Chapter 160: Too Knowledgeable For Your Age (1/2)
”Calvin, are you sure that we should take this old man with us? I mean, he might be the Village Chief and his knowledge is what we need, but he's just a human being! As a fellow member of one of the three Judiciaries, you should know what I am talking about!” Ricardo dragged Calvin to the side and whispered into his ears.
Calvin nodded his head, ”It doesn't matter, so what if he's just a mortal? Even if he gets exposed to supernatural events, do you really think that the church would care about some random old man? Besides, he's already this old. I'm sure he knows what often happens to snitches.” A sinister smile appeared on Calvin's lips.
Ricardo didn't know what to say.
Heisenberg noticed that the two were whispering with each other, and after getting a whiff of what they were talking about. He joined the conversation, ”Can we really do this with just the four of us? Goddamned it, I didn't sign up for this! Why do I have to face a mysterious curse haunting some random village when my original mission is to just deliver some goods to Laguna...”
Calvin stared at Heisenberg and noticed that the man was just faking it. Even though he was lecherous and sometimes sadistic, Heisenberg was indeed a man that suited his calling. He deserved to be a Priest of the Church of the All-Encompassing Light. He didn't dare to turn his eyes away from those who were in need.
”It shouldn't be a problem. But I'm more concerned about the Village Chief.” Calvin voiced out his concern and both Ricardo and Heisenberg agreed. But after one hour of trekking, they realized that their worries were unfounded. Despite his old age, the Village Chief was healthier than he looked, his movements were also without waste for he knew the local geography quite well.
”What are you three doing there?” The Village Chief asked.
He turned around and stopped the group from their journey, ”We are a few meters away from a tree with an X mark on its stump. Once we reached that three, we will have to make a choice. It's either we go up, or we go left...”
”If we go up, we will reach the tunnels in three hours. But if we go left, we can go down the valley and then take a path that will lead us directly towards the tunnels. This path will only take us roughly about an hour to complete. What do you guys think?” The Village Chief asked.
”Did you even have to ask us that question?” Heisenberg frowned.
”What's the catch if we go upwards?” Ricardo directly caught the issue.
Calvin nodded to voice out his agreement, but he didn't say anything as the three waited for the Village Chief's reply.
But the Village Chief fell silent, but it was soon broken by Calvin who asked, ”Are you saying that the shortest path is the most dangerous?”
”Yeah...” The Village Chief nodded. On his face was a rare look of seriousness, ”The valley is full of impure things.”
”Impure things, like ghosts? Oh, come on, Chief... You already know our identities, are you still doubting our abilities?” Ricardo said, unimpressed.
The Village Chief let out a sigh, ”All right, you win. Let's take the path to the valley. I just wasn't so sure if we should take it, since even I, with my extensive experience in this mountain range... I still have no idea what kind of monster haunts that valley. All that I know is that everyone that dares to enter it without coming out of the valley in a day is definitely dead.”
Calvin narrowed his eyes, ”It sounds like you have a story to tell us, do you mind sharing? I mean, even if you do not know the identity of that monster, the clues that you can provide us might help us prepare against that bastard.”
”It's not really something that I am proud of seeing, but here it goes... The only clue that I can provide is that everyone who died while within the valley had their insides torn off and eaten...”
”Eaten?” Ricardo's eyebrows scrunched up.
His mind was currently browsing through the Bestiary of the three Judiciaries while the Village Chief continued.
Calvin was also in deep thought. Having memorized the Bestiary—he already had a few candidates in mind. But until he could get more clues and narrow down the lists of suspects, there was no way that he could make an accurate deduction.
”Yes, eaten... If you are asking why we knew... It's because we could see chew marks on the leftover organs of the victims. Oddly enough, the victims seemed to have made such a struggle since the weapons near where their bodies were located had a few dark-greenish bloodstains. We suspect that it might've come from the monster...”
”Dark-greenish blood?” Calvin asked once again.
”Yes, if my memory serves me right, that's correct.”
”Okay, so that eliminates roughly three-fourths of what I know from the Bestiary... Any notable traits? Aside from the victims' organs being chomped while they are obviously alive. Is there something strange about their corpses?” Ricardo asked.
Heisenberg and Calvin glanced at Ricardo and also nodded their heads towards what he had said.
The Village Chief thought for a moment before he exclaimed, ”Ah! I can also vaguely remember that their bodies were deflated! When the village doctor gave them the autopsy, he discovered that their blood vessels were devoid of all blood!”
”They're blood were sucked out of their bodies?!” Ricardo cried out, ”How could that be? As far as I know, Vampires do not have dark-greenish blood in their bodies. They should bleed similar to us, humans!” He stared at the Village Chief, ”Perhaps you might have remembered incorrectly, are you sure that the blood wrapped around the blades of the victims' weapons is dark-greenish in color?”
”Yes...” The Village Chief grimly said, ”I'm sure since one of the victims was my father.”
”...”
The atmosphere immediately soured.
Everyone was silenced.
Even Ricardo felt embarrassed that he questioned the Village Chief's memory.
”I'm sorry...”
”It's fine... It's a long time ago anyway, I've already moved on from it. So, what are we going to do? Are we still going to go to the valley and take the shortcut there?” The Village Chief smiled at Ricardo, indicating that he wasn't about to blame him for his lack of delicadeza.
”The route up the mountain takes too much time— time that we, unfortunately, do not have the luxury to waste. We will go down the valley.”
Calvin quickly made a decision.
”Calvin, are you crazy? Didn't you hear what the Village Chief had said? We still haven't even identified just what kind of a monster is roaming the valley and you want us to go down there without some kind of preparation?” Ricardo confronted Calvin with a frown.
Calvin smiled at him, ”I've already identified the monster. It's a Vampire.”
”A Vampire?” The frown on Ricardo's face deepened, ”Is there even a monster in the vampire classification that is similar to what the-”
Ricardo suddenly stopped. At the very next moment, his pupils widened in shock, ”A Sigbin...”
”Yeah, it's a Sigbin... There's no doubt about it.”
”A Sigbin? What is that?” Heisenberg asked. Although Priests from the Church of All-Encompassing Light had enough clearance to access the Bestiary, not a lot of them were willing to memorize the incredibly dry and droll information contained within its pages. It wasn't strange that Heisenberg has no idea what a Sigbin was.
The Village Chief was also staring at both Ricardo and Calvin, waiting for them to open up and talk.
”It's basically a creature that looks like a crossbreed between a goat and a bat. It doesn't have the wings of a bat, and it looks more like a goat aside from the horns that it has on its head that it uses to tear open the abdomen of an unsuspecting victim. They are dangerous, not because of their speed and agility, but because of their ability to turn invisible to anyone that they wish to hide from...” Calvin explained.
”They can turn invisible? How are we supposed to fight them, then?”
”Yup, even worse is that they are tenacious bastards. Thus, we must never try to tire one out, for we will certainly die. If we meet one, we must cut it down as fast as possible using all of our power, no holds barred. To be honest, if we have the time we should even burn its body to ashes so that we can ensure that it won't return in the future...”
”Fortunately, Sigbins are lone wolves, so we should only meet one Sigbin in this valley.”
”The only real problem is their ability to turn invisible.”
”Fighting one will be a real test of reflexes unless we have the proper lure to attract it to us and then scatter the decoction around the lure so it would be unable to turn invisible in the course of the fight...”
”But since we obviously do not have that decoction, the only way that we have to fight that monster is to keep an eye out of our surroundings...” Calvin mysteriously smiled.