-Vol 6: Dusk of An Era-
-The Case of Mass Disappearance(1)-
The following morning Kenshin and his small party consisting of Chiba, Joy, and Ena set forth to attempt their first-ever official mission as a complete party. Well at least Chiba was excited, Kenshin and Joy however could only feel annoyance. They were clear about the true nature of these missions. What mandatory missions, they were just forcing these new parties what the local police couldn’t handle.
In Kenshin and Joy’s opinion, this was just a waste of time. They should be clearing dungeons and level up as much as possible. In Kenshin’s case, polish his skills so that they can break the barrier of levels. The opponents he faced till now and will be in the future, none of them were what one could call normal. Hell demons to galactic criminals, to some alien creature coming from space… none of them are normal opponents. And now he had developed a beef against the so-called elders of earth. How can he fight them if he had to complete these measly missions?
Looking at Chiba’s excited face, they both buried their annoyance deep down. Thinking that it’s alright if they do some missions together. It’s just fifty-something missions anyway. They can complete it in a flash. Therefore, first thing in the morning they took the most exciting and annoying of the bunch and went for that. It was an investigation mission in a remote village. A month ago, more than fifty people vanished from their beds at night, never to return. This caused mass hysteria among the people causing police to finally involve the DCB when they couldn’t handle it anymore.
This mission was posted a month ago and since then twenty teams had already taken it, but none succeeded in completing it. no matter what out of the box they think, nothing works. It's as if those people just up and left on their own, rather than some supernatural force getting involved. Last night Kenshin and Joy read through all the info published and came to a solid conclusion. This mission was going to be a drag to the finish. The one involved in it must be a mind-control type and those monsters were harder to deal with.
Killing it was one thing, finding it will be a bitch. This kind of monsters hid far away from their target and use a decoy to confuse enemies. Unless someone with prior experience in dealing with them gets involved they wouldn’t be caught that easily. Either that or someone with a skill that could discern between the decoys and find the real one. In any case fortunately their small team had both, Joy with experience and Kenshin with skill.
“Joy, Kenshin, we should catch it as soon as we can so that we can proceed to our next job. We can’t take too much time with one.” Chiba said seriously.
“Alright” came Kenshin and Joy’s unenthusiastic reply from the back. They could feel their skin crawling just from the thought of it.
“Don’t worry. Aside from today’s job, all the other jobs I have picked were about monster exterminations. We must finish more than one job a day to meet our quota. Even if you guys don’t like it, we have to do it.” Chiba smiled wryly. She could understand why these two were so unmotivated. Even she herself felt it was not worth it, but what can she do? They must finish these. Besides she was also excited about doing a team activity, together with Joy and Kenshin where she wouldn’t be a burden.
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“Okay.” They both agreed and finally reached the front gate of the village, which looked dilapidated. The village itself was no good either. if not for the old man standing in front to wait for them, they would have thought it’s a ghost village.
As soon as he saw four people holding weapons approach, the old man forced a smile before coming forward to greet them.
“Hello, welcome to Kagura Village. I am Murasaki, the in-charge of the village.” Then he stared at everyone with his dead-like eyes and continued “Please follow me. Your rooms are arranged by us already.”
After that, he turned around walking in the front. As they followed him behind Chiba started a small conversation, “Mr. Murasaki, I am not seeing anyone here, they are all inside their homes?”
“Heh, inside their homes? I wish… but no they aren’t. Since that incident a few months ago, the disappearances kept happening. The remaining ones were spooked, thus ran away with their baggage.” There was a hint of pain and anger in the old man’s voice which no one pointed out. As for Kenshin, he was busy scanning the area surrounding the village to find anything suspicious. Although he didn’t find anything yet, he was still being cautious.
Joy too had gone to his [Overdrive] mode, stretching his senses beyond inhuman level. Unfortunately, he too didn’t discover anything. But he didn’t let his guard down though. Then he heard the old man saying ‘repeatedly’ and asked, “Old man, you are saying the disappearance is still happening?”
“Yes. If not people then animal… no matter what living creature comes to our village, they just kept disappearing. Actually, these strange disappearances were occurring for a long time here. But during those days only animals would vanish, not the humans. That day was the first time so many people vanished.” Shaking his head in sadness, the old man led the four of them to a well-built house to the mouth of the village. It looked suspiciously new to Kenshin and co.’s eyes.
“We built this house for hunters when they come to our village.” Seeing their weird gaze, the old man explained. Opening the door with the key, he escorted them inside the mansion-like building. “There are five rooms inside, please chose whichever you like. I will send someone to cook foods for you.”
“Don’t bother with that old man. Just tell us everything regarding this issue.” Kenshin didn’t bother with choosing a room and asked directly to the old man. Like what Chiba said, they didn’t have time to take it slowly. They must finish it by daybreak and return to Mito.
“Eh?” the old man’s face changed instantly. The mild hope he had since their arrival vanished then and there. But he didn’t let it show in his face, “the locals believe it’s the work of Atub. A deity our ancestors used to worship.”
“Many years ago, we stopped worshiping and now people believe he is punishing us. We used to offer animal sacrifices every year. But since we stopped, bad things kept happening. Finally, after the disappearance of the mass of villagers, we finally decided to start worshiping again….”
“it didn’t work, huh?” Joy finished for him.
“yes, it didn’t. But, though the disappearance didn’t stop, the mass disappearance already stopped. Please, I beg you. Do something. Our village can’t afford to lose any more people.” Unable to take it anymore, the old man kneeled on the floor and begged Kenshin. An old man to bow his head to a young man, one can only imagine how much suffering he was in.