[Day 4]

The new day started, again, with another scream.

This time it was not from the house Kirana stayed in. Some other house in the village…? Did something happen?

The screaming was coming from the village chief’s house. The villagers already surrounded the house when Putri and her arrive. She had a horrible prediction that one of the players died, but unexpectedly…

It was Kevan who screamed, because he found the village chief’s corpse in the living room. His face was dark blue. Not only his face, but his whole body. Kirana frowned.

Remembering the poisonous village in his backyard, Kirana felt like she had touched some truth. But how?

It couldn’t be that the village chief poisoned himself, could it?

“Village chief!  Why, why did you die…” The villagers wailed.

She had the intuition that the village chief’s death was definitely not as planned by the villagers. The players all huddled together to the side of the room. “Why did the village chief die?” Banyu asked.

Jet, who had no sense of appearance from yesterday, suddenly spoke up. “Did you kill him, Kevan?”

Kevan was still pale after discovering the dead body. “What? Why would I do that?”

Jet shrugged. However, the harm was done. One of the villagers heard that and turned to them. “Did you kill him?” He shook Kevan’s shoulder.

“Goodness, no! I found his body, he’s already like that!”

“Why do you wake up so early?” Jet asked.

Kirana’s eyes flashed. This man was obviously ill-intentioned. But what did Kevan do wrong to him? Maybe he was the one that did something to the village chief?

Jet realized her sight and looked back at her, smirking. Looking at his smirk, Kirana was decidedly unamused. She wondered if he had some clues so that pushing Kevan onto the limelight was somehow justified.

Still, it didn’t seem to be like such a good thing. Kirana ignored him and focused back on the villagers’ eyes who now glared at Kevan with fire and pitchforks in their eyes. She didn’t think it was good before, and she didn’t think it was any good now. “I was going to the bathroom,” Kevan said, answering Jet’s earlier interrogation. He gradually regained his composure. “I saw the village chief already lying here, with this condition, then I screamed.”

She genuinely didn’t think that killing the village chief would result in any other thing, other than tearing the superficial harmony between the players and the NPCs. Perhaps… that was exactly Jet’s aim.

The villagers slowly moved their eyes away from him, and back onto mourning their chief. Jet wasn’t giving up, however. “Are you sure? Maybe the village chief was sleeping here and you decided to…” He gestured his hand over his neck.

The others were quiet. They had caught on by now that Jet was trying to do something, but they honestly didn’t know whether to help Kevan or not. Maybe Jet had already discovered something? Kirana didn’t have such concern. She wasn’t familiar with either of the two, but if she had to choose, she preferred the bespectacled man that looked like a decent person rather than Jet that gave her a very dangerous, malicious vibe. “Does it matter? Should we not quickly prepare, so the village chief will be at peace in the guardian god’s arms?” She said it as she looked at the villagers.

They seemed to respond to her words, then started tidying up the village chief’s body. Jet’s eyes narrowed at her, but she didn’t respond anymore. She was thinking of a more important thing.

It was definitely the poisonous plant that killed him. Dark blue skin was part of the symptoms. However, the plant was a slow-acting poison. It was perhaps a few days ago that the village chief was poisoned.

It didn’t matter. As long as the superficial peace wasn’t torn up, his death was most likely a good thing for the players. She didn’t forget the malice that she felt from him during their first meeting.

She had a more important thing to do.

In the dead girl’s diary, there was a mention of a secret place where the girl met her friend everyday. She didn’t think much when she first read it, but thinking further, why was it secret? Was the girl not allowed to have friends? In any case, it was worth it to check it out.

The two brothers followed behind her. When she looked back at them, Banyu said cautiously, “Is it fine if we follow you?”

Kirana had a feeling that she had failed in being low-key.

Sighing, she nodded. Well, the two brothers were quite useful, after all. She didn’t mind taking them because she wouldn’t need to protect them.

The place was in the back of the village, near the entrance. She didn’t think to look there because it was just big stones before. She didn’t expect there was a small cove behind the stones, overlooking the river.

She didn’t expect even more that there was a small hut there.

“How did you find this place?” Bintang, the active teenager, started to move to that small hut.

“Careful!” Banyu held him back.

“I found a clue,” Kirana said quietly, then moved as slow as she could to the small hut. “It mentioned this place.” She didn’t explain how she got the clue, and the brothers didn’t ask, either.

The hut was quiet and, well, small. As they walked closer, they could feel the tension rolling over them somehow. Danger, there were dangers. Kirana’s steps got lighter and more cautious. She slowly pushed open the wooden door of the hut.

Something came at her, hard and fast. Kirana almost jumped in surprise, but her training kicked in and she held her ground. The thing was thrown on the ground by her.

Almost at once, the sounds of growling were all around her.

What she saw was… a woman… but a monster. She didn’t know how to describe it. They smelled like corpses and their bodies were twisted in a horrifying way. Kirana avoided their attacks to try and observe, but the monsters didn’t give her a chance.

Kirana ruthlessly kicked them away. But even after she handled one, more kept pouring out of the hut, as if endless. The two brothers behind her were already fighting by a few monsters that escaped her hand. She knew they could handle herself and didn’t worry anymore and started to handle the more monsters popping out.

Until she was almost tired out, the monsters finally stopped coming. The two brothers behind her already plopped on the ground uncaringly, tired from expending so much force. Thankfully, they weren’t very injured. The monsters weren’t too difficult to handle, just too numerous.

After taking a short breath, Kirana walked into the hut.

The two brothers started to stand and followed her in. However, the hut was really too small. It made her wonder how the monsters were stored here. It was cramped just with the three of them.

Banyu got a flashlight out of nowhere and shined it on the dark hut. The smell was awful, but she held on, because there was so much dried blood on the wall. The very much bloodied room was not something she wasn't used to see, exactly. She'd seen similar things during her days before... but not to this extent. There were scratches on the walls. Counting... days. Or weeks. Or months. Half of them were dyed in red, as if whoever counted days had run out of space and started tracing over the scratches with blood.

She'd never seen something so desolate before.

Bintang and Banyu was evidently amazed, too. They were quiet. Bintang started to touch the bloody scratches. "Wait!" Kirana said, but it was too late.

The air around them rippled, and everything went black. []