"What the hell is this?" Asked Edd looking around.

"I have no idea." Said Jake with a confused face.

"What happened here?"  Asked Margaret with a shocked face.

Noah stood at the side with a thinking face, while his wolf scanned the area around for him.

/System?/

*Detecting spatial magic traces. Analyzing acquired information*

"Spatial Magic?" Muttered Noah, surprised.

"Spatial magic. Quite possible. Surprised you know about it." Said Kail standing nearby accidentally overhearing his muttering

"No freaking way!" Said Margaret. "This big? What kind of monster could do something like this?"

They stood at the empty field lighted by only the torches that they held, while looking around in total surprise. They did not want to believe it when the scout came back bringing news. But now that they've seen it with their own eyes, there was no way to disprove it.

The village was gone. Not just empty. Simply gone. Behind the wooden village walls that were supposed to surround houses, fields and gardens, was instead an empty field of huge crater with rough ground. As if the whole village was just picked from ground with everything that was inside and moved elsewhere.

"Wolf found something." Said Noah after a moment.

"What?"

"Bodies." Said Noah looking at dark blue dots with no shine to them on his minimap. When they traveled he found out that monsters that were red on minimap, would dim and lose their shine, when monster was killed, as if representing put out fire of life within them. Judging from this logic dark blue dots should be representing people that lost their fire of life. Dead human bodies.

Everyone looked at him with serious faces.

"Show the place." Said Jake. 

Noah led them toward the wooden wall where spatial magic that was used to transfer the whole village did not reach.

When they reached the spot where the wolf scratched the ground, they called all the mages and asked them to dig out all they could.

A dozen minutes later they were staring at the row of dead men and old people bodies.

"There are no women and children." Said Margaret.

"Yeah." Confirmed Jake silently. 

"They took them away." She hissed at the kicking ground. "As if killing all their families was not enough. They took women and their children to be slaves."

"They are inhuman bastards." Said one of the adventurers clenching fists. "But we are the ones that let them go. It's our fault"

"The fuck it is." Said Jake. "The ones who sold their souls to the devil to warn them, are the ones that are at fault. We did our job right!"

*Detecting a new source of spatial magic!*

"ENEMY INCOMING!" Screamed Noah suddenly, rousing everyone from their shocked state.

No one needed a second warning to do what they needed. Weapons and magics were immediately raised in defence. People suddenly moved to group up with their teams.

"Where is it?" Asked Jake with a huge round shield in his left hand and a sword in his other, while standing in front of Noah covering him behind himself.

"Very center of the village." Answered Noah.

"Huh? What's that?" Asked Keena, staring into the darkness with her shining in the darkness from the torch light eyes.

"You see something?" Asked Margaret.

"Something is laying in the ground." Said Keena. "I will check."

"No." Said Rey. "You're the best at night vision and long distance vision. You are our best look out in this darkness. Besides, I am best at trap dismantling. If it's a trap I have more chances.

"Rey is right." Said Jake. "Keena you get on the wall behind us and look around. Rey….be careful"

Rey nodded and walked toward the object that suddenly appeared in the center of the village.

He carefully walked toward the object and shone at it with the torch. His rangers night vision skill allowed him to see in darkness however it disrupted colors making the world gray. Right now he needs to see this object well to understand what he's dealing with so he took the torch.

Once he was close he saw that it was in fact two objects instead of one. 

One object reminded him of an extra sized chicken egg and had some kind of intricate lines all over it that had dim light pulsing within them.

The other was a big ball the size of a human head made out of what looked like countless paper slips glued over each other and a small fuse wick was dimly burning down with only a speck of it left.

"Oh fuck!" Said Rey barely turning away and jumping to the side with all his accelerating skills combined when the ball blew up.

With a loud roar a huge cloud of smoke covered Rey and a great deal of the crater that was left instead of the disappeared village. Soon that cloud started to spread in all directions as if early morning mist was creeping close to the ground instead of flying up into the air.

"Smoke?" Asked shocked Edd.

"No. That must be poison fumes! Everyone get away from it! Don't inhale the fume!"

"REY!" Screamed Keena trying to run in the direction of the cloud.

"Keena stop!" Screamed Margaret grabbing her by the scruff.

Next moment a deafening roar of monsters sounded from the direction of the forest around the village.

"What the hell was that?" Asked someone in shock.

"Oh shit." Said Jake taking out a stick from his pocket ring, pointing it to the sky and yanking the rope hanging from the lower end.

Red ball of fire went up into the sky, shining so bright it lit up the whole village area and a good part of the forest around them.

"That was monster bait!" Said Jake. "Let's hope that you were wrong Edd. And soldiers do come for our back up. Otherwise we are fucked." He said to Edd.

"EVERYONE GET ON THE WALL!" Screamed Jake.

Just as they all climbed up loud sounds of cracking wood and falling trees sounded from all over the place. Ground shook with countless feet of monsters stomping on it, getting closer with every second.

Soon one wolf jumped out of the bushes in the forest, which was lighted by the red light from the ball hanging in the sky. Then came another, and then more and more.

Next moment all shit broke loose around them.