“Walk slowly and carefully. There’s likely plenty more hornets within those nests. If they take notice of us, they will definitely attack.” I whisper to Madeline. 

 

“Are you sure they will?” she replies quietly, her voice almost trembling. 

 

“Definitely,” I whisper back, “I killed that crazy hermit. Those hornets were basically his pets. If they see us again, there’s no doubt they’ll try to kill us.”

 

I killed six of them yesterday, but even so, there was likely no shortage to their numbers. It was surprising that only six of them went after us, now that I think about it. If there had been any more than that, I don’t think I would’ve been able to kill them all. 

 

We carefully approached the cottage that was covered in thick green vines once again. The buzzing of the hornets was present, but fortunately none of them were outside of their nests. Once we do a quick search in the cottage, we can go. It shouldn’t take us too long, considering the fact that the cottage is not particularly large.

 

The old hermit’s lifeless body was right outside of the door. My stab to his back was more than enough to kill him, as there was a large pool of blood that was underneath his corpse. He was surprisingly able to crawl after the stab, but the loss of blood is what killed him. Good. That bastard didn’t deserve to live. 

 

I’m tempted to grab my iron dagger and lodge it straight into his cranium due to my spite and anger, but I know that if I did that, it would attract hornets. Still, I’m glad that he’s dead, and I was the one who got to kill him.

 

I carefully step over the hermit’s body and carefully reach for the doorknob. After doing so, I turn the knob. The wooden door creaked quite a bit, so I did it as slowly as possible. Once the door was finally open, I entered the cottage, Madeline right behind me.

 

“Keep the door open. It’ll be easier for us when we leave. The last thing I want is those hornets to hear creaking. Or anything for that matter.” 

 

The hornets clearly didn’t hear the opening of the door since we made it inside safely. But regardless, you never know what’s going to happen if we try to open the door again. It’s simply safer keeping it open. 

 

“I want to go home…” Madeline says quietly, her voice almost in a whimper.

 

I turn back to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be fine, Madeline. Just help me search this place first and then we’ll head back to the village, okay?” 

 

I tell her this in the gentlest way that I can. Even though she said she trusted my decision to return to the cottage, she was afraid. I can understand why, though. It was natural for her to worry. I watched those hornets nearly sting her to death. It’s obvious that experience has traumatized her. It’s something that neither of us will forget. From now on, I will do my absolute best to keep her safe.

 

Madeline lets out a deep sigh and nods slightly. “Okay.”

 

“I’ll start searching here in the kitchen. Go ahead and look in a different room, Madeline. And if you find anything out of the ordinary, just call out to me, okay?”

 

Madeline nods and makes her way to a different room in the cottage while I begin my search in the kitchen. I look around the room from where I’m standing, and I notice the boxes of goods that we delivered yesterday in the corner.

 

Since the old man was now dead, those boxes of goods were of no use to him anymore. Also, no one would ever have to deliver anything to this cottage ever again. Thank God.

 

I grab the dagger that's attached to my belt and walk over to the boxes, grabbing one of them carefully. 

 

I pry the box open with my dagger. The box was full of small bread rolls. We might as well take these for ourselves. We haven't eaten any breakfast yet, and we'll definitely need to keep our strength up for the long walk out of the forest.

 

I grab one of the bread rolls out of the box. It's still soft despite not being the freshest. After eating one, I resumed my search.

 

I started looking through all of the cupboards followed by the drawers in the countertops. There wasn't a single thing out of the ordinary here. Just a regular kitchen. Tea kettles, teacups, plates, cutlery, practically any basic kitchen and dining equipment you could find.

 

I mumble to myself after making a thorough search in the kitchen two more times just for safe measure.

 

It was the same result. There was nothing I could find to tell us more about the hermit.

 

One of the main questions that was lingering in my head is related to what the man had said before he grabbed hold of Madeline. I remember him saying something around the lines:

 

 "Everyone else left me and I won't let anyone leave me again!"

 

Who was he referring to? Maybe his family left him? Or was it other adventurers who had delivered to him? Or was it both? It was clear that the old man was lonely. He desired company, that's for sure.

 

Regardless, that was no excuse to latch onto an innocent girl like that. If I hadn't done what I did, he could've killed her. Also, there's no doubt in my mind he would've kept us prisoner if I hadn't killed him, either. At that point, he'd never let us leave. 

 

I wonder if he actually does keep anyone prisoner here, though. This thought is one of the reasons why I wanted to come back here. But thinking about what the hermit said again and again makes me think that isn't the case. Adventurers or family, everyone that the hermit had wanted to stay with him ended up leaving.

 

That being said, it must've been the last straw when it came to us leaving. At that point, he decided he wasn't going to let anyone leave him ever again, just like he said. 

 

Of course, all of this is just a hunch. I can't be sure that's the case until we've inspected the entire cottage. Because for all we know, we might come across a prisoner or two.

 

"Hey, Madeline," I call out, "Find anything?"

 

"No, not really." she calls back.

 

I make my way into the room where Madeleine is. It's a room with a couple of cushioned chairs and paintings on the wall. It looked like a typical living room to me. 

 

I began my search in the living room along with Madeline, and in the end, we both came up with nothing.

 

"Let's just go, Steven. There's nothing really unique about this place. It's just a regular old cottage if you ask me." Madeline sighs, gripping her staff tightly. 

 

"We can't leave yet," I state firmly. "There's only a couple of rooms left. We might as well check them, right? And what if there really is something here that might be useful to us? And most importantly…I think there might be prisoners here."

 

Madeline gasps at my words. "What do you mean prisoners? You think that old man trapped people in here?"

 

"I think so. And he would've done the same to us if I hadn't killed him. We have to make sure."

 

I continue to explain my thought process and how I've come to this conclusion. By the look on her face, it's clear she's a little skeptical, but still ends up nodding in agreement. 

 

"Don't worry. I won't make you search alone anymore. Let's do it together." I smile at her.

 

I notice Madeline's face softens once I say that. I'm glad. Anything that I could do to help reassure her was optimal. 

 

The two of us carefully made our way out of the living room and down the short hallway that consisted of just two more rooms. One room on the left and one on the right.

 

We decided to start with the room on the left. It was clearly the bathroom. There was a large wooden tub for bathing. It reminded me of the one back at the tavern. Man, I miss that place. 

 

There was a large mirror on the wall and beneath it was a large counter. In the ground, there was a large wooden chair with a hole in the middle, clearly used for disposing of waste, because again, there was no such thing as plumbing in this world. No flushing toilets, no pipes, no running water, no sewage system, none of that.

 

Where your waste ends up, I don't even want to know, but underground would make the most sense. I barely remember anything from my history classes way back when, but I'm pretty sure it was similar to that. I could be completely wrong though.

 

These were the only things inside of the bathroom, aside from a stack of parchments. Since toilet paper didn't exist, you had to use something else. It's still hard for me to make that adjustment, and I don't even want to mention what I've had to use to wipe my ass…

 

 Anyways, it made sense there wasn't much in here. didn't really need that much if you lived alone. My question is where did that hermit get the water for his bathtub without plumbing? Maybe there's a well outside?

 

There was no point in thinking about that. I sigh to myself. I really expected to find something important, but we've had no such luck. Not wanting to spend another second in the bathroom, we leave the room as the door closes behind us.

 

"This is the last room. Right, Steven?" Madeline asks as we approach the door on the other side of the hall. 

 

“Yeah.” 

 

Hopefully we’ll find something in this last room, or this whole search will be for nothing. 

 

After opening the door, we realized that the final room was the bedroom. A small bed was situated at the top of the room, and there were counters on opposite sides of the bed. One of the counters had an oil lantern sitting upon it, and on the other was an unlit candle. Aside from these things, there was a large cabinet near the middle of the room that appeared to be the old hermit’s wardrobe. There was also a large chest by the edge of the bed as well.

 

If I have to give that hermit credit for anything, he really did know how to keep his cottage nice and tidy. I’ve noticed that in every room that we’ve inspected so far, all of his furniture and other belongings are kept in proper condition. This room was no different. Nothing was scattered and all over the place. It made the search a lot easier for us.

 

“There’s not much in here, Steven. I think searching the cottage was a waste of time.” Madeline sighs. 

 

It was starting to feel like that to me too, but we couldn’t just give up yet. We haven’t even begun our search here.

 

“Maybe. But we might as well search this last room thoroughly. There has to be something. I just know it.”

 

“But what if there isn’t anything? What if you’re wrong?” 

 

“Then I’m wrong. But I feel like it was necessary to come back here. If we didn’t search this place, it would’ve bothered me forever. It’s something I just couldn’t ignore.” 

 

“Alright, I get it. So where should I start searching?” 

 

“Go ahead and check the inside of that wardrobe. I’ll take a look inside this chest. It looks pretty promising to me.” 

 

Madeline nods without a word and heads over to the wardrobe while I kneel down to the chest. Luckily, this chest didn’t require a key, so I was easily able to open it.

 

What I expected to see when I opened the chest was human bones or something like that, but instead it was just a bunch of books. I reach inside of the chest and grab one of them.

 

The book that I pull out is fairly thick in size with a red cover. There was no title on the cover of the book, so I opened up to a random page. I can’t read it too well, since the book is written in Elven tongue, but I know enough to recognize the language. It’s not a history book like the one that I have. This is a novel for sure. A work of fiction. 

 

I grab another book. I might as well take a look at all of these just in case. 

 

“There’s nothing in here at all, Steven.” Madeline says. 

 

“Huh? Really?”

 

I stand up and walk over to the wardrobe. She was right. There wasn’t a single thing inside. No clothes, no nothing. Completely spotless.

 

“I see…”

 

“Can we go now?”

 

I could tell by the cleric’s facial expression that she was tired and growing impatient. I guess we probably should get going.

 

“Sure. But I just need to finish checking these books, okay? After that, I promise we’ll head back to the village.” 

 

“Okay, good. My family is probably worried sick about me…” 

 

I open up the new book that was in my hands and skim through the pages. Another novel. This one was written in Human though, so I could read it perfectly.

 

After heading back to the chest, I proceed to take each book out one by one and skim through them all until there’s not a single one left.

 

I was hoping to find some sort of special information like a code or a cipher or anything like that, but they all turned out to be novels.

 

I’m a little disappointed that our inspection accounted for nothing, but maybe it was better this way. It’s definitely a good thing there weren’t any prisoners after all, and from what I see now, this cottage was completely ordinary. I can’t say the same for the old hermit, though. He completely lost his mind. This is why you can’t trust anyone. Especially not in a fantasy world…

 

“Alright, let’s go,” I say, turning my head to Madeline.

 

I return all of the books to the chest except for the novel with the red cover. I couldn’t really get the gist of the plot or anything, but maybe I’ll give it a read if I have some free time. After slipping the novel into my satchel we head out of the bedroom and walk to the kitchen. 

 

The front door was still wide open, and if I had to guess, it had to be around noon by now. Hopefully we can make it back to the village by evening, night at the latest. 

 

“Take some bread rolls. We’ll need it to keep our strength up.” I say, pointing to the box that I opened earlier. 

 

Madeline nods and grabs a few bread rolls and hands them to me. There was still a good amount of room in my satchel, so I could fit a generous amount inside. I was thinking that we could’ve just taken an entire box with us, but I didn’t want it to slow us down. We never know what we’ll encounter on our way back, and we need to be prepared. The box would definitely be a hindrance.

 

As we head out the door, we both nod at each other, remembering to tread lightly. All we had to do now is make it out of here a second time. 

 

The search didn’t take us too long, and despite the buzzing of the hornets, I still couldn’t see any of them outside of their nests. I would be able to notice if they were if that was the case, because those things are huge.

 

With each careful step, Madeline and I slowly made our way out of the clearing until we could no longer see the large hornet nest that was above the cottage. A few drops of sweat were rolling down my face. That could’ve gone much worse than it did. I really wouldn’t have wanted another fight; Another battle after yesterday would've really sucked.

 

Even though we were away from the hornets back there, we couldn’t let our guard down, because there’s going to be more on the way back.

 

It was straightforward enough, though. Since we took the middle path here, all we had to do was keep going straight with caution, taking breaks if we needed to. I open my satchel and grab a bread roll. I needed as much energy as I could get.

 

Side by side, we carefully started on our way out of the forest, eager to return to Corrina Village.