AN: No tables in this chapter (not like each chapters need a table, right?)
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During their travel, they had to deal with groups of monsters on several occasions. After the first 2 encounters, Erwin strongly insisted for the 6 others to do their parts. Aside from him, everyone gained a level, but all his enhance and decrease spells leveled up. At that time, he started to think about magic, and mana. Aside from casting the spells, he couldn't move his mana and couldn't separate the elements. After all, he had affinity to 8 elements. He also wondered if there were others methods to raise ones affinities.
In the middle of the first night they spent in the wilderness, Erwin woke up while screaming, trashing around for a few seconds and darting away from the others with tears and snot on his face. David and another guy who were keeping watch got startled, and the others woke up in a panick. Diane paled when she saw the state Erwin was.
“Erwin, what's happening?? David, something is wrong with him!! What should we do?”
“... There is nothing wrong with him.”
“What do you mean?”
At that time, Erwin had stopped screaming and was panting hard with a knee on the ground.
“He survived a plane crash and saw people die in that crash. He was attacked by monsters and almost died at their hands. He saw people being killed by those monsters. The world we knew has changed and became more dangerous. All of this happened within the same day. Not everyone can cope up with it. Some people will faint, some will go crazy, some will fall into despair, some will shut down some of their emotions. Some, like the red haired girl over there, will break.”
The red haired girl in question was the survivor staring into empty space. She no longer reacted to anything, she was like a soulless doll, blindly following anyone who held her hand, not reacting to danger, not reacting to pain. The one who took most pity on her was Diane, and she made efforts to take care of her. She peed and shat on herself without a care, and Diane had to clean her up. She was just a shell, but others took pity on her and decided to keep her around, thinking that maybe bringing her back to the civilisation will heal her mind.
“In his case, most of his feelings and emotions were blocked. It's like some people who learn that someone they were close with died, and only start to cry during or after the burial ceremony. Now that he had time to rest, to assimilate everything that happened with no distractions, the weigh, the seriousness, the horror of the situation bareled down on him in the form of a nightmare. I had a crazy one myself when it was my time to sleep... It's still the middle of the night, get back to sleep... Even if you can't, lie down and let your body rest.”
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The next day, the group came upon a railway, which went from the east to the west, and following David's advice, they went toward the east, that earned him the orientation skill... Until they came atop of a cliff. The railway was broken there. The cliff was several kilometers wide, from the north to the south-east in a crescent shape, and almost 300 meters tall. A dark forest with weird looking trees lay at the bottom, and extended to the horizon. In the distance, within the forest, they could see the ruins of a town.
Aside from the red haired broken girl, they were all speechless. They were all a little knowledgeable about the geography of southern France, they knew this scenery shouldn't be there. The railway had given them hope that not many things may have changed physically, especially considering that the signs they saw on the way indicated a town was near.
But the sight in front of them confirmed their fears. The ruins were definitly remnants of the town that should have been there. And the appearance of the forest didn't reassure them at all. One of them went closer to the edge and observed the cliff in more details, before returning to the group, who had istanced itself from the view.
“... I can't believe it!!” said David as he started to silently cry.
“Looks like the path toward Toulouse is gone. Shit, the city may have disappeared just like this one!” cursed anothr survivor. “You wasted our time leading us here, you asshole!!”
“So you're losing it, eh? You're not happy? Noone is forcing you to follow us, you can leave anytime you want.” said Diane.
“I'm telling all of you guys right now, I intend to continue to move toward Toulouse. I won't believe it's gone until I confirm it with my own 2 eyes. I want to confirm wether my gardian survived or not. I also think of going into that weird forest and reach the ruins of the town. If there are ruins, then there are things to salvage. David, Diane, what do you want to do?”
“Are you serious? That forest doesn't look good at all. Morever, the trees seem to be packed together so it will be dark, and there are probably a lot of bushes. You'll get ambushed easily in there.” said David.
“Wether we like it or not, we don't have a choice but to go down.” said one of the survivor.
“And why would we do something so stupid??” replied the one who was panicking.
In reponse, the guy pointed toward the way they came from. The ground had become dark, and the darkness was squirmming and getting closer to them. These were definitly some kind of insect monsters, and there was an insane amount of them, completely covering the ground, and the sound of hundreds of squirmming insects reached them.
“... Ahaha, they remind me of the beetles in the movie 'The mummy'.” said the man who warned them “Let's move!!” he added as he darted toward one part of the cliff that seemed usable for descent, and started to go down.
As they were about to follow him, Erwin suddenly grabbed Diane's shoulder while she wanted to take the red haired girl's hand.
“How do you intend to climb down with her?”
She froze on the spot. The cliff was more than 200 meters deep, they didn't have any rope, and climbing down with her on ones shoulder would be too dangerous. It would have been fine on a shorter distance, but not 200 and more meters. And the red haired girl wouldn't put any efforts into staying in a secure position. A single mistake and they would very well die together. There wasn't time for extended thinking, she had to make a decision within the next few seconds, and had tears in her eys as she stared at the broken girl.
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The others were already descending. Erwin looked at the approching insects, then locked gazes with David. They both knew it was hopeless for her. He cast the speed enhancement on all 3 of them, then the strenght enhancement on himself. Feeling the effect of the magic, Diane turned toward him, just in time to see him tackle her and lift her while moving toward the cliff, David just behind him. The red haired girl didn't react to anything and was just standing there.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
She struggled to get free from him, but without succes. He reached the place where the others had come and started to descend, still holding Diane with one arm. Diane had the time to see the insect swarm the red haired girl. She didn't react nor utter a single sound when they ripped the flesh from her legs, when they tore her tummy open, spraying ripped internal organs and blood on the ground. As they were descending, they could hear the sounds of the insects feasting on the girl's body. Some tried to follow, but they weren't good with vertical surfaces and fell.
Diane held onto Erwin hard as he cautiously descended the cliff, the rock dangerously cracking under their combined weight. In a short period of time he had to swiftly change between the nubbins in the rock several times, some giving away undertheir combined weight. We were going down at a much slower pace than the others since I had to triple check before resuming the descent.
“If my cousin was still alive, she would have looked just like her” she whispered in Erwin's ear while crying.
He stiffened for a bit, but continued to climb down. Since she was holding onto him, he could use both of his hands. Now he understood why she was so adamant in helping the girl. It didn't have anything to do with girl's solidarity or something like that. It was because of an old wound.
After a few meters, she had calmed down enough to move on her own. As they got lower, it became easier to climb down. However, noone of them was used to climb down for nearly 200m, and their hands and arms had started to hurt. The guy who was panicking earlier didn't put enough strenght in his grip and slipped to the side, he tried to recover but it was already to late. In a loud cry of horror, he fell, ceaslessly hitting protubing rocks as he went down with nasty sounds. He had stopped to scream after the second hit. Seeing this, the other got even more carefull on the way.
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When they reached the bottom of the cliff, they all earned the climbing skill. They also got to see the body of their former comrade, ripped apart by the sharp pieces of rock encountered on the way down. The head had been blown into pieces when it reached the ground. In short, he had become a bloody mess. They had gone from 9 people to 7 within an hour, and knowing they had to cross this forest didn't make them feel any better. They were abou to move when one of the survivors noticed Erwin didn't move at all and was gazing at the forest.
“... What's wrong?”
“... This forest, there is a lot of mana in it. I didn't feel any mana where we came from.”
“So what? This forest wasn' part of our world, but from the other. So of course there would be mana in it and not in our forest. Now le-WHAAAAAAAAA!!!”
The survivor was interrupted by a vine warping around his foot and dragging him away. David and Diane immediately went after him. After being quickly dragged over 30 meters he was lifted in the air and the predator revealed itself. At first it looked like a small stocky tree, but it turned out to be a giant flower with small sharp teeth on the inner side of its petals, and it held he poor guy right above its head. Being enhanced by Erwin, Diane threw her spear at the vine. It jerked and dropped it's prey right next to the lethal hole. The jerking motion pushed him to the side and saved his life.
David hacked at it's body with his hatchet, but it was tougher than it looked. The same couldn't be said for the vine, who was severly cut after 2 quick strikes from Diane's makeshift machet when it tried to attack again. With its vine useless, the plant monster was just an easy target. The others aside from Erwin joined in the melee fray and it was quickly killed.
“This is going to be very, very troublesome...”
“Hidden carnivorous plants possibly at every corners... Great, that's just great...”
“These simple carnivorous plants are the least of my worries.” said Erwin. “In video games, plant monsters often have the ability to poison, paralyse or confuse a target by releasing spores in the air. The 3 of us already met a troubleso-”
“WHATCH OUT!!!”
Erwin dived to the side on impulse when he heard the warning, and 2 giants spiders landed right where he had been. The guy who had warned him was about to attack but was held back by David. More spiders were appearing from the depth of the forest. Many more. The smaller ones went straight for the freshly crushed corpse at the bottom of the cliff, but the bigger ones stood now between Erwin and the rest of the group. The bigger spiders reached 120 to 130 cm in height, the smaller ones were around 50cm.
“Shit, they were attracted by the scent of blood. Erwin, there are too many of them, we can't reach you!” said Diane.
There were now around 30 big spiders between Erwin and the group, and more smaller ones were coming from the forest.
“Forget about fighting them, these spiders are agile insects, remember how they jumped at me. There are to many of them and some are probably poisonous. Run away. Our primary goal is the ruined town, if we can't meet there, then go nortth, north-east until you find a road or something! I hope we will meet again.” said Erwin as he backed away from the spiders heading his way.
With that said, he gave the others one last speed buff and went his way, numerous spiders after him. The others, seeing him leave, went there own way with their share of spiders. They now had to flee from the spiders while being wary of other plants monsters.
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AN: ...