—Sally—

  I was relaxing on Orion's head when I realised that I might be getting too big to keep doing this in the future. I did know that I’d been growing, but it was another thing to realise that my favourite mode of transport had begun to become cramped.

  I avoided grumbling about it as my palanquin passed by a twitchy townsperson. We were up and about to hunt for clues today, trying to find traces of the growing threat. Well, that and avoiding the increasing ire of the villagers. Something seemed a bit… off about them today.

  They still looked as sickly and starved as usual, but they looked pissed—at us specifically. I don't know what we had done to annoy them so much, but I swear I heard a couple of them debating if they could succeed if they tried 'getting rid of Orion'.

  There wasn't only bad news however, as I’d finally managed to get an [Appraisal] off on the monster and progressed the [Quest]. I was getting worried that this whole adventure would have to be written off, and we'd have to skip town without any rewards.

  [Wolf Among The Sheep]

  [There is a monster lurking among the defenceless villagers, hunt down and neutralise the threat before it can destroy the village!]

  [Part 1: Where's Wolfie?

  A man-eating beast has managed to silently kill a man, even while he was surrounded by friends. Identify the threat using [Appraisal]!]

  [Part 1: Completed!]

  [Part 2: Hunt it! Before you become its prey!

  The monster has been identified, and you know that a [Wendigo Walker] stalks the streets. It is a fast growing threat, with the capability of destroying this town completely! Hunt and kill it before it can irreversibly damage the town beyond repair.]

  [Part 3: Locked (Complete Part 2 first)]

  [Potential Rewards:

  Part 1: Scored based on how long it took to find and use [Appraisal] on the threat.

  Final Time: 61 hours 21 minutes

  Excellent(Time < 12 hours): [Appraisal] will gain a level!

  Pass(Time < 72 hours): [Appraisal] will gain a level when used on [Aberrations]!

  Failure(Time > 72 hours): [Appraisal] will no longer function against this [Wendigo Walker]

  Part 2: Scored on how many villagers were eaten before killing the [Wendigo Walker].

  Current Victims: ?

  Excellent(Victims < 2): Double XP when killing it, and unique [Notable Emergence]

  Pass(Victims < 10): A unique [Notable Emergence].

  Failure(Victims > 10): ???

  Failure(Wendigo is not killed): ???

  Part 3. ???]

  It pissed me off that we missed getting an extra level for [Appraisal] because we were too slow. At least we still managed to get a partial reward instead of outright failure. But hunting it was already going poorly, and that's before I got told that it got stronger with every victim it ate.

  I looked over to the still open [Appraisal] screen in the corner of my system, its words still unchanged from last night.

  [Wendigo Walker – Level 30 Aberration]

  [Tamer of the frigid wendigo fever, sickness transformed into strength]

  [It was the coldest winter remembered by memory, mouth or myth. The first snows fell after a hungry, desperate autumn.

  That was when the first victim of the cold-cannibal curse first appeared.

  It was the most desperate she'd ever been, the hungriest, and she was trapped in a cave with nothing. Naught but what few people remained of her family. They had to struggle against the elements for months to survive this long, the only food existed in distant memories.

  However, when a drop of black blood was mixed into the snow by the entrance, their fates were decided. The madness it carried dripped in slowly at first, so alike to the droplets of frigid water that they melted, and so desperately drank.

  She resisted the animalistic urges, the whispers from the darkest corners of her mind. Even ignored the sudden pools of drool in her mouth whenever she watched her son play beside her.

  She resisted the best she could, better than most could've. But once Wendigo Fever takes, it is already too late. Resisting only prolongs it.

  It wasn't long after that. Before the screams went silent. Before the mad cackles and cracking of bones finished soon thereafter.

  The first of the poisoned progeny was unique, an innocent twisted, but not shattered, not completely broken. So unlike the witless wendigos it birthed afterwards. It was titled the Wendigo Walker, and no humans survived that cave, as it only left behind marrow-drunk bones, and the shed skin of its morality.]

  A monster centred around eating people, and presumably how it grows more powerful. A bad situation.

  Because of… y'know, the multitude of skeletons we'd found.

  "Sally." Orion spoke, breaking me out of my reverie. I resisted the urge to scowl at the Ranger as I closed the system windows blocking my vision. He'd been getting more difficult to work with over the past few days, and his behaviour had disappointed me.

  While I could admit that it was partially my fault—I did gas him with fairy mist—but his words last night were still stuck in my mind like an agitated splinter. The problem was that he said some shit I couldn't get over, because as far as I knew, he did believe what he'd slurred while he buried his face in the mattress. At least that was what I could gather when I used [Appraisal] on [Charmed] and [Reduced Inhibitions]. Those [Conditions] could only draw out or amplify already existing thoughts and feelings, not create entirely new fantasies.

  As much as I wished that some of the things that he said were actually true, it would only hurt me in the long run if I indulged my fantasies—or Orion's misunderstandings from the [Mountain Dungeon]. Getting your hopes up only makes it all the more painful when it all collapses around you. Something I had to continuously remind myself of after the incident that damaged my [Mental-Framework].

  I had to reinforce what I knew was the correct thing to do, and that some things simply couldn't be changed as I looked down at the floor where Orion had-

  Oh.., that's a corpse.

  Well... kind of. Even calling what remained 'leftovers' felt generous. Before us was a pile of gnawed, snapped-in-twain, and scraped-clean bones, with not a fleck of meat left on the shattered pile of ivory.

  And this time, it was hardly hidden. The mound of bones was barely out of view of the main street, shoved only a couple of metres down a side alley. The [Wendigo Walker] must be getting arrogant if it wasn't bothering to cover its tracks.

  Just another reminder that this first quest wasn't going to plan as much as I’d like it to. Though I wasn't deterred yet, because it'd be embarrassing to fail now. For a beginner quest in a starter area, giving up now after all of the effort I’d put in would be so irritating.

  "Should we… Tell the chief? That there’s another victim?" Orion asked. I thought for a few seconds while I watched him sort through the bones, using his bow to push them around. Whatever the Wendigo did to this guy had left nothing intact. It made it hard to tell which pieces were meant to be a human skull.

  "Why not?" I answered, uncaring either way—but I was happy that he deferred to me for the decision. It would be a good habit for me to encourage.

  Though as we left the bloodied alley—it nauseatingly reminded me of when I watched a toddler eat a bowl of spaghetti—a familiar kid ran into Orion's side. I glared down at Aylin when Orion’s shaking stopped, but paused as I noticed the uncharacteristic frown on her face.

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  "Sorr—Oh! Hel-hello." The girl stammered to Orion as she slowly untangled herself from Orion's legs. The first thing I noticed was that she was strangely plump, her belly sticking out like she'd been force-fed an emu. The second thing I saw was her obvious post-crying face—which was hard to miss with the dried lines of salt down her cheeks and bloodshot eyes.

  "Hello Aylin." Orion responded coldly, not even asking why she seemed so upset. I stretched my neck out to get a good look at his face, and saw only the cold mask of a professional.

  "H-hi?" Aylin stammered back, the both of them caught in a deadlock of awkward staring. But a quick glance Orion took behind him confirmed that he remembered that the corpse in the alleyway was behind him. Orion's body the only wall preventing Aylin from noticing the pile of bones still dripping with saliva.

  He gently pushed Aylin to the side so she wouldn't be able to see the contents of the alley. He then stepped out as well.

  "Are you injured?" Orion suddenly asked, lifting his hand to reveal a bruise on Aylin's collar-bone, uncovered by Orion shifting Aylin's shirt.

  "It's-s nuffin'." Aylin mumbled as she immediately pulled her top, the purplish-green mark hidden once again.

  "Are you sure?" He continued to ask, Aylin giving him a teary-eyed look in return as she nodded.

  "Yeah… Mom is just being a bit mean." Aylin answered, making me feel no less concerned.

  "Why?"

  "… She didn't like it when I asked where all of my friends were going. Lot-n'-lots of them aren't around anymore…" She answered, rocking on the balls of her feet as she stared at the ground.

  I squinted in confusion and surprise at the revelation that people were abandoning ship so fast. I can understand wanting to flee from a monster—especially if its favourite meal was human flesh—though I was surprised that this was their last straw.

  I suppose if anything was going to break the floodgates, a cannibal eating your friends and family would do it.

  "Aylin!" A growl interrupted my thoughts, and looked down to see a ratty women clutching Aylin by the shoulder. I glared at Aylin's mother with a snarl and scowl, finding both her degenerating appearance and casual cruelty towards her own daughter disgusting.

  It seemed in the days since I’d last had to put my eyes on her, her face had only become more foul, saggy, tight, and wrinkled in all the wrong spots—she looked like a victim of a botched facelift. But now her body was even more decrepit as well. Her bony body was curved as a shrimp’s, her posture was worse than someone who’d been diagnosed with scoliosis. If I was willing to speak, I would’ve joked that she could've been the anorexic hunchback of Notre-Dame.

  "I told you not to talk with this… thing Aylin!" She verbally berated the child, hissing at her through clenched teeth. Aylin herself looked like she was about to cry, but I didn't know if it was from how hard she was being clutched, or her mother's tone.

  Aylin tried to nod as fast as she could as her mother raised an open palm, the incoming slap as telegraphed as how inevitable it felt. Like watching a train crash.

  But before it could land on Aylin's face, it was stopped halfway through its swing.

  "Stop." Orion calmly demanded, his hand catching the women's forearm before it could connect. She gave him a scowl as she tried and failed a few times to get the limb free from Orion's grip.

  "Stop interfering where you're not wanted." She hissed. Her words caused Orion to flinch, and his reaction made his hold brittle enough for the mother to break free.

  The moment she was unchained, she grabbed Aylin by the back of the neck and marched her off, leaving me to watch their backs disappear down the street. It might've been a trick of the light, but I swear that I could see the ridges of her spine poking through the back of her shirt. Her bony appearance almost made me appreciative of how well fed she kept her child—it meant that she had to be a caring mother in some fashion… right?

  But it was getting harder and harder to maintain that line of thought. Then again, how would I know what was going on inside the home to cause this kind of behaviour?

  I guess it just wasn't my business to stick my nose in.

  ***

  Orion knocked on the chief's door while I looked around the courtyard in front of the house. It was midday, but the place was abandoned. Not a soul in sight.

  Even when we first came here, there were still people milling about and interacting with each other. Not even the lethargy and exhaustion from the starvation had stopped them. But now there was a chill in the air, and most of the people I saw were hiding inside buildings. The only proof I had that they were still alive was the glinting eyes in the shadows of the windows.

  "Old Chief? Are you awake?" Orion shouted, loudly enough that even a half-deaf old man—which the Old Chief was—couldn’t have slept through it. But it still took a few more minutes of banging on the front door to get a response.

  "COME THROUGH YOU! Y-YOU, YOU HOOLIGAN!" I heard the hoarse voice call out, sounding sufficiently pissed off. Orion paused halfway through smashing the bottom of his fist into the wooden frame again, smoothly transitioning from a brutish slam into a polite and hesitant opening of the front door.

  Orion slipped inside and closed the entrance behind him, plunging the both of us into a soft darkness. It took a few seconds to acclimatise, but once I did, I was thoroughly disgusted.

  The house looked like it had been occupied by a mix of hobos and NEETs, a precarious balance between destituteness and the wastefulness of twenty-first century depression. Dirty bowls had been left out, with them and their wooden utensils coating the only table of this main first room, and much of the floor as well. While I couldn't see any morsels of food anywhere, the smears of sauce and evidence of long digested food showed that they'd all been used—very messily by the looks of it.

  Orion carefully stepped through the minefield of germs and poor table-manners with precision, navigating the room perfectly even with the blinds closed. I suppose his heavy woollen blinds were just another signifier of his position in the village—the guy in charge should be able to afford them, even when everyone else had to make do with wood.

  I'm unsure as to how Orion knew where to go, but he exited the first room and walked down a short hallway to the door at the end without hesitation, ignoring the set of stairs at the end for the ajar door underneath it. With a duck to avoid letting me get hit by the door-frame, he walked into a small room with a fireplace, the elderly chief inside and sitting on a chair by the extinguished stone oven.

  The room itself was cold and pale, the stone slabs surrounding the hearth smeared with snowy ash. There were no embers in the coals contained within the recess of the wall either, which had left the room drained of any warmness it might've had, temperature or colour-wise. Without those memories of warmth to colour the room, what remained was a sickly, pallid, white tint. The lack of light inside the room only made it worse, the darkness reducing most colours to shades of grey.

  The Old chief wasn't looking much better, the old man's face gnarled with boils and lumps that must've developed recently. It reminded me of kid-friendly representations of the black-plague on thirteenth century peasant—disgusting, but not ugly enough to make parents change the channel.

  Though I shouldn't be too surprised that an elderly person caught something while being forced to live in this pigsty. But there was something else that was different about the emancipated man, something feral that I couldn't quite pinpoint the source of.

  "What'd'ya want you rascally, rascalling... rascal!" He attempted to insult Orion, his vocabulary failing him as his heavy breathing sent flecks of spittle flying onto his shirt. I had to look away from the old man at this point, I wouldn't be able to keep my breakfast down if I noticed any other disgusting details. Realising that the muck around his eyes was a mix of yellowish pus and an unusual amount of sleep-gunk was too much to look at without gagging.

  "I wanted to inform you of another corpse we'd found earlier." Orion replied, somehow maintaining eye contact with the Chief's puss-covered and almost crimson-red eyes. There wasn't anything suspicious or unnatural about them, they were just so bloodshot that it was hard to see any unblemished parts of the whites of his eyes. It reminded me of an elderly bloodhound, and the Old Chief’s drooping cheeks and the painful unawareness of the long strings of saliva hanging from his mouth were included in that comparison.

  "Oh, that's… that's not an issue." He replied with a scoff, and I felt Orion's surprise through the slight jolt—and then tensing—of his body.

  "Why?"

  The old man dismissed Orion's concern with a limp wave. "Our Medicine Man… He could be returning soon—if he's still on schedule. Then… there’ll be nothing else to worry about."

  "… What about the food issue?" Orion continued to ask, and the Chief grinned, showing off a mouth of blackened gums, with only a half-set of remaining teeth. The flesh around each yellow, pointed tooth red and puffy, truly making him the greatest victim of a world without dentists.

  "My boy Chester managed to find some meat, meat he'd found from an abandoned fresh kill! My grandson is a real smart cookie, a smarty-pie." I had to look away again, barely holding down a visceral gag as I watched mucus-mixed saliva pool between his sagging lips and gums.

  "If it was abandoned, then that usually indicates it died from unnatural-"

  "We're eating—No!—devouring it tonight! We can’t waste a good meal!" The old man cut off Orion's sentence, snarling—quite literally—at Orion. His hackles raised as an animalistic growl rose up from the man, personally confirming my personal theory about how many brain-worms he had. There had to be at least half-a-dozen chomping away on his grey matter for him to be this feralised.

  "But the potential for disease-"

  "Then why don't you come around tonight? Inspect the meat, the morsels for yourself?" The Chief interjected again, and I struggled to tell if his smile was meant to be friendly or threatening. His face had too many wrinkles to decipher the difference.

  But the inspection was interrupted by a loud creaking from above, the floorboards groaning as—what I assumed was a person—somebody walked around upstairs.

  "Bloody—Sweet, wonderful Chester has been so sick recently. That's why he wasn't 'ere to greet you." The elder explained before I could form a coherent thought about the interruption.

  "… I suppose if you have the situation under control, then may you please provide us directions?" Orion asked, and I had to restrain the urge to scowl at him.

  "I!—well… You don't have to leave just yet! We could use your help until the Medicine Man returns… And it'd be a waste for you to leave before you can enjoy the feast! It could be our… ‘thank you’ present?" The Old Chief suddenly insisted, very intent on showing his gratitude in the most pious—and still disgusting—way he could, bowing.

  He was surprisingly spry, showing a lot more nimbleness than he had a couple of days ago as he stood and bowed at the waist in front of Orion.

  "I'll… decide later." Orion delayed while taking a step away from the wrinkly old man.

  Without another word the Ranger fled from the room, leaving behind that grotesque grin the old man was making as Orion walked back to the dining room.

  As I looked at the mess scattered all over the floor, I realised that there was a lack of vermin for all of the mess. I would've expected to spy cockroaches, flies, and rats enjoying the garbage, but I couldn't see a single one. Now that I think about it, I hadn't ever seen any of the scavengers you'd expect to see in a medieval town. I did have one suspicion as to where they all went, but I didn’t really want to consider how the townsfolk might’ve eaten every species of vermin so thoroughly.

  Orion opened and moved through the front door, and I took a breath of fresh air as I enjoyed the warmth and cleanliness of the outdoors. I only noticed it now how freezing and stuffy the inside of the cottage was. Exactly how I imagined a dusty, walk-in fridge would be.

  But as Orion walked away from the cottage, he just had to open his mouth.

  "I… think we should leave." He whispered to me as he reached the door to our temporary residence, ruining his streak of listening to me for instructions.

  "Why?" I asked imperiously as soon as he stepped inside the house, annoyed by his abrupt trepidation.

  "There's… something strange going on. With the people, and the forest. With Aylin's mother, the creatures living in the forest, and those corpses. I don't know what exactly, but it isn't safe." Orion complained, bringing up some debatably reasonable concerns.

  However! I did not care.

  "Ign-hore it. We're so close now. Wh-hy leave?" I shut him down, and Orion squinted at me.

  "But… what if something goes wrong?" He whined. I sighed, realising that I would have to 'convince' him to change his opinion.

  "This isn't a s-herious threat Orion. I'm sure I w-hon't get hurt. Or at least not b-hadly, like when we first met." I reminded him, the memories of that cave painful, but at least it was something I could use.

  And judging by Orion's flinch, it had worked as well as I could've hoped.

  "Okay… you're right." The ranger admitted.

  "Th-hough, if it'll make you feel better, w-he could go stake out Aylin's house f-hor a bit." I suggested, as Aylin’s mother was the best townsperson to investigate—my personal grudge against her had nothing to do with the decision. As weak a lead as it was for investigating Orion’s suspected ‘strangeness’ of the villagers, it was the best one available to me. At the very least I could use it to reassure some of Orion’s suspicions, and at this point anything was better than patrolling the town again. Though I don’t think we’d find anything other than an abusive mother, whose body is suffering from a world without healthcare.

  Orion nodded, and I enjoyed the taste of victory.

  While the sensation was sweet, I couldn't help but feel that it was slightly tarnished whenever Orion refused to meet my eyes for the next few hours.