up from the bed with a groan, the kind of groan that old people make when they're grumpy.
Thud! Thud!
The loud sound echoed again.
"I'm coming, I'm coming! Who is it at this hour?" I heard the voice of the man who had assaulted me as he walked towards the door and opened it.
"What are we going to do? My dad is awake," the girl whispered to the man.
"Just wait for a minute, maybe he'll go back to sleep after that," said the man. I also hoped that what he said would come true.
Creak!
The sound of a door opening reached me.
"Gisly, why at a time like this?"
"It's those freaks, Chief, they've escaped."
"What? How could that happen?"
"Don't know, but it's all a mess right there. All of us are afraid. Who knows what kind of shape those freaks are in now. It'll be good if you came and talked to them a bit."
"Hmm, you go ahead. I'll come to the main square in a few seconds,"
After those voices, I heard the sound of someone stepping as they left the house.
Thud!
The door closed again.
"Are you going to go now?" I heard a female voice from the house. For some reason, I felt like I had heard her voice before.
"Bastards, coming to me whatever happened to them. What the heck am I gonna do once I'm gone? I'll just wait until someone else comes looking for me," the man said. As he spoke, I heard his steps moving toward the room.
"Reika, are you asleep, my sweet?"
"Oh, shit!" The man in Reika's bed hurriedly jumped away and turned towards the window. But as he did, what he saw was me extending my hand toward the bag.
"It's the freak!" the man suddenly exclaimed.
Reika also saw me and became frightened.
"Huh, who's that? Reika, who's in your room?"
Bang! Bang!
Reika's father suddenly began to slam on the door.
"Reika, open the door right now!" he exclaimed.
"Shit," the man's face turned pale, and Reika's fear increased. But suddenly, her expression changed.
"Pelon, can you take him down quickly? If you manage to do that, I could blame this all on him. I remember that thing being extremely fragile."
Hearing her words, Pelon's gaze toward me changed to that of a hunter.
"Yeah, I remember, the fucker didn't have any strength from what I saw," he said as he suddenly lunged toward Akiel.
But as Pelon lunged toward him, Akiel, holding his bag in hand, swiftly took a step forward while putting his hand on the bag and pulling out a sword from it.
Swish!
Chus!
The two of them went past each other, and blood sprayed through the air.
Pelon looked at his hand but didn't see it there.
Thud!
With a sudden sound, the hand which separated from his body, fell to the floor.
"Argh!" Pelon screamed in pain as he knelt down, holding the place where his hand had been severed.
Reika's face turned to utter fear as she saw that. "But... But how? You're just a weak creature."
"there's a difference between not wanting to kill or fight and wanting to kill or fight," Akiel said as he looked toward Reika. For some reason, his gaze sent shivers down her body.
Suddenly, she ran toward the door and opened it, and as she did, her father suddenly barged into the room.
After he entered the room, the first thing he saw was Akiel, who was holding a sword, and Pelon moaning in pain with a loose arm.
"Reika," in the next second, he grabbed his daughter close to him.
"Father, that thing barged into my room while I was sleeping and tried to rape me, but Pelon somehow saw that from the window and came to help me, but he cut his hand,please save Pelon" Reika said while crying in his arms.
Her father's face turned to pure anger as he heard that, and at the same moment, another woman came running behind him.
"Kin, here," the woman came with a sword in her hand and gave it to him.
Once I saw that woman, I figured out why I felt her voice was familiar; she was the woman who had intercourse with the skinshaper. After giving her husband the weapon, she gazed at me. She showed a bit of surprise but quickly calmed down.
"You freak, I should have gotten rid of you the moment I saw you," Kin exclaimed. He grabbed the sword and pointed it toward me, then suddenly dashed toward me.
His sword was not well crafted and not very sharp, probably one that had been rotting in the house for a long time.
In comparison, my sword was much sharper and shinier, so when I swung my sword toward him, his sword got cut in half.
After that, I took a step forward, swinging my sword as I cut the hand he held his weapon with. Perhaps because that ghost implanted the memory of sword mastery in my mind, these movements felt way more easy and familiar to me.
"Argh!" Kin felt intense pain as his hand got cut off, and in the next second, Akiel kicked toward him, and he fell to the ground.
With the two men down on the ground, Akiel looked toward the women. At that moment, Pelon seemed to lose consciousness from the extreme pain he felt, and Kin was also extremely close to losing consciousness.
Reika, pressed herself against the wall out of fear toward Akiel. Her legs began to shake, and she slowly lowered herself to the ground. The other woman, her mother, tried to run away, but Akiel hurriedly ran and grabbed her and pushed her back toward the room before closing the door.
"Payback time," his ominous voice rang in the ears of Kin. Even though he didn't know what Akiel said, he felt that it was something worse for him and others.