Eric, Lyria, and Livy stood in front of the empty Whisperwood Village gate.
"So, we are back here again..." Livy glanced around and said after a sigh.
The entire village now truly looked like a long-abandoned or dead village.
They could now understand why the walls, gates, houses, and the entire village seemed so neglected. After all, the entire place had been taken over by a bunch of skeletons who believed they were still alive.
"But why did such a powerful illusion work on us?" Lyria asked thoughtfully.
"Probably multiple effects have taken place," Eric answered calmly. "First, it was without a doubt the five had used some sort of abilities to conserve the souls from dispersing altogether. Soulweavers, after all, feed on souls. This dead village, whether they were the cause of it or not, is like a full warehouse of food for their winter, so they must have their own way to preserve these souls from dispersing."
"The second reason is probably that all the villagers themselves believed that they were still alive, and so a hallucination spell or something like that took far stronger root. It was like all of them were supporting one another to hold each other in place to keep the spell ongoing. I believe when their village population dropped below ten, the spell would have been canceled, and they all would have realized the truth—though I think the Soulweavers were smart enough to not let their 'food' escape."
"And finally, about your question—it was probably because of our lower ranks and experience that we couldn't see through it. Maybe if we were at Master Rank, this spell wouldn't have worked."
"Alright, take this. You girls know what to do." Eric handed them two large pouches, which he pulled out from his pocket watch.
Lyria and Livy glanced at it, sighed again, then nodded with understanding. They started heading toward two different directions of the village, pouches in hand.
Those pouches contained 'Fire Sand,' a type of ingredient for basic Fire Rune engraving and also required to draw some specific arrays.
Fire Sand also had a direct property: it would catch anything of Mortal grade on fire. It was a dangerous product in the hands of a Mortal, as they could burn themselves up if they were careless.
What Eric wanted Lyria and Livy to do was obvious—burn the ghost village down!
Lyria and Livy had no hesitation in doing so. Perhaps letting the entire village burn down would also release the souls of the entire dead village, setting them free.
Meanwhile, Eric calmly strolled down the empty streets, the same way Orion and Mila had guided them toward their home.
After arriving, he didn't hesitate and barged right in. His destination was the basement of the house.
It was dark inside, as it was still night, but to Eric, it was no different than daytime.
Since he had fulfilled Orion's request, he was now the rightful owner of their 'treasure.'
He didn't have any expectations other than whatever Orion and Mila's father had left behind might bring a new adventure for them. A map could help them greatly, as they didn't have any such thing with them. Perhaps Batley City might have some map of this plain, but their pitiful Ringwood Town... They didn't even have a proper map of their own surroundings.
The decaying old timber floor groaned as a seven-foot-tall monster walked all over it.
Eric ambled down the basement stairs, and after reaching the door, he found it was locked. It seemed to be blocked by some furniture from inside. Perhaps there might have been some secret entrance, but he was not in the mood to solve puzzles that games usually threw at players. So, he used the hidden technique—breaking the fourth wall.
After kicking open the rotten door, Eric strode in and glanced around. He found it in a similar condition as upstairs—filled with cobwebs and dust. The room had some plain old wardrobes, tables, chairs, and so on. In the center of the room was a simple wooden table, and over it rested a book—or perhaps a notebook.
Eric flipped it open and found handwritten notes in Avis language.
The words written on the old yellowish pages were... mostly useless things, nothing noteworthy, so after reading a few lines, Eric skipped to the final few pages.
After reading those last pages, the information he managed to gather was—
The village was going through famine, and there were shortages of food. Perhaps some Mana Beast or some enemy Mana Wielder had killed or chased away all the animals and also ruined their soils for further cultivation of crops. Thus, the village Elders—which indeed numbered five people—went outside every time to hunt for food for the rest of the villagers.
At first, it was still bearable, but on a certain day, an Elder disappeared during hunting. The other four immediately went into caution and searched for him, but no matter how much they searched, they couldn't find him—not even his corpse.
A few more days later, another one disappeared, and so the villagers decided it was high time to seek help from their few neighboring villages that they knew of.
When those few mortals, who went out to contact the villages, returned, they informed that all they found out was—all their four neighboring small villages' villagers had disappeared without any trace.
They all panicked and felt there might be some powerful Mana Beast out there hunting all villages. It had to be a powerful beast; otherwise, those villages should have notified them if something was happening, but there was no news, and they all had silently vanished.
After some discussion, they decided to head toward their final known village—or rather, what they considered a 'city' in their eyes, as it was a big village with over ten thousand natives residing there.
What Eric was able to gather from the notes was that this Everwood Village had many Mana Wielders, including Rank 2s. It was a village located on a plateau with tall redwood trees surrounding it; there was also a big river flowing not far from it... In short, it was a dream 'city' for the Whisperwood villagers, something they all longed to visit one day.
However, the distance between Whisperwood Village and Everwood Village was very long. Even their Elders—or, in other words, Rank 1 Mana Wielders—might take a month or two to reach there, and that was if they didn't die along the way in case they were unlucky and stumbled upon a powerful Mana Beast.
So, after an extensive discussion among the villagers and Elders, they all decided that a few of their capable Mortals would make the journey, as the remaining three Mana Wielders were too important for the village. If anything happened to their remaining Elders, then their entire village might truly perish.
After that, not much was written, other than that Orion's father and a few other capable adults had been chosen to make the journey. It would take them a year or two to make the whole round trip.
As Orion and Mila had mentioned in the past, their father never returned. The reason their father had informed them of the note was because he had drawn a rough map toward this Everwood Village.
His intention was obvious—in case Whisperwood Village was destroyed due to the strange occurrences, then both siblings could follow the map.
Though it was entirely hopeless, as two mortal children would never be able to make such a long, treacherous journey through such dangerous wilderness. Their father perhaps just wanted to leave behind some hope for both of them.
Eric observed the hand-drawn map and smiled. At least he had managed to obtain a rough direction toward their next destination, and what was more amazing was that it was directly north of here with a slight inclination toward the east—in other words, they didn't have to deviate too far from their original route toward Batley City.
He wondered what troubles awaited them there. Five late-stage Rank 2s? That would be interesting!
Eric took out his pocket watch and pointed it toward the notebook, using one of the spells in it—'Temporal Tracer.'
After he selected the option and sent more Mana into the watch, a gentle white light flew out like a beam, wrapping around the notebook, causing it to briefly glow with a soft whitish hue.
After a brief moment, various details appeared on the clock face, with a lot of pointless information and numbers written over it.
Eric skipped all that and looked for the time since the last pages were written.
...51 years.
Eric sighed. He couldn't exactly estimate when the village had been killed off, but noticing how young both Orion and Mila were and with various other clues, he could roughly guess that Whisperwood Village had been killed off—either by Soulweavers or by something else—within a year or two after their father left for Everwood Village.
'Whatever. This story ends here.'
Eric took a photo of the roughly drawn map with his pocket watch, then closed the notebook and left it as it was before.
After walking out of the house, Eric jumped and sat on the roof of the building.
He noticed that both the north and south sides of the village had already caught fire, and one by one, more houses and buildings were rapidly catching fire.
In a relaxed manner, he waited while seated, with his hand against his cheek and his elbow on his thigh.
Within less than ten minutes, both Lyria and Livy arrived at his current location. The rest of the village was burning sky-high, vigorously enough to light up the morning twilight sky.
Eric jumped down and nodded at both of them, then started heading toward the village gate without saying anything.
Lyria and Livy glanced at each other. They didn't chit-chat either and threw the last remaining Fire Sand on Orion and Mila's house, then followed after Eric.
They all walked out of the village. The sun was slowly rising right in front of them.
The view was unusually glorious, almost as if it was marking a new beginning for the three.
After they walked a few dozen meters, the three of them suddenly had an urge to look back at the burning village.
As they turned their heads behind, all three of them were left in a daze.
After a while, they gently smiled.
Eric turned his head forward and continued walking toward the rising sun.
Lyria and Livy followed behind while watching two children—one of ten years and another of sixteen—vigorously waving their hands at them in goodbye near the village gate.
Soon, flames engulfed them both, and they disappeared from sight.