I get myself in a battle stance when I see multiple people are charging towards me. They seem to be holding a hand-made wood shiv, I guess they are not scared of a spear-wielding man when they have more than one people advantage to makes up for their bad weapon.
I waited for them to get a little closer and I thumped the ground with my spear. Then, A whistling sound can be heard from behind and certainly, it was Yuki's arrow that was shot from inside the house. One of them got hit by the arrow and fell with an arrow stuck inside his body.
They were surprised that there were other people inside the house, and they have a bow too. They feel a sense of danger if they keep moving forward, so they decide to run away from this place, but since they're near me, I sprint forward and thrust my spear into one of them. The spear pierced through the man's body, and he fell to the ground. The other person ignored and leave the injured man behind, running to the forest. Another whistling sound came from behind but alas, the arrow missed the fleeing man. We let one escape.
I looked at the man that I pierced him with a spear, he was seemingly to be in pain. I couldn't bear to see him in pain any longer, so I thrust the spear to the man's head, ending his life.
I can't feel any emotion from killing the guy but when I looked at my hands, they were shaking and I couldn't grip the spear. I can't help but feel fear. I just killed a man with my own hands. Although I prepared myself ever since the mass disappearance happens, my mind couldn't.
I look at the person that gets hit by the arrow, he didn't move. It's possible that the arrow hit the vital spot, so I didn't bother the dead and look at the woman. She's still sitting on the ground, shaking and looking at me in fear.
"Ma'am don't worry now, you're safe."
She looks exactly like a foreigner. I don't know what language she speaks. So I just tried to comfort her, but it startled her instead.
"J-Jap-anese?"
I was surprised when she can talk a messy but surely a Japanese language. I just nodded so she can understand me. She immediately stands up with her shaky leg and points her finger to herself.
"I- L-Lily Hughes..."
She tried her best to introduce herself. When I was about to reply, she points her finger to the direction where the people that chase after her was escaped.
"There, P-People- Eat.. P-People... Save. People. Please..."
I furrowed my eyebrows when I heard what she just said.
Cannibalism.
One of the taboos in humankind. People are banned from eating each other on Earth. But in this damned world?
I feel disgusted when I think about people eating each other. I tried not to talk about it, she must be terrified thinking when it's gonna be her next. I guide Hughes to the house, so she can feel a bit more comfortable and safe.
Yuki also came out of the house and help me. When she sees the cooked meat and campfires, her leg gave up immediately. I told her to close her eyes to avoid seeing the similar traumatic scene.
We keep guiding her until we're near the large bedroom. We let her go on the bed and leave the room. I closed the door and Yuki looks at me, starting to talk,
"So, what did she says?"
"She just gives a hell of information. Do you know where did that person that tried to chase after her go?"
Yuki ponder for a while and said, "The cloud of smoke that we see when we were hunting the boar?"
"Correct, and I guessed it correctly when I said there were people living over there."
"But how they still survive from that harsh condition for living beings?"
"That's the thing... People eat each other over there."
Yuki starts to feel gloomy when he heard it.
Yuki's arm is itching to touch his bow and commit genocide to the cannibal people, but he tried to calm down and opened his mouth, "So, what are we gonna do now? We can't just let them continue eating random people."
"Of course, we can't let them do whatever they want. The faster we finish this problem, the fewer people died being eaten by one of their own species. We're hitting them tonight. So get your necessary stuff ready."
Yuki smiled and immediately start packing up. He got nothing else but two quivers behind him and a bow in his hand. I also got nothing but a spear in my hand. We set out and start running quickly.
I don't know how many people in that place, but I hope there's no absurd monster is in the way when we start killing them. Funny, I still have my naive thinking that all people are kind and won't do something like this...
After running for quite a while, we crossed the line between the grass and the rocky surface. There's nothing living here, just a few rocky hill and a huge mountain. Once we start getting near the last time the cloud of smoke was found, we start crouching and slowly walk.
We saw peoples patrolling around the area. It seems we are getting near. Yuki wanted to shoot at them straight away but I stopped him from doing it, he only brought more than 30 arrows. There could be more people here than the arrows he brought, or he could miss some of them. Either way, both of them are not a good thing.
I saw one of the patrols is getting closer. We hide near the trees and once the person passed, I immediately grabbed his mouth and choke him with other arms. Yuki grabs one of the arrows from his quiver and stabs the person many times. After the person stops resisting, I let go the person and drag him to the nearby bushes. My hands start shaking again, but it's not the same as when I killed a person for the first time. We start moving after seeing no patrol insight.
We keep moving until we saw something lights up from the edge of the hill. Step by step to the light, there's a smell getting stronger, something being cooked. We can guess what they are cooking, so we prepared our mind for anything. After we arrived at the edge of the hill, we saw... unavoidable things to our eyes, cooked to the point it no longer look like a human. We immediately avert our eyes to somewhere else. I saw people inside the cage and there seem to be four people inside the cage and all of them are women. They look lifeless and have no emotion to show, afraid or fear, nothing like that appeared on their face. They look a little skinny and have bruised all over their body too. You can guess what happened to them before they're being sent to the cage. They look like they don't want to live anymore.
We tried to plan out a stealth plan but when we see a woman is about to get dragged away from the cage, we immediately scrapped the plan and start with a loud plan. Yuki immediately pulls the string and shoot the arrow and immediately after, one of the men got hit by the arrow. Yuki starts to get used to the bow now. I'm starting to wonder, is there something else he can't do?
I charged to the last person with a spear. He was about to call a reinforcement, can't let you do that!
I stab the man in the head with the spear. Instant kill.
I heard another footstep coming toward me. I grab the arrow that Yuki had shot and hide beside the tent. Once the man appeared in front of me, I grab the man and stab him with an arrow, quickly dragging him away from getting exposed.
I peeked over the tent to see if there's any more cannibalism victim. I didn't see any sort of similar situation as the women that got caged here. There were so many people that are roaming around here though. Yuki and I couldn't possibly kill all of them. So I go to the women that got dragged. She looked at me as if I'm one of those people but didn't bother to run away at all.
They look like they won't move unless they're being told to. They've resigned their life to fate.
"Follow me, all of you. Stay low."
They stand up and walk like a zombie once they were ordered. They just followed me. I feel like I'm acting like a bad guy here. Luring women to somewhere, I'm just doing a good deed, nothing else.
I walk to Yuki and gestured him to go-ahead first so there's no patrol ahead of us. He just nodded and start running inside the forest.
I could hear whistling sounds for a while, then I saw Yuki came back with a thumbs up. I ordered the women to start moving fast. I don't want to stick around here any longer.
We rushed away from the place, getting to the safe house.
