Don't Be Holy! - Chapter 17
Bang, bang!
The harsh knocking on the door continued relentlessly. When Eir put on her shawl and stepped outside, she saw a group of villagers in raincoats, thoroughly drenched by the rain.
“What’s wrong?”
The wind and rain were so loud that she had to shout with all her might to be heard. She could see them grimacing as they shouted back, but their words merely brushed past her ears without reaching her.
As Eir tried to take another step forward, suddenly a hand from inside grabbed her wrist that was holding the lamp.
“You’ll get soaked.”
It was Rubel.
He naturally guided her back inside with one protective hand as he passed by, stepping outside in her place. Eir forgot about the strange feeling she’d had about him moments ago, instead feeling both embarrassed and grateful for that small gesture.
In an instant, his red hair and entire body were drenched. As the rain traced down his body, his clothes clung to his curved back.
Eir lowered her raised lamp slightly. Somehow, she felt like she was sneaking peeks.
Among the raised voices of men shouting in the rain, she could make out a few words.
Monster, east, we too, measures, careful. Words like that. It seemed that monsters had been spotted in the east, and the village chief was leading the village militia to deal with them personally.
When Eir, worried, tried to step forward again, the concerned-looking village chief pointed his cane toward the house. It seemed he had come to warn them to be careful today, with both the rain and monsters about.
While monster appearances weren’t particularly unusual during her three years in this village, the direction was troubling.
‘The east is where Granny’s grave is.’
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the villagers to handle the monsters well, but the problem was that before her death, Granny had desperately insisted her grave shouldn’t become corrupted.
‘Something terrible will happen. Something beyond your imagination.’
With this house having such a strange room, who knew what mechanisms she might have set up at her grave? Though half of what Granny said had been lies, she wasn’t the type to lie about her dying wishes.
After brief consideration, Eir eventually grabbed a dagger and put on a raincoat shortly after the villagers left. Rubel, who had been drying his wet hair with a towel, frowned in incomprehension and approached her room’s doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to go out.”
“Was I the only one who heard that conversation?”
“Technically, yes.”
Eir shrugged her shoulders. Though she tried to appear calm, her hands trembled slightly, and this time Rubel could see it.
He dropped his shoulders with a sigh and repeated what he had heard once more.
“It seems monsters have appeared in the eastern forest. They told us not to go that way. Apparently, they heard the cry of an Alupu.”
“An Alupu?”
An Alupu was a wolf-like monster. They were large and quite threatening even alone, but the biggest problem was that they traveled in packs.
Sensing the tension in her voice, Rubel finally relaxed his furrowed brow as if he could now understand.
“The villagers plan to use Pahma powder to lure them away rather than confronting them directly.”
Monsters, and darkness itself, were naturally drawn to light. The Divine Empire had developed Pahma powder based on this characteristic of monsters. Soon, Pahma powder was distributed to villages and other places beyond the temple’s influence to help avoid monsters.
Eir carefully traced the monsters’ migration path in her mind. She had roamed the back mountain so much that she could remember which parts were corrupted and which were intact just by closing her eyes.
Moreover, Alupu were famous for favoring waterways, so with a little effort, she could predict where they had emerged and where they would move.
The Alupu moving east would surely head toward Granny’s grave.
Places where monsters passed through typically became corrupted with high probability.
“Granny’s grave is in danger.”
