Chapter 81
Nightmare Message
“So mind telling us why we are on the move again, when we just found ourselves a place to stay?” Ryle asked in a grumpy voice. “I thought we needed rest! Especially Erin!”
The blonde was airing out her grievances, as Erin’s group was on the move yet again. As soon as Lexton had learned about a healer that was close from the fake one, he decided that it was best for them to take the gamble and go see her. Right now, Erin’s condition was getting worse with every passing moment, so the kobold knew that whatever chance they had they needed to take it.
Although, it didn’t mean it was going to be pleasant, which was something Ryle had made evidently clear.
“Like I said back at the motel, we are going to see a healer to help Erin!” Lexton said with a frustrated sigh. “Are you deaf as well in addition to being freaking stupid or something!?”
“Hey! I was just making sure that we aren’t wasting time here!” the blonde argued. “Besides, it’s not my fault that you didn’t explain things clear enough!”
“Oh yeah! It was obviously MY fault! I wasn’t being nearly clear enough on what I was going to do!” the kobold said sarcastically. “The fact that I said “we heard about a healer and we are taking Erin to her” was obviously far too vague! Next time I’ll make sure to have a long ass lecture to explain it for your thick goddamn skull!”
“BITE MY ASS!”
“Guys, I get that you two have issues with each other, but would you mind and cut it off for now?” Durge asked in a tired tone, having had enough of dealing with the constant bickering. He was currently dragging Erin on their makeshift stretcher. “If you two need to argue, can you do it AFTER we have reached the healer and gotten Erin fixed?”
Both Ryle and Lexton looked at the injured redhead, who was currently asleep but still in pain. She had a terrible fever and was sweating a lot, indicating that her condition hadn’t gotten better. She also had a pained expression on her face, as she was being tormented by nightmares fueled by her deteriorating condition in her dreams.
Upon looking at their friend in agony, both arguing parties felt shame. They were bickering like children, while someone important to them was in such a horrific state and suffering.
“...I’m sorry,” Ryle apologized. “It’s just… It’s just been a rough few days, okay? It all just kind of burst out.”
“I get it. And I apologize as well,” Lexton said. “I’m just looking to fix my mistake. I still think it’s my fault that Erin ended up like this and I want to make things right.”
“I understand, but it wasn’t your fault, Lex,” the blonde said. “Erin knew what she was getting into when she took that potion of yours. Not only am I sure that she would do it again if need be, but I know I would have done the same thing in her position. I can’t blame you for that.”
As the two bickering sides were making up, the other members of their group were watching them with slight smiles. Only Erin wasn’t doing that, as she was still asleep.
“It’s so nice to finally see them get along for once,” Arkay said. “Usually they just continue, until they both get tired and stop for the day.”
“I’m guessing you’ve seen this happen a fair amount then?” Durge asked with a small smile. “I guess their personalities might not mix all that well, but deep down they both still have some form of appreciation for one another and want the same thing right now.”
“LIKE HELL I’D APPRECIATE THAT ASSHOLE!” Ryle and Lexton yelled at the same time after hearing what the orc said about them.
“...And there goes the progress they made,” Durge said with a sigh. “Whatever. Let’s just keep moving. The sooner we get this done the better.”
The group continued on their way to the healer, unaware of two things. One was that they were not alone, as someone was actually following them. The second was the battle that Erin was having within her dreams.
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Inside the redhead’s dreams, she was walking through what seemed like typical Western Continent wilderness, which came in the form of barren badlands. However, something was wrong with her surroundings, as these were far too barren even for the area she was at. It was only rocky harsh plains everywhere as far as the eye could see, with nothing breaking up the monotonous view at all. One should have been able to see hills, mountains or even large rocks somewhere to give nature at least a bit of variation, but there was literally nothing. It was almost like an empty canvas stretching out to no end.
The strangeness of Erin’s surroundings didn’t stop there, as the skies were also very odd and quite frightening. Thick and dark clouds covered the skies, leaving no room for light to come through. The clouds also seemed to move very violently with the wind that felt like it could blow you over, if you weren’t careful. In addition, there seemed to be something like mist or fog everywhere, making it harder to see if there even was anything around you.
With no other choice, Erin moved forward, hoping to find someone or something. She was worried over her friends, as she had no idea where any of them were.
“Hello!? Is anybody there!?” the redhead called out into the emptiness before her, hoping to get an answer of some kind. “Ryle! Arnie! Lex! Durge! Any of you guys here!?”
Upon calling for her friends, Erin hoped to get at least something. Some sound to indicate that she wasn’t alone. Yet to her disappointment, there was only the sound of the wind.
Suddenly, the redhead heard something from behind her. It was the sound of footsteps coming up from behind. Thinking that it must have been one of her friends, she turned around with a hopeful look in her eyes.
Once she saw what it was that approaching her from behind, all of her hopes were crushed and replaced with the feeling of sheer horror. There were people coming towards her, but they were not her friends. They were walking corpses of all the people she had killed ever since she came to this world.
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Erin was able to recognize a good amount of the people coming after her. She saw the people she had killed back when she had worked as an assassin under Ryan and Holly. She saw Gibbot with a massive gash in his chest, Lune with his missing hand, Dryzal’s torn body body struggling to move without falling apart and Goldiana with her burnt face and body covered in bite marks from ghouls. All of these and many others, all having fallen by her hands were there.
All of the walking corpses were also speaking, letting out angry moans where they cursed Erin for what she had done to them. Saying that she had no right to take their lives and that they would drag her to hell with them.
Erin’s fight or flight instinct activated almost right away upon seeing these nightmarish things and she tried to run away. However, for some reason, her movements were very slow. It was almost like her body was suddenly made from lead and she had to struggle to make even the slightest of movements.
With her ability to move taken away from her, the walking corpses soon caught up to her. The redhead could feel the cold and rotting flesh of their hands grab onto her body. The smell caused by their decomposing corpses infiltrated her nose and made her want to vomit.
Once caught, Erin felt her body starting to sink into the ground, like it was some kind of a swamp. She was sinking deeper and deeper, as the dead bodies held onto her while cursing her for what she had done.
image [https://i.ibb.co/3FQsqfw/Ch-81-Pic-1.jpg]
The redhead felt like she was starting to drown, as she was now completely submerged underneath the ground below. Seeing as there was no possible way for her to escape, she began to curl up and closed her eye, waiting for death to come.
“Oh please… You get spooked a bit and you immediately give up like this? I’m honestly a bit disappointed in you.”
Erin’s lone eye snapped wide open upon hearing the familiar voice taunting her. She looked around and saw that she was back on solid ground, the same barren and nightmarish scenery around her. The only difference was that the walking corpses of her victims were nowhere to be seen.
“Would you mind and at least turn your dumb gaze towards me? I didn’t come here to speak to your back,” the voice called out, causing the redhead to turn around to face the shadowy figure once again. “That’s better. I would really appreciate it if you started to get a bit quicker on the uptake. It would make these meetings of ours a lot more comfortable.”
“You again!?” Erin said in shock. “But I was… I wasn’t even… Where am I!? Just what is this place!? And where are the people that were here just a moment ago!?”
“Oh for the love of… Could you please try to figure things out for yourself at least a bit?” the shadowy person said with a sigh as he shook his head. “Where do you even think we are? Do you honestly think places like this exist? This is obviously your dream, idiot.”
“My dream? But how?” the redhead asked. “Since when were you able to appear in my dreams? I thought you needed to actually come and meet me in person.”
“Why would I ever reveal everything I can do to you? I never needed to do this in order to talk to you, so I never did this,” the shadow explained. “However, after you decided to mess yourself up with that little energy drink your friend gave you, I wasn’t left with much of a choice, was I?”
“...So why did you come to see me now?” Erin asked. “Is there something important you need to tell me?”
“No pleasant banter? Fine. I suppose I might as well get to business,” the shadowy figure said. “You see, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that you beat Lune that I even gave you a bit of a gift. Can you guess what it is?”
The redhead simply shook her head.
“Oh dear almighty… You seriously can’t get good help these days,” the shadow said with a sigh. “Okay then. Let me present you with a bit of a riddle.”
The shadow held up his hands, creating what seemed like black portals on the ground. From those rose two figures. One was Lune and the other one was Goldiana. Both looked the way they had just moments ago, when they were chasing Erin, except now they weren’t moving and simply hung limply in the air as the shadow held them.
“Now, here is the riddle. What is the difference between these two?” the shadowy figure asked. “And please don’t point out obvious things, like one is a general and the other is an assassin, or anything else that’s really dumb. What I’m looking for is something that is very much connected with you. Both of them have something in common, but differ greatly in a certain way. Can you guess it?”
Erin thought about it hard. Both were enemies that she was responsible for taking down, yet what was the difference between the two? And how was it connected to her?
The redhead thought about everything. How she had met them, fought them and ultimately defeated them. At first, no answer seemed to be in sight, until it suddenly struck her. Her eye went wide as she realized what the shadow was getting at.
“When they died… I saw the history of one of them, but not the other one,” Erin answered. “When Goldiana died, I didn’t see her past, unlike with other people I killed.”
The shadowy figure made a sound that was mimicking a buzzer at a game show, as the two corpses sank back into the shadows.
“And you just got it right! I was afraid I was going to have to wait here for hours to get that answer out of you!” the shadow said. “What you just said was indeed the correct answer. You see, after you defeated Lune, I decided to do you a bit of a favor. If you are to beat the Five Overlords, I can’t have you freezing on the spot, thinking about the sob story behind every goon you take down on the way. That’s why I installed a bit of a safety measure for you. Think of it as an ad blocker of sorts, preventing those pesky and annoying pop-ups from ruining your day.”
“But I though there was a reason for me to get those visions all those times,” Erin said. “Am I not going to see them anymore at all?”
“Oh, you will see stuff, don’t you worry about that!” the shadowy figure replied. “It just won’t be as constant as it used to be. There will be times when it activates when you REALLY need to see something. Can’t really say more than that, but you should be prepared for it to happen from time to time.”
“So other than these… special moments, I won’t be seeing the pasts of those that die by my hands?” the redhead asked. “I just thought that I didn’t see what happened with Dryzal and Goldiana, since I didn’t kill them…”
“And just what in the hell do you mean by that?” the shadow asked. “Are you saying that since you didn’t give the final blow that you’re somehow not responsible for their deaths? May I remind you that you literally caused both of them to fall to the monsters that ended up killing them. Saying that you weren’t responsible for those, would be like shooting somebody and blaming the gun.”
“...Point taken,” Erin said, feeling a bit ashamed of herself.
“Good. Now I also came here to tell you one thing,” the shadowy figure said before grabbing the redhead by the throat and lifting her up in the air. “Don’t EVER do anything as stupid as using drugs that will kill you, got it? I don’t care how noble you think you are or what you can save by doing so, but you better not even think about it. I’ve invested far too much into you to let you kill yourself over some stupid stunt like that. You can risk your life obviously, as that comes with the job, but taking something that is pretty much guaranteed to kill you is now officially OFF THE TABLE. Understood?”
Erin could only give a slight nod in response. This seemed to be good enough for the shadow, as he let go of her right after that.
“Excellent. We are making some good progress here,” the shadowy figure said. “Now, I should probably be on my way. You should also consider getting your ass up. I just took a peek at the real world and your friends seem to be in a bit of trouble. Not sure what your half-dead and completely useless self can do, but who knows? Maybe you can surprise me.”
“The others are in trouble!?” the redhead asked with a shocked expression on her face. “What happened!? Are they alright!?”
“Goddammit… Why do you expect me to tell you everything? Just look around when you’re awake,” the shadow said with a frustrated sigh. “But before we depart, I should remind you of one thing.”
The shadowy figure pointed at something behind Erin, causing her to turn around. There she once again saw the moving corpses of her victims, all staring at her with angered expressions.
“The blood that you spill will always be on your hands. Even if you don’t see any glimpses of their lives, they will always be there. Waiting for you to come and to see what you’ve taken,” the shadow explained. “As a demonstration, let’s have you see some stories from your latest victims. It might actually send you back to your buddies as well.”
Before the redhead could ask what he meant, the shadowy figure suddenly pushed her towards the walking corpses, all of whom reached their hands towards her.
Upon being touched, the tortuous sensation that she hadn’t experienced for some time now came back, showing her the stories of the lives of those she had killed. She saw how Dryzal started off as a simple nature-loving child, who loved animals with all of his heart. How Goldiana had started training at an early age to become a great martial artist to help those in need. And then she saw how they and others fell into tough times with the arrival of the Five Overlords. Once the tough times started, they went on to become the monsters Erin faced.
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The raging torrent of visions was so violent and vicious that it caused the redhead to have a nosebleed in the real world as her body started to visibly convulse. Soon after that, she finally woke up from her dream. Erin had to take a couple of deep breaths, before her body had calmed down enough that she could actually observe her surroundings. But once she had calmed down, she could feel cold shivers run down her spine, as she realized what was going on.
She saw her friends locked in a battle to the death with what seemed like a group of assassins.