"Ugh..."

Lief groaned as he moved his arm towards his eyes to block the sun.

He slowly opened his eyes and sat up, the view before him was truly horrifying...

Corpses. 

There were corpses of young children, corpses of adults, corpses of the elderly and even corpses of dogs and cats!

Their ashlike corpses littered the courtyard, some were lucky enough to keep their body parts whole whereas some had lost half of their bodies.

The putrid smell made Lief gag. 

He looked around him, Lief thought that it looked like someone was having a celebration of sorts, maybe a wedding? 

He looked around and saw what looked to be the bride, her body was so infected you could not make out any of her features.

Not just her, everyone around Lief looked like that. 

Their bodies looked charred, though Lief could tell they weren't burned.

Lief was finally starting to get used to the smell. At least, it wasn't as bad as when he had first woke up.

He glanced at his surroundings.

"Wait... Why am I here? I should be in the vaults right?"

Lief tried to recall what had happened but for some reason, it seemed like he couldn't recall anything recent!

He decided he should go and find his father ask what happened to these people. 

Lief felt something on his face and went to wipe it with his hand. As his hand was reaching up towards his face he noticed that his hand was actually trembling, this was quite strange as Lief has seen many situations of death. Not first hand or anything, he has seen them through memory crystals of other people so that he could strengthen his mind.

To tremble from this is quite normal, though, how can memory crystals compare to the real thing?

Lief wiped his face and realised that whatever liquid it was, it came out from his eyes. Glancing at his hands he saw it a deep red liquid, blood.

"Why... Why are my eyes bleeding?" Lief was at a loss, he had only ever heard of someone crying blood once and that was when a deranged alchemist used a little boy as an experiment and caused thousands of scenes where the child went through life losing people each and every moment the child eventually cried blood from grief and the alchemist, happy with his experiment finally disposed of the boy after months of experimentation...

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But Lief wasn't grieving for anyone nor had anything sad happened to him. In fact, everything's been going well for him, right?

Lief wiped the blood off his face and decided to head towards the library to find his dad. However, after his first step, he kicked something.

*Clang*

Lief's attention was drawn towards a golden crown.

The kings crown.

Lief suddenly remembered everything. His wedding, the old priest and the black gas that he coughed up...

His vision blurred red, streams of blood ran down his cheeks, he started crying blood again.

"N-no... This... This isn't possible, right? There's no way... Ju-..No!" Lief dropped to his knees and stared at the infected corpse.

Missing its right arm, laying on several charcoal like pieces of a royal red robe. It was laying next to another body, a slimmer body, a female's body.

Its identity was confirmed when Lief saw the pendant wrapped in its hand.

The pendant that the queen had given the king just before she vanished.

"I... I'm sorry... I'm sorry everyone, dad, sis, Sophie... everyone..." 

"AAAAAAARRGH!"

Lief's howl sounded beastly, nothing like a humans cry, the amount of grief contained within...

---

He stayed kneeling for several hours silently sobbing to himself until he finally forced himself to stand up.

He began to walk to the shop with an oak sign outside.

The Crafters Den.

This was a place for designers and crafters to get together and make partnerships, deals and maybe even friendships. 

However, right now, Lief was going to use its stockpile of tools and materials to dig graves. 

Not just for his family, he would dig a grave for every life he took, animals included. 

They would be buried with their families and pets first before Lief buried them, he wouldn't bury his father.

He didn't know why he was doing it this way, it just felt right to him.

---

One by one, Lief went up to each body and checked its pockets for the Civilian or noble ID.

The ID was a small iron or silver plate that all members of the city had to carry.

The ID told you the owners name,date of birth, and address.

Lief was surprised when he found out that quite a lot of people had already laid down inside their own homes. 

Instead of making him happy, this made him more depressed.

"Does this mean that they were in pain for a long time? Was it painless? Either way, it couldn't have been quick for them to go to their homes, right?"

It took Lief an entire week to carefully move each body to their homes, another week to dig the holes and two weeks to bury all of them with their treasures.

Each one of them was buried in the front of their homes. 

The headstones all stood in a line going down each street, spreading from the entrance to the king's mansion.

Lief had also buried his father, sister and fiancee. 

His fiancee was buried with her family whereas his family was buried outside the mansion, facing all the other graves.

Lief hadn't rested for a moment, if not for his cultivation he would have probably died of exhaustion.

He kneeled down in front of his fathers and everyone else's graves and stayed there for a while whilst he said,

"I have buried you with your treasures and gold, I'm deeply sorry for what I had caused. I am unable to give you an explanation. I wish each and every one of you wealth in either reincarnation, the other worlds  or wherever it is you believe you go in the afterlife."

In this world, although the majority of the world believes in the church and god, everyone has different beliefs on how you pass.

Some believe that you go to heaven or hell, some believe that you get reincarnated, some believe you roam small radios above your burial grounds as a ghost and some even believe that nothing happens.

No one knows what happens, perhaps all of those things can happen, perhaps none of it does. 

The only way to find out would be to die, and it's not like there's a way back from that, right?

--

After silently kneeling, Lief stood up and turned towards the mansion.

His previously gloomy face turned into a smile and he casually walked into the mansion.

He walked straight down the hallway, up the stairs and through the first door.

In the bathroom, he hopped into the shower and washed all the blood off his face and the dirt of his body before grabbing his clothes he uses for gathering from the forest. 

His clothing was slowly deteriorating but he pretended not to notice before walking towards the front door and yelling,

"Father, sister, I'll be leaving for a while, I'll see you later!" It was something he had once said on an almost daily basis, such a casual way of speaking, yet this time... It was sad.

With that, he vanished. Teleporting to the entrance of the Forgotten forests, using up one of its now 3 uses. 

"I suppose it uses up more of it when you teleport to somewhere you have only seen in memory crystals, huh?"

Walking past the sign, Liefs vision turned black for a moment before...

[Warning: If you continue progressing along this path you will trigger a system change]

[Cultivation will be lost and converted into skill points]

[Skills will be lost and converted into skill points]

[Exta longevity will be converted into skill points]

[You will begin at level 1]

Do you wish to continue?

[Yes]  [No]