CHAPTER 62 - Change of plans

It seems like there is a problem with those who come from the direction of the totems. All their weapons are drawn and pointed at me and their faces don’t show anything but hatred directed at me.

Not being able to do any other attempt of communication with them now that things had taken a bad turn, I try my last time and talk into the mind of the leader of the tribe, trying to get things to settle peacefully.

“You need to hear me out, I am lost and just found you after days of searching for anyone to talk to.” I link our minds briefly, sending my message and holding on to it just for a while longer for him to answer.

The shock of my talking in his head must be great, as he doesn't try to answer back or say anything at all, he shouts something I can’t understand to the people surrounding me and they all attack me.

Forced to cut out the link before his brain is fried and with no other card to play, I leave yet once again another village with meager results.

‘Now at least I know I should avoid talking about coming from the other side of the perimeter of totems.’ I make my way up a hill as I follow the line of totems yet again. Each time I find a new village trying something different, but with not much success.

Each time I run out of options I try the link, each time getting better at it, even though the response from one village to another doesn’t really vary that much. An instant expulsion from their village is what I get time and time again.

Another day passes by, and I still can’t spot a single soul chasing after me, making it all even weirder.

‘This place resembles a huge rainforest like those from Earth, maybe they have chosen to pour their resources into something with more chances of success?’ My doubts only grew as the time without any suspicious sightings got longer and longer.

Losing the sense of time, I continued with my search, each day repeating the cycle, only adding some training in between the trips from one village to another, forgetting just how many days I have been lost inside this sea of trees.

I meet a lot of new animals along the trip that I am not familiar with: parrots the size of a dog, some kind of koala with a horn in its head, monkeys with two more arms than normal and wayyy too aggressive tendencies, and even a few worms covered in armored exoskeletons the size of a mouse.

More than one time did the worms scare me when they popped out of nowhere to eat small rodents or insects in a whole bite, forcing me to focus my scans a bit more on the underground. I have been keeping a close watch all around, but I tend to give less importance to animals/beasts of that size, tagging them all as “non-threat”, but that may change from now on.

Losing the count of my days just shows how much effort and exhaustion I have been experiencing so far. Day after day, days with double the amount of time that those of Earth, being on the run, constantly moving and training with no reprieve, in fear that any moment of rest will turn into an ambush.

Days have been accumulating, and for some reason my body is holding on a lot better than expected, even with the harsh environment, but that’s only probably due to the abundance of mana and qi too fed upon from the ground and air.

However, that’s only in regards to my physical condition, my mind is weary and I am starting to have doubts about my own decisions after expending so much time into only one endeavor and having no results so far, so I finally give up, ready to take a long and really needed sleep.

Bruma had it easy till now thanks to her sleeping on my watch, so I will trust her to keep an eye out for enemies just the same way I did, but I am going to take extra precautions just in case.

Funneling one of those orbs of mine with mana, I lay on a small hole I dug. Taking out the orb, I mold the ground around us to create a cocoon big enough for both of us out of rock and dirt infused with mana for extra durability, protecting and hiding us at the same time.

The orb floats on top of our heads with a dimmer light as I attach its energy to the construct I just made out of rock, ready to fuel the cocoon I just made in the event that we are found and attacked.

Bruma settles on my chest as I lay there, ready to finally get my much needed rest, and after a few minutes of closing my eyes, I fall asleep for the first time in this alien world.

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I open my eyes, and the first thing I see and feel is the fluffy fur of Bruma brushing against my face. The small cute little thing is all curled up into a ball, taking a nap too, probably bored.

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“Sorry little guy.” I say as I pet her and start breaking apart the construct I’ve made to protect us while I slept.

I bit by bit take apart the whole thing, just stopping before it all crumbles, performing a huge area scan before destroying the stone shield. There are some holes for the air to come in and out, yet I have a barrier there too so that we are not poisoned or anything by gasses or weird substances, something I developed while trying to avoid friendly fire with mana.

I couldn’t reach the point where I wanted to be, but now I can at least avoid abnormal things to my knowledge from entering my barriers, like lethal toxins or gasses. That’s why I get stopped in my tracks the moment I assure myself it's safe to leave, and I break apart the construct, finally breathing fresh air, or at least those were my expectations.

“Argh, what is this smell…”

*Blargh!* I can barely contain myself from vomiting the second I breathe outside the safe cocoon of stone, even Bruma nearly falls over from the strong stench.

An awful nauseating stench is circling all around, it smells like rotting corpses left out in the open on the hottest of days. It comes from every direction, carried by the wind, it is nearly impossible to breath with how bad it is, so I get a hold of Bruma and start sprinting away while checking my scans for the source of the smell.

I come out empty-handed, I can’t see or feel anything in the area, making it all smell fishy too.

"There are no animals nearby, they all probably fled, yet I decipher the cause of this smell.” There are no corpses laying around, nor strong enough wind to bring that awful stench from so far away, so just how is it that it feels as if we are walking on top of a battlefield where the smell of death reigns supreme.

While I absent minded walk forward, trying to come up with a solution, my scans finally sense something that’s alive, a village to be more specific.

I approach the village, this time trying to be stealthy so as not to alert anyone. I stand behind a few shrubs, taking a close look all around, yet it all seems normal, people going on about their daily lives like normal.

Too normal.

They all go from building to building as they would usually, working on things, chatting among themselves, preparing food… Not even once of them make an attempt to block the stench from reaching inside their nostrils and filling their noses with that nauseating stench, not even one of them, so I stand up.

I decide to approach the village, making my mind to get to the bottom of this. The moment I start walking out of the greenery though, shrieks and screams erupt all around, from the inner part of the settlement to the outer parts, the loud noises propagate like a virus.

I rush inside, boosting my whole body in case whatever's attacking this place is strong enough even with the weaker gravity of the planet. I have yet to see anything too dangerous around in the forest, yet I have yet to see much at all, so I can’t be too sure for now.

I jump on top of the ceiling of the first house that comes into view, and from there I advance from one roof to another, trying to guess what’s happening faster with the help of an aerial view.

When I get to the center of the village, chaos comes into view. Fires erupt from the buildings and people run away in panic, trying to not get squashed by the falling pieces of them. From the ground, monsters arise, skeletons and zombies crawl out from the ground with an ease that sends shivers down my spine.

The ease with which they do it is appalling, it seems surreal, as if they could do it from the start and just didn’t want to till now.

Most of them are skeletons, bare bones left from past generations that were laying below the earth, but some of them are more like those zombies that the TV often showed, with muscles, organs or even flesh hanging from their bones.

‘That makes no sense, there shouldn’t have been THAT many bodies buried inside the village! Even less of those with still hanging parts of their flesh!’

I try to look for an explanation, yet nothing going down right now makes sense, yet I can’t deny it either, seeing it all happen in front of my own eyes.

I hesitate.

Should I help? Should I evacuate? Protect the villagers? Kill-, destroy… those things?

Or should I just not involve myself with all this? Going by what I’ve seen so far, they might as well brand me as a traitor to the human race or something if I go down and help them by how they treated me so far. Last thing I want is to get called a necromancer, evil god, spiritist or something along those lines.

I don’t know much about this world, but humans always tend to condemn those who mingle with things they have no knowledge of, just like those who were branded as witches on Earth and killed for it.

‘Screw it, if I don't help them now, there will be no more people to scorn me, they will all soon die at this rate.’ The walking dead have already spread, they chase after the villagers at a fast speed. Some of them run closely behind their victims before lunging on top of them and biting their neck off while some others just use their bones as spikes as they impale the humans, killing them in one swift motion.

They all seem as strong as humans, just more durable and without a need for stamina or worry of injury, and they all slowly whittle down the numbers of the humans alive, showing no mercy. They slash and cut through males, females and children alike with no remorse, by the time I jump down and start oblirating their skelly frames, half of the village is already dead.

I could protect all of them if I really put my mind to it, yet I choose not to. These people are no more than strangers to me, and while I would prefer them all to live, their death don't really affect me that much… I think.

I smash the skeletons one after the other, they all are as tough as a normal human should be if stripped of their flesh, maybe just a bit more tough, but not by much. I start using my fists, but once I see just how slow that is, I start using my mana to reshape the ground, synthesizing my manna with the soil and creating traps all along.

In some places spikes shoot from the ground, impaling the skeletons and stopping their murder spree, while in others, small, chunks of rocks condensed into even smaller chunks, are thrown at the advancing foes, crashing against their bodies and sending splitters of bone all over the place.

Minutes tick by before I stop fighting, and by the time I destroy every single one of my enemies, only a small group of villagers remain. Around fifteen people are still alive, some of them were lucky to be near me when I started fighting those monstrosities off, while others saw us and came my way.

There are a couple of adult males, but most of the remaining people are the children and the elderly, most of the adults died fighting or fleeing. I walk to the closer adult of the pair and I am about to strike a conversation with the guy via a mind link when a wave of coldness and fear makes me flinch.

I get goosebumps just in time to see all the corpses around twitch… the ones of the recently dead villagers.