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The girl kept glancing sideways at Avan, who was leaning comfortably against the tree, looking around at the surroundings and just enjoying the moment before whatever was going to happen here started.

When she finally picked the last mushroom from the tree, she stowed it in her basket under a cloth and stood up with the basket hanging on her left arm.

"I'm done!" She declared with a seriousness despite the fact that Avan had seen and witnessed everything, which drew a cheeky grin from him.

He also stood up and followed the happy and lively girl who looked back with a cheerful grin on her face and then hopped away.

Also smiling and without much effort, he followed the young girl with some distance, so as not to give the wrong impression.

Looking back from time to time, the girl ran with her mushroom basket through the forest and between the shady trees, while Avan, slightly surprised by the endurance, had to run faster with his larger steps than he had previously thought.

After a few tens of minutes, Avan slowly saw the clearing and wooden huts from afar, as well as the rough but friendly faces of the few inhabitants who were going about their daily tasks.

As the girl scurried past among the adults, he could see only friendly expressions on their faces, even if some shook their heads at the impetuous girl or laughed at her antics.

But no sooner had Avan himself left the edge of the forest than the expressions and postures of the people immediately became cautious and tense as the first people noticed him, until the girl called back, "This way, mister!" He walked past the still-attentive people and nodded apologetically to them left and right, immediately softening a few facial expressions.

With a few mumbled apologies and almost embarrassing situations in which Avan almost ran into one person or another, still chasing after the determined girl, he finally came to a stop behind her in front of a slightly elevated wooden hut. She proudly turned to him and pointed to the house with her right free hand.

"This is where grandfather lives! Come, I'll show him my loot from today!" She explained to him enthusiastically and ran up the three wooden steps to disappear beaming with joy through the open entrance door into the interior.

Shaking his head slightly and still somewhat ashamed of his sudden intrusion into the small community, he also entered the wooden house a short time later, carefully and deliberately.

With slightly watery eyes, he blinked into the suddenly darker hut and needed a moment for his eyes to adjust to the difference in light.

The interior of the hut was sporadically furnished and, at first glance, had only one other adjoining room and was otherwise furnished with long lengths of cloth as room dividers. Everywhere was furniture and interior decoration of dark, red wood and here and there brown and beige fabric.

In the back part of the room and behind a cooking place fenced in the middle by stones, sat an older man with bald head and a white long beard, who just looked smiling at the girl and listened to her narration and gestures with patience and joy.

As if he had not seen Avan, although he had briefly glanced in his direction, he continued to nod at the joyfully telling girl and took the mushroom from her hand, which she just showed him.

After a few minutes, and after the brown-haired girl had remembered her guest, she whispered something conspiratorially into the right ear of the elder, who cast a neutral glance in his direction and nodded to her again, placing his left hand on her back.

Finally turned in his direction, with the girl now sitting next to him, he let a look wander over Avan that strongly reminded him of that of the guildmaster. I wonder if that comes with age. He chuckled inwardly and bowed respectfully and slightly to the older man.

Without further ado, Avan explained again what he had already told the girl; he was lost and from far away, but embellished the story a bit more realistically and integrated a true core, so that everything at least came across honestly. Through an accident and an attack of bandits he was lost in the woods and had then found himself at the foot of the mountain in the south, from which he had then seen the village and had wanted to ask here for help and orientation.

In the conversation he had also introduced himself and learned the name of the two; the girl was called Alvira and her grandfather Alva.

Without letting on whether he believed Avan's story, the village elder had kindly offered him a place in a guesthouse on the edge of the small village, where he could spend the night until they could send him off in the morning with some provisions and a direction to the next larger town.

Avan had thanked them several times and had also shown real honesty, since a promised dinner and also provisions sounded good to him.

Now in the small one-room hut, which had been shown to him by a skeptical young man at the request of the oldest, he sat down on the clean-looking bed and could finally let his thoughts run free.

If my feelings are not deceiving me and my suspicions are confirmed, whatever is expected of me will happen here or in the vicinity... Why else would I have been led here so obviously. he continued his train of thought thoughtfully and looked out of the only remaining window in the room, which was covered only by a fabric net, which reminded him of a fly screen from home.

The sun outside, at the sight of which he still shuddered, was just setting and the eldest would send his granddaughter by to pick him up for dinner.

While he was lost in his thoughts, thinking again of the nightmarish raven figure that had so easily and effortlessly mutilated and then killed him, there was a tentative knock on the wooden door.

With a "Come in!" a brown-haired head peered through a crack in the slightly open door and Alvira peered in hesitantly but with a grin on her face.

"Grandfather said we could eat now. There's mushroom soup, with my mushrooms, with wild boar!" She told him proudly and took a whole step inside the hut while waiting for his reaction.

"That sounds extremely delicious, Alvira! Thank you for picking mushrooms so diligently and giving me some tonight! You're a little hero!" He replied in a played serious tone and thanked her spiritedly, which elicited a giggle from the girl.

With a follow-me gesture in his direction, she turned and muttered, still grinning, "I'm not little!" and walked ahead.

Avan followed her directly and entered the village chief's hut right after her. Before he could give much thought to why his dungeon senses were not picking up anything, he heard a shrill girl's scream from inside.

Suddenly plagued again with thoughts of the god of death, he ran energetically and purposefully through the doorway and after a short blink, an image of horror appeared before his eyes again.

The girl, her robe covered in blood, arms and hands, was kneeling in the left half of the house in front of the figure of her grandfather, who had slipped from his chair at the dinner table and was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, his eyes wide open and staring blankly into space.

Alvira knelt in front of him and cried, screaming his name and trying in a panic to shake and stir the much heavier man, who, however, only responded to her attempt with dead eyes.

"Fuck!" Avan cursed instinctively and already at the edge of his perception perceived a dark and now familiar spot, which he could not sense or grasp, but knew.

With a turn to the right half of the house, from which he perceived the emptiness, and something in his perception was simply missing at the spot, he immediately recognized the figure from his nightmare.

A black outline of a raven figure with a bone-colored glow in its eyes stared in their direction, while fresh blood dripped from the claws of its supernaturally long arms just above the ground.

Before Avan could react, the outline disappeared into the shadows with a backward step, only to reappear with a void in his perception right next to the young crying girl, separating her head from her shoulders with a single, clean cut of its claws.

Screaming and inwardly undergoing another torture, Avan had already been running, but could do nothing but watch and stare at the girl's head, still streaming with tears, rolling on the ground in front of his feet.

"You'll pay for that!" He shouted and hissed between clenched teeth with his own tears clouding his vision.

With another step, he stood in front of the raven figure that had been staring at him silently and unnaturally quietly, and let his fists filled with Akkalon's touch come crashing down on the monster. Just when he should have met resistance, he felt only a chill as if his arms and hands were immersed in a cold damp mist, and his blows disappeared into the black billowing interior of the raven monster.

With a hiss, which Avan had first mistaken for a sound coming from the raven's head, the right bloodied claw whizzed in and without much resistance pierced his black leather armor and penetrated his beating heart.

Coughing bloody and still beside himself with rage, he tried once again to grab his opponent's head with both hands, but felt only a cold dampness as his second attempt seemed to glide through his opponent.

Avan felt the life drain out of him and a renewed coldness enveloped him, for the second time in a day, and he collapsed in an instant as if a puppeteer had cut the strings.

---

 

He awoke once again, shivering suddenly, while sunlight stung his eyes, and he panicked, running his hands over his body, feeling for all the blood and the pierced heart.

With a thought he remembered the familiar feeling and realized a few seconds and touches later that he had once again faced death and it was again the time of day when he had woken up here at the foot of the mountain.

A brief grasp and a shivering goose bump later, an equally familiar and now slightly hated voice sounded in his head and all around him.

"Oh, oopsie. I TOTALLY forgot you weren't even from Aorus. How could I have forgotten that...? Hmmm... Oh, what the heck! Forgive and forget, right? Here, I think you can use this very well!" Laughed the god of death with a slightly mocking voice in his head.

Suddenly, a new status window appeared in front of Avan, whose heart was still racing.

 

[Character Interface upgraded!]

You were finally given the quest system, much to the pleasure of the god of death. Quests are another way to pursue specific and important tasks, earn rewards and experience, and advance in the world of Aorus!

Normally, this is unlocked at the latest when joining an Aorus-based institution such as the Adventurer's Guild.

 

When Avan read this, he cursed the God of Death all the more, and his anger at the fresh memory of the dead girl brought a few tears to his eyes, which he wiped away with his leather sleeve just as the next message appeared.

 

[Quest: Save Alvira and her grandfather's village]

An unknown, but now familiar, figure has slaughtered the inhabitants of the small community and your first attempt to take down this monster has failed magnificently.

Your blows could not harm the raven-like figure!

Find out how you can hurt the killer and save as many residents as possible, but Alvira and her grandfather must survive at all cost!

Rewards: Perks(?), Unknown

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