The smell of death and rot. That was all I could think off when I took my mask off for a second, regretting my choice quite a fuck ton. The robed man with the black clouds swirling around him instantly took notice of my reaction, but ignored it a moment later. It seemed they were used to it.

Speaking of people used to my reaction, other people were standing before me with a similar “affliction” to the robed man. Zombies. Not only foul human and beastman bodies, but some of them were even animals.

“As I explained, this is our home. Our refuge. Our prison. The ‘world’ for us onnikai,” the robed man told me. He had put his hood back up after showing me his deformed undead face.

The place he presented me was simply an extension of the forest, the only difference was there were sheets of gathered leaves around, looking as if they were used similar to beds. Black slime and mold-covered body parts laid on the ground, making it all seem too filthy to live in unless you had no other choice.

[“I am Imila! This is Emil!”] One of the countless black clouds moved around wildly like an energetic puppy. [“We met before, Miss!”]

“… Yes, we did. You look different now that your body is gone, Imila.” As crazy as my current situation was, I felt slightly more at ease at hearing her voice. The light-hearted way she spoke made it easier for me to speak with her.

[“Ahh, yes… My body. Mhmm! I took so much time to rebuild it and it was destroyed before I could—”]

“Enough, Imila. You speak too much,” the robed man interrupted her, sounding grouchy. “It’s your fault for leaving… Human. What is your name?”

“Asaka.”

No reason not to answer.

“Asaka… So you are supposed to be the one Goddess Death wanted us to meet? Hmph.”

[“But she has the amulet, Emil! She has the amulet! Goddess Ilsaphone told us to look for it on the person she chose, definitely! Miss will help us! Yes!”] Imila interjected herself in the conversation. She truly acted like a kid.

However, what confused me was the information she was giving me. I was chosen? By this amulet? Then, what did that make the woman who gave me this thing? What was going on?

“…” The robed man was looking at me, analyzing me. However, with the mask I was wearing, he couldn't find any clues from my expression. “Let us say you are the chosen one, human. What are you planning on helping us with?”

“… Nothing.”

That was my answer.

“Wrat?”

“No help? Why?”

There was some commotion coming from the undead behind the robed man while the onnikais were swirling around as if they were displeased with my answer. However, lying here wasn’t the way.

Assessing my situation and the risks and benefits, I concluded offering them a solution wasn’t the way to go. As much as I tried, forgetting the lessons my parents imprinted into me to prepare me into their political pawn was impossible. It was like a trauma to me. I will act as I wanted if the repercussions were worth taking, not the other way around.

And in this case, the amount of information I had was not enough. Stalling was an option, but one thing my shits-for-parents taught me was to never make a decision without prior knowledge of the situation and circumstances of the opposite party. It would all blow up in your face if you did.

I could die here.

“… Then why did you come here?” The robed man’s suspicion rose up again. He was on guard, and I could hear a threat coming from his sentence.

“… Because I was simply given this necklace by somebody. I don't know who they were, only that they told me they weren’t an enemy. I came here ‘cause somebody gave my company a Quest to solve the ‘ghost situation’ in this area. That’s all. I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about.”

[“You don’t? … Miss?”] Imila stopped moving around like her previous self, sounding lonely as her hopes were crushed.

Sorry, kid.

“… Then who are these onnikais you have with you?” On the other hand, the robed man kept asking me questions. “They aren’t like us. They weren’t spirits or lesser fae before they died. I sense Goddess Death’s intervention in you, wolves.”

As I was about to say something, my onnikais came out of their catalyst after requesting me for them to take over. They floated out of their cage and spoke with the people before me, swirling around like the other black clouds.

[“We are the souls of fenrirs under the alpha, Belzac!”] One of them announced proudly. [“We were turned into this form by the Goddess of Death, to serve our alpha even in death. This human girl, Asaka, is our current ward. We protect her at the command of our alpha”]

The robed man nodded, seemingly content with something. “… I see. Follow me, Asaka.”

“H-Huh, uh, sure?”

Somehow that worked out so easily?!

I wasn’t about to complain about what just happened. I should just follow along the ride.

While walking behind him, we went even deeper into the forest, where I noticed more and more corpses lying around. Some were twitching around, which the robed man, Emil, was explaining were onnikais trying to recreate the bodies they decided to inhabit.

I thought I should have probably asked him about the matter there and now, but I was more interested in something else. Something I felt was quite hard to believe.

“Hey, uhm, Emil, you mentioned before something about your goddess speaking with you? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Impossible.” It was an immediate answer.

“Huh?”

“You cannot speak with gods. It is impossible if you aren’t a blessed or a being with an extremely powerful soul. You, as a human, should have known about that,” he explained, causing me to frown at how he said it.

“I clearly heard Imila say she told you that I was a ‘chosen one’ or something. You reacted to that, too!”

[“I said nothing! Hmph!”] Imila, for some reason, grumbled to the side. What caused her attitude to change so dramatically? It actually pissed me off.

Emil waved his hand around, trying to flatten Imila as if she was a fly, only for her to act like a kid and fly away with a few other onnikais.

“Quiet, you…” He scowled. “… Don’t mind, Imila. She speaks and acts like that because Goddess Death has given us onnikai the ability to assimilate corpses. In the process, our mana bodies slowly adapt to the body’s memories and our personalities get twisted in the process. She acts exactly like you would imagine a small child would, but she dramatizes it a bit too much from how she expects a child to act.”

I shrugged. I didn’t care what her reason was. If she wanted to act like that to me, then so be it. Not like it mattered too much to me.

“Now, to answer your question, we did not speak with her. Goddess Death, or Ilsaphone with her birth name, suddenly came to us about three days ago.”

Emil then took something around his neck and pulled it out from his robe for me to see. It was the exact same amulet as I had, from the design and name. I had to double-take [Identify] to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.

“She gave it to us without saying anything. We had no idea what she was trying to say, but I guess Imila interpreted something after she met you. From all my time alive, I learned mortals will never truly receive the full words of our gods. We must interpret them.”

He stopped walking, turned back to me and continued, “From whom did you exactly receive that amulet? Did you speak with her? Did you feel like you weren’t hearing something properly?”

“Hmm? Not hear something? Well, she had this weird accent that made it hard to listen to, but I know she mentioned I should hold onto this thing and how she was an ally. The onnikais had to translate a longer sentence, but it was hard enough to listen that I wish they had done everything she said.”

“… Then that means you actually met her.” He turned around nonchalantly and began walking again, gesturing for me to keep up.

“Huh? Hold on, what are you talking about? Stop making all of this so mysterious!”

“You met the actual Goddess Death in her mortal form, human.”

“U-Uh… WHAT?!” I grabbed his arm, pulling it back to stop him but I accidentally pulled his entire arm off his body! I could only stare in horror at what I did. “… Eiiik!”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I dropped it onto the ground after being stunned for a full two seconds. The disgust I had inside of me began to surface again.

“Uhm… Sorry.”

Emil sighed, shaking his head at my words and simply picked up his arm and put it back on with some black slime support.

“Stop shaking. The bodies we all are inhabiting are ‘unfinished.’ We haven’t been able to live up to Goddess Death’s dream to create her own patron race. Come, I’ll speak. Just follow and watch.”

“… I guess I won’t be able to leave until then?” I asked, feeling too stressed out to stay here any longer. My heart hasn’t stopped feeling like a drum ever since I entered this place.

Emil didn’t answer. His silence was his reply.

And in this silence, we continued walking through this forest of the dead. The groans and moans of the onnikai zombies stumbling away. Small rotting cats slipped past my feet, frightening me. Some of the black clouds were even more mischievous, using their slimes to pull pranks on me using the trees. And all of this while I couldn’t even see if I was stepping into poop or mud, or even a piece of growing flesh.

Proficiency requirement fulfilled. [Night Vision Lv. 4] gained

Even with the skill leveling up just now, I was really tempted to level it up to level ten, but I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it when I made it back to Haruka. Such a sweet girl, until you speak about numbers with her. Then she would turn into Miss High Scorer.

Unable to take it anymore, I asked Emil if I could use [Light] to create some light for myself, and he accepted it. Thankfully. If I had gone any longer in this darkness, I probably would have pissed my pants.

And I learned about why only seconds later, as he stopped at a hole with a set of stairs leading down. A light in the middle of the dark could have attracted people. I thought he let me since we were quite deep, but it was ‘cause he wanted us to go down.

“This is our real home, and the source of our bodies.” He turned around to me, looking at me despite the robe covering his eyes. “A dungeon. Created through the many deaths of the faefolk around us, and serving as the base of the mastermind behind this place.”

“A dungeon? Wait, does Estralia know about this?” I asked.

From what I heard, Estralia didn’t have too many dungeons, as they valued the dungeon cores quite a lot in their trades with the dwarves. Tatsuya and Kyouya, in their time at the local hunter’s guild, informed us many dungeons were destroyed since the cores were taken and cracked open for the shards.

If you wanted to enter a dungeon as an Estralia adventurer, any other country would have been better. Thankfully, Ullistar in Artorias was close by and had a dungeon.

Which made it weird to me that a dungeon actually existed here. In this place.

“Do you know why I am speaking with you?” Emil suddenly asked me, but I shook my head. He was articulate, but I didn’t know anything else. “Because I am the oldest onnikai in this community. As a spirit, I died during the War for the Faefolk. Vengeful beings, we onnikais are, and every single one of us cannot just give up on our grudge. Do not blame Imila for her bad attitude. She was betrayed by a human when she was captured and eventually used to fuel a mana battery.”

“Does that mean all the onnikais here are in the same situation as Imila?”

He nodded. “Yes. But the reason for a dungeon being created here wasn’t purely because of the passive mana we exuded. The monster holding us captive here, the ‘Master’ as those guards called him, placed something with a tremendous amount of mana here. Dark mana. Dangerous. It’s not a darkness elemental. It’s something far more sinister. I overheard it was taken by their enemies. After some time, the dungeon appeared to contain all this mana.”

Still, the fact we actually have evidence now on all these onnikais once being spirits and getting their mana drained should be proof enough for Tasianna. As weird as it was to find it all here. And we also now know the Resurrection was involved in it.

However, something didn’t make so much sense. I knew about how dungeons worked and how the dungeon master could influence everything. If Emil admitted all the bodies they got came from here, then how did they get them in the first place?

“I am the dungeon master,” Emil answered after I asked him. “I was the first to find the presence of the dungeon and make the contract. Due to the mana barrier placed around this area, we cannot escape, and since that meant our lingering mana could permeate the grounds and the dungeon, I used that to create undead bodies.’

Emil explained how the object in question was placed here as rumors of ghosts appeared due to some onnikais managing to escape this area. The results of mana draining the lesser faefolk were these onnikais, vengeful mana creatures, and the people who drained the faefolk wanted to hide this. Most likely from the elves and any faemancers.

Over time, the area turned into a monster infested area due to all the mana in the ground, something they couldn’t control even with macula plants. To the Resurrection, this sounded like the perfect place to hide something important. Sadly, that was the tipping point on the scales of balance. Too much mana was around, and it created this dungeon.

And from there, after Emil became the dungeon master, he began creating undead bodies for his friends to possess. Undead, since humans didn’t count as monsters and couldn’t be spawned by a dungeon. This happened about two year ago.

And the moment they received this dungeon, Ilsaphone also gave them the ability to create this black slime through their mana. It reminded me of the story I heard from the Aurora gang, something about an onnikai gaining the ability to use a black slime from the catalyst it was trapped in. It used that black slime to create undead bodies for its friends.

I told this story to Emil, trying to further understand the situation here. Hearing it, Emil went silent.

“… I see, a fellow survivor of that war… I am glad that he managed to find peace in the end. I am glad Goddess Zephira decided to grant the others mercy. Instead of the Wind Goddess, we received the blessing of the Goddess of Death. One’s torment became our blessing.” He spoke about the slime oozing out from his arm. “But, unlike that one, our control of this slime isn’t as good. We cannot fully repair our bodies.”

“Is that why you can use necromancy? Well, those undead were controlled by you, right?” I remembered the scare I got from their surprise attack.

“Limited… I remembered following a necromancer once. I learned how to use two spells — [Raise Dead] and [Flesh for Mana]. Otherwise, I cannot become better. The bodies I used to attack you came from a few intruders who were enemies of the ‘Master.’ Even as the dungeon master, the monsters I spawn do not listen to me. At least they can attack our oppressors.”

Emil then looked back to the hole. He didn’t speak. What was he thinking about?

“… How did you know that woman was a goddess?” I finally asked, finding this too awkward.

“…The amulet. And the fact you weren’t able to hear her properly. Her ‘accent’ is our soul’s inability to hear all their worlds. However, you can listen to some of her words. She clearly blessed your onnikais but where did you get your blessing? Only one blessed by a god or a godlike being could listen to a god’s voice!”

“I-Is that so?”

But, from whom?

It’s already been made clear that our unique skills weren’t actually blessings, nor was my [Saint Candidate] title. They came from the demonkins through some method, so where did my blessing come from? I didn’t have some special skill or title for that.

Hold on! If that was Ilsaphone, the Goddess of Death, then Elrick shouldn’t have heard anything. If it was the Goddess of Vampires, that would explain something, but Elrick couldn’t hear anything!

And that was when it dawned on me. There were too many factors to get a clear conclusion, but what I knew was that Elrick couldn’t hear her at all while I could a bit. And what differentiated us from each other?

[Hestia’s Retainer]… But that girl is nowhere near a goddess in strength, though. Not divine at all. This doesn’t make sense.

“Asaka?” Emil’s voice brought me back to reality.

For now, I should leave this thought for later, as I couldn’t understand enough.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry So, uh, since you probably know your goddess so well, why did she give me this amulet?”

[Amulet of Blessed Spirits] not only allowed me to speak to the onnikais, but use them as a conduit for dark magic as well. In other words, I could emulate the elementalists of old who used elementals to cast spells. I didn’t need to learn any dark elemental spells with this catalyst around my neck.

“I don’t know.”

But Emil’s answer was unsurprising, but still disappointing.

“She couldn’t say anything to us, don’t forget. It makes me curious how your onnikais and my fellow war survivor managed to hear Goddess Death and Goddess Zephira respectively.”

Once again, another good point. Tasianna and Segawa talked to Zephira, right?! How?! Both of them have [Hestia’s Retainer], too. Are you actually telling me, the secret is in Hestia's title she’s giving out like cupcakes?

“However, I do know you can help us, Asaka. Goddess Death didn’t send you our way for no reason,” Emil continued while I returned to that previous thought.

“Urgh…” I groaned, scratching my head. I didn’t like what I wanted to say when somebody looked as if they needed my help. “… I don’t like expectations, Emil. I hate it, actually. I feel forced to do something, despite not getting a say in it. If I tell you off, I look like a dick. If I accept your request, I’ll have to deal with the repercussions of my decision. I don’t like it at all.”

Imagine your parents not caring about you one bit, thinking of you and your brother like tools. Yeah, that was my curse after being born. Now, add to that annoying part with how Japanese society looked at people who were “different” than the ideal, and you start getting annoyed at everything.

“You must do this”, “You should learn it like so”, “You can’t speak with these people.” Fuck off. This was my life. Rebelling was my only way to respond back to these expectations, even if it turned me into a delinquent. I felt liberated about it, especially since it tormented my uncaring parents.

But, now? I felt bad. I hated it even more when people began to depend on me. I despised having this saintess shtick pushed onto me, whilst having the church constantly breathing down my neck to become more like Aiko Hasebe, the other [Saint Candidate] from our world. How was that supposed to motivate people? Compare them to others? Really?

But outside of that, imagine having all these people injured before you, relying on you to save them with your healing. Imagine these people dying before you ‘cause their wounds could only be cured with [Major Heal]. I wanted to spend my skill points on [Sacred Magic] so many times, only to return to reality that I needed other skills to survive. Too often I was placed in danger, and then Elrick or Yorshka had to save me.

Too often. I didn’t want people to depend on me since I felt uncomfortable about it, but I was making myself depend on others. I hated it so much. And how I loved it when Hestia appeared, with not only her incredible healing ability but also her talent as a leader and attacker. No longer did I need to lead “The Misfits” nor did they rely on my healing.

I felt liberated again, but now?

“…” I stayed silent. I did not give Emil an answer.

“… Come with me. Let me show you the rest of the stuff in the dungeon. We need your help, Asaka. We onnikai want to leave this place and fulfill our duty to Goddess Death. But we cannot. Every time we try, the ‘Master’ simply destroys our bodies with his guards,” he lamented as he took his first step onto the stairs. “I can spawn monsters how often I want, but the ‘Master’ simply destroys them. Afterwards, he destroys any body that we try to repair and—”

And my [Danger Sense] activated at that moment. I felt something approach me from the skies, and only seconds later—

Boooom!

“Griiieeack!”

“Woah!”

The onnikais managed to form a barrier around me just in time as the explosion landed, protecting me from the impact.

“Emil! Are you okay?!” I shouted after confirming my own health, but as the dust settled, I noticed a signal with [Enhanced Enemy Sense] from above me.

The target landed onto the ground with a loud thud, blasting the clouds of smoke and dirt away with a thrust of wind. Looking from within my protective ball, I saw him stand up after performing a superman landing.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

It was a foxian in a suit of black armor. In the next moment, his arm literally opened up in two, revealing gushing blood and tendons as a metal barrel came out from it. The end of it then began shining blue, looking to me like a gun readying itself to shoot at me,

He gazed directly into my eye, where I noticed how absolutely devoid of life they looked. Even the zombies from before seemed more “living” than this person.

“Respond or die.”