“So, this is Jose’s message?” Louise, after hearing Selene’s recitation, was slightly puzzled.

“He mentions that only he and a nameless person remain. Who is he leaving this message for… If the danger in the village comes from the undead, and there are many of them, then frankly, they probably won’t live very long. Undead, regardless of their intelligence, have an innate instinct to kill. If there are a hundred of them, and Jose in the real world is a superhuman, while Jose here is just a low-level apprentice… If they survive for an hour, that’s luck. ”

The expression “Divine Grace” refers to the “Twin Mirror Butterflies.” In Elven mythology, envoys are also called divine manifestations.

“We can’t trust this completely. We’re in a world Jose created, not the real Tatra,” Richter sensed that the name Tatra was familiar, but couldn’t remember the details, “Even if there are many undead in the real Tatra village, these are probably just illusions, things made of magic that only resemble undead.”

“Instead of worrying about that, let’s check if what he said is true. Look, there are intertwined lines carved on the door of that house,” Richter pointed towards a small wooden house, and they all saw the clear cut marks on the door. Since the houses were old and dilapidated, covered in various marks, the three hadn’t paid much attention to these marks before.

“Want to go take a look?” Louise glanced at the sky. “It’s still afternoon. We have some time before nightfall.”

“Let’s take a look, then go back to the inn,” Richter looked at Louise. “Selene can’t really do much. You or me?”

“I’ll go. You and she together aren’t a match for me,” Louise twitched the corner of her mouth. “Seriously, why can’t I have normal teammates?”

Then, she placed her hand on the rickety door and knocked loudly several times.

“Hello! Is anyone there? Say something, or I’m coming in!”

Without waiting for a reply, she pushed the door open.

“Let’s see what’s here…”

The room was very small, with only a bed big enough to stretch out on, a stove, and what looked like a makeshift oven, and a window facing the fence at the entrance of the village.

Louise scanned the room but couldn’t find anything—neither the undead that Jose had mentioned, nor any noteworthy marks.

Did they not exist, or were they things that only Selene could see? Why was she so special?

While Louise was thinking this, she suddenly heard something small fall on the ground.

Click—

Something seemed to fall in front of her, leaving a mark on the ground.

But she still couldn’t see anything.

Instinctively wanting to look up, but before she could, a powerful warning surged through her, like a massive loss of blood, making her shiver. At the same time, Selene’s voice came from behind her.

“Don’t look up! There’s something above!”

“Whew…” The intense warning made Louise take several deep breaths. After regaining her composure, she asked, “What is it? If you can tell me.”

Selene looked up, her gaze passing through the slightly open door, towards the ceiling, towards the creature whose limbs were like a spider crawling in the corner of the ceiling. Its entire body was dry and shriveled, devoid of blood, as if all the blood had been drained from it. It was smiling.

【Look at me, look at me, look at me—】

Click—

As the creature’s mouth moved, a gray, viscous substance dripped from a gash across half its face. But it didn’t fall to the ground, but onto a gray slope of brain matter.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

And there was more. She could see more. She could see what that thing must have looked like when it was alive—an unremarkable face, the kind that wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. You could see him enthusiastically greeting the villagers and the outsiders. You could see his face contorting in fear as he was dragged away, his fingers scratching bloody trails on the ground. The villagers were around him, no one helping. You could see him, eventually, among them, all of them smiling as the next person was dragged in. We all become mangled limbs…

“Snap out of it,” Richter slapped Selene, whose body had tensed up. He waved his left hand in front of her face, then made a fist. “Or I’ll use a bit of force.”

Perhaps the image of him raising his hand to reach Selene’s face was too comical, but Selene quickly recovered. The bloody scene before her eyes began to fade.

The guard’s voice continued to echo in her ears.

【Look at me, look at me, look at me—】

“Look at you, you idiot. I’ll explain your dream!” Selene, using her body’s instincts to blurt out crude words to calm herself, then turned to Louise, who was still waiting at the door.

“There’s something creepy above you, but as long as you don’t look at it, you’ll be fine.”

“…” Louise, realizing what had just happened, immediately turned and left the room.

As if she had already made up her mind, Selene described the head she had seen, giving her companions something to think about.

“It’s definitely not undead,” Louise, having experienced being targeted before, said confidently, “At least, to me, it felt no different from wood or a wall. If it hadn’t been for the brain matter dripping down, I wouldn’t have noticed it… Even when I focused, I could only vaguely sense something there.”

“I think it’s different from the others in the caravan,” Selene frowned, though the image was fading, some impressions remained. “How should I put this… If the others were only superficially real, their bodies empty, acting according to certain rules, then that thing was like a puppet being manipulated, and its strength and intelligence were far superior to the others.

“No, ‘puppet’ isn’t quite right… To be precise, it felt more like us. The sense of a ‘real’ existence was very strong.”

These words made Louise and Richter fall silent.

After a moment of thought, Selene continued,

“Of course, this is just a feeling. It doesn’t necessarily mean they came from outside.”

“At least, we can’t ignore them as if they didn’t exist,” Louise sighed, then remembered something else, “Wait, if not looking up prevents being attacked, then when you saw that head, Richter, we made contact with it… Could it attack us?”

Richter, having experienced it firsthand, shook his head.

“At least, nothing happened at that time. According to Selene, it was heading towards her, but…”

Pausing, the three spoke in unison,

“That thing’s probably gone, right?”

“…At least, doing something worked. Hopefully…”

“Let’s go back to the inn,” Richter said immediately. “According to Jose’s message, the inn is safe. And we might find more information from him there.”

The three quickly reached an agreement and hurried back.

Passing the mound of dirt, they paused for a moment. Selene could see that the mound had returned to normal, with a new, unsettling message written next to it. Louise and Richter, though they hadn’t seen the mound or the message, noticed that the hole Louise had made was gone. This was clearly abnormal.

Luckily, they didn’t encounter any other anomalies along the way and quickly returned to the inn.

Along the way, Richter discreetly memorized the markings on the doors—three “safe” rooms, six “somewhat dangerous” rooms, and two “do not enter” rooms—and shared the information with Louise and Selene. Then he stopped for a few minutes to look for the “church” Jose had mentioned.

He couldn’t see it from that angle.

In the bar on the first floor, Louise found some edible rations and some heavily diluted ale. The three sat down in Selene’s room on the second floor, replenishing their energy and organizing the information they’d gathered.

“First, we know we can get out in… roughly two days,” Louise took a sip of diluted ale. “The number fluctuates a bit, but it shouldn’t be far off. I can’t say exactly how much time passed after we slept last night.”

“At least five hours,” Richter added.

“You only sleep five hours a day?” Selene was surprised.

“…I haven’t slept for at least five hours,” Richter sighed, not explaining why. “We know there are many undead here acting according to certain rules. As long as we don’t provoke them, they won’t attack. But earlier, by the bonfire, we learned that staying in one time period for too long would lead to an attack. So, these undead will likely attack us after a certain amount of time… Or maybe not. After all, it was only after we revealed our experiences that the caravan took action. There’s probably some kind of trigger…”

“And there’s also the question of our current identities,” Selene rubbed her clothes. “In the caravan, according to your theory, we have the identities of both caravan members and Jose’s companions. What are our identities here?”

“Uh… Lady and maid, perhaps?” Louise guessed, based on the style of their clothes.

“Have you seen a lady whose clothes are this worn?” Selene pulled at her clothes. The material was clearly thin and not very comfortable. Only a poor noblewoman would wear clothes like these.

Richter suddenly seemed to realize something. Before he could speak, a knock came at the door.

Knock, knock, knock—

Along with the knocking, came the soft, childish voice of someone, a faint, metallic, fishy smell, and the dull sound of something small falling on the floor.

【Sister, don’t you like my treasure?】