Even though Roland believed he wasn’t someone who quit easily, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep going for much longer. His legs were hurting like hell because of what happened the previous night and he still had numerous cuts and bruises on his arms as well.
There was one thing that did go well though. Using his ‘Cortar’ spell he managed to find a way to properly skin the bunny he had killed. He sent the spell onto the bunny straight on causing a cut to appear, he then managed to rip it open further until he could properly gut it.
And now he was really tempted to stop and make a fire to cook the small animal. The problem was that there would be a whole bunch of smoke if he decided to make a fire and that would make him extremely easy to track.
Luckily the gods seemed to smile upon him as an hour later he already saw signs of civilization. Roland had been prepared to spend a few nights in the forest but surprisingly he arrived at a cornfield.
He backtracked a bit and made some fake tracks leading away from the field before slowly making his way toward it, trying to make as few tracks as humanly possible. When he got to the field properly he immediately threw his raw bunny aside and grabbed a few oars of corn, promptly eating them.
The corn was pretty much ready to harvest as it reached above Roland’s head. After quickly eating a bit he made his way through the farm, he changed directions a couple of times and tried to disturb the corn plants as little as possible. Then after fifteen minutes he luckily ended up at a road.
The road wasn’t that wide and had multiple potholes in it but it was a road nonetheless. On both sides of the road was filled with the corn plants. Roland didn’t hesitate as he decided to follow the row to the right. Even though his legs were still hurting like hell, now that he saw a way out his spirits were rekindled allowing him to go on for a bit longer.
This paid off as he soon saw a dirt driveway on his right side, when he started walking on it he saw a farmhouse a bit further ahead and a tractor on the dirt driveway. He didn’t see any tracks on the driveway though, this made him think the owners of the farm might’ve not been here for a while.
He walked up to the house properly and looked through the dirty windows. The inside of the farmhouse was surprisingly empty, other than the basic furniture there was really nothing else. But when he saw the tractor it looked relatively modern. Roland shrugged as he felt like he was paying attention to unimportant events again, he put those matters aside and knocked on the secure wooden door of the farmhouse to see if anyone was home.
After a bit his conjecture was proven correct as nobody opened, he then headed to the backdoor of the farmhouse. Compared to the front door this looked a lot less secure, the wood the door was made of even seemed to be rotting a bit.
He managed to kick the door in after three kicks and then quickly entered. The housed smelled horrible as he could clearly smell something rotten but he ignored it for now as he quickly checked the kitchen closets. There was very little food here and surprisingly for a farm everything was storebought in metal cans. As for the fridge, it was empty and the power seemed to be off.
After quickly opening and eating a can of baked beans, he was finally somewhat full. He decided to check out the house properly just to make extra sure nobody was here. First, he followed the wretched smell. It led him to a door that seemed to lead toward a basement. As soon as he opened the door he held his nose closed as the smell became unbearable, the basement seemed to be damp and when he looked down the stairs at the basement floor he even saw there was a layer of water there, the room clearly wasn’t maintained properly.
When he finally got down the stairs far enough to properly see the basement he fell back on the stairs with a shocked expression.
There was indeed something rotting but what he hadn’t expected was for it to be a human.
Chained to the wall by her neck was a lady, she looked extremely malnourished and her clothes were in tatters, furthermore, some of her skin had begun to rot. The skin around her neck where she was chained up was gone, it looked like she had pulled with so much effort her skin had come off.
As for why she pulled, it wasn’t hard to figure out. On the ground in front of her laid a fat naked man, he wasn’t chained up in any way but instead Roland could see a long, sharp piece of wood that had stabbed him right through the heart. On his hip were some keys, the truly sad thing was that the lady was doing her very best to reach the man’s foot, but since he had fallen backward she couldn’t grab it to pull him closer and grab the keys.
Roland felt even more like puking when he saw a large number of metal tools on a table nearby, many of them bloodied. After puking Roland turned around and started heading out of the house, but just before he did he thought about something. He grabbed the landline hanging on the wall and called the emergency number. When they picked up Roland quickly spoke in Spanish “A murder happened in the farmhouse I’m calling you from, please come quickly.”
As soon as he said that he let the phone hang down as he ran out of the house and kept going to the right. He was trying to escape from killers himself yet just then he stumbled onto such a horrid scene. He tried not to puke again as dizziness assaulted him and just barely succeeded.
