Chapter 174 - L'appel Du Vide

"How far are we going in?" Merlin asked.

"As far as we need to," Thovan responded, "But the scouts reported that the undead were a small distance in the valley, so it shouldn't be that far."

Merlin nodded in response and the group continued travelling through the valley.

After a little while, the group decided to take a break and regain their strength before the anticipated fight.

Thovan decided to scout the surroundings first, while the rest of the group sat down and started recuperating.

Everybody seemed to be doing their own thing, but Merlin's attention was particularly focused on the twins.

Lyonette seemed busy trying to wipe off a vibrant purple stain from her younger brother's face. The cause of the stain seemed to be a strange purple fruit that grew in the area that Leonid had feasted upon, as evidenced by the stains on his fingers and clothes too.

Cam seemed to be sitting still while resting his eyes, but Merlin could feel a very faint trace of magical energy leaking from his body. It was likely some kind of area detection ability or alarm spell.

Stavros seemed to be tuning his lute, gently strumming it every so often to check if it sounded right.

While Bibar seemed to just be silently praying to Hecate.

Merlin approached Bibar, who stopped with his prayer as he noticed Merlin approach.

"Hey, Bibar." Merlin said, announcing his presence to the man.

"Hello Merlin, can I help you?" Bibar responded.

"I actually wanted to get your advice on something, seeing as it relates to your goddess," Merlin said.

Merlin seemed to have grabbed Bibar's attention, and after a nod of understanding, Merlin continued.

Merlin explained the events that led up to him praying to Hecate the first time in the simplest way, before getting to the most important detail. "When I asked Hecate for guidance, it felt like she was asking me for assistance. But I don't know what she means or what to do to help."

"Have you had any similar interactions with the goddess lately?" Merlin asked.

"No, I can't say that I have, unfortunately," Bibar responded, "I wish to do everything in my power to assist her, but there isn't much I can suggest outside of purifying undead."

"I see. Well, thank you for the help." Merlin thanked the man before letting him get back to praying.

Thovan returned a few minutes later with his arms full of strange fruits, some of which even Merlin was unfamiliar with.

"Feel free to eat, we'll be moving out in about ten minutes," Thovan said, picking up a strange bumpy fruit from the pile and biting into it like it was an apple.

Others started picking from the pile, and seeing this, Merlin felt comfortable enough to also reach into the pile. He picked out a long fruit that looked almost exactly like a banana on the outside, outside of the reddish hue and blue spots on the skin.

Peeling the fruit's skin back, he bit into the soft fruit and much to his surprise, it was exceptionally flavourful.

But then the flavour really started kicking in only moments after.

'Why... why is it spicy?' He thought to himself as the heat rushed to his head.

After their break, the group continued their travel through the valley, until they had finally run into the targets of their mission.

A small group of zombies were slowly shambling around the valley. It seemed as though they were just wandering around without any real intent of invading the village and just ended up this far into the valley by chance.

This was further proved by the sight of several zombies chasing around the local wildlife, even when there was a small group of humans a small distance away.

'I guess their undead behaviour causes them to stumble towards the closest group of life. So they're drawn towards the valley that is flourishing.' Merlin thought to himself. 'It's a surprise the entire Necropolis hasn't invaded, but I guess there are towns closer than this village that serve as juicer bait.'

"Alright, Merlin," Thovan started talking, "It's time to fight, let's see what you can do."

As Thovan said those words, Stavros began playing an upbeat melody on his lute, and Merlin could feel a sudden surge of energy rush through his body. 

A ball of scorching red fire flew over Merlin's head, it travelled through the air, well above the undead.

When Merlin thought it was an obvious miss, he heard Bibar suddenly start chanting a prayer.

The fireball that hovered in the sky suddenly flared up and took on a bright gold colour instead, before splitting into smaller bolts of golden fire that rained down on the group of undead beneath it.

Any undead the fire touched were immediately set alight and seemed to be in pain. A sensation that should have been impossible for a creature without a functioning nervous system.

Black smoke plumed from the zombies as the flames ravaged their undead skin. Once the flames had done enough damage, the zombies all dropped to the ground, their corpses remained smouldering as the rest of the group of undead were now aware of the group's presence.

Cam, Thovan and the twins all rushed in, with Merlin following shortly behind.

It was clearly a one-sided slaughter,  Merlin thought it'd be easy to get his five required kills, however, the biggest challenge was that the group kept killing everything before he could even get a hit in for it to count as an assist.

「Undead killed: 5/5」

「You have completed the quest, "Receiving Enlightenment III", talk to Archbishop Ferdinand to receive your rewards.」

Fortunately, there were more than enough undead around, and it seemed as though the group had started slowing down on their killing which would have allowed him to finish the quest even if he didn't compete with the group for kills.

'But, that's strange. Aren't these guys a little too competent for such a beginner class quest?' Merlin thought to himself as he cut down an extra zombie.

"Aren't there way more undead than the scouts reported?" Stavros asked the group. "They said it was only a small group of wanderers, and it was only a small group when we started this fight, so where did the rest of them come from?"

'Now that you mention it...' Merlin subconsciously thought that it was just a feature of the game to prevent the player from getting stuck on quests that were impossible to complete, but if an NPC was pointing it out, then it was clearly something beyond just simple game mechanics.

As if to break his train of thought, a loud boom echoed throughout the valley, seemingly out of nowhere. It was quickly followed by an obnoxious cracking noise as if a plane of glass was slowly being cracked under pressure.

「A strange phenomenon has occurred.」

'Right, I suppose I was due for one of those...' Merlin thought. 'But what is that cracking sound?'

"What on earth is that?" Stavros screamed.

Everyone turned to face him, only to see that he was looking up at the sky.

When they all turned to see what he was looking at, all they saw was a large spiderweb-like crack that was seemingly floating in the sky. But as the cracking noises got louder, shards of that large crack started peeling off, plummetting towards the ground.

The sound of glass shattering echoed throughout the valley as the large shards of glass, or sky, began shattering further into little shards that were then harmlessly blown away with the wind before it could make contact with the land below.

What remained where the shards of the sky used to be was a seemingly infinite black void.

'Well, that matches what the elf explained a while ago.' Merlin thought to himself as he stared into the black abyss. He felt himself being drawn into it as if he couldn't pull his gaze away.

"It's happening again. Don't stare at it!" Cam began shouting orders to his party with confidence, which snapped Merlin out of his daze temporarily, but his eyes were still slowly being drawn back towards the void in the sky.

Merlin wasn't entirely sure if this was just a trait of the phenomenon or if this was just him unable to fight against his curiosity, perhaps it was a mixture of both.

It seemed as though while Thovan was the de facto leader of the group, Cam was also able to give out orders.

Based on Thovan's reactions to those orders, it seemed as though Cam might actually be a higher rank than him within the temple. Perhaps he was just in the group to serve as a warden and protector by the temple's orders.

'Right, so more undead and a strange hole in the sky. What's gonna happen no--' Merlin wondered to himself, but his thoughts were interrupted by a strange noise coming from what he could only believe was the shattered sky.

It was a strange group of grunts and low growls, almost bestial or monstrous in a sense.. At least it would have been had it not been for the static-like sound over it which made it sound more synthetic.