Days after arriving in the village more and more people were reported missing.
At first it was two then three and four, now a total of twenty five people were missing from the ship.
Mathew couldn’t help but wonder what was happening in this place.
While Nice leaves every night to scout out the village.
The village itself was busy with people who went about their daily activities at day but at night the village becomes a ghost town.
Nice calls everyone down including Mathew for a meeting “I guess we are all wondering the same thing aren’t we?” The other members nods and Bullard eventually says “it’s a little bit concerning I know but I’ve decided to investigate this matter personally”.
Everyone turns to Bullard eventually Altier says with her hands folded “I agree with him, we should investigate this matter and see what’s really going on here” Frank goes on to say “really or maybe it’d be better to just leave and avoid any further trouble for us.
In the end they decided to have a vote, Nice says “all in favor of investigating raise your hands” Altier, Bullard and Nice himself raises their hand “okay now all in favor of leaving raise your hands” with that Frank, Ellie and Quiver raised their hands thereby making it a tie.
“I guess we have a tie then” said Nice.
Bullard raises his hand to points at Mathew “wait Grey didn’t vote” he points out.
Mathew hearing that feels a bit confused “me but I’m not a member of your party” said Mathew.
Nice waves his hands and says “so what if you’re not a member we won’t have called you here if we didn’t want to, so break the tie for us”.
Mathew thinks to himself for a moment “this side quest isn’t really my business all I want is to kill that pope, but I can’t help but feel these villagers don’t have anyone else to help them plus if we do save them they ought to repay us with something right?
Yes that reward should be worth saving them for”.
With that Mathew raises his hand “I say we investigate the situation”.
Hearing that Nice smiles “alright we that out of the way we’ll need to follow at least one member of this village to see where they go and what they do maybe that could lead us to the missing people”.
And with that everyone leaves and begins to follow one member of the village.
After a while it was noon and every member of the village begins to return home all at the same time.
Mathew who was following the bar tender they met on the first day followed him to his home.
Mathew didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, so far the bartender just did what he usually does, he takes a cup of tea and waits in his bedroom.
Mathew stays at the top of the building carefully monitoring him.
At exactly mid night the bartender begins to walk to his basement, Mathew watches him suspiciously “where could he be going at this hour” he then sneaks into his home and silently follows him.
On getting to the basement Mathew sees a huge portal in there, the bartender walks into it, as he did the portal begins to disappear.
Seeing that Mathew instantly makes a clone and sends it to report back to Nice and the others without letting them know it was a clone and not the original Mathew.
With that the clone leaves and Mathew dashes forward and goes into the portal before it closes.
At the other end of the portal Mathew falls ungraciously and later on raises his head to look at his surroundings.
He noticed it was a cave with crystal like rocks surrounding it, Mathew then decides to walk around the cave until he finds the bartender.
walking deeper into the cave, he then thinks to himself “seriously where is this guy going?”.
He follows the bartender for a while and eventually the bartender stops near a wall which had myriads of pipes hanging from the top.
The bartender then takes one of the pipes and shoves it into his mouth then stands their doing nothing.
Seeing this Mathew decides to climb up to find out where those pipes came from.
He then pulls out the black blade which was given to him by Nice and starts using it as a stepping stone to get to the top.
After a while of climbing Mathew stumbles across a hole which could take him up, he then goes into the hole and finally arrives at the upper layer of the mysterious cave but what he saw at his arrival made chills run up his spine.
In the dark cave there were numbers of people standing there and with the same pipe connected to their mouths.
Mathew almost pukes “what the hell is going on here ” Mathew thinks to himself.
He then notices that the soul essence in the cave was denser than most places he’s been, so dense that even Mathew who couldn’t really sense soul essence that well could know that there was a lot in the cave.
With that he activates Frank’s ability and begins to see the flow of soul essence around the cave.
Normally when gathering soul essence, the essence flows from nature and into one’s body but it was the opposite for the people who had pipes in their mouths.
Instead the soul essence moved out of their cores and went straight towards a particular spot within the cave.
Mathew then follows the flow of soul essence and eventually arrives at the deepest part of the cave and what he saw next made his entire body shudder even more.
Right before his eyes was a creature that spanned over three hundred meters tall with five eyes, eight arms and countless pipe like tails running deep in the ground.
Mathew with a scared expression steps back “what in the constellation is that thing?”.
Sensing his presence the creature opens its eyes and rises up looking directly at Mathew’s location, with a thunderous roar every being within the cave moves as if being controlled by one existence and all rushes towards Mathew
“Damnit” seeing this Mathew begins to run with all his strength but he was cornered and surrounded at all angles.
With no way of escape so far Mathew then draws out the black blade and heads towards the people of the village surrounding him.
He bends space shifting himself to the top of the cave while hanging on a small hole at the top.
The creature then moves one of its pipe like tail as an attempt to attack Mathew.
Seeing this Mathew let go of the hole and falls down while simultaneously shifting space, removing the group of people who were there, away to avoid being hit by his landing.
Mathew falls down hard on the ground but due to his uncompleted Divine physique he did not sustain much injury.
The creature stares at him particularly at the location of his core.
Mathew notices his gaze and made an angry expression while thinking “oh is that what this is?
So you’re one of them who wants to kill me just because of my core.
Seriously if you want a Divine core that badly just make one you asses”.
Mathew picks up the black blade and stares directly at the creature “I made a promise to myself that I will destroy anyone and everyone who comes after me just to remove me from being a threat to them so you are very unlucky I’d say” he steps forward towards the creature and continues”today one of us is going to die it’s either you or me but even if I die I’ll definitely make you fear humans “.
With that the creature orders the people to attack Mathew.
With an almost empty light core and an injured body Mathew grits his teeth in anger and charges towards them setting his sights on the creature as his main target.