At once, everything was clear. The hut looked clean; the wood was new. Kirana blinked for a few seconds. What... happened?

Banyu and Bintang was nowhere to be found.

Kirana didn't have time to think about them. She now found herself in between a very crowded place, with her limbs bound. Someone beside her clearly felt her jerking, because she heard a voice, “What is it, Aren?”

She realized that the other girl was talking to her. Apparently, she was now Aren. “No, nothing.”

The other girl who sat next to her was also bound tightly. Her body was dirty and her clothes tattered, with scratches and tears on her hand. “It’s been a week…” She muttered. “It’s so unfair that the shaman’s daughter came looking for Pelita and freed her…” There was envy laced in her voice.

Kirana kept quiet, trying to figure out her situation. So she was inside the hut, filled to the brim with girls around thirteen to fifteen. They all looked dirty, injured, and weak. The smell inside was almost unbearable.

The first thing that came to her mind was human trafficking. Was this the past, where the village was involved with human trafficking? The shaman daughter must be the girl whose diary she found inside the house she stayed in. She remembered the golden hairpin that she took away from that room.

She already had a feeling that the villagers weren’t right, but she didn’t expect human trafficking exactly.

The friend mentioned in the shaman’s daughter’s diary must be one of the girls. Pelita, didn’t she say? Kirana frowned slightly and asked, “A week?”

“You’ve been here longer than me, Aren,” the girl sighed. “I want to go home… My parents were waiting for me… I’m about to graduate soon…”

There was a sob from the other side of the room.

“Pelita’s escape hasn’t been successful so far,” someone said from another corner of the room. “She was punished worse and worse every time.”

“Yeah, she was bleeding when she returns yesterday…”

“There is no hope…” Another wailed, which prompted the whole room to go into tears.

Kirana’s head started to hurt. The room was very small, with limited oxygen, and the crying made it all felt stuffier. She took a deep breath and felt her rope. Having been kidnapped several times in the past, this knot wasn’t even hard for her to solve. The rope on her hand fell after some tries.

With her hands freed, she started unknotting the rope on her legs. The other girls were still crying and didn’t pay attention as she walked out the small hut from the open door. Only the girl who sat next to her saw it, but she didn’t say anything.
Kirana found herself in the small cove surrounded by stones, with a river to the left. Her eyes observed the surroundings quietly. There were not many changes from the previous ones, before she was transported here. The only difference was the grass under her feet was still green, unlike the dead grass she saw previously.

She heard someone’s steps from the outside and looked around. Finding a big stone, she decided to hide behind it.

The people entered from the small entrance near the river. They dragged a girl, bound tightly with rope. “A problematic wench,” one of them said. “She keeps escaping. None of the villagers are inclined to take her now.”

“Brides like this are not popular,” The other replied. “How about we talk to shaman, advance the ritual this year? They’ve been really restless.”

“This matter is the seller’s fault for coming too early,” the first one said, roughly pulled the struggling girl. “I don’t think the shaman will agree. The shaman is doing something different this year and he needs more time.”

“Hey, this thing is really annoying.”

They threw the girl into the hut, and she screamed as she hit the ground. The two men then walked away from that same entrance.
From their conversation and the shaman’s daughter diary she read before, she could estimate what was happening in the village. The shaman and his wife wanted to revive their dead son through a ritual involving girls’ lives. These bunch of girls were bought from a human trafficker for that same ritual, and somehow the villagers supported it. Why? Kirana frowned.

When she heard the footsteps receded, she stood from behind the stone and brushed the dirt off her already dirty clothes. Seeing that it was pointless, she stopped and walked to the small wooden hut.

The girls inside were still crying, especially after seeing Pelita got thrown inside. Only the girl who sat next to her before, her gaze was empty until she saw Kirana coming in. “Do you find a way to escape?” She asked, whispering.

Kirana shook her head, and her face fell flat. She didn’t talk anymore. In the meanwhile, Kirana was observing Pelita, who she thought was the shaman’s daughter’s friend in the village, like what her diary said. “Pelita, where did you escape?” She asked.

Pelita raised her bruised face and laughed bitterly. “Where can I escape? Last time I reached the forest through the way Mina taught me, but they somehow know where I was and catch me. This time I hid in the river, but there was something in it… I panicked and got caught.”
Mina… should be the shaman’s daughter. Kirana didn’t expect this girl to be really daring and couldn’t help but admire her. She sighed when she realized that all of this was in the past. What was the purpose of the game sending her here? It couldn’t be to give her answers for free.

She must do something to escape this past realm.

Escape.

She wondered if that was the theme of this “mini-level”. Everyone here was thinking of escaping. Mayhap her goal was to help these girls escape? She couldn’t be too sure, but all these girls were talking about was to escape this hellhole. Understandable, seeing how bad their condition was.

If that was the goal, then she should figure out a way for these girls to escape safely.

The fact was that none of these girls were in good conditions. She could imagine how they were treated before. But unfortunately, this also meant that these girls couldn’t go very far.

Opportunity arrives to those who waits. When Kirana was still tangled in her thoughts, the mentioned shaman’s daughter, Mina, arrived in the dead of the night. She was shivering and trembling as she opened the hut’s door.

All the girls who were still awake turned their heads to Mina, Kirana included. Mina looked around and finally found Pelita. “I’m sorry…” She started to sob. “There is nothing more we can do, we are going to die…”

Kirana frowned. Why would a member of the village, a shaman’s daughter, spoke as if she was one of the imprisoned girls? That was when she remembered Mina’s diary that she read before. True to her thought, Mina pulled up her sleeves and showed it to them under the dim moonlight. “It has appeared on me… They are going to kill me!” She looked almost hysteric.

“Slow down, Mina…” Pelita, who was injured, tried to sit up slowly. “Tell me, what happened?”

“What they’ve been doing…” Mina whispered. “Three years ago, our village was attacked by strange ghosts. An older cousin of mine… I was told she got married… but I found out that she died drowning in the river and they say it revive the river god!”

The look in her eyes was almost… crazy.

“The river god protects our village from the ghosts. They do this ritual every year… My father… The shaman wants to revive my brother… I am of the same blood, so I will be sacrificed…” At this point, her tears had reached her clothes, but she made no effort to wipe it. Instead, Mina laughed in hysterics. “This is karma… I know what the villagers have done and I did nothing…”

Her tears then started to ran dry and it appears that she fell asleep.

Kirana fell into contemplation instead. So that was the secret of this village. She didn’t expect to find it all out in one ‘secret level’, but it was a good thing for her. ‘Escape’ might be the key to get out of here.

“Mina, what if we escape?”

Mina wasn’t actually asleep. She looked up at Kirana like she was an idiot. “What? That’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

Kirana wasn’t offended. “Have you tried going through the main gate?”

“No way, it was guarded…” Mina subconsciously refuted, then paused.

“We can use this point as a breakthrough,” Kirana replied. She heard shouting from a distance, and the girls must’ve heard them too. “They must be looking for you right now.”

“But we fail so many times…” This time, it was Pelita who refuted softly.

Kirana said, “It is a do or die situation. Do you not want to at least try?”

Silence.

Kirana was never a kind person. However, these girls were the key to this ‘secret level’, and she wasn’t sure if staying here would result in anything good. She was about to open her mouth and persuade them again when the girl beside her said, “I’ll go.”

She turned to the girl who greeted her first earlier. The girl resolutely nod at her.

“Anyone else?”

“I’ll go too,” Another girl from the corner said.

“But we’re all tied up…” Another refuted weakly.

“Mina isn’t,” the girl beside her said. “We can go! We can escape this hell, don’t you want to?”

Everyone started to whisper and one by one, everyone said they would go. Mina started untying everyone’s rope and we started to get out of the hut. Kirana led them through the small opening of the stone. No one was guarding, but the village was really bright. There were voices calling for Mina.

Kirana brought them through the front gate of the village, where she was obstructed by an invisible barrier before. The difference was, now she could walk through it. Bringing around ten girls with her, too.

However, it was quickly becoming apparent that this couldn’t go on for long. There were patrols in the forest. "Hey, what are you guys doing!"

Kirana urged them to run forward while her mind raced. She was surprised to find that she could get the [Stick] in her inventory from the reward before and brought it out. With it, she started hitting the three villagers that were after them.

The leader saw that his underlings were being defeated. "You useless bunch, you can't even beat a wench!" He stepped forward.

Kirana threw the stick towards him, which hit his head, and kicked his jewels while he was distracted. She could feel that Aren's body was weak, and decided to run away with the girls after grabbing her [Stick].

Further and further they ran, but they kept meeting patrolling villagers. After Kirana demolished their third group of pursuers, breathing heavily with an untrained body, she urged the girls to walk deeper into the forest. “We need to find the main road,” she said.

There was only silence.

No one answered.

When Kirana looked back, she saw the earlier monsters with mangled bodies, that she fought with Bintang and Banyu before, instead of the girls she led out. She instinctively got on a defensive stance. However, the monsters didn’t attack her.

One of them walked forward. Despite the mangled features, she could see human characteristic as it bowed towards her.

Then, the rest of them bowed, as well.

Kirana was silent as she watched them slowly dissipated.

Then, the air around her rippled, and everything went black. []