Chapter 87 - Investigation after Predation (2/2)

“Go ahead. Something biting me from the side gives me shivers.”

“Loren…should be fine, I think? You have that as well.”

Lapis pointed towards the great sword that Loren held.

When Loren raised it up, wondering what the matter with it was, Lapis touched its blade and said proudly.

“This had a mechanism that protects its wielder. It won’t let any bad things such as curses near you.”

“How do you know the functions of this when you randomly found it in the weapon shop?”

In fact, the weapon was something Lapis had procured from somewhere for Loren, who had lost his weapon during a job, and had schemed with the weapon shop owner to sell to him.

Of course, Loren hadn’t bothered confirming with Lapis, and Lapis hadn’t said a thing about it to Loren, but Loren knew it was something like that when he bought it.

“I’m a priestess of the Knowledge god, after all.”

“Stop being so unreasonable to other priests of the Knowledge god.”

Loren started feeling even sorrier for the priests of the Knowledge god other than Lapis.

Although the only ones there were him and Feuille, it was a problem if Feuille got an inflated image of them.

“Enough about that. How about we go inside the village? We need to investigate, right?”

“It’s really not, but I guess we should.”

There was a chance there could be survivors.

Even if there weren’t, Loren guessed they could find clues to what happened, and started walking towards the village with his great sword in hand.

Lapis, with Feuille in tow, followed him.

They entered from a torn part of the fence surrounding the area, the sight that waited for them was a terrible one that he couldn’t imagine seeing for Feuille, but for Loren and Lapis, it was what they had expected to see.

The attack seemed to have been a sudden one.

Within the houses they entered, although they were ransacked, they found signs of preparing food, and in some houses they saw remains of meals on the table.

Although, all of them were devoured by something.

They found a few bodies as well.

They couldn’t tell if they tried to fight or run away, but there were bodies of dead elves leaning against the side of the road or against walls everywhere.

Those were destroyed horribly by something as well, and was impossible to tell how the cause of death.

“It doesn’t seem like it was just the fairies.”

Lapis muttered as she looked at the destroyed wall of the building, and a dead body that was leaning onto the remains.

“There are buildings with destroyed walls all over the place, so it seems like it was attacked by medium sized to large monsters as well.”

“Searching for the culprit won’t mean anything in this forest, I guess.”

Loren shook his head at the large number of possibilities.

Even if they did identify who did it, it didn’t seem to matter to them in their current situation.

After all, the village had already been destroyed, and there were no signs of survivors.

“There were traces of attempts to hide children as well.”

There were bodies of dead children in basements and large chests.

The parents must have put them in there, praying that they would survive the attack, but it seemed that they couldn’t escape the clutches of the attackers, and none of the prayers were answered.

“No, there was the child from before.”

“You mean that he had managed to survive until today…I don’t know what to say.”

Lapis closed her eyes and folded her hands, and said a short prayer.

Seeing her, Loren thought for a moment that she looked like a priestess, but when he thought about it, her job was a priestess, and thinking that she looked like one was kind of rude.

“What do you think…happened to everyone in the village?”

Feuille, who had seen the horrible state of the village, being pulled around by Loren and Lapis, asked them in a hollow voice.

It was possible to imagine based on what the village looked like, but Loren, not having a definitive answer, looked towards Lapis, as if asking her what they should tell him.

“I think it’s not fair that you turn things like this to me.”

“That’s true, but still.”

When it came to words, Loren couldn’t even compete against Lapis.

He could’ve just told Feuille what he thought, but if he did that, there was no way to tell if he could endure the shock.

“Well, my guess is probably a bit different than yours though.”

After letting out a sigh, Lapis turned towards Feuille, who was looking towards them with clinging eyes.

“I’m not sure how many people lived here, but I think that there are too few bodies for the scale of the village.”

“That’s…”

“Yes, there’s always the line of the bodies being eaten completely, but it’s unnatural to think that no one was able to escape an uncoordinated attack.”

A small light returned to Feuille’s eyes.

When Loren heard those words, he was convinced that she might be right.

Putting aside what attacked the village, what most of those who won’t fight would do was either run or hide.

Then it wouldn’t be strange for there to be residents that chose to run, and it was hard to say that none were able to escape.

“If it were as well planned and coordinated as the attack on the post town, it would be a different story…So Feuille, do you have any idea of a place where the people of the village would run away too?”

There could be survivors.

Being presented with such a possibility, Feuille told Loren and Lapis the only place he knew of that could be used as refuge.