The villagers we saw in the distance made their way towards us, one after another. Many people were injured, and after seeing them, two of the people in our group quickly began setting up a small healing area to tend to injuries. One of them could manipulate bones, allowing him to fix up any bone-related injuries, and the other could make people’s body quickly convert water into blood. We had no way at all to heal flesh-related injuries, but we could at least help those who were moderately injured.
After the first few people were healed, bandaged up, and comfortable, the adults of our group began to quietly surround them and pepper them with questions. I quietly made my way to the side of a few of these groups, before listening in.
“How are things at the village right now?”
“They’re pretty bad. Between twenty and thirty land beasts came. A few of them jumped into the ocean right away, but they trampled quite a few houses. The other land beasts started fighting with the hunters and with each other once they arrived. Abilities keep hitting the area, and they’re doing a lot of damage to the buildings. A lot of these landbeasts had ranged attacks, which was pretty unlucky, so the usual method of holding of the landbeast while dodging around was much riskier than usual. Lots of people are getting caught in the crossfire. Luckily, most of the land beasts aren’t interested in hunting down villagers, so the ones who are targeting random people are being handled by the hunters right now. But trying to evacuate everyone and hold off the landbeasts is proving a big strain on the hunters and village chiefs who are helping out.”
Many of the adults who were questioning the villagers fell silent at that, and I could see that many of them had grim expressions as they pondered this information.
“How long will it take until we can return, and help anyone who got trapped under rubble or something?”
“When I heard the hunters talking, one of them said they hoped it wouldn’t take more than an hour before all of the Land Beasts succumbed to the Call of the Ocean and committed suicide. But there might be a few land beasts who take longer, or something could go wrong. We don’t know for sure.”
“Do any of you know who’s winning in the fight between the outsiders and the chiefs? How is the village doing? Have we killed the outsiders who didn’t escape?”
“I don’t know. We were too far away from the outsider’s camp to see what happened there. But since the outsiders were running away, they’re probably losing.”
“I knew those outsiders were no good. The moment Olav told us about the empire of Megailia, I felt that they were trouble. Why, if it were up to me…” Past that point, the conversation between the villagers started to devolve into nervous complaining and discussions about the outsiders. Since none of it seemed relevant to the current situation, I opted to drift to another group, listening in as I searched for new information. However, I didn’t learn much more. The outsiders had left, land beasts were attacking the village, and the hunters and village chiefs were evacuating people and fighting the land beasts in our village. That seemed to be all that anyone knew.
As I listened to the adults conversing by the side, my eyes continuously drifted back towards the ocean, as well as the groups of survivors fleeing towards our area. I couldn’t help but wonder if the village chiefs would destroy the last boat of outsiders or not. I also wanted to make sure a land beast didn’t sneak up on us and take us by surprise, even if they seemed more focused on rampaging through the village. So my thoughts continuously drifted between the fight happening in the ocean, and the land beast rampage in our village.
Eventually, however, I started to feel a different emotion.
Is this everyone? I looked at the dwindling stream of survivors trickling into our area, and felt my heart sink. The number of villagers who had reached our area probably only numbered two hundred people. Our village had nearly seven hundred residents. Somewhere between one hundred and two hundred villagers had fled to other villages before the fight, but that left three hundred villagers unaccounted for. Where was everyone else?
I knew in my heart what the answer was, but I didn’t want to believe that so many of the neighbors and acquaintances I had met over the years in this world had returned to the ocean of souls so soon. Perhaps they’re just injured in the village, and can’t move. Or they escaped in a different direction. I comforted myself. Only three or four hundred people were confirmed to have lived through this crisis. However, the other three hundred people of the village weren’t necessarily dead. Some of them probably were, but plenty of people might still return to the village once the landbeasts were dealt with. I felt my stomach churn with worry, but I forced myself to cling to that hope.
I felt someone gently pat me on the back, and looked up to see Felix staring at me.
“Don’t worry so much. Worrying won’t help anything.” He said. “I’m sure your worst fears won’t come to pass - there are definitely more people alive than this.”
After that, he sat down on the sand, before tugging at my arm. I sighed, but sat down beside him and did my best to relax. Once the land beasts were dealt with, we would need to sort through rubble and find survivors where we could. Remaining tense and worried would just wear me out before I could help anyone.
However, my thoughts kept wandering back towards the number of villagers who had died in this fight. I gritted my teeth, and in addition to worry, a new emotion started to sprout as I clenched my fists.
I had never wanted to hurt someone before as much as I did right now. I hated the people who had caused so much damage and suffering for our village. The outsiders who had landed on our islands had incited the massacre of hundreds of innocent people, just to increase their chances of escaping. Such a despicable method of pulling noncombatants into the fight was just…
I realized my jaw hurt, because I was clenching my teeth too hard. I took in a few deep breaths to calm myself down, and took comfort in Felix’s presence by my side. After a minute, Sallia also joined us, and the three of us kept watch over the unsteady trickle of refugees from the village.
Minutes crawled by.
Eventually, one of the hunters returned to our area and told us the village was safe. With unsteady gaits, we began to trudge back to our home.
When we arrived, much as I expected, it was basically just rubble. At least half of the buildings in the village were utterly destroyed. Chunks of wood and bone were scattered across our homes and workshops. Most of the bones looked like fragments of tools that had been destroyed during the fight, or fish bones that hadn’t been processed before the fight had started.
A few of the bones were distinctly newer, and were covered in red stains. I tried not to think about who they had once belonged to.
There were four land beast corpses lying in the ruins of our village. One was a seven-headed chicken, half as tall as a human being. It was accompanied by three hunter corpses, letting me know just how fierce the innocent-looking animal had truly been. Two of the corpses were of giant snakes. And the final corpse was of… something. I wasn’t sure what it was - its remained looked like a ball of minced meat. If it weren’t for the fact that its corpse was so massive, I might have thought it belonged to a human. I had no idea whether the creature had turned into this state after the hunters had attacked it, or if it was just particularly unusually shaped.
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I took in a deep breath, before I started checking back through the villagers again, trying to see who survived. My mother and father were alive. Sallia and Felix were alive. Sallia’s parents were alive. In the distance, I could see Felix’s mother. Her left leg looked pretty badly injured, but she was still breathing, and a healer was tending to her injury. She should be fine.
Nobody else that I knew well had been accounted for yet. Olav, Claus, and the other two fishermen on father’s boat could still be alive or dead.
My father also looked through the survivors, concerned, before shuddering. It was a minute motion, but I could tell he was worried about his colleagues. “Perhaps they’re still in the village, or on one of the fishing boats. I’m sure the village chief and their hunters took along some fishermen to chase after the outsiders,” said my father. I wasn’t sure whether he was comforting me or himself. He reached down and tousled my hair, before giving me a tight hug.
“Let’s get looking for other survivors,” said one of the other villagers. “There could be some people seriously injured in the village, but still alive. Let’s find everyone we can and get them patched up.”
Most of the villagers seemed to share the sentiment, and so all of us got to work clearing out rubble for the second time in the past year.
* * *
People’s moods were foul as they found the corpses of friends and family members. After two hours of searching, we found the corpses of Joanna and her husband, Agnar. I felt even more sad and frustrated when I saw their bodies. I hadn’t known them well, but they were people my father had worked with for years. When I saw them in the village, they were happy to smile at me and give me toys when I was younger, and they seemed like good people. For them to die just so that the outsiders could escape felt wrong.
When we found their bodies, my father broke down and began sobbing. I spent a few minutes hugging him and patting him on the back, trying to make him feel better. He had worked with them for years, and so their deaths hit him much harder than it hit me. However, as his daughter, I wanted to comfort him and make him feel at least a little bit better.
As the hours wore on, and villagers continued to sift through the rubble, I felt depressed as I saw the number of villagers who had truly died in this attack. Some of the villagers were trapped by rubble or knocked unconscious during the catastrophe, as I had hoped for. The natural resilience of people with three runes was well beyond what an ordinary human being would ever be capable of, and this had helped people shrug off some injuries that should have been fatal. However, for every one survivor we found, there were another two corpses. After it seemed like we had dug out most of the survivors, I took a quick count of the villagers we had confirmed the deaths of.
Of the seven hundred or so people who had previously lived on the island, perhaps five hundred and fifty remained relatively healthy. This included those that had temporarily taken refuge on other islands before the fight started. Some of the ‘healthy’ villagers had suffered minor injuries, but none of them would be permanently disabled, and they could heal up within a few weeks or less. Then, perhaps another thirty people were permanently crippled or injured. That left around a hundred to a hundred and twenty dead.
The only real solace was that very few young children had gotten caught up in the attack, since those with young children had been most wary of a catastrophe and thus most likely to leave the village beforehand. However, this was a shallow silver lining in the face of such a huge catastrophe. Even though there were probably a few dozen villagers left unaccounted for, because they were part of the boats chasing the outsiders or hiding nearby, we had definitely lost at least a hundred people. That was over a seventh of the village.
I had previously thought that a single land beast was a catastrophe, when one of the land beasts had rushed through the village during the adulthood ceremony last year. However, this catastrophe was several orders of magnitude worse than the previous year’s land beast catastrophe.
As I stewed in my thoughts, I got an Achievement notification.
Influence: Contributed to the defense of the Village by a [Negligible] amount.
Achievement + 3 (Achievement for your actions is awarded now that events are concluded)
I ignored the notification. Three Achievement was nowhere near enough to make me feel better.
Then, I saw the flying boats, finally returning from the ocean. The fact that they returned hopefully meant that they had won. There was no way the village chiefs would let such a major threat to the island escape if they could end the threat once and for all, so if any of the outsiders had escaped, I doubted they would have returned.
When the boats landed on our island, I was relieved to see Claus and Olav disembark from the boat, along with the village chief. Joanne and her husband were dead, but at least Olav and Claus were alive.
The village chief looked over the ruined village, as well as the pile of corpses we had dug out from the rubble, and I felt as though he aged a decade in the span of a few seconds. He closed his eyes for a few moments, and a look of anguish and exhaustion flitted across his features, before he regained his composure.
He strode towards the nearest villager and gave him a nod.
“How many dead or wounded, Alfing? Do you know?”
“Probably a little over a hundred dead, give or take a bit,” he said. Instead of anguished or frustrated, the villager just looked numb. He sifted through the rubble like a walking corpse.
The village chief sighed heavily, before turning to the other village chiefs who were disembarking, as well as some of the village chiefs who were helping our village look for survivors.
“How about among the village chiefs? Does anyone have a head count for hunters and chiefs dead?”
One of the village chiefs looked up from the pile of rubble he was sifting through, before sighing. “Of the seventeen village chiefs, I can now confirm at least twelve of us are alive. That leaves five of us dead or missing. I think two or three might be looking through the forest for any other pockets of your villagers, and I know at least two are dead. Of our hunters… I’m not sure. I estimate most villages have lost at least a fifth of their honor guard, but the exact numbers may vary.” Then, the village chief focused on our village chief. “What about the outsiders? Did you get them all?”
“There should be no survivors from those who landed on our shores. We had a hard time dealing with the outsiders at first, but we managed to kill most of the soldiers on the upper deck of the ship after chasing them and whittling them down for a while. After that, we landed on the ship and cleaned out the lower deck of the ship. Then, we used wood abilities to shatter the wooden ship into pieces. Finally, we hovered around the area, and used arrows and abilities to shoot down anyone that managed to hide from our boarding attack and surfaced after the ship was destroyed.” The village chief sighed. “So at least for now, we should remain unknown to the Empire of Megailia, as far as I can tell. However, if Olav could drift to this island two decades ago, and a military fleet could land here this year… who knows if or when we’ll have more visitors from beyond our shores?”
The other village chiefs frowned, their expressions turning grim as they listened to the village chiefs speculation, before one of the other village chiefs sighed.
“At least for now, the crisis is dealt with. We must finish dealing with the rubble here, and rescue any remaining survivors we can. After that, we’ll hold another village chief meeting to determine what countermeasures we can take in the future.” She eyed the forest. “At the very least, we don't have to worry about attacks from the forest for a while. Those black-hearted bastards cleared out most of the land beasts immediately surrounding your village, so no more should show up and make a mess of things for at least a few months. It’s something, at least.”
The village chief sighed, before nodding.
He seemed done talking with the other village chief, and so he instead started making his way towards a pile of rubble. However, before he got to work, I quickly walked up to him.
“Village chief… what started the fighting? We thought that if a fight broke out, the village chiefs would fly in more warriors first. What happened.” It probably wasn’t the best social etiquette to question the village chief right now, but I was seven years old. I could get away with things adults couldn’t, and I used that to my advantage right now.
The village chief turned towards me, and his expression softened a bit. “Little Miria. I’m glad you survived this mess.” He patted my head. “The outsiders told us that we had to swear fealty to Megailia, and give them some flying boats and barrels of pearls. We don’t even have enough flying boats for ourselves, since floatwood trees are hard to harvest when landbeasts rule the forests, so we refused. The outsiders took offense, and got pushier. Then, the village chief that claims the sea monster is a messenger of the ocean mother attacked them.” The village chief sighed. “Not that I think the meeting would have ended any differently, even if he hadn’t started the fight. The outsiders were very pushy, and things were heading in a bad direction almost the moment the negotiations started. The outsiders seemed surprised to see so many of us with ten or more runes, but still seemed to feel that they would win if it came to a fight. Luckily, with the help of the other village chiefs, we managed to drive them off.” He stopped patting my head, before turning to the ruined village. He sighed. “Don’t worry, little Miria. The bad people are gone now. You’ll be safe for now.”
Then, done talking to me, he got to clearing out rubble.